Program Director’s Report
Sled Island Festival Day 3
Friday, July 2, 2010

Since Friday wasn’t technically a holiday, the Sled Island schedule didn’t begin until later in the afternoon on Day 3. Friday was record-shopping day for me, so I didn’t get my music on until Built to Spill’s set at the Olympic Plaza, but since I arrived after they were already three songs into their set, I wasn’t allowed to shoot any photos. This is where having a good quality point-and-shoot camera would be really handy. Audience members were snap-snapping away with their pocket cams, but if I were to raise my camera to my eye, someone would spot me and disallow my photographing.

Built to Spill put on a good show, though there was something understated about it. As I’ve said before, maybe it was just me. I don’t like the big, outdoor festival venues, with the rented fencing, sponsor tents and high-security. Give me a dingy pub with pints of beer and french fries any day of the week. Luckily, Sled Island provides the dinginess in abundance, so after enjoying a few choice numbers by Built to Spill, it was off to The Republik for an epic night of rock and roll.

Unfortunately, I missed the first set by former Iggy Pop collaborator/guitarist Whitey Kirst, but was there in time to catch another charged set by Toronto’s C’mon. Ian Blurton and crew kicked out a bunch of their signature melodic rock n’ roll tunes, complete with Blurton bursting into the crowd mid-song to give his left-handed guitar to some random audience member to make noise on.

C’mon

Following C’mon’s set was a band I’ve been meaning to check out for some time, but have for one reason or another, never crossed paths with. The band is Seattle/Los Angeles duo/trio Big Business. They put on a great set of low-end (as in bass-heavy) rock for the increasingly excited and packed crowd at The Republik.

Big Business

The excitement of the crowd was brought on by the anticipation of the final band of the night: The Melvins. These legends of punk and grunge were slated to play the outdoor main stage the following day, but that’s not where you want to see The Melvins. You want to see them in a noisy club, filled to capacity.

I parked myself in the direct centre of the stage, camera in hand, strap wrapped around my wrist, feet at just wider than shoulder-width apart. In short, I was bracing for a storm. As soon as The Melvins hit the stage, the crowd erupted like a wild animal, bodies churning and swaying, pushing forth to get a closer look at the band. I tried to steady myself to get some photos, and succeeded somewhat, and what blur there is in the photos only helps describe the mayhem. After a song or two, I escaped the suffocating crowd and made it to higher ground to enjoy The Melvins’ set of strange and wonderful heavy rock music.

The Melvins

Keep checking back here at CFCR.ca for more coverage of the 2010 Sled Island Festival!

Sled Island in a nutshell, by Jeans Boots

“Jeans Boots! Relax!” says my new friend, and just then Ian Svenonius walks up.
The singer of Chain and the Gang was playing Broken City that evening, and he lets us touch his hair as we talk to him about the festival.
Sled Island has that real-world-magic, anything-can-happen sort of vibe. It’s a seemingly endless indie-rock nerd fest, full of people who are sort of famous for doing really great things, and even more people who do really great things you’ve never heard before. I can’t count the number of bands I saw. The number of great bands I missed is even higher.
From the sweaty Tubby Dog shows to the even sweatier 2 a.m. end-of-the-nights at Broken City, the entire weekend was a hazy overload of music. It sounds like I’m writing ad-copy but it really was amazing. Here’s a list of random point form festival favourites:

Sweetest Venue: Science Centre planetarium (Sleepy Sun show)
Most hard-working band of the festival: The Thermals
Most popular hairdo: The top knot
Most magical show: Silje Nes inside The Opera Centre, while having a lightning bolt painted on my face by a tiny woman, possibly a fairy.
Best accidental experience: Visiting the Cantos Music Foundation, a mind-melting synthesizer/piano museum full of working instruments
Best idea: Borrowing a bike
Best girl band: Puberty
Best hot dog: Sumo Dog at Tubby Dog.
Best jumping up and down to music (aka moshing) experience: Black Lips, Thursday night at The Legion
Biggest surprise: Watching my friend Amy of the very mellow Bronze Leaf play an insanely energetic yelling rock show as the lead singer of Gyre, Spire and Spindle.
Best awkward embrace: Lead singer of Brooklyn’s !!!
Biggest accidental insult: Asking one of Ted Leo’s Pharmacists if he got his beard in Vancouver.
Random art project: Taking nightly photo booth shots at Broken City.
Next year’s plan: Play the festival!

