Charging bluegrass screams majestically over the hills of Gallagher Park calling revelers of all ages back to their home tarps. The individual experiences that exist in traversing from side stage to side stage have now ended and now the communal ...Read More
-Van Morrison - Wednesday 8:30 PM, Main Stage Obviously. I'm about 90% certain that Van Morrison is one of the music's all time jerk-asses. Maybe it's the alleged stage fright that he still hasn't been able to shake, even after forty-plus years ...Read More
By the time this article is published, the Toronto After Dark Film Festival will already have been underway at the Bloor Cinema for a few days. However, I would like to take this opportunity to say a few words about ...Read More
Photo by Matthew Filipowich Some people play fantasy basketball. Not me. I make fantasy maps and how I started doing this, I could never in my life say. Specifically, the fantasy maps that I have been known to occasionally make are TTC ...Read More
July 15, 2010 The July 2009 issue of Steel Bananas, last year's NXNE/Fringe issue, represented what is still our most significant jump in readership to date. For one reason or another, with the publication of that issue we saw our readership ...Read More
“I usually just have an unamplified electric guitar handy and I write a lot of songs, or at least riffs on the guitar while watching bad movies and TV shows. For some reason, that’s just where the magic happens.” If you ...Read More
[caption id="attachment_7798" align="aligncenter" width="380" caption="Photo by Matthew Filipowich"][/caption] Contrary to my typical time/space arrangement, I do not currently exist in Toronto – and thus at Eastern Standard Time. Rather, as of last week I have temporarily returned to my roots: Western ...Read More
London's A Horse and His Boy are a band that I first caught wind of while attending the CD release show of last month's cover band, Krupke. They were the opening band on that bill and I managed to catch ...Read More
I spoke to Krupke shortly before the very successful release party for their debut album, The Pony You Always Wanted Died Today earlier this month at the El Mocambo. It was a pelican of a time. There were no pelicans ...Read More
[caption id="attachment_7453" align="aligncenter" width="380" caption="Photo by Matthew Filipowich"][/caption] So these past few months have been pretty slow for transit. Or at the very least, relatively scandal-free, which leaves me with relatively little to rant about. No major announcements. No negative press, ...Read More
Recently I was asked by a friend for input into the cover art for his band's record, which is set to be re-released with, you guessed it, a new cover. It had been discussed and decided that a new look ...Read More
Due to last month's interview with local cycling advocate queenpin Yvonne Bambrick, I was unable to comment on the outrage that was the now infamous budget cuts that have basically rendered Transit City a David Miller vanity project at best. ...Read More
The opinions expressed in the first few paragraphs of this column are in no way related to the interview that follows. They are expressly the views of the author and should not be taken as being connected to those of ...Read More
A simple request: Dear Kevin Drew, Your new songs are cool. However, I must humbly implore you to please stop trying to make Still Life Still happen. Still Life Still is not going to happen. That is all. Sincerely, C.S. Folkers Usually, when ...Read More
Late Sunday night slash early Monday morning: Canadian Music Week and my sixth straight night of concert going is now over. A thin sheet of mist is currently dusting Toronto like the produce aisle of a grocery store. I’m exhausted, ...Read More
And people wonder why there was a fare hike. It costs absurd amounts of money to operate a large-scale transit system, let alone to improve and upgrade it. I’ll never understand, though, why it seems to cost so much more ...Read More
The history of The Band is easily one of the most fascinating in the canon of popular music. We all know the story: four Canadian dudes and another American dude form under the banner of being rockabilly mainstay Ronnie Hawkins’ ...Read More
So… it was a weird month for the TTC. Off the bat I should point out that this piece slanders just about everyone involved in any recent TTC-related news, as well as a certain faction of TTC riders, and also the ...Read More
Here is a fairly legitimate neo-blue-eyed--soul outfit coming out of Calgary. Growing up in the territory of that city's bitter hockey enemy, Edmonton, seventeen-year-old me would never have believed that anything worthwhile ever came out of Calgary. Hell, I would ...Read More
Old Man Luedecke loves life. That’s about the long and short of it. If you take anything away from this piece, I’d prefer it if you think of Nova Scotia’s favorite singin’ banjo man as a guy who really digs ...Read More
In the later months of 2009, the TTC announced the approved designs for four of the six new subway stations to be implemented as the Spadina Subway Extension. This past fall saw architectural plans for Highway 407, Steeles West, York ...Read More
If there’s one thing I can really appreciate in music, it’s things that cannot be described easily. Musical projects that defy the classic Who-Meets-Who model and that cannot be tied down accurately without necessitating a lengthy explanation are likely to ...Read More
Bet all you commuters to York University are feeling pretty smug these days. You, with your fancy new bus lane, bet you’re feeling on top of the world; or at least as on top of the world as you can ...Read More
