It's hardly revelatory to say that certain bands get more exposure than they deserve. It's also hardly revelatory to say the reverse is true. Some bands have bad management, too little drive, too niche a sound, or miriad other factors that contribute to them not getting noticed by as wide an audience as (I feel) they should get. This column, and other similarly titled ventures in the future, will aim to rectify this somewhat. I'm not aiming to be wilfully obscure with my selections, as I also think some bands don't get exposure because they are fucking terrible. I think [...]
I'm actually amazed at how 'not tired' I was by day 4 of Canadian Music Week or Fest or whatever. It's not that I'm not tired, it's just that I was expecting myself to be twice as tired as I actually felt on Saturday night. Still, I avoided venue hopping and had decided to just simply get my twang on at Lee's Palace for the night. The lineup looked solid, featuring some of the more folk and country oriented acts in the city. It looked like it was going to be a chilled and laid back evening. Turns [...]
elliottbrood.ca So it's Canadian Musicfest week! You all set for three days of club-hopping around a still sorta wintry Toronto? Got your wristband? No? Well. That could be a problem if you intended on hitting up Lee's Palace on Saturday night for the rather splendid Billions showcase featuring Cuff The Duke , Elliott Brood , Basia Bulat , Herman Dune and Jon-Rae Fletcher since that show is wristband-only. Or is it? Maybe not! Because courtesy of Billions, I've [...]
I wasn't going to let the frigid temperatures this past Saturday night stop me from taking in a few of the free events happening in TOronto. First up I headed down to Nathan Phillips Square to catch some of the evening WinterCity theatrical performance [a nautical-themed piece] , then sets from Shad and Thunderheist. Shad, with bassist and DJ, performed some cuts off his album "The Old Prince" and even busted out some freestyle acappella style when his DJ was having some technical difficulties. He asked us if we liked '80's music to which the audience cheered then Shad and [...]
Die Roten Punkte This week, Thunderheist and Shad top a series of FREE weekend shows in Toronto; the Rhubarb and Weesageechak Festival s open at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and Theatre Passe Muraille, respectively; Ruby Coast and Winter Gloves headline a rock solid night of indie music at the Horseshoe Tavern on Thursday; Bad Dog Theatre's Globehead Tournament ramps up to the finals [...]
So in a lame attempt to put a post out, I give you a mish mash of Canadian artists over the past few years. Some newer than others....some better than others...overall a pretty decent Friday I must say. Now, don't get all "these are simply the mainstream indie-Canadian bands" on me...I didn't say it was cutting edge or even new, just solid. For some reason, I still really enjoy "Hotel" from BSS and that Jill Barber track is more than I remember it...GLS will be having a new album soon, so why not something from their first album? I am [...]
Frank Yang Guilt and courteousness can be powerful motivators. Even moreso than self-preservation, which is why it was that rather than stay home Saturday night, safe and warm, I set out into the frigid, frigid cold to the Velvet Underground to catch a couple of bands who'd been politely and persistently inviting me out to their gigs for a while now - Receivers , visiting from Montreal, and locals Beth In Battle Mode . Of course it helped that I'd liked what I'd heard of both acts and had intended to catch either or [...]
After many years of neglect, I finally got around to seeing Calexico live on Tuesday night at The Phoenix. Admittedly I haven't been an avid follower of their style of Latin tinged eclectic folk rock, but I've always been curious enough to want to see them live, and thankfully they did not disappoint. They were already here back in July at the much more intimate Mod Club, and at that time they chose the very energetic Scout as their opener. This time around they chose to adopt a more subtle approach, opening with Brisbee Blue [...]
As I mentioned in my last post, last Friday I (Heart) Music had posted the annual Hottest Bands In Canada list. I gave a few comments about my choices and omissions, etc. but after noticing that Mike at For The Records put up his personal choices, well, copycat that I am, I figured that I'd do the same. Each of us who contributed to the list were basically given only two rules: the bands had to be Canadian, and they had to have a particularly "hot" year. We were aloud to define [...]
When Bowie sang that line on his 1972 album The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars , he was echoing the fantasy of many a teenage boy or girl. The children wanted to grow up to be garbagemen or astronauts or superheros, but at a certain age that changed and most teens would have given anything to make that wild mutation as a rock 'n roll star. However, only a precious few ever get to live out that dream. While Bono , and Sting and Chris Martin [...]
Ballad of a Lonely Construction Worker - Cuff the Duke I can't be the only one who finds this piece from the Wall Street Journal editorial pages to be a telling example of just how far the country has shifted - and how completely unaware of this fact are the intelligentsia of the Right. The premise is that people thinking about ushering in an Obama presidency and a huge Democratic margin in the Senate have no clue what's in store. The horror, the horror! of an "unchecked left-wing ascendancy." [...]
