On a side note, tomorrow the 21st of November, St-Catherine Street in downtown Montreal will host the Santa Claus Parade.
While if you’re a kid this might be a big event for you, for the rest of us it will only mean that traffic will be disrupted downtown and hordes shopping crazed parents will invade the streets of downtown; eventually to return home carrying heavy shopping bags with items that will be forgotten right after Christmas as quickly as they were bough.
Really, it is just plain ridiculous that the Santa Claus parade is held so early. It’s not even December yet, Christmas is in over a month time. The parade just goes to prove how Christmas has lost its celebration spirit to turn into a shopping frenzy fueled by guilt and societal and marketing pressure.
This is really not the Santa Claus I was dreaming of as a kid.
Some news here on the huge Celebration 2010 party to be held at the Bell Center. Just like in 2006 when Tiesto graced Montreal with his presence and played at Celebration, well this year we’re getting another mega-star of electronic music, Paul Van Dyk.
It’s difficult to get extra info because the site of Celebration 2010 has very little but a flash splash page on it (for now).
Maybe I enable comments again on this blog, and let you readers post whetever info you might have. Hopefully we don’t get spamed to death.
Or maybe I’ll just do some more research and post it up here.
In the mean time, some hard base beats from Paul Van Dyk:
In their tradition of serious professional media, the Montreal Mirror just published an epic, both in quality and size, party guide for the Halloween weekend. Everything you need to know about nightclub parties, live music, Halloween balls and pagan rituals happening in Montreal over Halloween, well it’s all in that guide.
The good thing about Halloween in Montreal is that it’s authentic: the trees are devilish-red and mostly dead-yellow or completely naked of any leaves, making them even freakier. The sun goes down by 4:30, the air is humid and smells of decomposing vegetation.
And Montrealers play along pretty well. In some neighborhoods, die-hard Halloween enthusiasts even turn the basement of their houses into dungeons for the kids to venture deep into scary territory in if they want the booty of candy awaiting at the end.
But for those who aren’t trick or treating, Halloween is all about finally having the chance to dress up as that hot doctor or wild animal or sexy nurse that we always secretly wished we were. And not only dress-up, but walk around outside or in the middle of a party with your costume, as if it’s the most normal thing to do ever.
And talking about costumes, here is an “interesting” costume worn by Montreal DJ Alice and the Serial Numbers (odd name, but we’ll forgive her)
If you want to get a sample of more than her costume, here is a video of her (properly titled for Halloween) song Zombie Barbie:
This week-end, that is September 17 to the 20th, you’ll have the chance to discover a entertainment form that you thought was only existing in Western films: burlesque. If you head out to the Just for Laughs Museum venue you’ll have the chance to discover the beauties of the 1st edition of Montreal’s Burlesque Festival. So leave your inhibitions at home and discover everything that these classical entertainment art has to offer, from leg-dancing and striptease to comedy and parody. Here is a little guide and info on the Burlesque Festival.
You know, you’re not a big city if you don’t have your big music festival. The formula is pretty similar across the globe: unique name, full week-end event, outdoors and most importantly tons of bands, with at least one really big bands to headline each day of the festival. Montreal’s own Osheaga follows this recipe to the letter: full week-end event, (Saturday amd Sunday the 1st and 2nd of August), outside venue at the Parc Jean-Drapeau and Coldplay and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (replacing the Beastie Boys who can’t make it because of MCA’s need to take time off to fight cancer).
Where Osheaga falls short is that it is not exactly like a European-styled rock festival extravaganza, where people stay on the site for the whole duration of the festival, usually in tent-cities, and basically transform the festival into one spontaneous and enormous commune. There is no camping allowed at Osheaga, basically you just go in the morning for the beginning of the shows and leave when the concert ends. That’s kind of sucky, itjust makes Osheaga a big day-long concert, something I wouldn’t really call a festival. But hell, it’s as close as we will get to such an event here.
Regardless, the lineup looks really promising, and Girl Talk will be there on Saturday, guaranteeing a crazy night out at the park.
Our friends at Montreal-Clubs have put together a little list of shows to be seen at the Jazz Fest, which by the way, is starting tonight, with what will be a huge performance by Stevie Wonder. Like every summer, the area around Place des Arts will be transform for about ten days into a giant outdoors concert venue.
