Tagged: music

It's the Friday before the long weekend

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and yr girl has a haircut in 10 minutes which means obviously I have to blog right the fuck now.

Spent the afternoon curled up sleeping in bed with Toulouse because I had a headache and was tired as f and this weekend just sucked the life right out of me.

The best part about this week was that I discovered the new Royal Canoe video

(which was actually released last week but whatever)

which I love, of course.

I've had a few conversations about the video and the way it makes my city

(which is vibrant and amazing and I love with all my heart)

look

so here's a quote from the director which gives it a bit more context

(which I don't have time to go into right now):

“I don’t know if this is true of other cities, but for some weird reason Winnipeggers have been bombarded for the past four decades by business-driven propaganda campaigns which aim to boost our hometown pride, promote tourism and economic growth. Each successive campaign is even more desperate and embarrassing than the last and they all fail, because they insist upon such a fake and whitewashed image of Winnipeg. For the ‘Exodus’ video, we wanted to warp the cinematic vocabulary of these obsolete Winnipeg tourism filmstrips and create a kind of subversive travelogue about the Winnipeg that is truly meaningful to us.

The thing I love about ‘Exodus of the Year’ is that, both musically and lyrically, it really sounds like the Winnipeg we carry around in our hearts. It’s both sad and beautiful, frustrated and triumphant. For the video, we wanted to walk this fine line between the ironic and the earnest, as all us Winnipeggers must do every day.”

- Matt Rankin

Enjoy your long weekend lovelies!

xox yr girl Shaner


 

Hip Hop Sunday: Cadence Weapon - Real Estate

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Stayed up cackling like a crazy person till 4am

after eating nachos and watching Orange is the New Black

got only 5hrs sleep

because I had to wake up & roll around in bed

and cackle some more.

It was supposed to thunderstorm today but it doesn't look like it will.

So things are shaping up pretty swimmingly.

Enjoy your Hip Hop Sunday, kids.

xox

yr girl Shaner


 

Paper Moon

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First fell in love with this song when I was living on Strathcona

in a house with too many rooms

which only accentuated how lonely I was at the time.

It's easy to fill a room with the sound of your own voice, or

alternatively

the sound of nothing at all.

It was a weird time.

Kind of like how right now is a weird time.

So it feels fitting that I should find myself listening to it again.
 

Sloan was supposed to save rock music

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or so I've been told by those much wiser than myself.

'Underwhelmed' came out when I was embarrassingly young -too young to be listening to music as cool as Sloan- but it was still kicking around in the form of my friend's cd of Smeared

(a word that I didn't yet associate with gross sexual stuff, but never mind)

when I was older to start appreciating the finer things in life.

We listened to Smeared to nonstop on her boom box while sitting on her concrete front step in front of her house, which was across the street from mine.

She was a few years older than I was and spent most of our time together explaining to my juvenile self just exactly why Sloan kicked so much ass

(a word I didn't dare say anywhere but on that front step)

why Jeff Martin of The Tea Party was so sexy

(hair, voice, perfect pitch)

why the Our Lady Peace album Naveed was clearly better than Clumsy

(I don't remember this, just that their videos freaked me out)

or why Treble Charger's "Red" gets more depressing the more you listen to it

(see what I mean?)

in addition to other life lessons that, sadly, have escaped me as the years have passed.

But the important ones stuck with me, clearly.

 

Avril Lavigne

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 wat r u doin

 avril lavigne


 stahp.


(awful video here because all the vids posted to youtube keep getting taken down)


 

Konstantine

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When the guy I was seeing left me it was 11pm on a Thursday and he did it in the Second Cup on Graham Ave and I was dumbstruck and I cried.

I was young and I didn't know what to do so I got up and left and he followed me because that's what you're supposed to do when someone storms out of somewhere, I guess.

It was February and it was snowing and I was trying to put on my coat and my mittens and my scarf at the same time and failing because nothing made sense, least of all arm holes and wool and zippers.

Nothing makes sense when someone hurts you.

He followed me and took my hand and because I was young I thought that meant something and he said "I'm sorry, let's go back to my place and we can talk" and because I was young I thought that meant something so we did.

But it didn't mean anything. It didn't mean anything at all.

He drove me home at 2am and I screamed at him in his car, I said what the hell is wrong with you why did you invite me back to your apartment when I was trying to go home

and he said

I don't know. I don't know about anything right now.

and I said some awful things that I wish I could say that I regret.

When I got home I called the man I'd been in love with all along and because it was the kind of man that he was, he stayed on the phone with me until I fell asleep.

The next day he dropped his Friday night plans and picked me up from work with flowers and when I saw him I began to cry either because I was wounded or in love or probably both

and he held me in his car as I shook in his arms.

We went out for dinner and on the way home he held my hand in between the red lights and shifting gears, and we listened to Konstantine by Something Corporate and I watched the snow and the traffic as we drove from downtown to Old St. Vital.

Later that night when we were alone and I was consumed by the smell of him I thought of the words of that song, the slow sadness of it, and though I was young and sad and fucked up I felt like maybe I’d be all right.

Which turned out to be true, but not then.
 

Things that I rocked today:

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- Baking midnight cupcakes
(because why the f not)

- Grooving out in my living room to Robyn

- An interview at a really exciting prospective job
(people like when you give a double thumbs-up, right?)

- Taking care of Tyrone after his dental surgery

- Twitter
(as per usual)

- My CodeAcademy lessons

- Home-made chicken noodle soup
(boom)

- Totally not falling in a single puddle at all

- This blog post
(obviously)

 

Sunday night, feelin' fine

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I haven't felt this relaxed in weeks.

Not even that time I went for that massage a few weeks ago. I was all nervous and anxious and didn't enjoy it at all.

I think I walked out of there more stressed out than when I walked in.

Isn't what what massages are supposed to fix? Honestly.

Turns out what I need to unwind are these 10 steps:

1. Sleep my ass in
2. Make a healthy & tasty brunch
3. Hit the gym & run like a mofo
4. Do deadlifts & squats like a boss
5. Come home n clean the apartment
6. Run a bath
7. Sit in the bath and read TIME Magazine
8. Use up my Tiber River goodies from MBlog
9. Drink chamomile tea with honey
10. Hug my cats & Tyrone

Perfect. I feel ready to take on anything.

If I could just melt into the floor into a puddle of bliss, I would.

But I can't.

So I blog instead.

Naturally.


 

#nomoresad is the cutest thing you'll see today

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Basically you email Michael Jukeson yr favourite song and he'll film a 30 second vid of him dancing to it, just for you.

It is charming, and adorable and the world needs more things like it.

(I already fired off my request, btw)

Here are a few of my faves from the youtube page:









Cred to @joeyng whose tweet alerted me to this adorableness.
 

The Uniter Fiver

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Local university mag The Uniter is holding a competition called The Uniter Fiver where you can go n vote for your favourite artist ad they win stuff (I think?) and get some much-deserved local cred.

I'm lucky enough to know not just one but two of the super-talented guys who submitted videos and even though you can only vote for one I'm gonna plug 'em both anyway, because they're both brilliant and they both deserve it:



"Crows" is a collaboration between Co-pilot, Mumbles and my friend Abstract Artform aka Shea M.

I met Shea through my friend Colin a few years back on a patio at Beachcomber's. In between charming all the waitresses and probably the waiters too he totally won us over as well.

After we'd had our fill of slushy drinks & beers he insisted that we go to karaoke at Saffron's on Corydon where we had one of the best, most random and entertaining nights ever.

In addition to being a sweet and unbelievably genuine person, Shae is also super-talented, and you should definitely vote for him.



Aband*nthecar is a one-man synthpop band aka my very dear friend John L. I don't know much about his music so here's his description of his setup for this video: I use a Boss RC-300 looping pedal with a single drum sample, the Little Phatty mainly for the arpeggiator, and the MicroKorg for the vocoder and leads.

I first met John several years ago when he was dating Kat, who is my best ladybro.

We were all at Wine Fest and ran into each other about 2/3's of the way through the night and even though everyone else decided to go off in search of more, differenter wines, John and our friend Teri and I decided to stand around the port table for close to an hour and drink there.

This move has basically become a staple of every Wine Fest since, and with good reason (port is great).

In addition to being one of my best friends and one of the cleverest and most outrageous people you could hope to meet, John writes some of the most charming and catchy tunes I know and you should definitely vote for him.



I don't actually know anyone from Bear Clones but they get a special spot in this post because of this cover of Faust from the epic 80's rock opera that almost nobody knows about Phantom of the Paradise.

I can't in good conscience tell you to vote for them since I'm plugging my friends, but I highly recommend you check out their stuff and definitely recommend that you watch Phantom of the Paradise.

Happy voting, and good luck boys!

xox yr Shaner
 

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