Thank you Waub for starting this tradition among our circle of now-extended friends 10 years ago.  Wow.  I’ve discovered so many great records (& more metal than a girl could ever dream of…) thanks to the initiative you took on that fateful day in Akron <3.

The real top ten, really (& I only cheated twice with double-entries):

1.  Feist – Metals:  Anyone who knows me a teeny bit won’t be surprised this is my top album. But it’s not pre-Monarch Feist bias at play, I swear.  This is a rich, dark record with challenging, complex & interesting percussive, vocal & melodic parts, which are completely different from the upbeat hand-clappy triple-a-radio stigma she suffered for the past six years. Not at all weirded out by her upcoming Mastodon collabo (what could be worse than LuLu, amirite?!?), it makes a lot of sense after listening to this (on repeat…for months on end).

2.  Singapore- do re mi fa q:  Not quite a full-length, but much more than an EP…& definitely a fair representation of what their live show yields. These (young!) guys shocked me with their polished presentation, unique sound (think a Nick Cave-fronted Strokes with a dash of Depeche Mode’s timeless sexy swagger) & smart songwriting. Hoping that 2012 brings big things for another ungoogleable band from Toronto.

5.  Ryan Adams – Ashes & Fire:  My boy got me through a near-hellish fall/winter. I’ll admit to leaning on the standbys: Pneumonia, Gold, Heartbreaker…& all-time fav Easy Tiger. BUT this album is stand-alone GREAT. Funny reading in the reviews that he took 2 years off, cause there are delicious Sad Dracula/bootleg/one-off breadcrumbs all over the interwebs to satisfy any dry spell, but you can tell that my future husband/ex-Mr. Mandy Moore put in some serious time sequencing, mixing, writing a near-perfect country/roots album.

6.  Chilly Gonzales – The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales:  There are no words to describe how amazingly meta this man has become. Oh & watch Ivory Tower or die laughing/trying.

9.  PJ Harvey - Let England Shake:  Spare me the Arab-Spring/political interpretation undergrad angst bullshit. This is a structurally sound trudge through the most painful moments in life, the inexplicable, the horrible & the terrifying. A tough slog, but somehow still beautiful.

10.  Bill Callahan - Apocalypse:  With his unique voice, folk tendencies &, well, a goofy approach to lyrics, I worry that a guy like this’ll get a ‘character actor’ stigma (I have more interesting things to worry about but it’s nice to switch it up). What can you do though, right? Wait 20 years & guys like Buscemi are revered as leading men…I trust that history will be equally kind to Mr. Callahan. At least in a big-payout-for-his-estate-Nick-Drake-level-of-reverence kind of way. (Watch “America” & it will all make sense)

Top five records in 2011 that were really good, but only in small doses (reasons outlined in handy parentheses):

1. Austra – Feel it Break (Shrill…Sorry, but it’s true.)
2. James Blake – s/t (Cold & melancholic, like a poorly curated pop-art exhibit soundtrack.)
3. tUnE-yArDs – whokill – (Too much, too busy, too piercing in its jangly-ness.)
4. K Flay – I Stopped Caring in ‘96 (Two words: white guilt.)
5. Raphael Saddiq – Stone Rollin’ (Too happy.)

Top five records I bought in Australia, still listen to on a regular basis, and secretly wish were released in 2011 because they’d have a fair shot at the real top ten:

1. Darren Sylvester – s/t (2008 – SERIOUSLY GET THIS. The Cars & T Rex honeymooned in Oz & this record appeared 9mos later.)
2. Tame Impala – Innerspeaker (2010 – Swirly psych without hippie dippy-tude, still nice & fuzzy around the edges. Sent it to all my Black Angels/WarPaint friends.)
3. Mystery Twin – s/t (2010 – So different than anything I’ve listened to in ages, great work-music, which isn’t to imply that it’s a total snoozefest, cause, it’s, ugh, just go listen.)
4. Angus & Julia Stone – Down the Way (2010 – a bit folk-twee, in a Felicity soundtrack kind of way, but not as cheesy as the godawful CD-ROM-flashback-website would have you believe.)
5. Cut Copy – Zonoscope (FastFact: this came out in 2011 but I had nowhere else to put it.)

