Fun times! Emily Haines and Jimmy Shaw from Metric stopped by CFOX today to perform a couple songs and have an interview. Metric are currently on tour with Imagine Dragons. We had a grand time and now Meredith, me, Emily and Jimmy are all best friends.
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Coral and I are home from the show (thanks Uncle Matt for watching Jack!).
The show was solid. I enjoyed “Help, I’m Alive,” “Synthetica,” and “Gold, Guns, Girls.” All ripped live.
Imagine Dragons also sounded pretty good. Coral and I didn’t get to stay for the whole thing but they played “It’s Time” and that’s the song by them I love. The arena was full…and the crowd was excited for Imagine Dragons, so they’re doing something right. I thought they lacked some punch. Couldn’t keep the energy up and stopped down every song to drag it out. But they did sound good. Their audience loved them and they worked the stage and the light show.
Their first song of the night was this one.
Coral said, “if you want to download the whole new album for me and put it on my phone, you could.” There you go IG, you sold one new 30-something on your tunes.
I had the chance to yap with Mark Foster of Foster The People last week. We chatted about a bunch of stuff including some world travel the man got up to. He talked about going to India, and how that changed the way the man will operate his life! Sounded like quite the spiritual journey. Back in LA, the man decides to call the new Foster The People record Supermodel…why is that?
Foster The People will be at Squamish… hit it up.
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Interesting story out of NPR the other day. Imagine Dragons’ “radioactive” has sat on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for a record 77 weeks. Why is that? According to NPR…. religion. NPR Pop Critic Ann Powers says, “It taps into one of rock’s favorite subject areas, and that is religious or spiritual imagery. It’s like an apocalyptic theme. It’s end times. It’s straight out of Revelation.”
And she says its not the only mainstream song on the charts borrowing from God. Check out OneRepublic’s new Much Megahit “Counting Stars.” Powers says, “That’s the power of pop music in America. It can absorb all of the most important influences in our lives. And certainly, for many, many people, spirituality [and] religion, specifically connected to Christian traditions, are important. It’s hardly a new thing, but we always seem to crave it again.”
The premiere of the second Hunger Games film Catching Fire is tonight at Silvercity Tillicum. The film promises to be one those Hollywood Blockbusters that everyone is lining up to see.
The soundtrack for thefilm is an interesting mix of pop and modern rock heavy weights. Coldplay, Christina Aguilera, Ellie Goulding and Lorde sharing disc-space with The Lumineers, The National, Imagine Dragons and Patti Smith? Sure.
Digital Spy said the best song on the soundtrack is Sia’s “Elastic Heart.” The song features the sounds of Canadian R&B star The Weeknd.
Let’s have a listen to a few of the contributions from Zone bands….
And here is that Lorde cover of Tears for Fears that some people love and some people pan.
The march to Rifflandia V continues… September 13-16th, the city will be buzzing on rock, electronic, hip-hop… and all the spaces in between. Family of the Year will be on the Side-Stage on Saturday fairly early in the day. Make a point to hit it.
We’ve been jamming on their sound around thew radio station a bit. After the bands were announced, Bossman Johnny flew on the youtuber machine and found a few quality tracks. One of the songs from this Los Angeles band that we like at The Zone is called “Diversity.”
I love Imagine Dragons. Its not an everyone fave at the Zone brain trust, but the ep Continued Silence is pretty special to my ear.
The single “It’s Time” is a strong modern rocker. The first song on the ep gets a little dirtier and aggressive. Reminds me a little of Awolnation’s “Sail.” The Las Vegas band is popular with some of the servers at Veneto so I’ve been going to the record a lot for the last month or two.
This song gets drilled into my head all the time. For the past couple days I couldn’t place the melody I was singing in the shower then today! BOOM, “Radioactive!” What a relief when you get that earworm out of your brain..oh man, I hope it didn’t lay any eggs! Ear Worms can do that you know…
This morning, when I HAD to get this song out of my head I went on Youtube. In the comments it seemed like some band spammed it with a link to their video. I never click on those, but the band was called We Barbarians. I judge bands all the time based on superficial shit like band name and appearance. We Barbarians just sounded cool so I clicked.
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I ended up kinda like the song. Simple, clean sounding. Weirdly familiar… maybe Alt Nation plays We Barbarians? or someone on Facebook sent me a link in the past? I can’t remember.
The song isn’t new… last summer. And clearly did not capture the mainstream attention as well, they haven’t become stars yet, but the song is nice. Maybe it was overlooked, maybe they’ll keep working hard and it’ll happen for them.
Lots of new music to check out… might even have some thoughts on new Bloc Party later or tomorrow… we’ll see if I can pull myself away from Rome Total War for 5 seconds to write tonight.
Go with yourself.
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It can feel like a challenge, thinking about summer in Victoria in June. The weather has been cold, grey and wet for the most part. On Thursday, I had the chance to DJ on the Rooftop Surfclub for their Solstice party. I was the first DJ up at 6PM and had a 45 minute set before Boitano turned it up and Marshal A and DJ Speedyshoes closes out the night. I posted my mix on Mixcloud if you’re into it.
A few weak mixes in here…but for the most part I think you’ll enjoy the set if you normally listen to modern rock.
Some of my favourite songs on the list… Cloud Nothings. I could listen to them all day. I dig the Passion Pit and Imagine Dragons remixes. Alex Clare is growing on my with every listen.
My next mixtape will be an Osheaga festival mix similar my Sasquatch mix.
The Morning After 