If anyone would have been surprised to hear that Hayden 's next album was to include a series of country-tinged toe-tappers, certainly such a potential surprise would dissipate after attendance at Thursdsay night's Duck Room show. No such announcement has been either made or confirmed in any of the obvious outlets for an announcement on a new album, but the punctuation of last night's set with a few unreleased songs bordering more on a country sound is an exciting prospect for fans both of Hayden and the broader genre. [...]
![[Wax Political] Disabling Democracy](http://cdn.elbo.ws/posts/1267779_lg.jpg)
" No company fails in communist China, because they're all partly owned by the government. I sincerely believe that Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke should resign. They have taken the free market out of the free market. " -Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) Perhaps that should be our new flag? Don't get me wrong, we're still decorated with limitless liberties and freedoms but this $700 billion bailout thing seems rather, well.. financially socialist. It's a rather incredulous time in which we live, you can't help but sit back reading the (bad) news exuding [...]
Work sux It's finally Friday, and in the U.S. it's the beginning of a three-day weekend too! The weekend is typically the last summer blow-out before school starts, and heralds the beginning of the fall/winter holiday season, although here in SoCal the hot, muggy weather is making brisk fall days seem far, far away. Big congratulations to Lonesome Music Blog for passing their 4th anniversary earlier this month! Don't miss the gorgeous songs by Donna Beasley and Beachwood Sparks in their two latest posts. [...]
I left my hometown of Oshawa, Ontario back in 1994 and I proudly never looked back. Until now. Cuff The Duke made me feel downright nostalgic about that dirty town, and I'm almost at the point where I'm ready to take back all of the nasty things that I've said about The 'Shwa over the past several years. The fact of the matter is that Wayne Petti and the gang put on a performance that was literally everything that a solid rock show should be when they hit the stage on Friday night at The Horseshoe with Bruce [...]
Well, July didn't go quite as planned with regards to the concert goings. I attended a very small ratio of the shows that I had planned to, due to the fact that I was busy with other stuff and, for some reason, reedonkulously tired. I know everybody in the whole world thinks that they suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, but sometimes I wonder if I actually do. Anyways, I did go see a couple of bands on Saturday night and I'll tell you about them as soon as I can, but in the meantime, let's look at the what ups [...]
Here's the latest XM Radio track that I'm obsessed with. Cuff the Duke is an indie, alt-country band hailing from Oshawa, Ontario, Canada. You know, that country that seems to be putting out way better music than the US these days. "Take My Money and Run" is actually from their 2005 self-titled album. Who said music blogging needs to be current? Good tunes have no shelf life. MySpace | Website | Hardwood Records Cuff the Duke - Take My Money and Run
It feels like it wasn't that long ago that I was posting another song from Cuff the Duke 's new album (their third, I think), Sidelines of the City . I remember seeing them open for the Sadies about a million years ago, right after their first album had come out on the sorely-missed Three Gut record label. I had walked in late and CtD was already mid-way through their set. While I heard their album Life Stories from Minimum Wage at that point and was impressed, I wasn't prepared for what [...]
concert review : Cuff The Duke , Land Of Talk @ The Mod Club (Toronto, Ontario), November 30, 2007 On a snowy Friday evening over a week ago[on November 30], Oshawa's Cuff The Duke played a CD release show at The Mod Club for their newly released album "Sidelines of The City"[Hardwood Records], and if that show was any indication, then their subsequent hometown two-night stint at The Velvet Elvis must have been barn-burners. Cuff The Duke's Wayne Petti(Guitar, Lead Vocals, [...]
I lived in Oshawa, Ontario once, about a decade ago, for four months. Just a Summer, whilst on a co-op work term. In that short time, my car - a harmless, innocuous 1985 Dodge Aries - was subject to all manner of indignities by the locals, including having the neutral safety switch disabled (someone climbed underneath in the middle of the night and unplugged it) and on another occasion, stealing my license plates (which were later recovered after said "local yokel" - the police officer's term - put them on his own [...]
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Gracing the Stage
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HearYa: An Indie Music Blog
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![CUFF THE DUKE 'Standing on the Edge' [The Paper Bag Sessions Pt. 1]](http://cdn.elbo.ws/youtube/jd4eB_nenG0_130.jpg)
![CUFF THE DUKE 'Letting Go' [The Paper Bag Sessions Pt. 3]](http://cdn.elbo.ws/youtube/AIVQmrotOWM_130.jpg)
Madonna producer unloads of CD disaster
Madonna producer unloads on CD disaster
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