Top ten records that I didn’t weigh fairly because I have it in my mind that they should be as great as the artist(s)’s previous LP, which is wrong:

1. Wild Flag – s/t (It’s hard to not expect more from this amalgamation of grrrl hrrros… REMINDER:  before you get angry, remember the intro about the total unfairness of this list)
2. Das Racist – Relax (Meh. Maybe it was their lackluster SX appearance…)
3. Tom Waits – Bad As Me (So so so good.  But still…)
4. Dan Mangan – Oh Fortune (‘Nice, Nice, Very Nice’ was TOO darn nice.)
5. Lykke Li – Wounded Rhymes (‘Little Bit’ less than what I’d hoped.)
6. The Roots – Undun (Solid…)
7. Black Keys – El Camino (Again, they set the bar SO high…)
8. Smith Westerns – Dye It Blonde (the NEXT record will be insane…right?)
9. Ian Kamau – One Day Soon (SO GOOD…but the mixtapes spoiled me.)
10. Fucked Up – David Comes to Life (concept albums, are, you know, um, tough to pull off…)

Apologies in advance if my choices offend…or you could just take this as a challenge to convince me otherwise:

Top ten 2011 records I seriously tried to like but can’t get into:

• Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
• Joanna Newsom – What We Have Known
• M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
• Gillian Welch – The Harrow & The Harvest
• Bon Iver – s/t
• Jay-Z & Kanye West – Watch the Throne
• Radiohead – King of Limbs
• Destroyer – Kaputt
• Drake – Take care
• The weeknd – all of them

We are very much looking forward to sharing our experiences with the non-profit sector, advocacy organizations & independent filmmakers attending SXSW.  Please ping any of us if you are going down to Austin this year & plan to check our panel out.  We’d love to have any of your comments &/or questions ahead of time!

Again, we greatly appreciate every single person taking the time to register for a voting account & adding their vote to the Panel Picker site.  We couldn’t've had our panel accepted without your votes.  To receive the programmers & advisory board’s green light in the first round is a BIG deal, especially since we’re in as a panel & not a core conversation.

<3 you!

BUT I couldn’t let this month-long provincial campaign go by without a non-partisan post begging y’all to give a crap…even if it’s a tiny crap.  You know what I mean.

Step One – Vote

Pretty much the LEAST you can do – consider it civic hygiene.  Best make sure that you are registered to do it on October 6th.  Don’t know which riding you’re in but can remember your postal code?  You’re golden.  Even if you’re super busy & can’t get to the polling station on E-day you can get a mail-in ballot.  Even if you’re away at school you can vote in your home riding or choose your school’s riding.  Even if you don’t live in the province anymore you can cast an absentee ballot.  Even if you are doing time you can vote from a correctional facility. You see where this is going, right?  No excuse.

Step Two – Read

The only thing hotter than a voter is an informed voter.  So get your read on, blaze up those GoogleAlerts, spice up your RSS reader & track campaign coverage from multiple outlets. Trevor’s built a fantastic resource on Politwitter that’ll serve up Ontario-only content.  He’s also aggregating blog posts that can be organized by province; same for Facebook pages.  Bonus points if you check party platforms before deciding which local candidate best represents your values & priorities.  Might also be fun to geek out & read past results for a context-refresher.

Step Three – Talk

Don’t get me wrong, FourSquare cafe check-ins, emo Instagram photos & food-related Twitter revelations are FASCINATING.  Just wondering if we could mix it up for the next month.  Try floating a leader’s campaign promise as a subject of discussion & see where things go.  Please note that Step Three is not labelled ‘Speech;’ talking means thoughtful conversations, interactions & respect for other points of view.  Godspeed on that one.

Step Four – Help

There are LOADS of gigs with Elections Ontario if you’d like to get involved hands-on. There’s also an Elections Ontario Outreach Team member for each riding who’ll support community events your organization is planning.  One of the most satisfying volunteer gigs I’ve ever worked was registering voters (you’d think it was rescuing all those drowning puppies, but no!).  Even if volunteers can’t actually get voters registered like in the U.S., you can point them to some great online information, including this post written specifically for new Canadians on Settlement.org or these youth-focused links & posts from Apathy Is Boring.

Thanks for indulging my nagging & good luck muddling through the onslaught of media coverage. Beats the breathless wannabe-L.A.  TIFF gossip, right?

PanelPicker‘s launch bombards us with requests or outright spam from aspiring pundits trying to participate in South By Southwest.

& who can blame’em? I mean, erm, us.  We’ve assembled a stellar roster for discerning thumbs to vote up-up-&-away to Austin, Texas in March, 2012.

Why the unwavering obsession with this Shiner-soaked conference? Since 2005, nerd Mardi Gras has been exciting & energizing, & conveniently bleeds into the music industry’s only upbeat gathering post-Napster.

