Royal Wood @ Niagara Wine Festival

Before leaving for Newfoundland, I was super excited because I got to squeeze in one more Royal Wood concert at the Niagara Wine Festival in St. Catherine's, Ontario.  The forecast that day initially called for rain, but it turned into a lovely afternoon of sunshine and music.  Royal played two 45 minute sets with his 4 piece band, consisting of Dean Drouillard, Steve Zsirai and Mark Mariash.  I'd say most of the songs were from The Burning Bright (and the I Wish You Well EP), with a few older songs thrown in for good measure.  Here's some of my favourite shots:

   

 

   

   

   

More photos at Superflash Photography on Facebook.

The Beauties @ Junction Music Festival

Last weekend, I had the chance to see local Toronto band, The Beauties at The Junction Music Festival. It was my first time attending the festival, and it was really cool. They only closed a small portion of the street, where the main stage was located, but there was stuff happening in all the shops, restaurants and alcoves along Dundas St. West.  It looked like it was going to be a rainy night and I almost considered skipping the show, but thankfully the rain let up just as I was arriving to the stage area.  This band is super awesome, and I highly recommend checking them out!

  Like what you see here? Give us a like on Facebook!

Mudmen at Taste of the Kingsway

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to see one of my favourite bands from my university days, The Mudmen, at the Taste of the Kingsway street festival in Toronto.  The festival shuts down part of Bloor Street for a full weekend and features great food and music.  It was an awesome day to spend some time taking in live tunes.

City and Colour at Jannus Landing

On October 3, 2013, I had the opportunity to go see City and Colour at Jannus Live in St. Petersburg, with my friends who were in town for the weekend from Toronto.  My friends are big fans of City and Colour, but I didn't know much about the band prior to the concert.  The music was great, and it's always nice to see a Canadian act here in Florida! Good times, great music, great friends!

Herman's Hermits at the CNE

On August 30th, 2012, I went down to the CNE for the sole purpose of watching one of my favourite musicians perform.  I had previously seen Herman's Hermits back in April of 2009, in Clearwater Florida, and yet again, they did not disappoint!  Here are some of my favourite shots:

  

Lots more pics, right this way!

Marco Carta

Marco Carta is an Italian pop/rock singer.  He won the 2009 San Remo festival, and on July 2, 2012, I had the pleasure of seeing him at Exhibition Place in Toronto.  He was the opening act for Umberto Tozzi at the Chin Picnic and he was really great.  Here's a few snaps.

First photo show coming up!!

Here's a sneak peek at something I've been working on over the past 8 months - it's my very first photo show!

The show is taking place at the Bending Spoons Gallery at Vesuvio's Pizza in Toronto (click for more info and directions) from January 30 - February 26. 

It will feature 20 of my favourite photos from concerts that I've been to - several of which have never been published to the internet, even! 

I hope if you're in the Toronto area, you'll be able to drop in, and if you're not, well, I hope you'll take a few minutes to share my post!

Thanks for the support!

Vesuvio's is located at:
3010 Dundas Street WestToronto, ON M6P 1Z3

CMW '10 - almost a month later!

So much to blog about, so little time! March has been an INSANE month (those of you closest to me know why... everyone else... stand by, it will all be announced in good time!). I've been meaning to update about Canadian Music Week for a while now. I'm ashamed to say this, but I haven't even finished editing my photos from the last show I went to (although, in fairness, I did take like, 200+ photos at that gig). Here's a brief recap of the shows I saw.

I was super excited heading into CMW weekend, because I found out that the Our Lady Peace shows were open to the first 50 wristband holders that showed up at Massey Hall. It was also super cool that once I got my wristband for the shows, the seats were down on the floor, pretty close to the front! I was expecting to be way up in the 2nd balcony, so this was a pleasant surprise!)

Short backstory: OLP was my absolute FAVOURITE band throughout my teen years. I was a crazy-die-hard fan. They fell out of favour with me when guitarist Mike Turner - now in the band Crash Karma - left OLP. Now, I've seen OLP in the time since Mike left the band (and in fact, told the longer version of this story here on my blog during last year's CMW recap), and I wasn't really *THAT* into them anymore - however these shows were bound to be different. They were playing two nights at Massey Hall - the first night, they played their entire Clumsy album, followed by an intermission and another set of songs from all the other albums, and the second night was Spiritual Machines, with another set.

I also got to hang out with a whole bunch of my friends from the "Clumsy Congress" days - it truly reminded me of being 16 again.

The Clumsy night was probably one of my favourite Our Lady Peace shows to date (and that says a lot, because I've probably seen them more than 20 times over the years). They sounded REALLY great, and it was amazing to hear the entire album from start to finish. The second set was also well-received, and I found myself even somewhat enjoying a few of the new songs. (Paper Moon is probably the best song I've heard them put out since I stopped listening). I found myself REALLY missing Mike Turner though - especially at the "OO-Wee-OO-OO-Wee-OO" part of Is Anybody Home, and some of my other favourite guitar licks & background vocals.

Spiritual Machines was also awesome. It's one of my favourite albums, and I loved hearing their interpretations of certain songs (like The Wonderful Future, which I don't believe they've ever played live, before this tour!). It seemed to be a little more difficult for the crowd to get into this show - at least, the people around me, who were all CMW wristband holders. Maybe they didn't realize that the first set would be entirely Spiritual Machines. Lots of people sitting down for this set.
There were also less people who showed up to get wristband tickets, so I was able to sneak two of my friends who had tickets up in the balcony down to come sit with me. It was much better being able to share the show with my friends! The best part of this show was rushing up to the front of the stage (when Raine called for everyone to move forward - in an orderly fashion), and really feeling like a part of the shows - just like back in the day.

Here's some shots of the two nights:




The last night of CMW was very exciting for me as a die-hard Twilight Fan. Jackson Rathbone's band, 100 Monkeys was playing an all ages show at Tattoo Rock Parlour. I was worried about the "all ages" bit... but it actually wasn't too bad. In the lineup before the show, most of the people were getting 19+ drinking wristbands (though, I assume that most people just got them to identify as part of the 19+ crowd, because I didn't see very many people drinking). And the younger set that was there wasn't too shriek-y.

The show was opened by two bands, Desperate Union and New Teeth. Both bands were good. Hard to say much more than that this long after the show, because it's not quite fresh in my head anymore. But I do remember enjoying them. And it was nice because I was able to move around to get shots from various angles (Not so much during 100 Monkeys' set)




When 100 Monkeys began to set up their gear, the girls in the crowd got a little more crazy. The set was really cool, I hadn't realized before the show that each of the members of the band played all the various instruments. They would up and rotate every few songs. The music was wicked. I haven't gotten around to editing all my 100 Monkeys photos yet, so there will be more on Flickr in the future, but for now...


Check out more from Canadian Music Week '10 right here