Greycoats // Setting Fire to the Great Unknown

Longtime friends Jon Reine (Vocals, Guitar) and Mike Smith (Drums, Percussion) have been in a myriad of bands since they were teenagers. It is with Greycoats that they have truly hit the mark. With Matt Patrick and Titus Decker rounding out the band, this Minneapolis/St. Paul foursome is creating a minor buzz around the twin cities with their debut album; Setting Fire to the Great Unknown. Soaring vocals reminiscent of Jeff Buckley and a sound that brings to mind Arcade Fire, Radiohead, and Death Cab make this disc an absolute pleasure to listen to. This band is destined for big things. They recently opened for ‘We are Scientists’ in Minneapolis and are presently on a tour of the East Coast USA. Setting Fire to the Great Unknown is now available from iTunes and can also be ordered off their website: www.greycoats.net

Check out the song ‘Goodbye Sweet Youth Goodbye,’ a featured track on their myspace page and also my track of the week.

Joel Willoughby - Host of The Fresh Sounds // Monday and Fridays 3-4PM

Halloween is happening at Casey’s on Campus at the University of the Fraser Valley. Hosting the the fine punk, hardcore, and alternative styling of:

Blisterin’ Barnicles
Limosis
Chainsaws & Machine Guns
Third Rate
Fight United

AND, If you are interested in working with analog recording equipment, Karl Blau is hosting a analog recording workshop in Anacortes WA this coming Saturday, November 1st. Go to the online home of the Department of Safety more details. Karl, an artist on K Records and involved in the Knw-Yr-Own collective is the man to learn this stuff from.

Saskatchewan ripped through the Fraser Valley last week Wednesday. Andy Shauf and Zachary Lucky, representing their respective cities of Regina and Saskatoon stopped in Abbotsford during their Cross-(Western)Canada Tour.

Photos Courtesy of Jordan W. Shaw Photography
Andy Shauf, in the middle, flanked by Zachary Lucky and Vancouver Folk-Husband-Bearded-Capped-Rocker Eisenhaueron the far right. The upcoming album from Eisenhauer, Time of Year is set for a November 2nd release at Pacific Theatre in Vancouver.

With a foot on a kick drum, and hands on a guitar Shauf, sings while his bearded sidekick fills out the sound with snare, high-hat, xylophone, and harmonica. Wonderfully full sound with just two fellas. The album is even better.

This coming Saturday, October 25th, Pat’s Pub and Brewhouse hosts the Halloween edition Grease n’ Grind with Bloodshot Bill, The Vicious Cycles and the Getaway Sticks. For more Psychobilly information and music and concert listings, listen to CIVLRadio on Monday mornings 8-10AM.

Stephen McBean of Pink Mountaintops is working on a follow up to the guitar washed psychedelia of his 2006 album Axis of Evol. In fact, it seems that everyone in Black Mountain is working on the sly. Perfect.

Karl Blau is ridiculously prolific. As in 35+ albums prolific. 2 years ago he began KELP Lunacy, a monthly subscription service in which he sends eager Karl Blau lovers whatever his tape-hiss-analog-loving fingers have had a hand in creating.

A while back he popped a cover of Tom T. Halls single ‘That’s How I Got To Memphis’ on his myspace. I swooned. Then he took it off.

With the excitement surrounding release of his latest record ‘Nature’s Got Away’ on K Records I managed to find it again. Produced by Tucker Martine(The Decemberists, Sufjan Stevens), the track manages to place Karl’s vocals over an atypical polished and smooth production. And my, it works. The warm drums kicking in over the clear piano and a cooing Blau.

But heck. We are able to listen to the entirety of Karl’s latest album ‘Nature’s Got Away’ on the K Records Website. Please do. It’s Mr. Blau in all his analog, impromptu glory.

Vancouver’s rock ambassadors LADYHAWK begin their cross-Canada tour at Richards on Richards this coming Friday October 24th.

OCTOBERMAN is stopping back into Vancouver and Victoria during their tour with FEMBOTS. See them at Logan’s in Victoria on the 29th of October and at The Railway Club in Vancouver on the 30th.

