I apologize for the short notice of these shows, I only first heard about them today in a Facebook e-mail from The Canadian Nightclub's Mary Lou Johnston, which alerted group members to these concerts. In the e-mail, Mary Lou hyped this weekend as a "tribute weekend" featuring two hard rock tribute bands, and it kicks off on Friday night with Toronto-based Aerosmith tribute band Mama Kin! You'll likely recognize them as one of the featured bands at last year's Hempfest, and if memory serves me correctly, they've played in town at least one other time before that. They have a very nice sound that sounds enough like Aerosmith to get fans excited, and they should do good on Friday! I should note that this show is NOT listed on their official website or on any other band pages that I've seen, and this isn't the first time that The Canadian Nightclub has announced a band that didn't personally mention coming, but there must be some truth to this if it's plugged in the e-mail! So take it with a grain of salt just in case, but until I hear otherwise, it's on and listed here! This concert will have a $5 cover, a 10:00 PM start time, and a 19+ age limit. Get more details at the links above, and Aerosmith fans won't wanna miss a thing on Friday!
The other new show mentioned in Mary Lou's e-mail is one I can 100% confirm, and if you're a fan of Bon Jovi, pay attention! Three months after Keep The Faith's last show here, another Toronto-based Bon Jovi tribute band will make their way to Sault Ontario on Saturday night. This time, the tribute band will be Crush: The Best of Bon Jovi, in their first ever show in the Soo, and if you wanna hear some authentic Bon Jovi hits, these guys will do the job well! They hold their own compared to Keep The Faith, and cover enough of their 1980s output to keep you hair metal fans happy! Unlike Mama Kin, Crush DO plug this show on their official Facebook group, and even launched an event page to hype the show! They're not on MySpace, so that likely explains why I never came across this show until today, so my apologies! This concert will take place on Saturday night, and the same house rules apply here as they will on Friday: $5 cover, 10:00 PM start time, 19+ age limit. Check all of the above links for more information! This should be fun also, and though I'm not a huge Bon Jovi fan, these guys will deliver the goods! So there you go, a weekend full of tribute bands at The Canadian, consider hitting one or both!
Next up, it's official: The Eastgate Hotel will be demolished. All remaining offers to purchase the former local metal concert venue have either been voluntarily withdrawn or not accepted by City Council at yesterday's council meeting, and there are now just two options left. Either Algoma Insurance buys the property, demolishes the building, and uses the space for parking (their building's across the road), or the city itself will buy the property, demolish the building, and sell the vacant lot afterwards. City Council did accept Algoma Insurance's offer yesterday, but nothing is 100% final. I imagine this will probably give many of you guys some disappointing emotions, given The Eastgate's history as a concert venue through the mid 2000s. It hosted numerous metal concerts in it's heyday, and it's a shame that I wasn't around to enjoy it then. I never assumed that a buyer would magically pop up to bring it back to it's old state, but it'd have been nice to see it saved in some fashion. When info comes online about the next steps, I'll try and have it for you guys, but for now, check out SooToday's Carol Martin's coverage of this story by clicking here, and here for The Sault Star's article from Elaine Della-Mattia.
Fourth today is some interesting news and updates from two local musicians, those being local solo guitarist Mike Cliffe and noted local drummer Glen Thomas, a veteran of a few metal bands from the scene's past. You may remember checking out "Bad Regime", an original song that Mike and Glen recorded with Swedish singer Karin Beckerus that was released onto Mike's Reverbnation page. Well, Mike and Glen are continuing with their collaborative work, and a new instrumental song by them is now online! Entitled "Dog's Breakfast", it has a nice bouncy progressive feel to it, with some nice liberal use of varying time signatures and tempos! Good stuff, Mike's really shining on guitar here, and Glen's as good as ever on drums! Definitely check it out at the above link to Mike's page on Reverbnation!Also note that Glen profiled his recent collaborations with Mike on his music blog, The Barking Eye, where he shared some insight into how they got together in this project, and what it takes to make these songs! Despite their local residences and long history in the scene, they've amazingly never met, and the recordings took place from their respective homes through track exchanges! Glen also clarifies that this is a fun project for people to check out only if they want to, but I think it deserves a bit more credit than that! Check out Glen's article on the Mike Cliffe/Glen Thomas project (and more) at this location!
Finally for today, I want you guys to check out this photo on your right. That's Ron Pyette, an amateur scout for the Pittsburgh Penguins, hoisting The Stanley Cup that the Penguins won in 2009. Now I know many of you like hockey, but why am I mentioning an NHL scout on The Sault Metal Scene? Well, maybe it's because Ron was the original bassist for local hard rock quartet Foothill Road! That's right, a notable local hard rock musician went on to work for an NHL team! I never clued in until the other day, when Ron e-mailed me to thank me for posting the Foothill Road albums on YouTube and for covering the band, and I noticed that his e-mail address ended in "@pittsburghpenguins.com". A bit of internet searching later, and yep, it's the same guy! Ron played on all three of Foothill Road's albums, and remained with the band through their 1996 break-up, later being replaced by Nancy Henrech in the successor band Cousin It. It's cool to see how far Ron's went in his career, even if it's not in music! Kudos to him and for the Cup win, and make sure to check out his work with Foothill Road at their MySpace page and at The Sault Metal Scene's YouTube channel!That's all for today, but stay tuned for more very soon, including our next poll, weekend concert previews, and much more! Thanks everyone!
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