One of the biggest complaints that Toronto hip hop artists have is that they are ignored by local media, and, for the most part, they're right. Drop the Needle hopes to help remedy this by checking in with some of the city's finest artists each month to see what's up. Photo by Mark Kasumovic. Since 1997, PHATT al has been dropping records and rocking crowds in Toronto. Back then, he was part of Tallisman's crew......

Torontoist is ahead of the game for previewing some of the best music choices this week (Queen West fire benefit, Forest City Lovers' CD release) but Musicologist will give you one more recommendation—just for kicks. When UK’s Field Music announced a (begrudged) break last year, who knew David Brewis would be in Toronto playing a show under a different name and clean ethos so quickly? School of Language and their debut LP Sea From Shore......

In the music industry's latest attempt to lazily claw itself out of the grave, the Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) is proposing a $5.00 per month licence fee on Canadian Internet accounts that would legalize music downloads. They're calling it the Right to Equitable Remuneration for Music File Sharing, a "reasonable and unobtrusive system of compensation" that will allow consumers to fill their bellies full of all the music they can handle from any......

It wasn't long ago that Torontoist was rapping about Five Blank Pages' CD release; Last Blush, their first full-length, was just unleashed onto the white-belt world last October, but this weekend marks a significant change in the band's line-up. Since growing from Noyan Hilmi's solo project to a full-fledged band, the group has consisted of Hilmi, sister Chelen Hilmi, and wife Pinar Ozyetis. The band added bassist Rajiv Thavanathan later on, and has been......

No, you are not mistaken; Michael Bublé, Ozzy Osbourne and Rob Zombie are all passing through the city this week. Imagine Michael Bublé (for some unknown reason) making a vocal cameo during Ozzy’s sure-to-be "Crazy Train" encore? Best mash-up, ever! Or not. Ozzy, Michael, and that ridiculous idea aside, there is a show worthy of your attendance for reasons beyond an ideal encore. On Saturday, January 26, The Tranzac will be hosting the CD......

When local promoter Dan Burke so unabashedly declared “less drugs, more shows” as what he looks forward to for this calendar year, no one believed the drugs portion of that resolution—but Friday is reason to start believing the show portion. Friday night will gather many to the Silver Dollar to celebrate the CD release of local experimental composer Katie Stelmanis. Widely recognized for her contributions to all-female baroque rockers Galaxy (R.I.P.) and alt-gospel howlers Bruce......

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains of 2007––the people, places, and things that we've either fallen head over heels in love with or developed uncontrollable rage towards over the past twelve months. Get your dose, starting Boxing Day and running into the new year, three times a day––sunrise, noon, and sunset. Is there anything as satisfying as waking up to that little dancing alarm clock every morning on Breakfast Television?......

Toronto seems to get its annual dose of legendary outsider filmmaker John Waters around this time. A couple of years back he was hosting the TIFF gala of his latest film, A Dirty Shame, then in late 2006, he could be found gallivanting around Roncesvalles overseeing the transformation—for good or ill—of his 1988 comedy, Hairspray, into this year's hit family-friendly musical starring John Travolta (based more on the 2002 Broadway remake than on its original......

Last Wednesday, legendary Canadian music retailer Pindoff Record Sales sold off their 72-store Music World chain. Two days later, the new owners filed for bankruptcy protection and and will likely lay off 648 employees by the end of January. And so it goes. According to court documents, Music World plans an "orderly wind down," including closing stores and liquidating inventory. The retailer has been in dire straits for years, propped up by the Toronto-based......

A Good Idea (In Theory) is a new play currently running at Passe Muraille that, as its title implies, is trying to do things a little differently. For starters, in lieu of a program, audience members are given a soundtrack CD. As the play's website explains, the idea behind the project came from the question: "What would happen if an award-winning stage play by a young Canadian was supported by a group of independent......

William the Conquerer may have been a great tactician and a bit of a bastard, but we're not quite sure if he was a talented musician. William the Conquerer (the band), however, is a talented musician. Five of them, actually. If you haven't heard their stuff, you should. They're a a buzzing mix of indie-rock and classical training, a blending of instruments and a quasi-seductive husky voice that makes you want to get up......

There are a few good reasons to check out C’mon’s CD Release Party this Friday, September 21, at the Horseshoe Tavern. The most important, however, is to watch bassist Katie Lynn Campbell do that insane thing where it appears like her body is about to snap in half she’s leaning so effing far back. That is how rock ‘n’ roll C’mon are; severed spines be damned! Among the other reasons to be kickin’ it at......

If you're downtown and looking for a lunch-hour chill-out tomorrow (Wednesday), head over to Indigo in the Manulife Centre at Bay and Bloor. At 12:15 p.m., Juno Award winner, Grammy recipient, Officer of the Order of Canada, and Canada's Walk Of Fame starholder Diana Krall will be sitting behind a piano and performing songs from her latest release, The Very Best of Diana Krall. If you didn't get your autograph fix during TIFF last week,......

Very early on this year, Torontoist was bold enough to predict that this may be the year of Basia Bulat. Nine months later and we may not have been very far off the mark. Ms. Bulat released her new album Oh, My Darling in Europe this past March, and has recently signed to Hardwood Records to finally (finally!) release her debut album tomorrow here in Canada. In celebration, we're giving away a pair of tickets......

Whilst performing our pre-read ritual of tearing out Toronto Life's 8,000 annoying snot-glued ad inserts and heavy stock subscription cards, we suddenly came across Torontoist's name in the mag's "Roundup" feature. The chart compares Toronto's four major city blogs: Torontoist, Spacing Wire (now Spacing Toronto), BlogTO, and the newish Torontopedia. Torontoist's raison d'être is listed as "news, arts, culture, snark"—and we won't argue with that—while BlogTO is like "your geeky friend who's always in......

