Slush, sleet and snow didn’t stop hundreds of Toronto hardcore fans from turning up at the Opera House last night to see Fucked Up play in its entirety (or so we thought) its Polaris-Prize-winning The Chemistry of Common Life.

After hockey fans took in the Canada vs. Slovakia hockey beat-down, Fucked Up took the stage with drummer Jonah Falco’s mother playing the opening flute part to “Son the Father”. Due to unavailable ’special guests’, they would not be performing Chemistry through-and-through, reverting to older classics including a cover of Sex Pistols’  “Bodies”. (more)

If you’ve recently found yourself rocking out to a killer 90’s soundtrack at the Annex’s Victory Café, chances are you have Reade Ollivier to thank. When he’s not pouring suds and making playlists at the Vic, Ollivier plays in Protozoans, a Toronto outfit formed in 2008.

Ollivier has spent the better part of the last decade playing drums in and around his hometown of Winnipeg. Relocating to Toronto, he decided to start a band of his own. Realizing it’s much easier to find a guitarist than a drummer, he reinserted himself behind the kit, recruiting Jimmy Rose and Simon Rogers to handle guitar and bass, while Ollivier both drums and sings. (more)

Given song titles like “Beer Today, Bong Tomorrow” and “Holy Smokes,” you’d expect there’s a perpetually-high stoner behind Montreal’s Barn Burner.

Turns out guitarist and frontman Kevin Keegan – despite his Kelowna and Vancouver roots – prefers a free beer over some grass. (more)

The journey from Halifax to Toronto seems to have been as temporal as it was geographical for Brent Randall and His Pinecones. Shortening their names to just The Pinecones, the now four-piece have tamed the polished, ostentatious orchestral pop of their past and refocused into a 60’s and 70’s nostalgia act.

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On this Wavelength 500 festival (and Valentine’s Day) weekend, we asked the most sexually explicit house-punk band in Toronto to give some love to the decade-long, now-ending weekly. (more)

“No one’s gonna know any of the tunes we do,” says Elvir Kovacevic, the conga drummer for resident cover band The Main Thing. “The stuff we’re playing is very obscure from songs off these rare 45s that just don’t exist anymore. A few DJs in the audience will freak out if they recognize it, but it’s definitely stuff you’ll never hear anywhere else – or maybe ever again.” (more)