Horace Pinker has updated their summer tour.

The confirmed gigs are:

They are about to drop their new album “Local State Inertia” in Europe on Arctic Rodeo Recordings.

Listen to the live stream here.

The annual SCENE Music Festival is this Sunday in St. Catharines.  It’s a giant one-day affair featuring dozens and dozens of bands on stages all over downtown.

This year’s lineup includes Saint Aliva, D-Sisive, Die Mannequin, Rebel Emergency, Silverstein, The Coppertone, the Artist Life—it’s truly insane.

If you want to see who’s playing, check out their official website.

So far the confirmed gigs are:

August 3rd- Toronto @ Parts & Labour
August 4th- Montreal @ L’ESCO
August 6th- Sorel @ Pub O’Callaghans

They are about to drop their new album “Local State Inertia” this summer.

Keep an eye on this space for upcoming dates and releases.

Excerpt From Wikipedia:

Horace Pinker is an American punk rock band formed in 1991 in Tempe, Arizona and currently based in Chicago, Illinois. They play an energetic, melodic form of pop-punk, filled with catchy hooks and political lyrics, and are staunch supporters of independent music. Horace Pinker has played in more than 19 countries all over the world from Europe to Brazil to Australia, and continues to play punk rock clubs, halls, and basements for an all-ages crowd. They have played some of the biggest festivals on the European circuit, including the Dynamo Open Air in the Netherlands, Popkomm in Germany and Belgium’s Groezrock. Although some are quick to point out that they never achieved commercial success over the years or sell-out tours like so many of their peers, HP continues to defy the trends and release records with thoughtful lyrics and powerful music that cannot be pinned down to a simple category or genre.

Since their formation in Arizona, they have toured North America with Agent Orange, Jawbreaker, All Systems Go and have shared the stage with the likes of Green Day, Face To Face, Blink 182, The OffSpring, and Jimmy Eat World (just to name a few). They have appeared on over 30 compilations around the world, 12 EP’s (including a split with Face To Face and a EP on Fat Wreck Chords), plus the top-selling DVD video compilations Cinema Beer Nuts (Hopeless) and Punk Broadcast System (Coldfront). They have also appeared on television shows such as “Homicide: Life on the Streets” (NBC), “Orleans” (CBS) and “Party of Five” (FOX) and Comedy Central’s Roast of William Shatner.

They have toured the world relentlessly for the releases of Power Tools (Earwax/Justice), Burn Tempe To The Ground (Onefoot), Pop Culture Failure (Jump Up!/Victory), Copper Regret (Coldfront), Red-Eyed Regular (OffTime/Cargo), and 2005’s Texas One Ten on Thick Records. The album built on the critically acclaimed EP Copper Regret and their third full-length Pop Culture Failure, and featured the bands’ commitment to combine their trademark pop hooks with the buzz of a two-guitar attack.

Reviews of their most recent material have focused on HP’s “energetic style of punk that can be ear-grabbing at moments but genuinely aggressive and heartfelt at others”, “the band’s classic, slightly-heavier-than-most pop-punk sound has persevered, and is stronger than ever”, “very smart music…that effortlessly eludes categorization by blurring the lines between a good half-dozen or so different genres” and “I recommend HP for anyone looking for a slightly heavier approach to pop-punk done the real way.”

2007 saw the release of “Carnival Nostalgia: 2000-2006” (Enemy One) in Brazil, a 20-track release that features select songs from their last four releases in addition to unreleased material from various studio sessions. The album was followed by a Brazilian tour in August/September as part of the Vans ZonaPunk Tour.

“Frederic D. Rosen has winked through Steely Dan, blinked through Neil Diamond and nodded through the Rolling Stones.

“Music, you see, isn’t his thing. Money is.

“Mr. Rosen, 67, is the godfather of the $18-billion-a-year tickets business. Go to almost any big-name concert — or to a Dodgers game or to a Broadway show — and the odds are that you will pay dearly for his legacy.

“Those you’ve-got-to-be-joking prices are, in good part, Mr. Rosen’s handiwork. Starting in 1982, he built Ticketmaster into the tickets giant that drives many people nuts. Even before the company merged with Live Nation Entertainment last year, fans and even some performers, like Pearl Jam, complained that it was a near-monopoly. Despite the protests and a nail-biting antitrust investigation, the Justice Department disagreed and approved the merger.

“So it might come as a surprise that Mr. Rosen, of all people, wants to challenge this behemoth, which sells tickets for more than 80 percent of the major concert venues. Mr. Rosen walked away from Ticketmaster 13 years ago, after a love-hate relationship with one boss, Paul Allen, and then a battle of wills with another, Barry Diller. But now Mr. Rosen is back and is hoping to reinvent the global ticketing business again.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Morrissey is scheduled to appear at the Lokerse Feesten, which is a ten-day festival in Belgium this August.  Organizers know that Mozzer faithful are going to come from all over the world to see their hero play. They’ve been trying to book Morrissey for years.  In all the years he’s been solo, he’s never played Belgium, and so getting him is a coup.

At all costs, they don’t want to see a repeat of the Morrissey performance at Coachella in 2009 when he stormed off the stage because the smell of barbequed meat offended him so.

Then there was the time at the Pinkpop Festival in 1987 when he cancelled an appearance because the food vendors wouldn’t shut down their burger stands.

The Belgian organizers had a problem.  The festival’s website boasts about all the great food that will be served at the festival, including sausage rolls, locally made ham, snails and, er, horse meat.

Therefore, in the interests of the Mozzer’s vegan sensibilities and sensitivities, the day he performs—August 4—all food venders have been ordered to serve nothing but vegetarian and otherwise meat-free food.

It’s a bit of a catering challenge, but they’re so desperate to get Morrissey on their bill that they’re willing to make it happen at all costs.

From the press release:

From the press release:

WHO THE HELL IS BILLY? HILLBILLY MUSIC FESTIVAL

ANNOUNCES INAUGURAL LINE-UP

(KINGSTON, May 3) Who The Hell is Billy? Hillbilly Music Festival explodes onto the summer festival scene with an all-day, all-night fair of hillbilly hellraisin’ Saturday, August 6 at The Mansion in Kingston, Ontario.

The 2011 line-up will include:

• · Liquorbox (Kingston) A five-piece band playing country music deep rooted in the classic tradition of the genre
• · Joel Kaiser & The Devil’s Own (Montreal) Montreal’s premiere Hellbilly band – for those who love real country music Outlaws
• · The Hobo Outlaws (Montreal) Bringing what they call “truegrass” to the stage
• · Ginger St James (Hamilton) A foot-stomping, jaw-dropping alt country burlesque queen
• · Uncle Sean and The Shifty Drifters (Ottawa) A mix of old time honky tonk & outlaw country complete with blazin’ fiddles and pluckin’ banjos
• · The Outbred Inlaws (Toronto) A three-piece band combining the story telling tradition of country music with the energy and attitude of punk rock
• · Mississippi Grover (Kingston) A one-man band, playing swampy garage and primitive blues punk
• · Evil Farm Children (Ottawa) This raw and raunchy trio serve up real rock n roll with a roots-rock flavour
• · The Boot Rot Depression Boys (Kingston)
• · Tom Savage Trio (Kingston) Sounds like dingy saloons, long stretches of highway, and cheap motel rooms

Another component of Who The Hell is Billy is an expo of like-minded supporters within the community including Loving Spoonful, Main Street Market, The Community Foundation Zeitgeist Kingston and The Kingston Coalition Against Poverty.

Who the Hell is Billy? Hillbilly Music Festival

Saturday, August 6 – 12noon-2am

The Mansion (506 Princess Street)

Kingston, Ontario

Tickets available day of only – $15

For more information email: liquorbox@rocketmail.com

Reader Steve Rioux has a take that differs from mine (“Here’s a Reunion that Shouldn’t Happen:  Big Country“).  With his permission, here’s what he wrote:

Hi Alan:

I was on ExploreMusic today, Saturday, and I noted that you tweeted “Here’s an Example of a Reunion That Shouldn’t Happen:  Big Country”.  I know Mike Peters as I’m involved with Los Mondo Bongo. 

I met with him this week and we talked about the Big Country reunion.  His answer to the question why was “Why not?” 

That is what I love about Mike he does what he feels is right in his heart, regardless of the critics.  He knows full well that people will slag him for doing things like Los Mondo Bongo and Big Country but he doesn’t care because people like Joe Strummer and Stuart Adamson we’re people he admired and respected.  This is his way of giving back.  If you watch this video of Mike singing “In a Big Country,” you’ll see that Stuart did mean a lot to him.

And here’s Mike and Stuart with Big Country at Glasgow Barrowlands for the last night of the Final Fling tour in 2000, when they sang Neil Young’s “Rockin’ In The Free World” together.

Anyway, I guess my point is that this is not a full time thing; it’s just the 30th Anniversary of Big Country and a tribute to Stuart who left us far too early.  While I can certainly understand your point of view and many others will share that view, in the end I have to agree with Mike, why not pay tribute to Stuart in this way.

The links below are to a BBC News video clip and a printed article on a movie currently being filmed about Mike and his hit UK single 45 RPM.

This light hearted film has an underlying message about ageism and stars among others Keith Allan (father of singer Lilly Allan).  They’re hoping it will be out in time for the Sundance Film Festival at the end of January 2011. Here’s the video and news story.

By the way, we are hopefully doing another Los Mondo Bongo tour in 2011 to once again pay tribute to Joe Strummer.  Nathalia graciously helped us out last time so I hope we can count on Explore Music to do so again.

Anyway Alan we’re all entitled to our opinion but I felt that I had to add my two cents.  Thanks for reading.

Regards!

Steve Rioux

There’s been much said, written, gossiped about and postulated about what really happened when Scott Weiland fell off the stage in Ohio last week yet appeared to keep singing without sounding like a guy falling off a stage.  Was he lip-syncing?  Is STP using backing vocal tracks to enhance their live performances?  Or is Weiland just such a pro that he was able to carry on without losing his place?

My guesses:  (a) No; (b) Maybe; (c) Possibly.

Backing tracks and other forms of vocal assistance have been a part of the concert experience for more than twenty years.  Audiences expect excellent performances for the money they pay, so singers and bands do whatever they need to in order to deliver.  This includes real-time pitch correction in the vocals (just about everyone), vocal augmentation by an unseen singer offstage (hello, Ozzy!) and even pre-recorded vocal tracks (Britney, GaGa, Madonna, etc) so that the performer sounds perfect even as he/she runs through all their dance moves.

Then again, we sometimes forget how masterful and professional some singers are.  U2 played a two hour set in torrential rain in Moscow last week and even though I was right up against the stage for much of the show, Bono looked like he was singing to me.  Then again, I’ve also heard that large chunks of the 360 Tour are “tracked,” just because of the complexity of the stage show.  I’ve also heard that the reason AC/DC didn’t switch up their set lists at all during their last world tour was because it was all tracked.  “If they wanted to change the set list,” one insider told me, “they would have had to gone back into the studio.”

Regardless of the truth, we’ve ended up with two camps.  In the first are those who don’t care how it’s done.  They don’t care that AC/DC’s Brian Johnson is 62 years old and can’t hit the same notes he could when he recorded Black in Black 30 years ago.  They just want their favourite songs performed perfectly.

Then there’s the camp who believe that backing tracks of any sort destroy the authenticity of the live performance and the spirit of rock’n’roll.  These are the same people who decried Queen’s use of backing tracks in the 70s, calling it “cheating.”

For the record, Weiland denies he was lip-syncing.  And even if he was, this won’t change anything.  Backing tracks and other forms of PA trickery are here to stay.  Might as well get used to it.

But for most, being a busker is a tough gig; recognition comes slowly, if at all. That’s why it’ll be interesting to see what happens with the first International Metro Musicians Festival this fall.

Buskers from Montreal, New York, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Moscow, New York, Barcelona and Mexico City will gather in Sao Paulo, Brazil to showcase their stuff. Their stage? Se Station, the busiest subway station in Brazil. Who knows who/what might be discovered?

Interested? Full details
here.