During this raucous 10-day marathon run of panels, workshops, parties & performances, startups’ fates are sealed, business cards exchanged (or ‘bump’ed) & socially autistic coders finally make it to third base.

Despite grizzled veterans’ gripes about its increasing size & commercialization, you’re hard pressed to get more bang for your buck as a film, music or digital conference attendee elsewhere.

Speaking of bucks…It’d be dishonest to not mention the financial considerations behind the apps. Speakers receive free conference badges, which is a lovely gesture & makes the trek somewhat less unaffordable to non-profit sector folks & entrepreneurs.

Cue the violins….

Until Friday, September 2, you can make “Social Media, Social Change & Social Filmmaking,” a panel to assist the non-profit sector, advocacy organizations & independent filmmakers, a reality.

Simply visit this site & log in or create a SXSW account, then click the thumb-up icon. (Extra brownie points = share this: http://bit.ly/r4EX2P)

The panel features Dorothy Engelman, who co-founded q media solutions, built GetInvolved & specializes in non-profit-sector digital shorts; Sherien Barsoum, former social worker, documentarian & founder of taza media; & the inimitable sk8 king of all social media for non-profits, Rob Dyer, founder of Skate4Cancer, subject of DreamLoveCure documentary & overall tireless advocate.

Aside from a much-longer-than-anticipated convalescence period (5+weeks) wherein I had no choice but to explore ‘inner space’ (& all four seasons of Felicity); massive terrifying reconstructive surgery; re-learning how to walk; avoiding the siren song of oxycontin in periods of extreme pain; switching gigs (again); travelling to LA & NYC to work on doc fests; pathetic attempts at surfing (again); speaking at SXSW (bucket list); moving into a beautiful new home; breaking hearts; & solving crimes…I guess it was calm-ish.

One thing that kept me going, as usual, was music. Less live gigs, more oldies/reissues/vinyl & less new album purchases/downloads. Still, it wasn’t easy to whittle down a final ten for 2010. A tip of the hat must be directed at journo extraordinaire Waub (soon to be published author) for starting this tradition over 10 years ago.

Local Lurv – Top Toronto Releases of 2010

• The Strumbellas – S/T EP – Within a 100 mile radius of the Cameron House while these lads work their residency? Go. They’re destined for great twangy things.
• William Del Ray - n/a – Anything Wm releases on Myspace, Bandcamp or burns onto a CD-R.  Mark my words (again): he’s our generation’s Ron Sexsmith.
• Zeus – Say Us - Proud to be a long-time proselytizer. Finally, a full-length that captures all the great tunes they’ve perfected with a relentless touring regime.
• The Sure Things – Two Dollar Bottles – Extra points for having a gracious lap steel player who’s suffered a fool during her couchsurfing days & emo undergrad years.
• Woodhands - Remorsecapade – Nothing will ever be as great as experiencing this band live.  Ideally, they’ll release a concert DVD.  In the meantime, buy this already.
• Shad – TSOL – Top-notch world-class hip-hop from the Old Prince. Even Kanye agrees.
• Ian Kamau - Mixtape Vol. 3 Love and Other Struggles – Blown away by the thoughtful/interesting samples, interview excerpts & sweet lyrics.
• Hands & Teeth – Enjoy Your Lifestyle – Not just another adorable-mixed-gender-high-energy-hipster-bait-brouhaha.  They’ve been building buzz & receiving high-indie-praise for a reason.
• Evening Hymns – Spirit Guides - Released late last year.  Back off, I’m getting too old to stay on top of these things.  So, so hauntingly beautiful, let this ’09 one slip & check it out, please.
• Royal Wood – The Waiting – Slick & far richer than previous releases. Definitely proves that he’s earned his place alongside veteran singer-songwriters/tourmates like David Gray.

