CBC’s 12 Days of Christmas

December 24, 2021December 24, 2021 by haterhigh

CBC Christmas — CBC’s 12 Days of Christmas

. : : Various 2013-2014 : : .

I seem to have a lot of Christmas-themed or otherwise related recordings, which surprises me, because I can be somewhat of a holiday scrooge.

Frivolous spending, unabashed commercialism, repetitive Christmas music that starts earlier each year, social obligations… the list of my pet peeves about the holiday is about as long as my arm.

And yet, here I am with a digital hoard of Christmas music recordings. Go figure.

This one, hopefully the last for the year, is a compilation of songs the CBC recorded in 2013 and 2014, featuring established and little-known Canadian musicians performing their favourite Christmas songs for two “12 Days of Christmas” radio specials.

(Or, you know, songs that weren’t picked by other artists before them)

For a limited time, some of these songs were available for download on CBC.ca — I believe as MP3s — but contained just the music itself. This recording, a presumably higher-quality FLAC, includes the band’s talking about their selections and DJ chatter giving the occasional context, and can thus be considered “more complete” if “less official.”

I combined the original tracks from both airings (removing duplicates and redundant dj chatter) for this compilation, featuring bands familiar to regular visitors to this blog, including Blue Rodeo, Royal Wood, Bahamas, Moist, Barenaked Ladies, and Chris Hadfield.

Live Recordings

Colleen Brown @ St. Stephen in the Fields Church

December 17, 2021December 17, 2021 by haterhigh

. : : December 18th, 2020 : : .

This time last year, we thought we were nearing the end of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

As I write this, we are ankle-deep in a fourth wave propelled by the latest Omicron variant. But last year, we thought “if we can only get through Christmas, we’ll be OK, right?”

People were desperately trying to return to something resembling normalcy, and musicians fulling embracing live streaming to supplement a year’s lost touring income meant that we had live music again. Rather than in smokey bars and tall-ceiling, boomy halls, we were listening to it from the comfort of our lazy boys with a glass of wine or a mug of coffee in our hands.

$15,000 speaker stacks were replaced by $15 laptop or tablet speakers, but we didn’t care: we had our favourite music and the very best sight lines.

There was an overwhelming selection of live streams to join — some paid, some free, some behind paywalls, others in front of donation links. I’m not sure about you, but it wasn’t long before I was overwhelmed by a glutton of options and ended up missing much more of it than I would’ve liked.

It’d been a minute since I’ve seen Colleen Brown live, and her latest album Isolation Songs seemed like the perfect way to wind down (ha!) the pandemic. Originally written as a series of weekly song-writing challenges during the first months of the lock down, the material blossomed into a 10-song album of reflection, introspection, and a dash of doom.

I couldn’t miss a chance to see her perform some of these songs with her then-roommate, Sarah Hiltz.

As Zoom musician amateurs, this recording features all the hallmarks of pandemic live-from-home idiosyncrasies, so have your BINGO card ready: you’ll hear, “Hello? Can you hear me?,” “I’ve never done this before,” “I don’t know what I’m doing,” “It’s weird having silence between songs,” common drop-outs, bursts of static, and more.

These imperfections are probably the main motivator that kept this recording in the blog post queue for so long, but listening back, it’s still very listenable. More so, it’s charming: hearing Colleen and Sarah banter and giggle between songs as they “fly by the seat of [their] pants” invokes a feeling of hanging out at their apartment while they jam.

Live Recordings

Gregory Alan Isakov @ Lee’s Palace

November 12, 2021October 26, 2021 by haterhigh

. : : November 10th, 2011 : : .

It seems about ten years ago is when I started to get overwhelmed with sorting, editing, and posting live concert recordings, and a lot of them didn’t make it online to the blog.

You may have noticed that I’m been picking away at the backlog with weekly updates for about 7-consecutive months now(!!), and luckily we’re past the point of scratching the surface (but still plenty to go!).

This particular recording slipped away from me after being taped ten years ago this week. I was recently reminded of it when I was discussing music with a client at work. I asked who his current favourite artist is, and he replied, “Oh, you’ve definitely never heard of him.”

“Try me,” I challenged.

“No one around here knows who he is: Gregory Alan Isakov,” He said with resignation at my presumed befuddlement.

“Oh, yeah! I saw Gregory perform like, ten years or so ago!”

I couldn’t remember exactly who I saw him open for or where the venue was, but how do you forget a name like that?

Live Recordings

Hatfield-Robertson @ International Space Station

November 5, 2021October 26, 2021 by haterhigh

Hadfield-Robertson @ International Space Station

. : : February 8th, 2013 : : .

Chris Hadfield is best known as a Canadian astronaut, but he’s also an acclaimed musician and author, and has built strong friendships with some of Canada’s finest artists.

This blog entry goes back to the beginning of his explosive career, where he collaborated with Barenaked Ladies’ Ed Robertson and the gleek club from my high school alma mater, Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts on a live performance.

Which, wouldn’t be so unusual if Hadfield wasn’t performing his contribution from the International Space Station in, you know, SPACE.

Live Recordings

Blue Rodeo @ Glenn Gould Studios

October 29, 2021October 25, 2021 by haterhigh

. : : October 29th, 2012 : : .

