New Quarantune Videos, Last Month's Poll Results, And More!!

As you may have noticed by now, our daily posting streak during the pandemic ended after Monday's 91st straight post on the SMS. Basically, I ended the run to help us build up stories for future posts (we were starting to run thin), and get them out on a more typical schedule like what we were doing up to mid-March, especially as "the new normal" is taking effect and the Sault area continues re-opening to the public. This regular run was good to keep everyone engaged and informed during the lockdowns, and if there is a second wave of COVID-19 forcing everything to be shut down again, I may pick things back up daily! Now, let's get to some recent updates, starting with the latest daily cover videos from veteran local punk musician Mikey Hawdon's YouTube channel! He posted three new "quarantunes" on there in as many days, including a cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Second Hand News" with guest singers, notably including his long-time bandmate Amy Gabba.

The other two are punk songs, including an original song (a rarity for this series) named "I Did It All For The Dookie", and despite the Limp Bizkit allusion, it's a tribute to Green Day and their "Dookie" album. It's no secret that Mikey is a huge fan of theirs, as anyone who's seen him front the tribute band The Dookies knows, and this solo performance is fun and fits in the right spirit of the band! Comparatively speaking, it's a long video too, as Mikey's quarantunes don't generally exceed 3 minutes like this one. Embedded below is yesterday's video of Mikey & his uke, only here, his one is stacked with guest musicians! Mikey aside, this cover of Operation Ivy's "Unity" features members of Goldfinger, Less Than Jake, The Anti-Queens, Fishbone, Big D & The Kids Table, and No Big Deal. Fittingly, the acoustic ukelele pretense is dropped early for a full band performance, albeit remotely filmed.

Nice choice of song to cover, and with this all-star crew, you know everyone handles this classic very well! Strong editing by Dean too, allowing good looks at every performer, though the jumps from black and white to colour aren't ideal. Give Mikey and crew a watch below, and look for more quarantune videos above and on his YouTube channel tomorrow!



We'll finish today's post by diving into the results of last month's poll on the SMS, where we posed this question to you guys: What was your favourite local metal, hard rock, or punk concert of 2019?  Sadly, this poll only received 5 votes, but thanks to those who did chime in, and there is a clear winner, so here are the final results from the past month!

Michale Graves at The Canadian Nightclub on September 28th (2 votes, 40%)
Oh!No III (night #2) in Leeburn on September 7th (1 vote, 20%)
Anvil, Striker, and Jack Spades at Soo Blaster on June 9th (1 vote, 20%)
The Killer Dwarfs & Re:Born at Soo Blaster on April 27th (1 vote, 20%)
Joni Radford Memorial at The Algonquin Hotel on March 2nd (0 votes)
Parabol & The Elements at The Rockstar Bar on March 23rd (0 votes)
The Tea Party at The Machine Shop on March 27th (0 votes)
Dopethrone & AlgomA at The New American Pub on May 20th (0 votes)
Random Killing & Jack Spades at The Rockstar Bar on July 5th (0 votes)
Dany Laj & B.A. Johnston at The New A on November 9th (0 votes)
Other (0 votes)

After claiming the late 2019 poll last month with just as many votes, the Michale Graves concert in September narrowly wins for the whole year! Of course, 2 out of 5 votes is hardly representative, but it's encouraging to see such a strong horror punk concert win out, esepcially given it's attendance and the one year delay in the show taking place. Oh!No III's second night and the mid-2019 Soo Blaster gigs from Anvil and The Killer Dwarfs all got representation too, which won't surprise attendees of those well received concerts I am most surprised that the Joni Radford tribute concert, The Tea Party, and Random Killing didn't get votes this time out, but alas, it's all in who votes in a given poll. Thanks to everyone who did vote! For now, I will put our monthly polls on the shelf due to the 2019 cycle ending and our recent polls recieving low totals anyway. As for our usual "favourite concert in the first half of the year" poll next month..... yeah, you probably know why I'm postponing it, no point in reiterating the obvious.

It would hardly be fair of me to run a poll on early 2020 concerts when we only had live concerts for two and a half months before the coronavirus outbreak shut down the local concert industry, and while there have been noises about social distance-friendly concerts in the E.U.P., I fear we're a ways off from anything major up here, sadly. I will probably end up doing just one poll on all concerts in 2020 down the line, and who knows what the rest of the year will hold for that anyway. I'll keep you guys posted, and look for more news & notes on the site soon! Thanks everyone!