Coming in off a freezing rue St-Laurent around 11pm, we entered Le Divan Orange, a warm venue laid with old wooden floors and a high room. As soon as we came in, we noticed the place was pretty empty. Well... it was more than pretty empty; in fact, there were about 15 people there in...
When I was in grade nine, Pennywise was the quintessential punk band. Not only did they give me instant cool cred when everyone else was listening to Nickelback, but their music soothed over the rough moments of early high school. When I heard that they were coming to Montreal, and I had the chance of reviewing the show, I jumped at the opportunity. Also, they were playing with pop punk legends Authority Zero and Riverboat Gamblers, as well as local band Fifty Stars Anger. It was the promise of a majorly great show.
Hot on the heels of burning up CJLO’s top 10 and in town for Pop Montreal, Vancouver 5-piece You Say Party! We Say Die! stumbled into the CJLO studios October 1, 2005 covered in blood. Covered in blood? Damn right. Well…sorta. The guys and gals had just got out of a photo shoot (the results can be seen here) and the fake blood proved to be a lot more difficult to get off. Meh, not really a bad thing. the bloodied-up look is punk.
Not only was the You Say Party! We Say Die! crew traveling with CJLO pal and past SONiCs...
After performing a stripped down set for Hooked on Sonics earlier in the winter of 2005, Haligonians Wintersleep, whose sophomore record spent 3 consecutive weeks at #1 on the CJLO Top...
Paul, Tim and Loel of Wintersleep visited chateau CJLO February 25, 2005 (Jud was missing somewhere in downtown Montreal). Wanting to do something a little different, the guys decided to do a stripped down session for Hooked on Sonics, and recorded the songs with Paul on acoustic guitar, Loel on drums, and Tim on ye ole keyboard.
Little did the guys realize that by passing us their second, and...
Tuscon’s the Bled rolled into the CJLO studios October 28, 2005 and recorded what probably has been the loudest CJLO Session to date.
After having serious trouble getting to the station (thanks, Mapquest…who, for the record, gives the complete opposite directions to get to the station, sending you to East Montreal, rather than West), the guys trucked on, determined to get this session done.
The guys arrived, loaded in (good thing we managed to get security to allow us elevator...
From the prairie-lands of Regina, Saskatchewan, poppy post-punk outfit Sylvie paid a visit to CJLO July 29, 2005. Already hearing a buzz about the band (guitarist/singer Joel Passmore was in Despistado, another CJLO and Hooked on Sonics fave), a couple of us CJLO kids caught the ...
One of the highlights of hosting and producing this very show is that sometimes I manage to luck out and get to interview some of my musical heroes like Robert Pollard (Guided by Voices) or John Reis (Rocket from the Crypt, Hot Snakes, Drive Like Jehu). This time I managed to up the ante and got Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer of the Posies to come on down to chateau CJLO and spend a good hour talking about their music & careers as well as record four acoustic versions of some of their songs.
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Philly poppy math rock indie quartet Pattern is Movement made their way to the CJLO studios on a Sunday afternoon, October 2, 2005, before their show for Pop Montreal. Funny thing with this session is it was initially supposed to happen in the summer but got botched up by yours truly. See, I had called back their label to set up the session when lo and behold, I had accidentally marked down the wrong weekend for when I thought they’d be in town. Turned out, they had already passed through the previous weekend...
Influential Halifax post-punk/math rock band North of America were in town playing a special reunion show on Saturday Feb 27th for the Blue Skies Turn Black 10th Anniversary show @ Il Motore. Here's an old session they did @ CJLO 5 years ago when they reunited for a brief tour with Ted Leo.
When we heard North of America had reunited and was playing a date in Montreal, ...
Scrappy San Francisco post-punk duo Moggs paid a visit to the SONiCs show September 6, 2005, and became the first band to ever perform live-to-air on our show. In town for a CJLO sponsored performance, part of our old “Upstairs is Underground” nights at (the now departed) Le Swimming.
A rad duo, Sir Plus and Miss Minor were nice and patient with us while our Program Director became defacto session engineer...
Uncategorizable band Murder by Death dropped by CJLO studios to record a special acoustic SONiCs Session for us on June 3, 2004, right before playing the CJLO/Blue Skies Turn Black co-sponsored Braid reunion tour, a night now remembered in CJLO history as the “Colossal Failure"© (if you want to know why, contact us). Having the Murder by Death gang come down was definitely the highlight of that night and it was also the first SONiCs...
Still putting out amazing rock records after all these years, Scott Lucas, exactly one half of loud rawk duo Local H visited CJLO June 21, 2004.
Pretty much having just woken up from the drive in from Toronto, Scott lugged his acoustic guitar up to the studio, sat down and looked up at us. "So," he said, "what do you guys want me to play?" No joke. He took requests for an hour. Old Local H songs, newer ones, and even a few covers (yeah...my Pixies cover suggestion was met with a "heh heh, you...
In town for Pop Montreal with the whole Boompa Records crew, Thom D’Arcy brought his new group, Small Sins (at the time they were called the Ladies and Gentlemen) to the CJLO Studios September 30, 2005. Along with the kids from Catlow, the session was set up pretty much the day...
Quite possibly the longest session to set up ever, we finally managed to get Montreal local faves Heroes and Villains to make it into CJLO to perform LIVE to air on the SONiCs show.
After literally months of setting things up, then canceling, then re-scheduling, and then re-canceling due to technical difficulties, etc (it seemed every time we had these guys scheduled our production equipment would fail on us a few days earlier), the moons...
The guys from Regina, Saskatchewan’s Ghosts of Modern Man swung by the CJLO studios the afternoon of April 18, 2005 to record a three song session. Nice guys with huge amps (the bass amp alone was seriously big), we helped them lug their gear up the Loyola staircase since the usual elevator route was blocked off due to exams being held nearby.
We’re kinda used to having to do this sometimes, except this time some dude...
