There’s no denying it. February is rearing its semi-ugly head, which means that Singles Awareness Day is soon to be upon us.

It’s sad but true: Valentine’s Day is out to get you no matter which side of the relationship fence you fall on. The romantically involved, for example, are pressured to spend wads of cash, organize and plan spectacles of endearment, and generally succumb to the discomfort of cognitive dissonance that this artificially invoked day inspires. Meanwhile, the romantically uninvolved are left to suffer from the malaise of envy caused by grass-is-always-greener syndrome.

It’s a real problem, with only one real solution: boycott.

Like my Dad would always tell me in regard to bullies as a smart mouthed child prone to bloody lips and teary eyes, ignore them and they will go away. In the same vein, treat Valentine’s Day like it’s any other day and its power over you will be diminished.

But in order to ignore a day that pressures you into pretending you like spending all your resources on the one your with, don’t you first have to be with someone? The boycott can only really work if you’re in a position to boycott.

So the dateless appear to be left in the lurch on this one. Once again.

Enter D’8 Night. Eight men and eight women get eight minutes each to get to know one another across the span of a mutually embarrassing evening. They fill out cards at the end of the night describing who they’d like to get to know more, and any two that match up are given contact details for the chance at further romance.

There’s one happening this Wendesday, February 4th, which is a good ten days before Valentine’s Day drops. The perfect opportunity to get romantically involved with someone in time to get romantically uninvolved come February 14th.

OK February, what the heck is your problem?

Sometimes you’re 28 days, other times you’re 29. You’ve got an “r” in the middle of your name that has no business being there. You’re cold. You’re dark. Valentine’s Day.

I mean, sometimes I think you’re just out to piss us all off. Like that’s just how you get your kicks.

But then you go and throw something our way like the RPM Challenge, and I’m forced to rethink your m.o. entirely.

For the uninitiated, the RPM Challenge is simple: make an album in 28 days. Alright, so it might be simpler in description than in execution. But only marginally!

Heck, 22 local bands made it look simple enough last year.

The RPM Challenge is being hosted and organized locally by the good people at The Scope, so check the latest issue for more on how to get your ass in gear. Then be sure to get said ass down to The Victory this Saturday night for the kick-off party.

The RPM Challenge: it’s not a contest, there are no prizes, and yet somehow everybody wins.

Bruce Springsteen has just announced he’s doing a world tour. As per usual, that world does not include St. John’s, or any part of Newfoundland and Labrador for that matter.

Whatever. Bruce Springsteen doesn’t need to do St. John’s because St. John’s is already doing Bruce Springsteen. Again.

From their Facebook event page:

“Last year it happened twice. Twice, it was so good. This year it’s happening again. Mick Davis is doing it. Tim Baker is doing it. And Jody Richardson, Phil Churchill, Geraldine Hollett, Luke Major, Blair Harvey, Sean Panting, Doug Rowe, Sandy May and Ian Cornelissen are doing it, all backed by Mark Bragg and The G Street Band.

And Jonny Harris is hosting it.

Not bragging, just sayin’.”

No, no. Brag away. I caught one of these before, after a Feist show, and it blew that thing out of the salt water. And you’d have to living under a bridge with an emotionally abusive troll who hates the idea of you going out not to know that Jonny Harris is split-your-sides-and-stomp-on-your-kidneys funny.

To cap it all off, it’s happening over Valentine’s. What better way to celebrate the commercialization of love than pumping your fist to the gyrations of a bunch of sweaty, scruffy men and two lovely ladies as they bust out the best of The Boss?

Honestly, I can’t think of one. The mental image already has me swooning.

St. John’s Does Bruce Springsteen is happening February 13th and 14th at The Rock House. Tickets are $15.00 and can be purchased in advance at The Ship and Fred’s Records.

…This. 

So I notice one of my fellow bloggers appreciates some of the more ridiculous posts on online classifieds as much as I do. 

I can’t help but spend my idle hours searching the Internet for stuff like this, and I have a folder brimming with screencaps to show for it. 

On Newfoundland’s own Craigslist, I stumbled across an ad enticingly titled “Seeking Disastrous Female Featuring Sex, Lies, Lots of Drama.” 

This user is simply looking for: “…an attractive female who will at first give me obsessive love, praise, and devotion – but whose paranoia, self-loathing, and fear of rejection and abandonment will eventually lead her to alternately push me away and pull me closer in a love/hate cycle that will lead to infidelity, consensual sexual violence, and the inevitable emotional breakdown of one or the other party – or, if we’re lucky, both!”

