24 Hour Canadian All Star Jam Session

According to a note in my inbox this morning Graham Wright of Tokyo Police Club, Will Currie of Will Currie and the Country French and Luke Lalonde of Born Ruffians and Skeleton Me along with Dean Marino (a.k.a. Ex~Po) will be heading into Chemical Sound Studio for 24 hours to record as many songs as they can squeeze in in that time.

The plan is to take whatever results come out of the session and release them for free. "I think the songs will get a lot more interesting around four in the morning" says Will Currie. "As we get tired, more creative things will start to come out in the music. Lack of sleep makes your brain think differently," he jokes.

Documentary filmmaker Wade Vroom is going to be documenting all of this as it happens and will release the final film on a, as yet unannounced, website. The actual date all of this is happening wasn't in the note but it is bound to be an amazing session and, in one way or another, we all get to be there.

Stay tuned! I'll let you know when/if I hear any more.

Load Up on Free Summer Music (compliments of CBC Radio 3)

I'm going to head off on the first of my summer getaways in a few days, but before I go I thought I would drop you a tip (for those of you who don't already know). If you want to load up your laptop, MP3 player..burn some CDs ... whatever with some really cool stuff for summer. Don't forget about the CBC Radio 3 Sessions - free podcasts, each one featuring an in studio session with some of Canada's most talented musicians, live, in studio and exclusive (you won't find these recordings anywhere else). For easy reference I've compiled a list of what's available so far. (I highly recommend you head over to the site and subscribe so you can keep up with the new stuff.) Currently available:

Tokyo Police Club

The D'Urbervilles

the Germans

C'mon

The Mohawk Lodge

DD/MM/YYYY

Paper Moon

Holy F*ck

The Cape May

Matthew Barber

The Russian Futurists

The Sunday Sinners

Corb Lund

Forest City Lovers

André Ethier

Sunparlour Players

Grand Analog

Royal Wood

Ultimate Power Duo

The Paperbacks

The United Steel Workers of Montreal

Dog Day

Ladyhawk

The Buttless Chaps

Christine Fellows

The Golden Dogs

Shapes & Sizes

Fembots

The Black Halos

Dragon Fli Empire

The Acorn

Raising the Fawn

The Sadies

Wintersleep

Shout Out Out Out Out

Malajube

Immaculate Machine

Hot Hot Heat

Matt Mays

Tokyo Police Club Joins the Copyfight

On their Tokyo Police Club has called on Canadians to fight the Conservative Copyright Bill, the band claims amoung other things that the bill is bad for both artists and fans. If all of the thousands of other people screaming about this bill that would make most Canadians into criminals has not convinced you to act, perhaps these guys will.
The blog post in it's entirety is below.

"Hey Friends,

Specifically, this is targeted at our Canadian friends. Not that we don't love the rest of you, because we do, but I wanted to talk about something thats of importance to Canadians. Its the new Copyright bill that was just tabled in Parliament. You may well have heard about it on the news or in the papers or on this fancy pants new "world wide web" that I keep hearing so much about. I can't explain it all that well myself because I'm not all that smart, but if you mosey on over to Michael Geist's informative and well written blog post on the subject you'll be able to read all about it.



Obviously, the bill is meant to protect people who make their money from intellectual property. As musicians, we're among those people. But I think it should be obvious to anyone that this is a law that would work in nobodies favour. I've talked before about the problems posed to us by illegal downloading, and I do think that theres a solution out there to that problem. But this legislation *is not* that solution. Its a big step backwards and will no doubt create more problems than it solves: its a law thats so seriously flawed and obviously ridiculous that it could well drive people to ignore copyright altogether, which would have a very negative result for everyone.



I know that its sort of a foreign concept for people around my age (or younger) to get involved in politics on this level. I've certainly never written to my MP about anything before. But this is a bill that, if passed, is going to cause a lot of problems for you and me, and I think its important that we stand up and make our opinion known. Mr. Geist outlines the actions that you should take and I would strongly urge you to take them. I know I'm going to.



And spread the word. This is being spun as a simple attempt to go after "pirates" and illegal downloaders, but its important that people realize the more sinister parts of this before its too late.



So yeah, thats me expounding about politics, even though I'm just a stupid musician. But its the musicians and the fans that are going to suffer from this! It is a big deal, and every voice counts!



Oh yeah, we also do music. And we're going to keep doing music and playing shows and stuff, so we'll see you soon.



xoxoxo

Graham"

Tokyo Police Club - Citizens of Tomorrow

Do You Want Your Paper Bag Digital (and DRM free)?

Paper Bag Records home of, among many others, the Woodhands, Laura Barrett, the Acorn, You Say Party, We Say Die, Slim Twig, and Tokyo Police Club is launching it's own, DRM Free, digital music store on June 17. From Exclaim:

"Paper Bag plans for the new shop and its 320k/DRM-free files to complement and enhance the label’s conventional releases, offering fans a chance to buy exclusive content such as live sessions and additional recordings by Paper Bag artists. The shop will also simply give you an alternative place where you spend your green on some good tunes. After all, we can only let Steve Jobs get so rich."

I'd also point out that if you want less expensive, digital, DRM free music that Zunior is already serving it up (if you want to buy the full album).