Mike Haggith's #LockdownLive Post-Show, Plus Treble Charger's Enhanced CD Content!

Today's post (our 73rd straight daily one) is devoted to two disparate topics, both concerning local musicians' exploits out of town, but otherwise totally different. Here's what you should know!

Local/Thompson, Manitoba solo artist Mike Haggith live-streamed his delayed second #LockdownLive post-show onto his Facebook page on Tuesday, and this time, it runs for a scant 54 minutes! Mike starts by talking about the live-stream share contest from Saturday's #LockdownLive VIII, where the viewer who shared the video the most times gets to pick a song that Mike has to cover this Saturday. After commenting on the impressive view, comment, and share counts, he revealed that the winner (with 134 out of 251 shares) was Mike's Din bandmate Brandan Glew, so if you like their irreverent and off-colour banter from the comments in past #LockdownLive installments, get ready! Brandan's requested cover is alt-country band The Gourds' version of Snoop Doggy Dogg's "Gin & Juice", which will be an interesting take to be sure, and less adult than last week's cover!

Mike also lets Brandan pick a song of his to perform, and while he debates picking his troll "Free Bird" cover, Brandan ultimately picks the title track of Mike's 2014 album "A Place Of Our Own", which is nicely performed as you'd expect! He then performs his newest album's title track "If Ever Comes The Day" on request, before letting us see his cats, and then listening to the "Gin & Juice" cover with his headphones so we can see his live reaction. Unlike "Drop 'Em Out", Mike's reaction is less amusing and more surprising, in that Mike openly likes The Gourds' rendition. Mike ends by discussing #LockdownLive IX on Saturday (theme to be revealed) and the planned private Facebook group. Entertaining video on the basis of Mike & Brandan's banter alone, but there's a lot more to see, so give the whole thing a look below!

Finally for today, I wanted to acknowledge a somewhat rare aspect for local CD releases, namely enhanced CD-ROM functionality. Partially owing to their major label careers, local/Toronto indie/punk icons Treble Charger actually have two albums (1995's "Self-Title" and 2002's "Detox") with enhanced content if you put the disc into a Windows computer. Having just bought "Self-Title" to complete my hard copy collection of their discography, now's a good time to demonstrate on the SMS if this stuff still works 18/25 years later! On "Self-Title", the technical first track on the CD is reserved for "Screen Zine" content made with QuickTime by the band and Digital Renaissance, which includes videos of some kind. Unfortunately, the content on this disc (ReadMe file aside) does not open on Windows 10, and I couldn't even manage to get a compatibility mode setting that it would accept. VLC Media Player doesn't even recognize media files on the disc that it can play.

The Internet Archive hosts a download copy of the Screen Zine if you're curious to try it without the CD, and it notes that the content includes information about other contemporary indie rock bands and local paper 'zines. Alas, further exploration of Treble Charger's 1995 "Screen Zine" will have to wait until I acquire an older computer that the disc likes, or install a virtual machine copy of an older variant of Windows (presumably, something between Windows 3.1 and Vista would do the trick.) As for "Detox", it's CD-ROM content can be loaded on Windows 10... sort of. Here, the content is not set aside as track #1, and you can launch it by opening the AUTORUN file on your PC. This image is what opens, and the enhanced content here was made with Adobe Director. If you try to visit the secret site, you only get error messages, but I fear that has been the reality since at least 2004, when Treble Charger's then-label ViK. Recordings merged with Sony Canada, and the band went on hiatus that year anyway. The help page is a dead link too.

The disc itself has none of the promised material, it was all on the secret site, which I believe was on a hidden link on ViK. Recordings' website, and has not been visibly backed up on the Wayback Machine. That said, contests aside, the advertised secret content is largely available publically if you know where to look. We'll address the "Self-Title" content down the road, but that's all for today, and stay tuned for more news on the site soon! Thanks everyone!