Worldwide Lurv – Top 10 LPs of 2010

• Caribou – Swim – Admittedly, I’m a sucker for trippy psychedelic tunes of any origin.  The fact that Dan’s dramatically evolved his sound from Manitoba days into such a unique, identifiable soundscape – & can pull it off on tour no less – makes it much more impressive.
• Spoon – Transference – Y’all know that I left my heart in Austin (among other sundry items). Consistently strong, well-thought-out, interesting records keep this band at the top of my playlist year-round.
• Tallest Man on Earth - The Wild Hunt - Just wow.  Dylan reincarnate.  One of many new artists I must thank Paul at Criminal Records for turning me onto.  You should shop there, too.
• Rufus Wainwright – Songs for LuLu – Absolutely hated the performance piece that accompanied this raw album.  But I’ve forgiven Rufus for indulging in his OOTT (operatic-over-the-top) ways.  His simplest record – with piano-only accompaniment of his a gorgeous, stronger-than-ever-voice – will hold its own in his growing discography.
• Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings – Learned the Hard Way - Anything Daptone Records releases is guaranteed to be warm, soul-stirring R&B.  Anything Sharon sings on is guaranteed to whip your ass into shape.  Ballsy, brassy, bold & badass.  Buy it twice, you’ll be compelled to give it to someone in need of a break-up care package.
• Black Mountain – Wilderness Heart – Again with the trippy psychedelia.  But Black Mountain’s sludgier, trudgier stoner rock is oh, so very different than Caribou.  Makes you want to buy a nasty old van & drive it across the country.
• The Black Keys – Brothers – As far as I can tell, these two can do no wrong.  Even last year’s risky BlakRoc collaboration confab stayed in heavy rotation throughout 2010.  I’m sure it’ll be the same for this gem.
• Robyn – Body Talk 1 (…& 2 & 3) – The official soundtrack of fag hag heaven.
• LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening –  Actually prefer James Murphy’s 10+ lower-key stripped-back tracks on the Greenberg s/t , but full-length-album-wise, this is as close to perfect as electropop gets.

Honourable Mentions - Caracol - L’Arbre aux Parfums (…but it was released in 2008) & Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night

What was your list?  Any glaring omissions?  I preferred older Deerhunter & Yeasayer records to the stuff they put out this year, but that might be general laziness on my part.  Excited to discover some new tracks & get some snarky feedback…

Please play with these numbers & challenge me if you feel this is mingy!

One of our (many) challenges in government communications (oh, hai, I got a new gig…more about that later) is our commitment to French-language services. Some comms branches & agencies, strapped for time & staff, worry that there isn’t an audience for French-language content on social networks. Last night’s #FBTO presentation by Facebook Canada’s Alfredo Tan included some great stats that lead me to believe otherwise:

• 16.9 million Canadians on Facebook (50.1% of ’09 population)
• 54% female users
• 9.5% French (1.6M)

Sooo…if we know that 9.5% of Canadian Facebook users are French-speaking, but we only care about Ontario (at Queen’s Park…not the royal we, okay?) …using StatsCan’s 2006 data (insert joke about non-Dark-Ages-government needing accurate population data here):

Let’s combine all the 289,035 French peeps with thecombo ENG/FR (26,050) & FR/Non-official/+ENG familes (3,065 & 3,405) for a grand total of 321,555 French-ish citizens in Ontario.

If total FR(& EN/Other) population in Canada is 6,777,665 & of those 1.6M are on Facebook – Pepsis have a 24% FB uptake rate.

We can now extrapolate that there are 77,173 Franco-Ontarians on Facebook. A definite worthy audience to plunk some effort & energy towards.

Now, who wants to quiz me on the periodic table of the elements?

* Strongly encourage you to track down the #FBTO presentations by  Syncapse (Stella Artois case study) & Vortex Mobile (Boston Pizza in-store promotion w/ FB-integration), both very good presentations that demonstrate the impact a properly planned, fully integrated campaign can have – & what data-rich results it can yield.

Once the tingles wore off from meeting the amazing, ambitious & gifted filmmakers (& often their families), interacting with the crew of enthusiastic volunteers & working out of the IFC Centre Theatres, I had a chance to learn about the business of fundraising, filmmaking & distribution (& more importantly Oscar nomination eligibility).

The International Documentary Association has been holding Docuweeks for 14 years, ensuring that the world’s top documentarians have the requisite number of screenings in the City of Los Angeles & the borough of Manhattan to contend for an Oscar nomination. The 2009 IDA ‘Finishing Fund’ grant-recipient, Summer Pasture, is one of the screenings this year; a success story reminiscent of the many talented musicians who’ve benefitted from Austin Music Foundation‘s career-changing ‘Incubator’ fund, which ensured that artists could take their projects to the next level without mortgaging their lives away.

My personal favourite thus far (until I see a new batch in L.A., & handicapping the Finnish flick ‘Steam of Life‘ from my admitted bias for all things Suomi) was ‘Louder than a Bomb‘, a Spellbound-esque tale of rival slam-poetry teams facing off at the Chicago finals.   Strongly encourage you to keep this film on your radar, because it very well may tug at the proper Oscar judge heartstrings & sweep the world in a couple months.

