This year is Exclaim! Magazine’s 25th birthday. They are one of Canada’s last surviving (print) music magazine. It was also where me and Nash first received some of our first industry experience. Many of my friends also had their roots there.
The Exclaim! crew is like my mini festival family and I hope they’ll be publishing for many more years!
I love the idea of being less wired, so I couldn’t resist trying the Airpods. At home, I use the Harmon Kardon Aura as my computer speakers, but on the go, it’s nice to have something compact.
Look how small the case is compared to the box! The case doubles as a charger for the earphones. I’ve had them for a week and haven’t charged it yet.
Like most mobile Apple devices, it uses the lightning cable. Now my entire house is just lightning cables and USB-Cs.
Anyways, I find the quality of these decent. I do have B&O H2’s for when I want something better, but it’s not practical always be carrying real headphones. Airpods can fit in my purse or pocket and connect to both my iPhone and Macbook in seconds! On a phone, it’s just a matter of opening the case. They also pause the music when they are removed and can activate Siri. I’m still learning all the tricks but I’ve been listening to so much more music now that it’s so easy to pull these babies out.
I’ve had such a crazy week. First there was Saturday’s #CRJProm. Then coincidentally on Monday night, I had to work our awards show and I ended up have a second to chat with her about Saturday, our party, and the karaoke afterparty. She was so nice and thought our whole adventure was adorable.
So yeah, your dreams can come true, even accidentally.
Last night, my friends and I had front row tickets to see Carly Rae Jepsen play with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.
Before the show, we dressed up and had a mini prom party at a friend’s house. It was a fun surprise when we found out CRJ noticed our prom party and actually shared it with all her followers.
I’m still freaking out about this hahaha.
The show itself was pure joy. It was cool to see the Toronto Symphony Orchestra do arrangements of her biggest hits. We had a moment during “Call Me Maybe” where she sang directly to us in the front row for a moment. The way performs with huge smiles and a positive attitude stole all our hearts. We couldn’t resist getting up to dance, which is probably abnormal for normal orchestra concerts.
These pop-orchestra crossovers hopefully encourage younger people to go see the TSO. Back when I was in choir, we performed the entire Mozart’s Requiem with the TSO. It was a lot of hard work, but it was one of the coolest experiences.
Anyways, after the CRJ concert, we topped it off by heading to The Abbey for karaoke. They only had a few Carly songs but by the end of the night, we treated the entire bar to all of them. #CRJprom was perfect.
I’m co-promoting a show on Canada’s Day with my friend Teagan from Little Coyote. Come to the Horseshoe, it will be a blast!
If you’re running low on funds you can RT the tweet here:
Heading to Field Trip this today. See you there!
Sunday is up in the air for me as it might be thunderstorming so we’ll see about that tomorrow.
This week rising queer-band PWR BTTM were outed as sexual abusers. I knew a lot of people who loved this band. Who would dazzle themselves in glitter and enjoy the so-called safe space of their shows.
It must be heartbreaking to find out that they’re not the people they thought they were. I watched this unfold from the sidelines as someone who is impartial since I never actually got around to listening to their music. Not a thing to brag about, just coincidence. But I do care about those that were emotionally affected.
It’s great that people are being informed about predators. However, I’ve seen too many people post on other people’s walls or try to message people in a vein of “LOOK WHAT YOUR FAV BAND DID”. If that’s you, please reconsider this. This news is everywhere, so the person would find out regardless, but it’s up to them to personally decide if they want to continue supporting the band, or if they will painfully let go of music they thought were from their allies. If they choose to remain silent until they can process it all, it’s their choice.
What exactly do you achieve for being the asshole who needs to personally ruin someone’s day?
I’m addicted to Puyo Puyo Tetris lately! It’s a mix of both games and new modes. It’s crazy how fun both classic games still are like a million years later.
I like the online competitive mode but whenever I get paired up with someone from Japan the match is rather frightening! There are some games where I can survive a long time and win, others that I’ll lose in less than 30 seconds. I guess I have to sharpen my skills more.
Add me on your Switch and maybe we can play sometime!
I recently was asked to test out Trebble.fm, a service that provides interactive radio to bloggers. At the moment, it is embeded on the bottom of Ride the Tempo and you can also stream it on the standalone player here.
I miss the days when ex.fm (now dead), provided automatic streaming to the tracks we posted on the blog, but Trebble seems like a strong contender in this department. All the tracks are added manually, but with a Chrome Plugin compatible with most music services, it is easy.
It’s still in beta, so there are some bugs but try it out and give a listen to some tunes I’ve personally curated.
I’m excited to delve into Mario Kart on the Nintendo Switch! I bought a pro-controller and the steering wheel thing for the Joy-Cons. They even threw in a pair of Mario socks for free.
Now to sharpen my skills before racing people.
Tiana Feng 