GO ALS GO!

Hi!!

I had so much fun yesterday! After last week, I think it was much needed.

On Sunday night, the Montreal Alouettes won the Grey Cup (Canadian equivalent of the Super Bowl). It was their 7th time playing in the finals in 10 years, but only their 2nd time winning it!!!

Yesterday was the Champions' parade in downtown Montreal. Let me tell you, the streets were PACKED! and it was a weekday!! I was able to join my friends to cheer on our champions!

Here are some pictures:
Number one!!!


Jamel Richardson hoisting the cup


The crowd


Anthony Calvillo saying a few words


CAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNN (far left) and the Grey Cup!!!


Ben Cahoon talking after much cheering/screaming from the crowd


Come back for one more year, Cahoon!


The Champions


I had so much fun screaming and cheering for my hometown's football team! I'm not a huge fan of football, but I do follow it from time to time, so it was very amusing to be able to witness this! Montreal Impact (soccer) won the Canadian championship, now the Als win the Grey Cup, now we only need the Stanley Cup!! :P

Celebrate your dreams when you are away

Just because he won 5 awards last night at the GAMIQ awards (like the Grammy for Quebec indie music scene), I decided to make a post for Patrick Watson!!

One of my favorite artist, his music, described as psych-folk-pop-ambient music, is simply amazing. Every one of his CDs are like a story. All the songs complement each other so well and it just flows. Especially in his latest CD, Wooden Arms.

I've been lucky enough to have seen him live 3 times and met him once.
Every concert was magical and unbelievably incredible. Patrick and the rest of the band are geniuses. He was super sweet, when I met him after the Wooden Arms release party/concert, and was kind enough to sign my CD. He asked from what nationality my sister and I were from and when we told him we were Vietnamese, he got sooo excited! He told us that he lived there for quite some time and even tried to say a few words! I say tried because I did not understand what he was saying.... My sister thought he said "fried rice" but when asked, he said no, laughed and then said that he hadn't spoken Vietnamese in quite some time. I guess that's good enough!

I won't say more, because it'll probably be an essay on how amazing Patrick Watson is, so I'll leave you with a few pictures and video

From the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal 2009:








This next one was taken at the Wooden Arms release show/party


Finally, this video is from the 2007, Osheaga Festival. Enjoy!

Gonzales Piano Talk Show

As I have mentioned, I recently attended Gonzales' show, Piano Talk Show.
It was really cool. It was in a small venue/room, in ExCentris, to be exact. Very intimate.

Throughout the show, Gonzales invited 3 local artists, Rich Lee (was in Star Académie); So Called (I think that's how it's written) and Katie Moore, my favorite!
He invited them on to sing and play piano with him. I guess the "talk show" aspect of it was that he would, either before singing a song with them or after, talk and joke with them. It was really fun to see how artists interacted with each other. I mean I know most of it was planned, but it was still really cool. I also like the fact that he chose local artists which means that every show is different, depending on where he is performing.

Anyways, Katie Moore was really brilliant. I just love to listen to her sing. She actually sang on one of my favorite artist, Patrick Watson, latest album. She also performed with him at the Montreal Jazz Festival.

The night (the show started at 10.30 pm) was great except for the two girls sitting right in front of our table. I mean.... you're at a concert, there are people around you! Stop talking!!!! stop moving!!! Seriously, I don't think I've ever been this annoyed at a concert. They kept talking to each other and at one point, one of them was "rearranging" her hair, I guess and just didn't put her arms down. She was blocking everybody's view! god....

To leave on a positive note, I really liked the show. Oh, I forgot to say that it was reallllllyy funny! I loved that there was interaction between Gonzales and the crowd. He made us sing along with him for a song, which was really cool! His piano solo works are truly beautiful and his rapping is... hilarious. I'd say it's pretty similar to Flight of the Conchords.

"I don't want to be an asshole but..."