I’m not even sure what a relationship like that would look like, frankly. I’m not the kind of person to condemn someone’s kinks–so long as they’re legal–so I guess if someone out there searching for the same kind of arrangement sees that and cares to respond, power to this guy.

Honestly though, this one has me scratching my head. I can’t tell if it was posted by some jackass who gets kicks pretending to be some creep in cyberspace (and in so doing, being a complete creepshow themselves;) or if it was posted in earnest by a real guy named Tim who happens to get off on “acrimony” and “possible legal drama.”  

I can’t tell if the very literate tone and impeccable punctuation (just look at the Oxford comma in the post title) of this entry indicates sincerity or some kind of online fuckwittery.  

But personally, I hope it’s genuine. As they say, different strokes for different folks.  

Good luck and godspeed, Tim-50(St. John’s); I hope you find a “nice smile that quickly melts into tear-filled rage. “

Part 3 of 3 (the others are here and here)

Fast forward.

It’s five minutes till we head into old Salon B, to watch as four pre-selected musicians make REAL pitches to REAL buyers, in front of twenty or so people who wouldn’t normally be sitting, watching, and making notes.

As Bryan and I sit in the hallway, breathing a sigh of relief that neither of us has been selected for the 15 minute pitch, I’m approached with some shocking news: In about 20 minutes I’ll be at the front of the room, pitching Waye Mason…

“Pitching Waye Mason” may sound like a generic alt-country band from Oregon, but it’s not…

Waye Mason is the Director of the Halifax Pop Explosion, and exactly the kind of person I need to talk to. He’s a political blogger, an indie-music supporter, and generally interesting/involved sort of guy.

It was time to get focussed…

So here’s where the learning will come into play…I’m no expert, but I’m going to do my best to get across the most important ingredients of a good pitch, using my own to illustrate both the good and the bad.

1. Know your audience.

This is pretty straightforward. If you don’t know who you’re talking to you won’t have much luck speaking their language…

I was pretty familiar with Waye’s festival. I knew who has played it in the past. I knew the genres that are included. Most importantly, I knew that the Subtitles could fit in pretty nicely.

I also knew I could use the term “indie-pop” and describe our sound as “Buddy Holly meets The Cure, with a dose of the Flaming Lips” and Waye would know exactly what I meant (and, he did!)

2. Say what you want to say FIRST!

What did i want to say to Waye?

A couple of things:

“The Subtitles are ready to take the next step.”

“How do we do it right?”

“What can you do to help us?”

How long did it take me to say these things? At least 10 minutes of doddering away, making small talk and giving him general information about the band.

My hesitance to ask exactly what I wanted to ask, right off the bat, was the primary part of my pitch that Waye thought could have been better. 

We’re used to talking in circles, approaching what we want to say, backing, off, going through the motions to keep whoever it is we’re talking to from feeling like we’re just trying to get something out of them…

The thing is, in a pitch, you are trying to get something out of them, and you’ve got an incredibly limited amount of time to do it- this is not to say that you won’t strike up a friendship with the person you’re talking with, just remember- if  you want something (information, a gig, a phone number), ask for it.

3. Follow up

The last step to any pitch, successful, or not, is the follow-up.

If the person you’re pitching to asks for further information, get it to them right away.

If they give you some advice, say “post a video on your myspace” do it right away, and let them know you did!

Most importantly, if you tell them you will do something, DO IT!

Follow up is important, and showing that you aren’t just full of hot air and no action is really, really attractive to pretty much anyone.

Yes?

The New Spin‘s Dashiell Brown has a podcast interview with Geoff Berner up on his site. Berner is an accordion wielding punk folker from Vancouver who has played St. John’s at The Ship once before and is about to do it again, come February 21st, alongside The Pathological Lovers.

His new album, Klezmer Mongrels, is loosely the topic of conversation, though, as Brown explains, they also manage to cover “statistically improbable words/phrases such as starving artists, mongrels, accordion revolution, dog breast-feed dog world, and bisexuals and Hitler, to name a few.”

While Dashielle hosts his radio show, maintains his website and runs his own blog, he’ll also be joining us here at Signal from time to time to do local music reviews and commentaries. So just a heads up and a thumbs up from me, as I’m looking forward to having him around.

     

 I’ve come to grips with the scourges of summer: the flying ants, the spanworms, the moths the spanworms turn into, the wasps, and finally, the carpenters and earwigs.

 In seven years I’ve learned to reconcile with the sheer isolation and that “no-one here gets out alive” mindset that’s sometimes palpable here.

Well, almost.

Let me clarify a few things: I love this place, and fall more in love with it each day. I respect and cherish the burgeoning arts scene: the theatre groups, bands, DJs, filmmakers, and visual artists that make up the cultural landscape of St. John’s.