So, OK. The first time I tried to write this piece, it just turned into a standard write-up of an event that I went to and it very pointedly didn’t engage with the ideas presented therein at all. I even ...Read More
According to my macbook’s built-in dictionary: gam-bol verb (-boled, -bol-ing; Brit. –bolled, -bolling) [intrans.] run or jump about playfully : the man gamboled toward Connie. noun [usu. in sing.] an act of running or jumping about playfully “I guess this explains why I don’t really ...Read More
Photos by Matthew Filipowich// Steel Bananas’ Photo Editor, Matthew “The Pro” Filipowich and I are sitting at some ill-lit corner booth at the ancient West End haunt, the Lakeview Restaurant on a dark, wet and miserable evening. I’m wrapping up the ...Read More
These are some guys. These are some serious guys. These are some guys who take their name from a Jane Austen novel, but play one of the most deafeningly loud and intense live sets you are likely to catch in ...Read More
When last we left our time-traveling rock and roll heroes, Jacqui, Steve and Liam, they had just slain the terrible dragon, known to many a villager as Shitty Music. I’m not going to give a full recap of their previous ...Read More
Ted Killin Tuesday Sept. 29, 2009: Banana Boy took an easy cross-country jaunt into Sneaky Dee's, only to be blown clear across the room by a shockwave of a larger-than-usual dose of PURE UNADULTERATED ROCK! He has, ever since, turned ...Read More
Tinto Coffee House 89 Roncesvalles Avenue @ Marion Roncesvalles is littered with coffee joints, yet we’ve never ventured out there for our Caffeine-Buzzing purposes. What’s up with that? I don’t know, but it was something that needed to be rectified and rectified ...Read More
September 22, 2009 Continuing on with our fruits and veggies thing that we've got going on, Steel Bananas recently launched a monthly reading series called the Monthly Eggplant to be held on the third Tuesday of every month - though this ...Read More
Last month I was the fill-in guy for Nancy on Weird News, today I am holding up the mantle for everyone's favorite cranky bastard, Mr. Daniel Bernstein. I've always enjoyed Trailer Trashin'. Furthermore, I've always enjoyed being something of a ...Read More
Living in the West End, I don’t often journey to Leslieville. I wish I did. I like it there – it’s a good place. Alas, it is rarely meant to be as my chronic North-of-Bloor-Syndrome is coupled with a crippling ...Read More
I make a mental note to remember Tony Dekker’s constant fidgeting, tracing his fingers around the staples that hold a piece of plastic to cover the table he sits at. He circles them, he pinches them. He does all this ...Read More
Awards are, almost as a rule, more than slightly lame – that much is to be certain and it is without a doubt an overwhelmingly silly notion to judge an artist based around the number of awards that adorn their ...Read More
photo/Ingram Barass As it turns out, Joel Plaskett is exactly as nice of a guy as I had thought he would be before I met him, if not even more so: it was almost gratuitous how disgustingly charming he is. If ...Read More
Considering that we at Steel Bananas just gratefully received an exceedingly generous grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, surely it is entirely inappropriate for me to - on the heels of this phenomenal event - go right ahead ...Read More
Our fabulous regular Weird News columnist, Nancy Situ has been experiencing some technical difficulties as of late and was unable to present the grotesque and hilarious results of her web scouring this month. However, we at Steel Bananas feel that ...Read More
John O’Regan; every time I’ve seen the unreasonably tall musician and artist in person, he’s been wearing a vintage basketball jersey. I don’t know what the deal with this is. I’m not sure if he really just likes basketball, really ...Read More
Canadian cinema: the very mention of such a phrase is liable to make some gag with terror as images of Paul Gross, mountains, mounties and bad jokes about Anglo/Franco relations stream violently through their heads. Indeed, when Men With Brooms ...Read More
[Photos/Matthew Filipowich] Jason Ball, the man behind the lush sixties-pop throwback project, Hopeful Monster, has just put more sugar in his coffee than I ever thought was possible. Has he recently spliced his DNA with that of a fly and I’m ...Read More
I’ve said this on the SB blog and I’ve probably said it a bunch of times in other places, but Fox Jaws totally saved my fucking Friday that one time. We were wandering around Little Italy and Kensington for hours ...Read More
Lined up along Whyte Avenue – essentially Edmonton, Alberta's equivalent to Queen West – for the weekend of July 10-12, over 230 E-Town-area visual artists set up shop in front of the many pubs and stores along the strip to ...Read More
“I’m kind of cooking dinner while I talk to you, I hope that’s Okay?” I’m informed midway through my telephone interview with Annie Clifford, banjo-player and co-frontperson of Kingston’s twelve-piece bluegrass band, The Gertrudes, whom I recently saw tear down ...Read More
The Most Brutal Burnout Ever So listen, the 60s died brutally. We all know that. All that optimism and goodness, the fond things, just got absolutely suffocated and beaten down by too many years in the jungle, unforeseen technological advances and ...Read More
Chris Eaton is a man who likes his narratives like he likes his schemes for world domination: elaborate. Truth be told, as per my interview with the Toronto-based songwriter/novelist, I was unable to ascertain whether or not this jovial, bearded ...Read More
