In this instalment of “10 things” we talk with Chase, one of the guitar players for Vancouver’s Living with Lions about Canada, water sports and the ethical treatment of animals:

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I was never a fan of Rage Against the Machine, but I’m happy to hear my favourite part of the band, vocalist Zack de la Rocha, teaming up with ex-The Mars Volta drummer Jon Theodore on this EP that pretty much begs the question “how long must we wait for a full length album?”

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I love this tune - some of my favourite TPC lyrics ever - and now it has a pretty cool video. The boys must be feeling pretty old after all that touring to liken themselves to displays in an antique shop.

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In this instalment of “10 things” we talk with Johan Hultqvist, frontman of Toronto’s Mr. Something Something, about bicycles, alternative energy, African rhythms, and green living:

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In this installment of “10 things” we talk with Jennifer Castle, otherwise known as Castlemusic about Lansdowne and Bloor, water towers, Toronto Island, patience and impulse shopping:

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Or I could just bail him out once and have enough left over to buy a veritable mountain of blow!
 

Oh, how the mighty fall! It seems Steven Page, squeaky clean front man for the squeaky clean Scarborough band Barenaked Ladies, ran afoul of the authorities in upstate New York and has been charged with possession of cocaine.

As luck and irony would have it, the arrest comes as BNL celebrate the release of their first full-length album for children, Snack Time. There’s no word yet from Disney whether this will affect BNL’s participation in the Disney Music Block Party / PLAYSKOOL Play Aid Benefit Concert on Long Island later this summer.

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Today marks the release of Thigmotactic, Negativland’s 19th full-length release in their 28-year career. If anyone were to assume that this new record would be just more of the same, they’d be foolishly wrong.

For a band that’s built a career on “culture jamming,” this record is decidedly devoid of samples and the like. The sound collages have instead been replaced by bona fide songs with rather unexpected instrumentation - you know, guitars and such.

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Except maybe The Count, that is. But he’s not in this clip. Instead, you’ll have to content yourself with Canada’s favourite export:

Other than Feist, Sesame Street has some pretty big names lined up for guest spots for its 39th season (Will Arnett, Jessica Alba, David Beckham and Jack “Good Luck Making Him Kid-Friendly” Black to name just a few), but this clip set to air on August 11 leaked the other day and I’ll be darned if it isn’t the cutest thing ever.

With kids aged 8 and 3, I’ve seen more than my fair share of Sesame Street in the last few years, and in my humble opinion, this is one of the better artist-involved song revisions they’ve done in a while. It’s right up there with Norah Jones’ “Don’t Know Why Y Didn’t Come” or James Blunt’s very clever triangle ditty based on “You’re Beautiful.”

When I stumbled across London’s Mad Staring Eyes mid-way through their set last month at North by Northeast, I thought to myself that I’d discovered the new kings of pub rock. When bass player Dan Lee handed me a copy of Bored of Looking Cool, and I saw they have a track called “King of Pub Rock,” I figured I wasn’t alone in my opinion. They’re also one of the few bands I’ve ever seen to list Ian Dury as an influence, so there you go.

Like their predecessors in the genre, MSE play straight-up rock with a raucous attitude. They’ve got a great bunch of tunes on this disc, however this recording comes a little short of capturing the band’s frenetic live energy. It does, however, do a rather nostalgic tip of the hat to the heyday of pub rock simply due to the fact that it sounds like it could’ve been recorded in the early ’80s (the dated keyboard textures on tunes like “Out of my Head” definitely drive that point home).

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White rappers tend to fall into three camps these days: Eminem-ish, Beastie Boys-esque, or just plain embarrassing. While not remotely Beastly, Chicago’s Alltruisms makes it clear he’s more Eminem than embarrassment even before he ponders whether martial law is as effective as Marshall Mathers in “Nine-Digit Number.”

An altruistic dude who speaks in truisms galore, Alltru has jam packed Clusterbombs with booksmart, politically-aware rhymes and some fairly dope beats. Sometimes the subject matter leads to too much sharing (I now know way more than I’ll ever need to about his appreciation of Asian women), but for the most part the rhymes are right on target, like when he ponders if he picked up the mark of the beast when Ronald Reagan kissed him as a baby in 1980.

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