Finally, the Show Schedule has been updated as to times as well as show descriptions. Remember that if you aren’t able to hear a show live, you are still able to download individual episodes or have them automatically downloaded through our podcast system.

John Welsh, David Welsh & Josh Hyslop at City Blends

John Welsh, along with brother David and Josh Hyslop, played to a packed City Blends(Mt Lehman) on Friday October 10th. Somewhere in Vancouver, like at Richards on Richards,  Born Ruffians and Plants and Animals worked crowds with sweet pop. Tomorrow, Sigur Ros plays at the Chan Center and Rags to Radio plays at the Bull and Raven. Sigur Ros is sold out. You know what to do.

Oh! And Sound and Silence is playing at Casey’s on Campus, UFV’s campus pub and hinted about the possibility of Shindig round 1 winners Language Arts coming as well! Yes!

Thanks to Andrew Macdonald and THE SCENE for concert info.

Good Afternoon!

It’s Monday October 13th, your Thanksgiving Holiday. And I am in the radio station, but for good reason. We at CIVL are proud to offer the first edition of our featured content program, CIVLCast. CIVLCast will bring to listeners and subscribers featured material from our radio station; special programs prescient to the musical, social and political fabric of our community. Our first edition is the Federal All Candidates Meeting 2008, recorded Wednesday, October 8 and broadcast through our station on October 10th.

The Federal All Candidates Forum featured Karen Durant of the Green Party, Ed Fast(Conservative), Tim Felger(Marijuana Party), Bonnie Rai (NDP) and Lionel Traverse of the Liberal Party. You can download the program here, or subscribe to the CIVLCast here:

Listen today. Vote Tomorrow.

Nathan at CIVL

So because I’m heading back to Abbotsford next weekend, and I’ve got most of my homework done, I decided that it would be a good idea to move the site over to production.

There are so many things that I did today; i think that i’ve spent 16 hours working on it today, and i have a few more things that i’d like to get done before I head to bed.

• I played around a lot with trying to get the blogging program to show up in the right dimensions on the site, but right now there is a a bug so that the page resizes by about 75 pixels once you move around in the site
• I setup some gradients that only work in firefox so that the site has a cooler appeal to it.  Unfortunately, this looks terrible in IE as IE interprets the grey as some sort of purple. gr.  I’ll have to take this down to bare bones before tonite is over.
• I setup an imbedded player link on the main page with an option to detach one for easy listening.  I’m going to improve that icon up there in a bit
• I made roll over text for all of the graphics at the top.  Just did this with a little javascript.  Really simple
• I cropped out the lightning bolt out of the logo and created the favicon.ico file from it so that we have a custom feel to the site.
• I moved over the site from http://civl.ca/new to the http://civl.ca address.  This wasn’t as hard as i thought it was going to be, there were only a few things that broke in the process.
• I completed a nice catalogue of the podcasts database.  It uses an ajax call for searching so that the searches are fast and completed as the person types.  I also created the basics for a help file which someone can finish up a little later.  I wrote the instructions for writing itunes because I had them memorized.
• I also wrote a content management system for the back end of the site so that employees can easily update the information.  It uses fckeditor, so it has a wysiswyg mode and a source mode for more advanced programmers.  I think that this is a good adaption.

There are still some things that need to be done in order to get this thing really kickin.

I’d like to get an advertisement management system working on here so that staff can monitor the success of ads, i’ll probably put one on the detached media player and one on the bottom of the page near the network sites.  Nothing too intrusive.

I also want to program an easy way to move around the podcasts so that if you click a podcast it takes you to a spot where the calendar description is shown or the blog is shown for the page along with an imbedded player for just that show.  You’ll be able to listen to any show right off of the page.

I also want to get more pictures flying around the site.  I’m not sure where i’m going to put them because it’s a pretty tight design; however, it’ll make more demand on teh staff and volunteers to get pictures up on there.

This is good for now, i’m going to write a chunk of the podcast thing tonight.

I hope to have this site made live by the end of the weekend. There are a number of changes that i’ll be making: here’s a list

• Make the new blog template
• Make pictures show up on the main page from the gallery
• Create a page for the podcasts so they can be browsed independent of the schedule
• Improve aesthetics of content pages.
• Maybe write some content into some blanks that have been sitting for a while.