Like I told you in the last post, I went to Kings of Leon's concert in Montreal.
They played in front of some 8,500 people (that includes my cousin and I) and it was GREAT!

They came on stage with Lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem playing, which I though was super cool. Then they jumped right into Closer, from their newest CD Only by the Night. I couldn't have asked for anything better: Closer is MY song. I LOVE it. So dark and sexy, lol. The Followill brothers and their cousin followed it by playing Crawl, another from their newest album.


Despite the good performances, I have to say that the show didn't start off with a bang. Don't get me wrong, it was great, but the first few songs didn't get all of the crowd on their feet-and it didn't go unnoticed. After the fourth song, Caleb, the singer, called the people who were still sitting out (yes, I admit, I was one of them) by saying: "I don't want to be an asshole, but I have never spent a whole night at a concert sitting" - or something like that. Needless to say that everybody was on their feet after that.

After that, it was singing, cheering, clapping, and pot smoking (not by me, though).

They mostly played songs from their most recent albums Only by the Night and Because of the Times; and only a few from their previous 2 cds.

Sex on Fire was THE song of the night and really got everybody singing. It was amazing! I started to record a video but had to give the camera to my cousin because I wanted to sing and move along to the song.

In the middle of the show, Caleb gave a speech about those who had talked shit about the band because they "went mainstream" and basically told them to "kiss my ass". He said that they have been, are and always will be Kings of Leon. Love it!

During the 4-song encore (and before Use Somebody), he gave another mini speech, saying a big "F- you" to all those people in the front row (he actually referred to them using a bad bad word starting with M) who jsut sat, talked and laughed during the show.

Kings of Leon definitely gave us Montrealers a great rock show. The play of lights (?, in French: jeu de lumières)was amazing, too! I wish they could have "talked" to us more but I can't complain much, because they sounded soooo great live.

I'm so glad I went to the show, despite that it was on a Wednesday night and I had school at 8h30am the next day.

Anyways, to finish off, here are a few more pics that I was able to take between all the clapping, cheering, jumping and singing.





If you ever get the chance to see them live, don't miss it!!!! You won't regret it!

Also, here's a link to my video of Sex on Fire from last night's show

I've heard if a city called Heaven...

I recently went to an awesome festival here in Montreal named Osheaga. It's a two-day event with lots of bands playing on 4 different stages. This year, the headliners were Coldplay, Jason Mraz, Yeah Yeah Yeahs (replaced Beastie Boys who had to cancel) and Arctic Monkeys amongst others. Needless to say, it was pretty good.

Anyways, during that weekend, I discovered a group called Beast. The groups consists of Betty Bonifassi on vocals and Jean-Phi Goncalves on instruments. Heard of their names before? Bonifassi provided the singing voices in Les Triplettes de Belleville (The Triplets of Belleville in North America and Belleville Rendez-Vous in the UK) and also sang on fellow Canadian DJ Champion's song "No Heaven". On the other hand, Goncalves has worked with Lauryn Hill and Quebecer musicians such as Pierre Lapointe and Jean-Pierre Ferland.


But enough about them.. onto the music.

The festival was my first time listening to Beast and I was quite impressed by.. everything. Stage presence, music, sound, Betty Bonifassi's voice, their rapping skills (they did a "shout out" to the Beastie Boys)...

I would describe their music as electro with a mix of rock and RnB (?). I'm not sure how to describe them actually...

Anywho, Bonifassi's voice is very strong and "in your face" (in a good way). I find that there is a lot of swagger in her style of singing, which I love. Her voice is very unique and "captivating". I've been listening to their CD for a whole week now, I still love it and will keep on listening to it. As Christian Marcius said, "Beast throbs with an anger you can dance to". Amazing. You cannot not move when you listen to their music and once you know a few words, you'll find yourself singing along to their songs!

I especially like the songs: Ashtray, Mr. Hurricane, Microcyte, City and Satan.
Ok, that's almost like half of their CD!

If you haven't heard of them already, check them out!
Website
Myspace

Later!