Blue Rodeo celebrates their 34th anniversary as one of Canada’s most-beloved band this month, so now seems as good a time as any to look back at this recording of the band’s celebratory performance of their 25th anniversary, performed 9 years ago on this very day.

Performed at the beautiful Glenn Gould Studio, I can only look back and wish I had been able to attend this one.

Almost reading like a who’s-who of Alt-Country and Roots-Rock in Canada, there were performances by Whitehorse, Ron Sexsmith, Justin Rutledge, Oh Susanna, Cuff the Duke, Skydiggers, Great Big Sea, the Sadies, and more.

Live Recordings

Andrew James O’Brien @ Rivoli

October 22, 2021October 24, 2021 by haterhigh

. : : November 8th, 2012 : : .

Newfoundland is a province drenched in a deep-rooted tradition of folk music.

So (although I’ve never been) when I think of Newfoundland, I imagine great big ocean waves crashing on rocky beaches, fishing boats out in the rain, gulls circling overhead in grey skies, and pubs filled with patrons talking over proudly strummed acoustic guitars.

Guitars strummed to songs performed like those of Andrew James O’Brien, who I saw open for Amelia Curran back in 2012. He was promoting his debut album, Through My Days, and an initial Google search to see what he’s been up since then had me a bit disappointed.

Live Recordings

Sloan @ Echo Beach

October 8, 2021October 6, 2021 by haterhigh

. : : May 25th, 2013 : : .

OK, I need to buy myself a bit more time.

Luckily, I have another short (1 track, 1 interview) 8.5-year old Sloan recording from the inaugural CBC Music Festival at Echo Beach in Toronto. This is a quick audio clip and recording of the band’s opening song (and massive nation-wide hit) Money City Maniacs.

Sloan was super huge in the late-90s in Canada, but I resented the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission)’s mandate that 30% of all music played on radio and television be Canadian content and took my contention out on the bands benefiting from the bylaw. Now that I’m older, I do get it — but the loophole still all-too-often employed by the media conglomerates is to play the same half-dozen or so songs and cycle them every couple of hours to fill the quota. The quality of the music was secondary, and felt perpendicular to the music of the international bands that book-ended these tracks. Maybe it has something to do with Canadian Identity or whatnot, but it felt weird, dated, and forced to my ears. In retrospect, it ultimately just wasn’t what I was into at the time, and I let my politics colour my opinion.

Live Recordings

Sloan @ CBC Studio 11

October 1, 2021September 30, 2021 by haterhigh

. : : September 17th, 2014 : : .

It’s been a crazy week, and I don’t have the time to jazz up this story with a lot of narration — but this post officially marks 26-weeks (HALF A YEAR!) of weekly, on-time posts. I wasn’t about to miss it because of things like work and familial obligations!

So, here’s tape also celebrating an occasion — it’s six-year birthday was this week! Here’s Sloan previewing songs from their then-new album Commonwealth (billed as essentially 4 solo EPs combined into one LP)!

As with all of CBC Backstage Pass’ programming, much of the music is talked over with interview snippets that are rarely of any importance whatsoever — but the sound quality is standard broadcast quality and is worth a listen for Sloan fans. The McCartney-esque Three Queens is especially worth your time; check it in the sample below and grab the rest if you like what you hear.

Live Recordings

The Organ @ Festival Internacional de Benicassim

September 17, 2021September 14, 2021 by haterhigh

. : : July 22nd, 2006 : : .

What if Morrissy was a lesbian, and the Smiths were an all-girl band from British Columbia, Canada?

Well, if you were a fan of indie rock music in the mid-2000s, you might not have to wonder very hard. Especially if you were exposed to The Organ.

Had you blinked, you might’ve missed it. If you hadn’t, you might have caught the band’s debut EP Sinking Hearts, or the follow up Grab That Gun (the latter essentially a re-recorded and expanded version of the EP).

Grab That Gun spent “more time on top of the Canadian campus-radio charts than any other record released that year” (Wikipedia), and with good reason. The band’s titular instrument heavily encompasses the retro-inspired new wave pop and frontwoman Katie Sketch‘s dour lyrics boldly pay tribute to the influences that made it feel like they could’ve been The Smiths for the Millennial generation.

Live Recordings

The Good Life @ the 360

September 10, 2021September 10, 2021 by haterhigh

. : : May 17th, 2005 : : .

You know that album that you hear at just the right time in your life? The one that hits you in the feels every song, from top to bottom? The one that you listen to obsessively for weeks / months on end, almost exclusively?

There’s been a few of those for me, but one of the biggest was 2004’s Album of the Year by The Good Life.

The Good Life is often diminutively noted as Cursive‘s front man, Tim Kasher‘s side project. One where, for the first two albums, he explored with keyboards and drum samples; lo-fi productions that sound like they were recorded intimately in bedrooms, whispered so as to not wake a roommate or neighbour. A sharp contrast to the angular, aggressive emo of his other band.

But the band’s third album took a hard turn into folksy Americana. Album of the Year is a play on popular phrasing — rather than an award or accolade, it’s accounting for a year of an all encompassing and then self-destructing romantic relationship.

The subject is not exactly new territory for Kasher; Cursive’s Domestica is famously the only-slightly fictionalized story of his divorce, released four years earlier. But the years between seem to have opened him up to a more balanced, reflexive view that replaced anger with regret.