LOCAL CONCERT ALERTS (Turner Up), Plus Mike Cliffe, Eastgate Hotel, And Woods Of Ypres News!!

Hey there everyone, I have some more news and updates to share on this Friday afternoon, including the newest songs from Mike Cliffe, The Eastgate's current status, a couple new Woods of Ypres notes, and to kick things off, a LOCAL CONCERT ALERT!!!

Local classic hard rockers Turner Up have scheduled three more concert weekends at Foggy Notions throughout the remainder of 2010! As confirmed in a new posting on the band's Facebook group by guitarist Robert Brown, Turner Up will be at Foggy's on the weekends of September 10th-11th, October 22nd-23rd, and November 26th-27th, joining their already confirmed dates at The Vibe Lounge and The Nicolet Tavern. As is typical with concerts at Foggy's, the new dates will likely have $3 cover charges with 10:00 PM start times, and you must be 19 to get in. These should be fun concerts, and it's nice to see them back downtown for some shows as well! Also confirmed in Robert's post: Turner Up will be the opening band for tribute band Gunz N' FN' Rosez at their show at The Rockstar Bar on September 23rd! This isn't backed up on the event page for the GNFNR concert, but if a band member says it, it must have some truth! Nice addition to that show, and if you want more details on Turner Up's next dates, check the above links! Also, remember to see them at The Vibe Lounge TONIGHT and tomorrow night for their End Of Summer Bash!

Next up, local experimental hard rock guitarist Mike Cliffe posted some brand new songs onto his Reverbnation page! Three that I know of, here's what you should know about them! One is called "Hype-O-Derivative", and in case you didn't catch how the title sounds, this is an instrumental track inspired by Type O Negative! I was a huge fan of theirs, and Peter Steele's death bummed me out, so it's nice to see Mike pay tribute to them with this song! It's a heavy number, but it only really seems to sound like Type O in the slower sections. When it picks up in speed, it loses that, but again, it's inspired by Type O Negative, not a soundalike copy. Good song with a great basis! Also new is his new song "El Blues O De Jam O", which is a blues jam track, as the title suggests. It has a freewheeling spirit and has nice solo sections and a catchy melody! I thought it'd be slower and more downbeat, but I really like this one and it's energy! The blues can rock, and it does here! The other new song is "Bad Regime", a collaboration Mike did with fellow local musician Glen Thomas on drums and Swedish musician Karin Beckerus from the electronic/dance project Out Of Quebec. It's a bouncy softer track compared to the other new songs, with soft melodic vocals and an experimental quality. Not my favourite of the new songs, but it works on a musical level!

Check out all of Mike's new songs at this location, and stay tuned for more, cause he always has some new songs in the works, and you're bound to like at least one of them!

Thirdly, here's the latest on the fate of The Eastgate Hotel, the former hotel and local metal concert venue beside The Rockstar Bar on Queen Street East. Carol Martin, Elaine Della-Mattia, and Craig Huckerby all reported on this story earlier in the week for SooToday, The Sault Star, and SooNews.ca, click on the site names to read each individual article. The gist of it is, there was NO decision made as to it's fate at Monday's City Council meeting, and two new buyers turned up with interest in buying the Eastgate. As such, a decision on if any offers will be accepted has been pushed back to September 13th. The three offers on the table include two with the intent to make the building into low income housing. Belleville's Tomasso Petrucci (who was the original interested buyer) has a $5,000 offer for it, while Anna Yurkevich and Walter Jakubsky have a $25,000 offer on the table. The third offer, from Robert Berto Jr., is for $17,000 with no announced intent for what he'd do if he bought it. The Eastgate itself is structurally sound and has a value of around $250,000, but would need extensive renovations if saved, and unless Robert Berto's plans are to restore it to it's old use, it won't be a concert spot again. I'll keep you up to date as news goes on about what will happen to The Eastgate Hotel!

Finally today, here's some new Woods of Ypres updates, and firstly, yes, David Gold is no longer in Canada. But where exactly is he now? I'm not 100% sure, he hasn't openly said, but I've heard a few theories. A comment on my post on Tuesday said that he's teaching in the United Kingdom, which would make sense given his past overseas work as a teacher in South Korea, but I can't 100% prove that to be true. I've also heard scattered rumours that he was everywhere from back in South Korea to Kuwait! I think many of us were expecting a clear statement about where he was going and why Woods of Ypres were ending yesterday, which we didn't get. However, I'm starting to think that David DOESN'T want people to know clear answers, at least not yet. It might just add to the mystery of it all. Of course, if official word comes out about what David Gold's newest steps are, I'll have it here, but I'm honestly not holding my breath. What we did get yesterday was a new thread on Woods of Ypres' official forum where David thanked his fans for the support and wished us the very best in the future, so even if it's not the answers we hoped for, it's a nice closing statement!

I contemplated writing a little retrospective paragraph about Woods of Ypres around now like I did for Nixxon Dixxon's end, but you know something? Woods of Ypres' story isn't finished. There's still a whole album left to come out, what point would there be to post my final thoughts when the band's final work isn't out yet? But believe me, when I do discuss the band's end, I won't have anything bad to say! I do have two more notes to share on Woods of Ypres today, my first one being another ambient slowed down version of a Woods song! This was also posted by anomaly88 onto SoundCloud, and it's an almost-25 minute long version of "Move On!" Interesting work once again, amazing what you can do to mp3s nowadays! Check it out at this location! And finally for today, we have one more Woods of Ypres "drum cam" live video from drummer Evan Madden's YouTube channel! Like yesterday's video of the band playing "The Shams of Optimism" & "Crossing The 45th Parallel", this comes from their Austin, Texas show in July, and it's of their version of "By The Time You Read This (I Will Already Be Dead)"! Good quality, but David's vocals are hard to pick out amongst the heavy instrumentation. Check it out below!



That's all for today, but stay tuned for my review of TOMORROW'S SBD show (yes, I'm going!), my next CD review, and more assorted local metal news and updates! Thanks everyone!