CBC Radio 3 Searchlight Nomination

As the Bad Astronomer Phil Plait would say, Holy Haleakala! Someone nominated sucktastic for the CBC Radio 3 Searchlight for Canada's Best Music Website. Though I'm extremely flattered, I don't really see my blog as a music website. Only because Canadian Indie Music is such a large part of my life does it get mentioned here so often. But I also talk about other things, food, travel, atheism, photography, etc. So I don't really think I qualify.

However, the blog where we keep The Moe and Martin Show, Canada Is a Music Mecca is also nominated! Besides our show, there is lots of great stuff going on on that blog. We have a number of contributors posting interviews, album reviews, daily music news, occational tracks of the day, and more every day.

So please, if you have a Radio 3 account, or want to sign up for one (it's free and easy), consider voting for Canada is a Music Mecca!

Music PEI Week Playlist

I took a lot of video for the Friday night Music PEI Showcases. 3 Venues, 9 bands, and 22 videos have been compiled for your viewing pleasure!



Click YouTube to go to the playlist page and watch in HD.

Metering the Internet

Some of the biggest news in Canada now is related to the CRTC allowing usage based billing [UBB] by Bell Canada and others. Many Canadians are voicing their dissent of this move, and are particularly critical of the CRTC for not looking out for the best interests the people it is supposed to protect.

I remember when High Speed Internet was first happening in Canada, sometime around 1998-99. I was on board right away when I moved to Hamilton for university. I believe I was paying $50 a month for unlimited cable internet. Sometime in 1999/2000 they switched the plan myself and many of my Software Engineering friends were on to UBB, without actually telling us. A friend of mine was the first to find out, when after a few days, they cut off his internet. Many of us followed in the days to come as we went over our quotas. We spoke out strongly against this practice, as many others did as well. Within a month or two the UBB policy was reversed in full.

It was slightly different in that older case compared to now, for one thing, they cut us off, not charged us more. Obviously their policy was very wrong, but I think charging us more for going over on our bandwidth is also wrong.

If UBB goes through people will all of a sudden have to be very concious of what they're doing online. Want to watch a movie on your paid for Netflix subscription? Well you might have to pay again on top of your subscription. Want to stream a TV show from CTV or The Comedy Network? Visit sites with lots of ads? Guess what, now you'll also have to pay for those ads to be loaded. Sure, you can ad block, but then the people who run the sites will lose out on income. This will hurt many part time bloggers and people who depend on ad income to operate.

Myself personally, I upload and watch a lot of video on YouTube, upload pictures to flickr, and I have also been spending a lot of time watching Al Jazeera's coverage of the revolution in Egypt. In a 15 minute time frame last night I tracked my bandwidth usage. I downloaded 150MB, and uploaded about 100MB. project that forward and my total bandwidth is about 1GB/hour. In total last month I uploaded about 10GB of video, and that was a light month. Maybe I'm an exceptional case, but I know if my internet were metered I would be over every month.

Overall UBB will hurt Canadians in their pocketbook, as well as stifle new development out of Canada.

For more information, and a petition to sign check out Open Media.

The Moe and Martin Show

Since last spring my friend Moe and I have had a radio show on Radio Atlantic, and available as a podcast on Canada is a Music Mecca. Recently Radio Atlantic has been having issues ensuring our broadcast goes out either on time, or at all. However the podcast has always been a more convenient way to listen to the show.

The show focuses exclusively on Canadian East Coast music, with a definite bias on the Charlottetown scene. We play pretty much anything, but tend to avoid the straight up traditional stuff, as well as jazz/blues/classical. But Rock, Pop, Country, Hip Hop, Electronic dancey stuff, etc, are all covered. Along with great tunes, you also get a lot of Moe and I talking about the music, artists, shows and the scene in general in a pretty informal (and often wine fueled) manner. Check here for all of our shows. Something I should do in the future is get a best of show list. We've had some really good ones!

Our most recent show was a recap of the Music PEI 2011 awards show, and I think it's a fun one. There is lots of great music from the winners of most of the awards.

For your part, your mission, when you choose to accept it, is to send us requests, music, links, fake news reports, real news, and any other feedback you like. Email us at themoeandmartinshow@gmail.com.

Music PEI Week 2011

Music PEI Week 2011 has ended.  As always it was filled with great music and good times.  I took my video camera around Friday night to three different venues and 9 different bands.  That'll make a lot of editing in my future, an endeavour that has already begun.  So far I have finished with two bands, Racoon Bandit and The North Lakes, both at Solid Rock Cafe.  Racoon Bandit won Best Video for their video HAT and The North Lakes won best Alternative Album.

Big winners were one of my favourite bands, Haunted Hearts.  They get played a lot on The Moe and Martin Show and I've probably seen them live more than any other band (including seeing them Friday night, stay tuned for video, they really rocked!).  They get classified as Country, but I don't think the standard classifications are working very well for PEI bands anymore.  When I think country I think twangy whiny crap music, and that they are not.  Perhaps it's just that the classification has changed while I wasn't paying attention.  Anyway, Haunted Hearts won Group of the Year, Album of the Year, Country Album of the Year, and Songwriter of the Year.

Molly Rankin, another regular on the radio show, won 3 awards herself, Female Vocalist, New Artist, and Pop Recording.  Each of her speeches at the awards was funnier than the previous.  In fact the whole awards show was hilarious.  Fraser and Lenny did another fantastic job as hosts.

Keep an eye on my YouTube channel for all the videos, but until then, here's a couple from Racoon Bandit and The North Lakes: