Magazine

Montreal's St-Ambroise Fringe Festival is finally here! For nearly three weeks, be ready to watch and hear the best and weirdest of local and international culture, both in English et en français. CJLO will be covering the best of Fringe, and to launch our series of articles, here are our Fringe Team's top picks for this year's Fringe festival. 

Erica’s picks

Erica hosts The F Hole, every Monday at noon.

The seventh edition of Pouzza Fest, Montreal’s punk music festival, took place over the Victoria Day weekend. With a ridiculous amount of bands (over 150 to be less than exact) spread over an outdoor stage and several local watering holes, like Foufounes Électriques, Théatre Sainte-Catherine and The Katacombes, there was hardly a calm moment to be had. Add to that—as if there wasn’t already enough to keep a person busy—some softball at Lafontaine Park, and for those who favour a comic Pouzza Fest first, Pouzza Laughs featured stand-up comics from both Canada and the United States.

Having been the frontman of one of Seattle’s most well-known rock bands, frontman of the second band in history to perform live in Cuba, and named as one of the godfathers of the grunge genre, Chris Cornell was a rare, unique, and special act in the rock & roll/grunge scene. In 1984, Cornell had formed the band Soundgarden back in his hometown Seattle with his friend Kim Thayil, who took role as the guitarist, Hiro Yamamoto, who took role as the bassist (but was later replaced by current bassist Ben Shepherd), and Cornell himself taking the roles of drummer and vocalist.

It is the middle of the month of May, and this can only mean one thing for Japanese music nerds in Canada: it’s time for another edition of Next Music from Tokyo (NMFT).

In short, NMFT is a DIY tour organized by Steven Tanaka, funded entirely from his own pocket. It is a passion project driven entirely by the desire to expose Canada to the amazing indie music scene from Japan, and has been running annually (sometimes twice in a year) ever since 2010.