Add to it unscheduled after parties, impromptu dance parties and wine surreptitiously sipped in back alleys, great new friends, and a city that thinks my name is Jeans Boots. Well played Calgary, you’re not so bad after all!

Sled Island 2010: A Bicycle Odyssey by Tyson McShane

Having won a ticket last minute to Sled Island and having not booked the time off, I wasn’t able to arrive in Calgary until Thursday afternoon. To make up for it this, I came completely prepared for the venue-based festival spread across Calgary’s downtown: I brought my bike! Having distinct memories of watching the clock during Mogwai’s set at Sled a couple years ago, then sprinting to get into a nearly sold out show at The Legion a half dozen blocks away, I wanted the freedom to hit many, many venues in a night, without having to skip out midway through a band’s set. What better way than my trusty bicycle?

Arriving in Calgary Thursday afternoon, according to the schedule literally minutes after Saskatoon psych-pop heroes Feral Children were to have finished their set, I texted CFCR main-man Jay Allen and Vive Music’s younger half, Rich Taylor, to see what was up. My first stroke of good luck: Feral started late. Off to Tubby Dog for dinner (if you hadn’t tried the A-Bomb (the ultimate hot dog) at Tubby Dog, make it a priority next time you pass through Calgary) and the end of Feral Children’s set.

It’s always great getting to see home town bands in other cities. Sometimes it is easy to start taking for granted a band you see every couple months, so it was great to see Feral Children playing to a packed crowd off and see the crowd loving it. Seriously, if you haven’t experienced the new full band version of Feral Children, go see them soon! Such a great mix of heavy, droning beats & bass, psyched out guitars and reverb drenched vocals.

Feral Children

With Feral finished and me full, it was back on my bike to hit up Central United Church and a set by Athens, Ohio band Southeast Engine. I hadn’t heard of the band before seeing them on the Sled Island schedule, but after hearing a couple songs and knowing they are on classic American indie-folk label Misra Records, I figured they were worth checking out. The band treads the same territory as many of the White Whale Records bands (Octoberman, the Mohawk Lodge) and takes some heavy influence from The Band. It wasn’t the most amazing set I’ve seen, but definitely alright stuff and they put on a nice chill show, which gave me a chance to plan my next move.

Next on the list was for Friendo at the Distillery. If you haven’t heard Friendo and you dig noisey, early 90s indie rock, you will likely hear of them soon, and you should likely listen up. Featuring Mike Wallace (drummer for Women) on guitar, the band definitely share a love of jagged rhythm with his other band, but distilled down into a more melodic Sonic Youth-ish slacker, two guitar & drums sound. Great stuff and they put on a wicked show. Check them out.

Hyped up on some noisy 90s indie rock jams, I was excited for more, and despite everyone I knew in town getting prepped to see Sleepy Sun in a planetarium, I was up for more melodic noisiness. So, it was back to Tubby Dog to see Halifax-based Cousins. Cousins mine the classic 90s East Coast sound that makes Halifax a nostalgic mecca for anyone who grew up on Canadian indie rock, and they do it damn well. Backed by two drummers (recruited in Calgary a couple days prior), Aaron Mangle (aka Cousins) ploughed through a batch of finely crafted, noisy slacker rock anthems. It was occasionally a bit sloppy due to the drummers being recently recruited, but with the kind of songs Aaron plays, a bit of sloppiness just adds to the charm.

Finally having seen four bands in three venues, it was time to finish off the night at the Republik for what was set to be one of the shows of the festival: Women, The Posies & Deerhoof. I arrived at the Republik half way through Women’s first song to see the place packed. Women are one of those weird, perfect bands that can marry completely off the wall kraut-noise workouts with the crazily catchy minimal pop hooks. As a result, sound techs don’t seem to always know what to do with them, sometimes burying the noise and leaving the songs feeling a bit naked in a live setting. That wasn’t the case at the Republik, the set was one of the loudest I’d seen them play as they worked through songs from their newly released sophomore album, Public Strain, and ‘classics’ from their self-titled debut.

Following Women, The Posies set up. I’d heard of the Posies, I knew the names of some of the members and knew of their impressive pedigree, but I hadn’t heard almost any of their music. They’ve played in R.E.M and they were part of the last incarnation of Big Star….so you know there has to be something to them. Unfortunately, not many people thought they deserved a listen and most of the crowd cleared out. It was their loss, as they missed out on a classic power-pop show. Sure it might not have been as edgy or “cool” as Women or Deerhoof, but if you’ve ever dug a Teenaged Fanclub album, you’d dig The Posies’ classic fuzzy power-pop. I really can’t believe more of these songs weren’t/aren’t classic indie hits.

With The Posies finishing up, the room filled to capacity in anticipation for Deerhoof. Apparently they blew a few minds the night before at Central United Church, so it wasn’t a surprise to see the crowd rush in to fill the space in front of the stage. Matt Flegel of Women had said from the stage that Deerhoof are the best band in the world and they pretty much make every other band look like a joke… some solid praise from someone who seems to know his way around making pretty great music. With all four members of the band set up across the front of the stage, looking like the furthest thing from an over-serious art-rock band, they launched into one of the most bizarre, charming and overall mind-blowing sets I’ve seen. The band cycled through odd chord changes and random, spazzy time signatures as if they were casually playing three-chord punk rock. Then, randomly, they threw in a Ramones cover to make sure everyone knew that three-chord punk rock was easily the equivalent of their bizarre art-rock. All the while they looked like they were having as much fun as anyone in the crowd and making their strange songs sound like they could be perfect pop anthems from another world. It was a nice way to end the first night of a marathon three days of music.

Keep checking back here at CFCR.ca for more coverage of the 2010 Sled Island Festival!

All photos (c) 2010 Jason Allen

Program Director’s Report
Sled Island Festival Day 2
Thursday, July 1, 2010

Canada Day was a busy one in Calgary, but not for the reasons you may think. There were no maple leaves or fireworks in my day this July 1^st, but there was a heck of a lot of music for me to take in. After a great Day 1 of Sled Island, I was really excited about Day 2. Let’s get started with this epic day of festivalization…

The day started with my two of my favourite words in the English language: “Free” and “Barbecue.” We arrived at the resurrected Republik night club on 17^th Avenue just before 1pm to catch Vancouver’s Makeout Videotape. Much to our delight and surprise, we found a free barbecue with beef and veggie burgers on the outdoor patio. Talk about getting the day started right.

Entranced by my free lunch, I almost forgot why we were there, so it was with partially consumed burger in-hand that I ran into the club as I heard the opening notes of Makeout Videotape. Formerly a duo, this Vancouver three-piece played a short set of indie lo-fi to a sparse but receptive crowd (it was only 1pm, afterall).

Makeout Videotape

After Makeout Videotape’s early set, it was off to Broken City, where Mint Records’ showcase featuring Hot Panda, The Pack AD and Calgary instrumentalist The Ramblin’ Ambassadors had the joint filled to the gills. Literally. It was the only time I was turned away from a show during the whole festival. There were others that sold out (Melvins, Fucked Up’s showcase to name a couple), but I always managed to get there in time.

So, slightly dejected, I walked over to what would become my Sled Island mecca (not to be too dramatic): Tubby Dog. This small hot dog restaurant features great grub and often, great bands. Underground websitists Weird Canada and Texture Magazine, as well as Edmonton campus station CJSR presented some great showcases at Tubby Dog, and I got there on Thursday afternoon just in time to catch a great punk outfit from Lethbridge called Fist City. Fronted by a pair of female singers, this four piece lays down energetic, melodic rock jams with great dual female vocals.

Fist City

After shooting photos of Fist City, I made the heart-sinking realization that I had not only forgotten my battery charger at home in Saskatoon, but had also forgotten my back-up battery. So, with dying battery in-hand, I had to cut out of Tubby’s to find somewhere to get it charged up. This caused me to miss Calgary’s Mount Analogue, but I got back in time to catch one of my favourite local Saskatoon bands, Feral Children, who closed the afternoon showcase presented by Weird (or Wyrd) Canada and Texture Magazine.

For those not wise to the greatness of Feral Children, do yourselves a favour and check them out. CFCR host Ryan Davidson (Hallucinations, Thursdays at 3pm) and his recently assembled band of merry noisemakers sample, loop and jam their way into some truly amazing music.

Feral Children

After the Tubby Dog set, the next stop was to be some hours later and was to be one of the greatest spectacles of the festival. The venue was the Telus Science Centre, in the planetarium to be specific. The band was San Francisco’s Sleepy Sun. It was shaping up to be an epic performance. The only problem was a buzzing speaker in the PA system. The band wasn’t able to crank up the volume, and as a result, coupled with the fact that the seating was akin to a movie theatre, they couldn’t really connect with the crowd as directly as usual. Don’t get me wrong, the show was still amazing, but it seemed like it was lacking a little something. And the visuals were awesome.

Sleepy Sun

Sleepy Sun left me pretty awe-struck, so a little down time was in order. Later that night, we took in The Black Lips at The Legion before calling it a night. The main floor of the legion was packed (as was the norm throughout the festival) and the boys from Atlanta, GA strutted around their usual bratty selves to the crowd’s delight. Maybe I’m easy to impress and maybe it’s just gross, but I like how guitarist Cole Alexander can spit in the air and catch it in his mouth while still playing his guitar part. By this time, I was pretty sick of navigating sweaty crowds with my camera gear, so you’ll have to picture this one in your mind’s eye.

Stay tuned to CFCR.ca for more music musings and rock recounts from Sled Island coming soon!

Who?: CFCR Program Director, Jay Allen
What?: The Sled Island Music & Arts Festival
When?: June 30 – July 3, 2010
Where?: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Why?: The rock music, of course.

Now that the basics are out of the way, I’ll start by saying that I now know that I love venue-based festivals. The only other one I had attended was Pop Montreal in the mid-oughts, so I felt like I needed to confirm the awesomeness of these urban festivals as opposed to those that happen in some stinking mud pit in some random field. Enter, Sled Island 2010. With over 200 bands at 25 venues across Calgary’s downtown and 17^th Avenue, including pubs, clubs, a science centre and a hot dog restaurant, the weekend promised to be a good one.

Day 1: Wednesday, June 30^th

After one of the easiest 6-hour drives I’ve ever had, I arrived with my weekend compadres at what I dubbed “Sled Island Central,” the Hyatt hotel in downtown Calgary. This hotel housed many of the bands who would appear at the festival, as well as a good portion of the out-of-town attendees. It was also in very close proximity to the Olympic Plaza (Sled Island’s outdoor mainstage), and several other downtown venues. After a pulled pork poutine (which is exactly as good as it sounds) at the Palamino, it was off to The Legion No. 1 to take in the Wednesday night lineup.

The Legion is a great venue, with a large main floor venue as well as a smaller upstairs room, so there were always bands playing.

First, I checked out Golden Triangle on the main floor. This Brooklyn, NY sextet plays chugging garage rock and features two front-woman singers, whose harmonized vocals gave the whole thing a 60s girl group-via-B52s vibe.

Golden Triangle

After Golden Triangle, it was up the stairs for San Francisco psychster Ty Segall. Ty and the rest of his trio played a great set of lo-fi garage-adelia. I found out later that Ty does a cover of Simply Saucer’s “Bullet Proof Nothing” and “Dropout Boogie” by Captain Beefheart. The kid can pick a cover.

Ty Segall

While Ty was playing his set upstairs, The Almighty Defenders were getting going on the main level. This garage-gospel revival band, made up of King Khan, Mark Sultan (aka BBQ) and The Black Lips was supposed to be one of my highlights of the festival. But in the weeks leading up to Sled Island, The King Khan and BBQ Show broke up in epic fashion. Despite being one of the curators of the festival, King Khan decided not to attend, leaving The Almighty Defenders a very important man short. The show went on, however, complete with white choir-boy robes. But it seemed to lack any real energy at all, which is surprising when you take into account even the band’s remaining members. It’s also possible that it was just past my bedtime. After all, I had to rest up for day two (be sure to check back for words and photos of that…)

The Almighty Defenders

Stay tuned to CFCR.ca for more music musings and rock recounts from Sled Island coming tomorrow!

On the evening of June 28^th, James Farm – a jazz quartet featuring Joshua Redman on saxophone, Aaron Parks on piano, Matt Penman on bass, and Eric Harland on drums – took the stage at the Broadway Theatre as part of the Sasktel Saskatchewan Jazz Festival.

At their most accessible, James Farm were engaging and impressive, with their various original compositions (written by Redman, Parks and Penman) exhibiting a challenging array of complex melodies and rhythms that nonetheless managed to remain compelling to a non-specialist. Joshua Redman in particular was an outstanding performer, with a powerful yet controlled approach to the saxophone that allowed him to exploit the full range of the instrument’s expressive potential. More generally, the group’s stellar musicianship and obvious immersion in the material created numerous exciting moments. The facial expressions of the other band members during solos made the improvisational nature of their music quite clear, with a variety of grins, nods and occasional quizzical head-tilts. Moreover, their own engagement with the creative output of their band mates created a sort of feedback loop with the audience.

Listening to the group, it also became quite obvious that they were drawing upon a broad passel of musical influences, from bebop and the Coltrane-esque “wall of noise,” to funk and classical, with one stand-out composition drawing on a complex interplay between piano and percussion that sounded particularly “math rock-y” (think EP-C era Battles).

All of this being said, there were certain portions of the quartet’s performance that may have pushed the comfort zone of a less-seasoned jazz fan. In these wildly experimental numbers, there were sections that, to the untrained ear, simply sounded like a fight for rhythmic dominance between the bass and the drums. While these expressionistic displays likely contained some sort of erudite rationale (likely involving “polyrhythms”), these components of the performance were at least somewhat inaccessible.

The approval of the crowd on hand was definitely evident, as cheers and applause (not to mention the speed at which they rose for the standing ovation) clearly telegraphed their profound appreciation. While some curmudgeons complain about the Jazz Festival’s move towards more eclecticism in their programming, I’d argue that shows like Redman’s James Farm indicate the Festival’s continued commitment to showcasing exciting experimental modern jazz music.

Chris Jensen
How I Spent My Summer Vacation
Fridays, 7-7:30pm

Calgary, Alberta hosted the 4th installment of the Sled Island Music & Arts Festival from June 30 to July 4 , and CFCR was there, racing from venue to venue, finding free food and enjoying all the great music at the festival. We will be presenting a retrospective of the festival via photos and words from CFCR Program Director Jay Allen, Music Director Arnold Van Lambalgen, volunteer hosts Casey Keating and Jeanette Stewart, and friend of the station Tyson McShane. All had the pleasure of taking in a variety of bands at a variety of venues throughout central Calgary.

Check back right here at CFCR.ca for reviews, photos and information on bands such as Sleepy Sun, The Famines, Gobble Gobble, !!!, The Black Lips, Built to Spill, The Melvins and many, many more.