Montreal New Years Eve 2010 :: the Blog

Unbelievable, I feel like Sherlock Holmes cause I actually managed to solve the Tiesto NYE mystery before it was disclosed to the public. In a comment to my own post (yes, I know, it’s pathetic) I suggested that Tiesto is actually going to play at both Avalon in Boston and Resolution at the Bell Center in Montreal during the same, one and only new years eve night. Well, judging from Tiesto’s official site, seems like that is indeed going to be the case. The man is going to play in Boston from 11:00 to 2:00; then he’s going to cross the border, I guess by plane, hopefully the border guards won’t give him too much trouble, and at 5AM he’s scheduled to hit the stage at the Bell Center, where he’ll keep on going like this until 9AM. That’s a 10 hour working shift, including a 3 hour cross country trip. I’ve heard of traveling for work, but I’ve never heard of traveling during the lunch break and finishing your shift in another country. That Tiesto guy is hardcore; I knew he’ll try to pull some crazy stunt like this. It just sucks that he won’t be in Montreal when the clock strikes midnight. But at least we’re getting him for one hour more than the Americans.

Now, if Tiesto was really hard core, he’d start his work day in another time zone, maybe Australia, play a NYE set there, then hop on a supersonic jet and travel to North America where it is not the new years yet, and play again.

Then he’ll be able to sleep on a big pile of comfy money for at least three straight days.

The other day, walking on St-Catherine under the rain, I saw the first flyers for a New Years party: it happened to be a flyer for Resolution. They also have a domain reserved now, www.resolutionnye.com, but there is no site up yet. We’re following this party closely for you and will bring you all the info as soon as it surfaces, cause Tiesto in Montreal for new years eve, well that’s pretty big news.

But there is also going to be a lot of cool smaller parties too, don’t worry about it, we’re keeping our eyes open on them too. Just don’t expect all the news to be out now, 2 months before new years eve. The smaller parties aren’t organized as well as the gargantuan ones of the style of Resolution. Let’s just say that you don’t need to makes as much noise to fill up Gogo as to fill the Bell Center.

I wonder if the Canadians are going to spend their NYE at the Bell Center too.

Kidding, it’s just a joke.

Celebration is no more. Long live Celebration. The traditional huge-mega-blowout for New Years at the Bell Center held its last edition last year. And if you ask me, that’s a good thing, because too much of the same thing gets boring. It seems that there has been a Celebration every year since I started drinking.

Don’t mourn too much though, cause the break will be very short. In fact, there will be no break at all.

A couple of promotion teams are uniting to take over the Bell Center for the upcoming new years and their take over is huge slap in the face of the entire world. Through the works of some kind of dark magic, the headliner of the first Resolution new years party in Montreal (cause there are many Resolution parties around the world) will be none other than Tiesto.

Tiesto is here. Long live Tiesto.

How the hell did the organisers manage to get Tiesto to headline a New Years Eve party in Montreal? He could’ve done it anywhere in the world, London, Barcelona, Tokyo, New York’ you name it and he’ll fill the largest venue there. But no, he’ll be in our little and cold northern town for this new years. The Bell Center will be more like the World Center for a night to some hard-core Tiesto fans; if there is an electronic music DJ that has a following like rock groups have, that is definitely Tiesto.

Here is a link to a thread announcing Resolution and Tiesto’s appearance in Montreal for the new years.

It’s still not announced on Tiesto’s site though?

On a related topic, I wonder if Sade is going to be playing a NYE show; now that’s going to be more relaxed and give me a chance to get drunk in peace. For once.

What does the world have to say about Montreal and its New Years parties? I decided to do some peaking and sneaking around, query all the most popular sharing sites with montreal new years eve and see what the world has to say:

Flickr: surprisingly, not much to see there, apart from some women called Jen, her pics are cool, seems like she had a good time in Montreal for NewYears. Actually, no, wait, there are quite a bit of pictures. I spoke too fast. Still, it’s unbelievable the amount of digital junk all these digital cameras are producing.