Unfortunately I can’t embed the trailer, but if you check out their website: http://louderthanabombfilm.com/ you can watch 8+minute teaser for the film & get a sense of how compelling these kids’ stories are.

If you’re completely smitted by the pick, the filmmakers are savvy enough to link to a Pay-Pal-enabled donation prompt on their website & are offering tax receipts through a 501(c)3 NGO based in Chicago.  Smart cookies.

Another avenue for film funding came across my interwebs through Kickstarter’s heads up on the in-progress Bob Dorough doc, which is almost done & has a fantastic tiered donation scheme…I chipped in & so should you if you enjoyed School House Rock clips in your yoof &/or are a fan of Charlie Parker & Miles Davis collabs.  The filmmakers have been fantastic at pumping out email updates to the funders, explaining the process, being completely transparent about their financing & licensing challenges.

As documentaries become less of a niche market & more filmmakers start, ahem, documenting the filmmaking process itself, how can artists better use social media, digital video & online funding models to get into more film-loving homes & theatres?  Feel free to comment on your fav doc/fiction film case studies that’ve shown gusto in their business models online.

Honourable mentions & fond reminiscing over LOLs of yore went to many American-election-related clips (Sarah Silverman’s Great Schlep, Barely Political’s Obama Girl meme) & last winter’s brutal Prop 8 melee in California, whose only silver lining/legacy is this over-the-top-star-studded-musical a melodic religious fundamentalist parody.

Celebrity aside, the juice that kept these URLs circulating was the humourous content – what many marketers/communicators love to call ‘sticky’ messaging – transmitted thanks to a wry undertone, quirky theme or flat-out parody.

The need to be *truly* funny was driven home by this week’s Sunlight Foundation blog post about how ineffective standard mass emails are for political/advocacy campaigns.

We’ve become increasingly immune to receiving messages guiltily prodding us into action, making donations or heightening our awareness through this inbox-filling-platform.  Just think – how many emails with witty titles do you delete sight-unseen on the daily?

One of the great things about pumping out newsletter-style emails to your preaching-to-the-converted-list is the metrics that you can mine for unique hits, forwards, open-rates, etc.

Sadly, according to the folks at Sunlight, open rates ain’t what they used to be.  Jake Brewer echoed many consultant/client concerns musing:

“I have a confession to make, though. I really don’t like email that much. I see 30% open rate and think “70% delete rate.” I see 8% click through, and think… “oh jeez.”

Strongly encourage you to check out his entire post as he eerily accurately dissects what has now become the cookie-cutter template for all advocacy/NGO emails:

SUBJ: Something catchy/funny/intriguing/pun to get you to open the email

That prompted an ‘oh jeez’ of my own…guilty as charged.  Often.  Moving beyond cheeky wordplay, what other funny elements can campaign communicators whip out to stand out?

One recent example, which used cheeky language IRL & online, stands out because it focused on the mobile platform’s hottest PYT, Foursquare.

Earthjustice’s San Francisco campaign is now in metro stations to assist their legal efforts to prosecute the oil companies behind the spill. BART stations around SF are displaying this advertisement, prompting transit users to check into a location called “Earthjustice Ad“, which results in an Earthjustice donor chipping in $10.

Many reasons to love this campaign, let’s try to list most of’em here:

• No onus on participants to donate

• BUT campaign message lingers in user’s Foursquare stream…& Earthjustice hopes users’ll scratch curious itches by visiting the NGO’s site…& hopefully/eventually donating themselves…

• By checking into the location, user’s friends’ streams are notified (the kids are calling this ‘viral’ these days)

• More bang-for-buck on ad-buy

• Metrics, metrics, metrics

• Novelty & time-killing aspect of foursquare is a perfect fit for transit downtimes (types the mayor of three streetcar lines…)

Now Earthjustice isn’t about to bonus its staff with a foursquare-funded Faberge egghunt anytime soon.

A quick visit to the registered location page itself yields some underwhelming results:

But, hey, it’s early days & in the grand scheme of things it’s $3,100 that I’d bet Earthjustice wouldn’t receive otherwise from these transit users’ involvement.  (There’s also a ‘Various Locations‘ version, too, with similar uptake).

It’d be great to hear what your predictions are for the next wave of cheeky/funny/quirky advocacy work going & how big of a role will mobile/location-based apps play…