The primary question posed at the panel discussion on the Art of Children’s Books at OCAD was a very simple one: what is a good picture-book? Is it the writing, the illustrations or a combination of both? Is it a ...Read More
Ninety years is a pretty big gap by today’s standards. While in the past it was entirely commonplace for whole millennia to just zoom by without much really changing in the way of, well anything, what with the rate that ...Read More
My first Luminato experience this year – or ever really as I was scarcely aware of the seminal arts fest until this year (my bad!) – was an installation from New York City-based artist Tony Oursler called Forty One – ...Read More
After that self-indulgent wankfest that I wrote last month on the Balconies, I’ve been hard-pressed to figure out what to do with myself in present and future articles. Even King Frankenstein, our esteemed Assistant Editor asked me how I planned ...Read More
The Beatles as Postmodernists As with most things Pop-related, the best place to start this madness is with – yeah – The Beatles. It is utterly impossible to escape the relentlessly extensive range of their mighty influence - and all the ...Read More
“We want the death of rock and roll. This is the music of the minions. This sound is a terminal condition.” -Constantines, from “Arizona” (2001) Typically, or at least, from what I’ve gathered, the venerable Postmodern Stamp of Intensity, when it comes ...Read More
I feel like I’ve fallen into a kind of formula with my interview pieces lately. I dunno… it sort of seems like they all fit into a pretty strict format and personally, I don’t condone this repetition; it's boring. Typically, ...Read More
Do you ever find that when you try to do anything productive in your house, you always just end up reading arbitrary Wikipedia pages and back-articles from Pitchfork? Does the combination of rumbling roommates, a cat that's always doing something ...Read More
For years now I’ve been telling people that there are few material things in this world I’d like more than a banjo, and people always think I’m being ironic – “Yeah, a banjo, that’d be great! Ha! Ha!” – because ...Read More
“I’m probably the most Canadian French-Canadian I know,” chuckles Antoine Bédard, usually known by his electro-moniker, Montag, to which I inwardly sigh a heavy groan of relief. Have I become so complacent in my Canadian ways that I forget that ...Read More
You know that it’s kind of a weird day when it’s eleven at night and you hear your roommate waking up to go to work for twelve; you hear him rumbling around, coughing or whatever, and you’re sitting there trying ...Read More
“I make music that I enjoy the most. It’s really all about me; I basically just make music for myself. Call me selfish… but if people dig it, that’s cool. I don’t try to fucking cater to anybody.” So I’m ...Read More
Ah, the Man-Crush, is there anything more beautiful or more hilarious? I implore you, do tell, for I can’t think of anything. What could possibly be better than watching one man (especially if he’s the sort of chap who maintains ...Read More
Canadian Music Week isn’t so much a week as it is a Canadian Music Weekend. It runs from March 12-14 at venues all over town. It would certainly seem, judging by the official poster, that the organizers of the twenty-sixth annual ...Read More
I’m at least fairly certain that the vast majority of the hits to Zeus’ Myspace page are from me. Ever since I first saw them at Lee’s back in October with Jason Collett and Rock Plaza Central, I have been ...Read More
Jane's Party - The Garage Sessions (Self-Released) www.myspace.com/janespartyband Aside from maybe a handful of Brit-Pop records here and there, I'm fairly certain that the most recent album that Jeff Giles owns is Deja Vu. The primary songwriter and keyboard-player of local troublemakers, Jane's Party, has such ...Read More
Say what you will about Dinosaur Bones (bearing in mind that as of this writing, I have heard nothing negative about them), say what you will about indie-rock and the Toronto scene and all that other jazz; just ask yourself ...Read More
Actual Trivial Pursuit Question: How many blowholes does a toothed whale have? I got it wrong; it’s two, apparently. I thought it was one - what do teeth have anything to do with an animal’s respiratory system? Unless every whale, when it’s ...Read More
2008 was weird for a lot of reasons and for a lot of people (for such reasons). It's a weird time to be a Canadian and indeed, a citizen of the world; everything just seems to be in limbo. For ...Read More
He takes me in his arms and embraces me tenderly, yet firmly with one hand cradling the back of my skull and the other reaching across the plain of my back and he squeezes me and whispers something to me ...Read More
Ashcliffe October 2, d. Martin Scorsese, w. Laeta Kalogridis, Steven Knight, s. Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams, Jackie Earle Haley Martin Scorsese’s first post-Departed flick has a fairly badass cast and is based on a novel by the same ...Read More
Yesterday I was reading Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, for school - a novel I was determined to find mildly amusing at best - when I came to a point about two-thirds through where I was forced to rest the Norton ...Read More
Jane's Party w/ Big Stero Thursday, November 6, 2008 C'est What, Toronto I think that the moment I realized that I actually like Jane's Party more than I originally thought I did came about midway through their hour-long set when I was trying to ...Read More
I once said that Will Sheff from Okkervil had the best hair ever. As it turns out, Jason Collett can definitely compete for the title. That guy has awesome, awesome hair. I should do an entire post devoted ...Read More
