Last night, for the frist time in several years I was lucky enough to attend a live music show. The re-baptism came by way of
LiVE 88.5's Big Money Shot at Live Lounge on York Street in Ottawa, ON. The Big Money Shot is a great program for developing local musicians and artists and they've ponied up a lot of cash for a lot of bands in the past. The rules of the contest are fairly detailed, requiring you and/or your band to be pretty well-rounded to be able to qualify for the development cash that is on the table. These kind of things include being responsible for drawing a sizable crowd, playing several live shows, obtaining live footage of your band performaing, aving a demo cd with at least 5 songs, and (later in the process) doing a minimum 5-date tour. Essentially, if you or your band aren't trying to be serious musicians you will be weeded out pretty fast. You can read more about LiVE 88.5, the Big Money Shot and schedule by clicking
here.
The lineup on Friday included Dave Norris & Local Ivan, Geoffrey the Giant, Loon Choir, Orchid Theives, and The Murder Plans. Now, being out of Canada for a couple years and away from Ottawa for longer, I have not really kept up to date on the local scene. Thus, I've never seen these bands play and have heard of only one of them before. The lone standout being Loon Choir, and I know of them through a couple of good friends who are members. I was lucky enough to be given their album so I'll be reviewing that a little further down.
But first let us steal into the night...
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