Kincardine-born, Mississauga-bred, Toronto-based, and Berlin-bound, Joel Gibb is the musical and managerial head of The Hidden Cameras, the fantastic and always well-populated music collective whose members have included Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy), Reg Vermue (Gentlemen Reg), Laura Barrett, Maggie MacDonald (Republic of Safety), Dave Meslin (founder of the Toronto Public Space Committee), Bob Wiseman, Steve Kado (founder of Blocks Recording Club, member of Barcelona Pavilion and Ninja High School), Ohad Benchetrit (Do Make Say......

The Hidden Cameras are back home, and we are all better off for it. As we mentioned in this week's music listings, the Cameras––they of the Mississauga-bred now world-famous exuberant gay pop fame––are playing an AIDS benefit concert this Thursday night at the Great Hall in Hart House (7 Hart House Circle), with proceeds going to Toronto People With AIDS Foundation and AVERT International. The show, with Montreal's Sister Suvi and Toronto's Allie Hughes, will......

The Ontario Coalition For Social Justice and Make Poverty History believe there need not always be dissonance when electioneering and rock n' roll meet. This Monday's Vote Out Poverty gala at Massey Hall promises to be a "coming together of people from all walks of life and political allegiances gathering for an evening of entertainment united by a desire to reduce poverty in Ontario, Canada and the world," and will feature a multi-partisan mashup......

Finally, another excuse to write about La Blogothèque's Take-Away Shows. The last time we covered the France-based music filmmakers, they were psyching us up for the Arcade Fire's May concert with the best concert footage we've ever seen of the band. Before that, they won us over with The Hidden Cameras parading along boardwalks. Now they've given us Owen Pallett plucking away at two songs––"Your Light Is Spent" (above) and "Horsetail Feathers"––in Paris. If......

Joel Gibb of the Hidden Cameras (top) and Torquil Campbell of Stars (bottom). Photos by David Topping. Finally, a Frosh Week concert worthy of U of T. After years of mediocre bands, increasingly-irrelevant bands, or good bands who underperform, the university brought Stars and the Hidden Cameras to campus for a free concert for students. Loaded with alumni, both bands played better than anyone could've expected for a free show, with the Cameras' ecstatic......

If you're not already exhausted on September 7 after trying to check out M.I.A., Stars, The Hidden Cameras, k-os, and You Say Party! We Say Die! playing for free for U of T and Ryerson's frosh, why not throw in a little free Yeah Yeah Yeahs for good measure? That night––if you're still looking for time to kill and bands to see––Vice, Rimmel London, and CKIN2U are hosting the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at the Berkeley......

The bands for both the University of Toronto and Ryerson's frosh week concerts are all confirmed and good to go, and they're all extraordinarily excellent. At about 4:30 p.m. next Friday, September 7, the Hidden Cameras and Stars will play a free concert on U of T's Back Campus (north of University College, at Devonshire Place and Hoskin Avenue) which is restricted to current students. While last year's U of T frosh week saw......

While Hilary Clinton was content to let her supporters choose her theme song, the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party has asked Dalton McGuinty's detractors to pick one for him. "What tune best represents Dalton McGuinty's campaign?" asks their website, accompanied by a Say Anything–inspired pic of the premier (pictured at right). "Which lyrics do you think of when you see Liberal red? Their election campaign needs a theme song and here's your chance to play political......

For a band with an entire album named for Mississauga, The Hidden Cameras and Toronto sure haven't seen much of each other of late. Friday night at the Phoenix was the band's first full-length show within the GTA's walls in almost a year, the too-long hiatus forced by (pictured) lead man Joel Gibb's Berlin exile; as he goeth, so goeth the band. Live show as interactive spectacle has always been the motif at Cameras shows,......

On occasion, Daniel Johnston has shed his cult status and entered the public spotlight: it happened when Kurt Cobain promoted him and again with the release of The Devil and Daniel Johnston. And as a recent compilation confirmed, his influence can be felt throughout modern music, including Tom Waits, Beck, and The Flaming Lips. So it was a surreal experience to see Johnston close the Over The Top Festival this past Sunday. On one......

L’Oréal Fashion Week kicked off this morning with an 11 a.m. press conference at Queen's Park. Seems the Ontario government excludes fashion from its definition of culture. So members of the Fashion Design Council of Canada want fashion visionaries to get the same recognition as their colleagues in art, dance, theatre and music. Clearly Toronto Fashion Week isn't the same kind of high-octane glamathon as Paris or Milan. In fact, most shows will be......

It’s fitting that Maggie MacDonald is one of four self-appointed prime ministers of the Republic of Safety. She’s a political and creative force, using art as her weapon of choice. Her current bands, The Hidden Cameras and the aforementioned Republic of Safety, are musical meeting points for sex and politics. She’s exhibited her visual art and had her comics published in The Globe and Mail and Lola magazine. When she was just 20, MacDonald ran......

We realize that we probably talk about Owen Pallett, aka Final Fantasy, way too much. So we're not going to talk about his free show on Saturday night at North York Central Library, also featuring The Creeping Nobodies, Hank, Ninja High School, and Bob Wiseman. Nope, not a word. Instead, what we do want to tell you about is the Toronto Public Library's stellar new local CD selection - the whole reason that the......

i (heart) music has just released their list of the 33 hottest bands in Canada for 2006, as selected by a more than forty Canadian music bloggers (including yours truly, current Torontoist contributor Carrie Musgrave, Said the Gramophone, former Torontoist contributor Frank Yang from Chromewaves, and lots of others). We don't mean to gloat, but it looks like we're still the best city for music in the country. A whole bunch of Toronto-based bands made......