Google Video: here there really isn’t that much to see, only some video, with a good soundtrack, by a bunch of kids from the University of Toronto coming to Montreal for New Years.

YouTube: much more results than Google Video, but all crap, with a really horrible ad by MontrealNiteLifeTours.

Blogger and MySpace: Just a bunch of garbage results, not even worth linking to.

I am now extremely disappointed. There really isn’t out there in the web community world about the new years eve in Montreal. I guess this site/blog is the only authentic, independent, user generated source on the topic. Well, user generated is a big word, because no one has commented anything yet! COME ON, post some thoughts, link some pages, share some pictures with us. Don’t make us go out of our way and make our own new years eve video and post it on YouTube, cause then we’ll become super stars and you won’t hear from us anymore, we’ll be too busy chilling in Las Vegas with the other stars.

Whatever, just get on it and start generating your videos/pics on the new years eve in Montreal, I want to see how everyone enjoys the night.

For those who haven’t heard about it yet, O.Noir is Canada’s first “in the dark” restaurant, that is, a place where you indulge your food while being in total darkness, and you are being served by blind waiters. When I say “total darkness” I really mean total pitch-black; no light whatsoever. The idea is that, because your sight becomes useless in total darkness, your other senses are heightened, making you enjoy your food in a different way. To top it all, O.Noir has a civic mission, as it makes the visitor (partly) discover what life in blindness is, and it donates part of its profit to organizations that support the visually impaired. I think the concept is great, there is a very nice and cozy little bar at the entrance of the restaurant, and to no surprise, the restaurant has elected St-Catherine street as its first home in Canada.

Now, I am not convinced that celebrating New Years Eve at O.Noir is the best of ideas, as drunk people, blind waiters and pitch darkness do not mix well at all. However, instead of the usual boring dinner before hitting the clubs and their endless flow of alcohol, why not spend a quality dinning hour at O.Noir? Just start drinking there and enjoy the good food, and get tanked latter at the NYE parties. A dinner at O.Noir will definitely set the tone for an out of the ordinary New Years Eve celebration. And this year, you will only be able to do this in Montreal. One more reason why our city rocks more than yours.

We might be small, we might have been rejected from all other writing jobs, the Montreal Mirror might have shunted us, but here we are: we have this little site, and we’re planning to cover New Years Eve with a vengeance. But first, before we open the gates to a flood of stint-full articles on New Years, we did some snooping around just to see what the others have done in the past, and will probably do again when New Years approaches. Our beloved cultural weeklies all have special issues covering New Years Eve, published in December, when all the party info is out. With their thousands of slaving cronies and tons and tons of cash, no wonder that the Mirror and the Hour pull a good job covering New Years: here, as an example, see what the Mirror prepared on last’s December new years events. However they probably will not be nearly as funny and biased as us while covering New Years, because tons and tons of cash does not happen when you are critical, right?

I was reading through some message board about New Years, and I came across this: Get Involved New Years VIP packages

Now that’s a pretty good idea I find, selling NYE party tickets and donating the benefits to UNICEF. There are no news on the official Involved site about the coming new years eve 2007, but last year’s edition featured a number of parties in Montreal being auctioned (Armin Van Buuren – Bal en Blanc @ Red Lite, Danny Howells – Aria, Deep Dish (Sharam) – Aria, Steve Lawler – Bell Center). Hopefully, a similar initiative will happen this new years too, and Montreal’s clubber’s will contribute. I mean, go nuts partying and help the world at the same time, how brilliant is that?

It gets tiring to drink the same old Molson Ex beer every night, or that extra killer double-Jack that you take to finish you off properly at the end of every party. The dudes at Wired suggest that we start experimenting with our drinks, and I strongly support them: read about Better Drinking Through Chemistry.

Now, a Dehydrated Rum and Coke sounds like the perfect drink for the coming New Years Eve, we just have to find the bars that will be serving it in Montreal, and that could be a rather daunting task.