If you've spent any time at all-ages punk shows in the last five years, chances are you’ve seen the Flatliners in action. Performing together since the tender age of fourteen, the band has made a name for themselves over the course of their six-year existence thanks to a tireless work ethic and the ability to write some catchy effing songs. That effort comes to a head tonight at the Mod Club, as the band......

With music download trends showing that the coveted male 18–24 demographic is more interested in the music of their ancestors than anything current, music store HMV is dropping CD prices on oldies like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. HMV hopes that the move will convince young men to abandon the web and start stealing from retail stores again. Ontario Conservative Party leader John Tory says that, if elected, he would save $1.5 billion in......

Songs about zombies, drive-by shootings, Obi-Wan Kenobi, pirates, monsters, punching people in the face, pregnancy, "reeking and seeking," families, obesity, virginity—all of them catchy, all of them disconcertingly happy-sounding, and all of them sing-and-clap-along-able. That is what Austin's Oh No! Oh My! is made of, and their albums—their self-titled full-length; their new EP, Between The Devil and The Sea; and their Jolly Rogers demo that the songs from the new EP are culled from—are the......

Canadian music fans might have heard of Sherrie Lea Laird. She covered Sade's "No Ordinary Love." She has a band, Pandemonia, and they just released a classic rock CD called Left to Die...In the Wide Open. Oh, yeah—and she married Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller, had an affair with JFK, and starred in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Laird is the subject of a book by a Dr. Adrian Finkelstein, "Marilyn Monroe Returns: The Healing of a......

If you're looking for something to do this Friday night—while abstaining from burning any holes in your pockets—you could mosey on down to the Mercer Union for some definitive hosting by Brian Joseph Davis. To celebrate the "oversized" release of Davis' newest work and adding to his long list of other works, Blocks Recording Club is having a summer release party. The Definitive Host is a collection of Davis' large array of sound and......

When Maximo Park released their debut in 2005, many critics were hoping the new wave revival was coming to an end. A Certain Trigger was catchy, but also included almost every post-punk trope that could be imagined. It's jolting rhythmic changes took time to get used to, but slowly the band managed to ditch the comparisons to Razorlight and The Futureheads. Fast-forward to this year's Our Earthly Pleasures, where the band has slightly toned......

Last night, one of Torontoist’s adolescent fantasies came true … no, not that one…we finally saw synth pop group The Spoons in concert! After a few technical glitches onstage at the Parkdale Arts and Crafts Festival, they launched into their 1984 hit, “Tell No Lies,” a song that is almost painful to mention without blurting, “Dit dit ditditdit DIT!” The thirtysomething crowd’s inner tweens sang along, and some sang out loud to their young......

The problem with doing a weekly CD review is that an excellent album will sometimes cross your path, only to realize that you can't get to it for weeks. Then they explode (sort of), play a show that gets covered by everyone and their Grandma (a.k.a. The Star), and you end up twiddling your thumbs, not sure if one more review is really going to say anything different from all the other ones. It might......

When The Ghost Is Dancing played our Back To School Party last September, they described their sound as "GODZILLA POP." Fast-forward to the release of their debut cd, The Darkest Spark (Sonic Unyon), and it's cleary evident why that description is appropriate. They've expanded their lineup since their EP came out, leaving the number of band members at a staggering nine. Not only have they grown in size, but their sound is appropriately more rich......

For Toronto's Kids On TV, it's been a long road to get their debut album completed, one that has lasted the better part of three years. For those waiting to hear Mixing Business With Pleasure, released last week by the Blocks Recording Club, there has been the lingering question of how the music would translate from the live show onto tape. For a band that is so infamous for its high-energy, explicit performances, how would......

Final Fantasy alert! Over the past week, the always-lovely Good Hodgkins has twice graced us with new Owen Pallett tracks. First came a grand total of six tracks from Owen Pallett and rapper Cadence Weapons's CBC Radio session in mid-April. Pallett is featured on three of Cadence's tracks (check out "Sharks," in which Pallett incorporates some sweet Andrew Bird into the mix) and then has three of his own songs: "What Do You Think......

If Torontoist wasn’t looking after the kids tonight, we’d be checking out The End of the Internet. The End is scheduled tonight at The Press Club (850 Dundas Street West) for precisely 9 p.m. The upstart, performance-based reading series, which has been ending the Internet for almost a year now, is hosted by man-about-town Louis Calabro. Tonight, Brian Joseph Davis performs his “first ever laptop gig” with dulcet sounds he has produced over the last......

There are as many types of poetry as there are different styles of music. Books of poetry are usually confined to a shelf or two at a local bookstore, but if you want to buy a CD, you visit an entire store dedicated to music. When someone professes to like poetry, the reference is probably to a favourite type of poetry, and not all poetries—just as a jazz afficionado might dislike Country and Western,......

From the million-record-selling stadium band to that guy who used to sell cassettes on Queen Street, Torontoist readers share their stories of the city's lost-but-not-forgotten musical acts. Today's Revisited review comes from Cameron Gordon. Superior Cackling Hen Bourbon Tabernacle Choir Yonder Records/Sony No band epitomized the communal spirit of early 1990’s Toronto more so than the Bourbon Tabernacle Choir. Their seasonal blend of soul, rock and funk made them a top live draw during that......

You may be aware that there are no plans to release the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters in Canada, as reported by The Toronto Star, Dose, Twitch Film, and, of course, us, in our film column last week. If, like us, you're saddened by such news, there's not much you can do to make yourself feel better about it, other than, I suppose, continuing to watch it on The Detour......