ECMA + CBC

I made this into a blog post but I’ll cross-post it here since it’s my impressions of the show as well.

Wow, CBC, fire your sound guys. That was terrible. Wintersleep sounded pretty good, they were the hilight of the show for me. I always love watching Loel drum and the backup vocals were a nice touch. Chucky Danger are cute but not all that interesting, I expect they’ll have a fairly successful career getting token airplay on Magic 93 and playing at high school dances.

I was happy to see Slowcoaster win an award, but really disappointed that the ‘alternative rock’ award didn’t merit being included in the main show presentation and was shuffled off to a 10 second segment in the ‘awards given out earlier’ sections. Those bands are the ones pushing new musical styles and actually doing something different, and if the ECMA people wanted to appeal to younger people by hiring the Trailer Park Boys to host they really dropped the ball by not making a bigger deal out of this category.

Natalie McMaster’s talking about her uncle Buddy and then her performance were wonderful. I was happy to hear a slower, more soulful fiddle tune as opposed ot the stereotypical jigs you usually associate with the cheesiest of Maritime music.

The Trailer Park Boys bits weren’t all that funny, and I’m getting sick of the characters rather rapidly, but to be fair it was definitely way better than the skits and canned dialog you hear at most awards shows.

I thought these PEI ads were pretty good. In the past by their focus on what the province has to offer (according to this year’s consultants) ad campaigns, I thought, conveyed a sense of a place that did not exist. These ads, however, and the Gentle Island theme are supposed to not focus what the province has to offer and thereby presents it as it is. “Gentle” is the word I always use to describe the old neighbourhood and the old neighbours.

PS: Bubbles singing “Liquor and Whores” as a sing-along was one of the great moments in Canadian comedy.

Disappointing to hear it came across so poorly on TV. The sound and overall production was great at the actual live show.

Ditto on the sound. The problem happens every year and is very disappointing.

The very best ad on the show - and maybe ever - was the Holland College kitchen party ad. I’d sure like to know who did it - it was brilliant.

The sound for the pre-broadcast portion of the show was terrible. Specifically, Andrea Curry’s number- the sound guy must have been out for a smoke. She gets a great showcase opportunity like that in front of six thousand people and that’s what she gets. He owes her a huge apology!

Perry Williams did the Holland College ad.

Thanks, Bob

Perry Williams is a star of the very highest magnitude.

(Alan: the duct-tape-improvised guitar strap was the icing on it)

A/V out of sync: The screens inside the Civic Centre remained .5 seconds out of sync with the stage audio for the entire show — contrast that with the Stones concert in Moncton where they had three sets of screens, each further from the stage than the previous, which were seperately sync’d to have the sound from the stage match the video *at that distance from the stage*.

I’m sure the Stones spent more though.

Once again, the CBC’s Halifax crew is screwed by our counterparts in Toronto. For the first 19 minutes of the show, some brain surgeon in T.O. married the video feed from satelite (an inherent half-second delay) to the back up feed audio (landline - no delay). Days of hard work and sync tests out the window and once again we look the fool.