I must have been hiding under a rock; or maybe it’s because I don’t watch TV or listen to the radio. Regardless, I just learned today that Roger Waters, the bass player from the original Pink Floyd lineup is in Montreal tonight (the 19 of October) and tomorrow (the 20th) for a show of Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
Yes you heard it right here, The Wall, the icon album/show-concept, released in 1979 by Pink Floyd, will be in Montreal for two consecutive nights (this at the Bell Center unfortunately, but I guess the Wall and it’s huge production needs a big venue).
I’m not sure that a show like this will ever happen in our life-time again.
Our partners and Montreal nightlife specialists, published a brand new review today for a little second floor bar on St-Laurent street, Korova. As the reviewer points out, Korova is also the name of the bar in “A Clockwork Orange”, a book by Anthony Burgess and immortalized graphically in a film by Stanley Kubrick, especially in its mad opening sequence.
Mentioning the name Korova and “A Clockwork Orange”, automatically brings to mind the crazy set of the Korova bar of the movie: the white colored female plastic statues, with milk coming out of their breasts. And you can’t help but feel weirded out by the fact that it is milk that they drink, not liquor or beer, but milk. This weird drinking arrangement is explained in the book by the fact that the boys are under-aged and there is actually drugs mixed with the milk. Still, the Korova in “A Clockwork Orange” makes for a perfect, health-obsessed, nature-loving, stylishly designed present-day bar.
The Korova in Montreal is not like the one in Kubrick’s movie, but it is still an interesting and original place.
Here is the opening sequence from Kubrick’s movie, set at the Korova:
My only problem with Kubrick’s brilliant vision of the bar is that it is skewed in only one direction, making it possibly sexist. It would have been interesting (and funny) to have some male-body shaped furniture to take a drink out off; a male counterpart to the genius contraption bellow:
And in a weird coincidence, these female-bodied furnitures in Kubrick’s Korova remind me of the female-legged synthesizers of Chromeo. I guess there is only that much original ideas out there.
Next week, on Tuesday the 21st of September, you’ll be able to catch M.I.A live in Montreal at tthe Metropolis on St-Catherine street. Knowing this crazy little pop-rebel, you’re bound to see everything you wanted to see, with lots of extra fluorescent, home-made street wear, tribal beats and a few political and social messages thrown all together in the mixer-robot called M.I.A.
Photo by Spin Magazine, which also happens to have a piece on Montreal’s own Hansome Furs, which are this week’s Friday pick..
I just watched her latest video, XXX0, and even though visually it is OK, neither the song nor the visuals come near to Galang: I love the animated stencil tag in the Galang video, of the flying jets and tanks and birds dropping bombs, and everything else about the animation actually:
To continue on the topic of what is truly important for the music scene in Montreal, I wanted to inform you about the fact that the British band and cartoon specialists Gorillaz will be paying Montreal a visit, as part of their world-tour for Plastic Beach. While in town, the band will not be transforming one of our beaches into a plastic beach paradise; they will instead settle for the Bell Center on the 3rd of October (which is a Sunday and is a bit lame).
You can’t talk about events in Montreal and not mention the now huge Osheaga music festival. It’s the closest we will get to a Glastonbury on this side of the Atlantic. An important news, that wasn’t mentioned much, is that Montreal’s Osheaga was one of the stops of the (probably) last world tour of a briefly reunited band resurrected straight from my teenagehood, the iconic Pavement.
But instead of focusing on the music or the artists, big media like GQ focuses on what matters the most: girls. Considering that GQ are so much more successful than we are, have millions of readers and makes tons of cash, they probably know better than us. So we will copy their strategy and show you the best-of from GQ’s The Wandering Eye on Osheaga, a picture slide-show of skinny girls with huge shades and American Apparel rags on their backs. Sometimes, the simplicity of big media is surprisingly… simple.
I know a cool festival by its website. According to this rule, the Jazz Fest is lame because its website is square and old fashioned, but the MEG Montreal Festival is the bomb .