Nothing beats Montreal’s Jazz Fest for spending a damp summer night outside, and dancing, all this for free. Obviously, it’s all paid by advertisements, and considering their main sponsor, GM, is bankrupt, that puts a pretty funny spin on the whole event. But anyways, that’s not that important in the grand scheme of things. The goal is to enjoy ourselves, so I recommend checking out the official web page of the festival, and hitting it as often as possible.
Here is a short video from Goran Bregovic’s amazing festival closing show a few years ago. It was just crazy.
St-Helene, the little island South of Montreal’s downtown is definitely no Jamaica. Yes, an obvious statement indeed; especially considering that St-Helene is in the middle of the St-Lawrence river, which is the furthest thing from the Caribbean Sea.
Well, that little detail isn’t preventing the organizers of the Montreal International Reggae Festival to import a little bit of Jamaica on St-Helene for three short days this coming week end.
For this year’s edition of the Reggae festival, the celebration is moving from the Old Port to Island St-Helene, a nice site for having shows and for spending the day outside in the sun in general.
The most interesting part of the festival, in my opinion, will be on the first day (Friday the 26th of June) with the Stur-Gav Sound System party. Apparently these guys have been together for a very long time, making music and performing following the sound system party tradition of Jamaica. Promises to be a good show; here is a little preview from over 20 years ago already:
The Montreal Fringe Fest is back in town with a hefty serving of over 75 plays/shows put up by a swarm of small, independent and semi-professional theater groups. Like every year, they invade le Parc Des Ameriques, on the corner of Rachel and St-Laurent, with a beer tent / ticket booth / postering paradise (see the video bellow). And like every year, the Fringe gives you the chance to see tons of theater plays for a very acceptable price. Consider the sad fact that a date watching a crappy movie at Scotia Cinema (the Cinema Formerly Know as Paramount) will set you back over a quarter of 100 $ bill, and that if you include popcorn and corn-starch filled Coke on top of the movie, you’ll be expected to fork over close to 35$. Now that makes the Fringe fest a much better alternative. And by bringing a date to the Fringe you’ll demonstrate your cultural and adventurous thinking, greatly increasing your chances of hitting the sack.
In retrospect, the serious truth is that, considering the amount of TV and movies people watch, we don’t go to theater nearly enough. I am aware that there are several reasons for this, mostly price, the relatively small number of plays, limited marketing and others. In my mind, the Fringe Fest is a perfect solution to some of these problems, and it’s the perfect way to get your fix of yearly theater.
So hit it.
PS: The Fringe Fest and I go a way back, in fact almost 10 years, when a bunch of friends an I volunteered at the festival with the goal of getting free beer and free shows. Our role was to guard the beer tent at night, a fun activity for teenagers that want to discover the deep secrets of Montreal’s summer nights. And a few years ago I also published a disgruntled article on the Fringe Fest because of a couple of crappy shows. But you know what, crappy can be good too, as long as it touches you in a significant way.
Quick reminder, for the fans of that drink I like to refer to as “la boisson des dieux” (translation “God’s drink”), the Montreal Beer Fest has started, and is in town until Sunday, at the Windsor Station, right next to the Bell Center. The Montreal Beer Fest is the perfect place to discover some small local breweries and quality foreign imports. And if that’s not enough for you, there is also all kinds of sausages, meats and other food products that go hand-in-hand with drinking a cool ale.
So take you mates by the hands, and drag them (if you have to) to the Beer Fest, I swear they won’t regret it.
Bellow is a small preview of what you can expect from one of the many promotional events that occur during Montreal’s Beer Fest.
This year is the 10th edition of the MUTEK electronic music festival. Montreal has only three short months of summer, but we make the most of it, cramming as many rooftop/street-level/backyard terasses as possible, and almost bi-weekly street festivals, turning downtown into a big street fest. But these festivals all usually follow a tested and true recipe: big, corporate, on the street, heavily subsidized and with lots of free events. MUTEK is different; it doesn’t really follow this traditional Montreal-festival-mold. And in my books, that’s a very good think. Shows are all paying, the festival isn’t backed by (that many) big corporations. Don’t get me wrong, MUTEK has gotten big too, but it still has that aura of novelty and hipness around it. The festival started as a mostly DIY affair, and has managed to grow, but mostly organically, though provifing quality and original line-up year after year, and by not being afraid to go in directions that are more experimental than popular.
So yeah, MUTEK is starting on the 27th and is finishing on the 31 of May, quicker that you’ll have time to realize. So get yourself some tickets and visit the SAT and the other venues MUTEK will be hitting.