But every now and then I’m driven to despair at the limitations.

For the last ten days or so, the prospect of bringing international hip hop DJ Girl Talk to St. John’s for a fundraising show has been bandied about at my workplace.

The deal was nearly made; everything was falling into place perfectly.

A simple hiccup with transportation derailed the entire plan, namely, the lack of direct connections from Pittsburgh to St. John’s during the proposed timeframe.

Seeing an opportunity to bring an artist of Girl Talk’s magnitude to the city fizzle because of something so menial as lack of flights is unbelievably frustrating. I’m aware that complaining about something as inevitable as geographic location is pointless and borderline malcontent; being aware of this, unfortunately, merely adds to the frustration.

If it is pointless, why am I bitching about it? 

I think it’s time for St. John’s to rebrand itself as a cultural leader in Canada. I know scads of talented artists, musicians, playwrights, actors, and filmmakers, so I can see the potential.

While things are getting better as far as marketing Newfoundland’s identity abroad—Hey Rosetta!’s ever-growing following in mainland Canada; Lisa Moore’s acclaimed Alligator; Down to the Dirt’s triumph at the Atlantic Film Festival, to name a few—the unfortunate truth remains that the most successful cultural export from Newfoundland is Great Big Sea.

A good and wise friend of mine talks about the “Newfier than thou” attitude that prevails here. What he means is, people are stuck looking backward at the days of economic hardship and tough times, while instead, they should be looking into the future.

To wit: looking backward makes for good folk tunes, but the fact of the matter is that St. John’s is the capital of a province that is on the verge of becoming an economic leader in Canada.

I happen to agree. I think it’s time for the people in this city to take some pride in the growing arts and culture scene, to generate momentum in exporting the best of what St. John’s has to offer, and to step out onto the national scene with conviction.

Abandoning the inferiority complex that can sometimes plague this city is the first step in reframing its perception by the rest of Canada.

When St. John’s becomes a bastion of culture for Canada, when it becomes a destination with the national cachet it deserves, maybe the isolation will become a selling point and not a drawback. Maybe we won’t have to suffer the disappointment of an awesome band backing out because St. John’s is too damn far away.

Nathan Downey is a student at Memorial University and features editor for the Muse.

Not to fan the flames of hatred or anything, but the truth is I rarely find myself with a reason for having to go to Mount Pearl. While it may be true that St. John’s mightn’t exactly have everything, what it doesn’t have isn’t likely to be found across the border.

Unless of course you count the Frosty Film Festival: a local film festival that focuses on local films. Brought to you by the Association for the Arts in Mount Pearl (which I had no idea existed until now), the festival is in its fourth year (also no idea).

Time to start paying more attention to Mount Pearl.
______________________________________________________________________

A lack of focus on the local is where I think The Nickel really goes wrong. How many times have I sat at that festival and wondered when the next local film was playing as I yawned my way through some mediocre entry from Ontario or Australia that I could probably find on YouTube if I ever had the inclination?

The folks at the Nickel have certainly worked hard to get where they are, and my hat goes off to them for their effort, but the truth is they just aren’t big or hot enough to attract cream of the crop international films. So most of the time they just wind up with the films the high end festivals won’t play while a pile of local films lay scattered on their cutting room floor.

Honestly, I’d much rather watch a poorly made local film than a half decent come from away production any day. At least that would give me some sense of how things are developing here, and would give encouragement, and perhaps even valuable criticism, to the developing filmmakers in this province.
______________________________________________________________________

The Frosty Film Festival takes place one night only, February 8th, from 7:00pm – 11:00pm at the Soccer Hut in Mount Pearl. Admission is $3.00 for adults, $2.00 for the kids.

Anyone interesting in entering their film will be delighted to know that the submission deadline is February 5th and there is no entry fee. You can download the PDF entry form here.

Perhaps I’m being a tad cynical, but I seriously can’t be bothered to link to either of these two ads:

“Hi i,m on a low income ,and the room i,m renting has no heat, i need a electric heater , if any has one they can donate ,i would be very thankful .” Posted January 24th.

“i am a low income family trying to get a car to take my family out  for rides and to see the dr when they  need to see the dr .i would be so happy .so would my family  . thank you .” Posted 20 hours ago as of this writing.

I’m no cryptographer, but judging by the writing style I’d say this is the same person. Also not a detective, but it almost looks like this person went from being on their own to having a family quicker than most.

If you felt your heart strings tug just a little at either of these two pleas, and you have electric heaters and/or cars to spare, then by all means go to Kijiji St. John’s and search for “low income.”