Results tagged “northbynortheast”

This year (June 17–21) marks the fifteenth run for the world-renowned North by Northeast Music, Film and Conference festival, and with that milestone comes...really late bar hours. Last night at the NXNE 2009 preview press conference, a swift-moving line-up of announcers, the most excited and audible being festival Managing Director Andy McLean, announced highlights from all parts of the five-day festival. Key conference guests will include GZA (yes, that GZA) and Jake Gold, and the film festival will host the Canadian premiere of Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. The usual dizzying five hundred bands will be playing as well, with Montreal's Melissa Auf der Maur and Atlanta's Black Lips getting lots of special mention. And the seemingly most crowd-pleasing of all news is that, indeed, most venues will extend their serving hours to keep the bleary-eyed parties going until 4 a.m. Once again Yonge-Dundas Square, Pearson Airport, and a slew of public parks will also be used as alternative daytime music venues. Full lists and schedules will be available at the NXNE website soon (where pass and wristband info is already up). Torontoist will of course be providing planning assistance and extensive coverage leading up to and during NXNE, including tips for effective napping strategy in order to maximize your (and our) festival intake.

Mesh, as "Canada’s web conference," is naturally tricked out with tech goodies—Microsoft made an appearance with the new Surface, for example. You’ll find podcasts and video streaming and Twitter feeds for the two-day conference, so that even if you didn’t attend you’d still have a good idea of what went on. Through live-blogs and Twitter, this year’s talks and panels were boiled down into a jambalaya of Coles Notes, quips, and talking points. With as many as four sessions going on simultaneously, participants could use the tech to catch up on the ones they missed. (We got into the fun by live-tweeting mesh, which you can check out here.) Mesh, started only in 2006, often catches the zeitgeist of the web scene, as one person noted. This year it became very clear that whether you Twitter or Facebook or instant message or blog, ich bin ein Computerfreak.

It's almost time to say goodbye to North By Northeast for yet another year. Two longs nights have past, leaving tonight as the last chance to get out an enjoy some of the best new music from around the world. Seeing as it is Saturday, expect a lot of the shows to be really busy so going earlier is always better than later. All the cool kids are doing it!

It's Thursday, which means it's the first day of North By Northeast and the end of our previews. In the final installment of our NXNE recommendations, we'll guide you through the best that Saturday has to offer. And, if we may say so, Saturday has a lot of good stuff to offer. Before heading out, you may want to fuel up at the 2nd Annual Back Lot BBQ put on by Six Shooter Records. It takes place at their retail store, located at 1118 Queen St. E., from 2–6 p.m. and features Six Shooter artists such as Justin Rutledge and NQ Arbuckle (not to mention BBQ and beer).

Similar to how the Oscars end the awards season with a bang, the coming of North By Northeast signals the end of festival/conference season for another year. Running from June 7th to the 10th, with over 450 bands playing NXNE shows between Thursday and Saturday, not to mention the NXNE film festival, we're already starting to sleep in a little longer so we can bring you as much of the festival as we can. To help you wade through the enormous list of bands and prepare for the long weekend ahead, we're you giving our picks for the bands and shows that will, hopefully, highlight this year's edition of NXNE (not to mention some of the extras, like BBQs and soccer matches, happening through the weekend).

Free North By Northeast stuff for everyone! Earplugs, CDs, thousands of magazines/promo junk and a mini flashlight in these neon green NXNE bags. Picture taken at the Holiday Inn swag fest.

Without notice, and just two days before the North By Northeast festival, the bar/live music venue The 360 has closed down. Well, not officially. But, according to sources, they've changed the locks and fired their staff, which is a pretty tell tale sign. Rumour has it that the Legionnaires have had enough punk rawk and put their foot down . Why now? Or, more importantly, what now?