What exactly is the MEG festival, I am not too sure, and I don’t even know what the acronym stands for. What I do know is that some pretty damn good music will be showcased at the festival.
To start, the amazing Bonobo will be playing the last day of the festival, Sunday the 1st. If you don’t know what a bonobo is, I can just tell you that it is a very sexually active primate (I guess a bit like us). But the Bonobo is a primate from the UK, making groovy electronic music like none other.
To end, the amazing Chromeo will be playing tomorrow Saturday the 31st. The guys from Chromeo went to my high-school and I saw them perform live maybe in 95 (that’s already 15 years ago for *&*# sakes). This morning I take the Montreal metro to work, like every day of my adult-like life, and i see that both frewe daylies, Metro and 24 Heures, have Chromeo mentioned on their front page. It’s good to see people from my generation making it (and I still taking the metro).
Then again with a genius album cover art like this bellow, how can they not make it?
The Football World Cup is nearing the end, but that shouldn’t stop us from pushing a close friend of ours. KF13 is a talented Montreal-based graphic designer, and a huge football fan. To celebrate the countries that made it to the World Cup, he has released an original line of football shirts. All the designs are unique and can only be purchased on his Rudetackle Zazzle online-store.
Get a shirt from Rudetackle and you can be sure that no one else will have the same tshirt as you. You will not find this line of apparel anywhere in stores either; online is the only place.
It’s pointless to describe the designs in text; just go and visit his online store and you will be convinced.
A quick note, to remind everyone that the St-Patrick’s day parade is hitting Montreal this Sunday the 14th of March.
Bring out the Irish in you, sport green clothing and enjoy your Guinness and your Irish car-bombs.
If you want serious journalism, read what the Mirror has to say about St-Patties. I did just that, and I realized for the first time where the name “Irish car bomb” comes from, and it’s kind of wrong, at least for people that have witnessed the violence in Ireland. But I guess this is a recurrent event: a name that starts with a quite dubious origin, but with time and history evolves in something more and everyone forgets it’s unpleasant origins. And there will be a lot of forgetting being done Sunday, especially after a few of these Irish car-bombs are consumed.
Talking about Guinness here are two cool ads. I prefer the first one, because it isn’t made with computer effects.
It’s a bit late now, because the event is now over, but that didn’t stop our friends at Montreal-Clubs.com to publish an article on the Montreal Fashion Week.
Judging from the media’s attention, it seems that the event was a success yet once again. It’s great to see so many talented designers from Montreal showcasing their creations.
Again, judging by reactions in the media, designer Denis Gagnon won the hearts of the public with an all-zipper made robe and purse, which you can see bellow:
I must admit that the zipper thing is an amazing idea. Denis Gagnon also makes shoes that have a big chunk of them made from zippers, so I guess it is a specialty of his.
Unfortunately, you will now have to wait until next year’s edition of the Montreal Fashion Week, to view the beauties bellow and to witness which other clothing accessory could be made from zippers, or other secondary materials. You’re probably already thinking about thongs, but I am ready to bet that it has already been done.
To continue on the Vancouver Olympics hotties topic, I was watching the first hockey game of Canada’a women team, when they beat the Slovak women’s hockey outfit by 18 to nil. The score is impressive and the Canadian women played amazingly, but to me, the true star of the game was the Slovak goalie Zuzana Tomcikova. She was simply spectacular; it seemed at moments that she was playing alone against the Canadian team. Tomcikova received a total of 67 shots, and some of her saves were brilliant. But what was even more impressive was her sports-woman-ship-spirit: she just never gave up and played with all her heart. And you could see the intensity in her eyes, peering from behind her goalie’s mask.
Today I wanted to know more about the eyes behind the mask, so I looked Tomcikova on the web. There is not much info on her, but I guess that’s normal, she still has her whole hockey career in front of her. The results are bellow. But one thing is for sure, for me, a new hockey star/hottie is born.