There are fewer and fewer places in the city that go unrecorded. Security cameras have become a regular feature of our landscape. So common, in fact, that most of the time we don't even notice them. And our level of awareness (or lack of awareness) of security cameras is usually an intentional design decision. Some surveillance machinery is well hidden, designed to be completely innocuous, placed under glass domes or behind one-way mirrors. These......

This weekend, the Harbourfront Centre plays host to Indie Unlimited. The festival's lineup features Amy Millan, The Hidden Cameras, Bell Orchestre - and Great Lake Swimmers, who are coming off the end of their touring in support of their acclaimed 2005 album, Bodies and Minds. Frontman Tony Dekker took some time to talk with Torontoist about touring and what's next after this weekend's show.......

Tsk, tsk. Late two weeks in a row. Someone needs a good spanking. Next week we'll get our act together and put Torontoist before busy schedules and get this puppy out on time. Pinky swear. As always, let us know in the comments section if you're heading to any good shows that we missed. Particularly for this Thursday...we need some hot action that night. Recently Announced Sept. 11 - M Ward @ Mod Club, $16.50......

Looking to check out some live music this week? Here's your listing of what's happening around the city between July 31 and August 6. In addition, we are now including recently announced shows, so you have no excuse about missing out on ticket opportunities. If you know of any good shows this week that we missed below, let us know in the comments. Feel free to also let us know about upcoming shows that......

Just about one year after the last major Toronto (areaish) concert, Richard Branson announced that the Toronto Islands will host the Virgin Festival over a weekend in early September. This is the first time the Virgin Festival crosses the pond outside the UK. Note that this is the first time that Centre Island will be closed to the public. Just like Live8, this concert is being put on to raise awareness... for "Make Rogers History."......

Photo of the Hidden Cameras' frontman, Joel Gibb, from The Music Gallery, April 2, 2006. The new Hidden Cameras album, Awoo, has leaked, well before its August 18th release date. There are two reasons that you, the average Torontoist reader, should care about Awoo and the Hidden Cameras: the album is really good [refer below to point #1] and Mississauga kindof sucks [refer below to point #2].......

Toronto's condominium market isn't always a pretty one. Owen Pallett of Final Fantasy (also the strings arranger for The Arcade Fire and The Hidden Cameras, pictured above at left) decided to take an unorthodox approach to dealing with the problem: he wrote a song about it. Pallett's newly-released LP, He Poos Clouds, includes a song called "This Lamb Sells Condos." The phrase should be familiar to anyone who's seen this billboard, an advertisement for......

Torontoist enjoyed Stuart Berman's interview in this week's eye, pitting Max McCabe-Lokos (the Deadly Snakes) and Bry Webb (the Constantines).We're not taking sides in this little "tiff" but we'll gladly go and watch either band this weekend at the Horseshoe. But enough of the friendliness of Canada's indie scene, we think that underneath all this collegiality and 'pat-on-the back' we're all in this together joviality there's some real rage. 1) Sarah Slean vs. Sarah......

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Starting next Tuesday and running for five nights, The Hidden Cameras will be putting on a special series of shows in conjunction with the Toronto Dance Theatre at Harbourfront, entitled "In The Boneyard". Head Camera Joel Gibb gave Pitchfork a sneak preview of what to expect from the performances, which will begin with the Cameras providing musical accompaniment for the dancers but trading places as the show progresses. All new music was written especially for......

Maggie MacDonald is a busy woman. As one of the most visible members of the Hidden Cameras, MacDonald is often seen on Toronto's stages bopping along to Joel Gibb's catchy anthems to enemas, fear of commitment and golden showers. MacDonald also plays in a number of other bands in the city including the Dating Service and Republic of Safety. So it's not like she needs another project on her plate. So Torontoist was pretty surprised......

Funny how quickly a show can go from pariah to the hot ticket in town. Sunday's New Pornographers show created a dilemma for fans who didn't want to miss seeing the full-roster band including Destroyer's Dan Bejar (also opening the show) and Neko Case (whose own skyrocketing fame all but ensures this is the last time she'll be able to tour with the band), but on the other hand, didn't want to make the trek......

Rumours of the demise of the Ear to the Ground Festival are greatly exaggerated. The fest won't be held on the grounds of the Ex and instead will take its slate of programming to a number of venues on Queen St. E. Most importantly the fest's chock-a-block full Sunday music offerings (Hidden Cameras, Sleater Kinney, The Organ) will be at the Opera House. The fest is also having a launch party at the Gladstone, thursday......

"So I said to myself, 'If they can do it with a photograph, why can't I do it with a bar of chocolate?'" - Willy Wonka And if he could do it with a Wonka bar, why can't Robert Kennedy do it with Joel Gibb and the The Hidden Cameras? Following up last night's Hidden Cameras show, their biggest Toronto club gig to date, Toronto's evil evil gay-folk-church-pop 15-piece gets split up into millions of......

A look at some choice live music going down over the next week: Sunday nights are turning into the nights for rock in Toronto. Case in point, this Sunday you can either catch Austin's indie gods Spoon at the Opera House with the UK's The Clientele to promote their latest platter, Gimme Fiction. It's an interesting pairing - following up The Clientele's gentle chamber pop with the lean rock attack of Britt Daniel and co.,......