By Stephanie Horak via StoriesBehindTheSongs.ca

2016 marks The Bovine Sex Club’s 25th Anniversary and yet, for some Torontonians, The Bovine is still a mystery. What’s the deal with the junk? Is it really a sex club? Does Metallica really love to party at The Bovine? Is it a metal bar? Is it true that Bill Murray showed up one night and started pouring drinks? What goes on in there?

What makes The Bovine such an iconic part of Toronto’s music scene is its eclectic history. Opening in 1991 as a DJ club, The Bovine evolved into a live music venue about three years later when bands began asking to play. “You know, we’ve always been a heavy place, but I think in the beginning we thought it’d be more like rock and roll Cheers, just with DJs and recorded music,” says owner Darryl Fine. “Then the emphasis of having all of the live music came when the bands started coming and saying, ‘We should play here.’ So in the first two or three years there was almost no live... Read More

By Jessica Kudas

Q. The Gutter Demons were a very aspiring Canadian psychobilly band and you released 3 albums, the last in 2008. After that you guys decided to take a break from music, how come?
A. We took 6 years off because we had to go back to hell.
Q. What were you guys doing during that time off?
A. We were still doing some music. Flipper kept on playing, he actually was a part of The United Steel Workers of Montreal and played a little bit for a band called LA Dukes which doesn’t exist anymore, but he had a whole bunch of things going on. Pat continued playing a little bit too but now he’s a proud daddy of a little boy so he’s sadly not with us anymore. For me, I took a break completely. I had some personal stuff to take care of on my own. But now we’re back on the road!
Q. What made you guys decide to get back together as Gutter Demons?
A. We sat down one day and we pretty much asked ourselves ‘why not?’ We started rehearsing a little bit to see if the... Read More

Despite those plans to hang it up in 2013, D.O.A. are back on their grind, having just popped out a video for their We Come in Peace send-off "Who The Hell Do You Think You Are."

The vid has Joe Keithley and the rest of his crew cranking out the punk cut in front of a green screen scrolling by unflattering pics of Rob Ford (as seen above), Barack Obama, Richard Nixon and Miley Cyrus, among other targets. In song, Keithley gargles out his qualms about people using valet service, giving lip to their spouses and more.

You can peep D.O.A. sticking to all sorts of characters in the video at the link down below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bSMw3jDMm4... Read More

In My Toronto, we ask musicians to discuss the local artists, institutions, and phenomena that have had a profound influence on them. In this edition, Priya Panda—the garter-belt-clad lead belter for hard-rock heavyweights Diemonds—shines a little light on the dungeons and dives that shaped her band’s tougher-than-leather sound.

R.I.P. 98 Carlaw: This was our jam space from the time we pretty much started Diemonds in 2006, until earlier this year when we hit the road for SXSW and were asked to leave for new tenants. Located in an industrial no-mans land, it’s sandwiched between Leslieville and the Lakeshore, but belongs to neither of those coveted neighbourhoods. The spot was most recently made famous for housing the new and improved Hells Angels Support Wear store and hangout. It’s undoubtedly where we were inspired to create our first record, In the Rough, in 2008. The dark, dingy, concrete bunker of a basement had two huge rooms, a rarity in this city. Ours was in the... Read More

Many bar owners, booking agents and promoters are bemoaning changes to the federal regulations surrounding foreign workers entering Canada which will see them hit with heavier financial burdens that could deal a crippling blow to live music at the club level.

The new rules, which quietly came into effect July 31, will double, triple or even quadruple the cost of bringing in international artists to perform in bars, restaurants or coffee shops, affecting such local venues for music lovers as The Palomino, Ironwood, Broken City, Blues Can, and the Ship & Anchor, and their counterparts across the country.

The regulations require that any venue with a primary business other than music but which also books bands or performers must now pay an application fee of $275 per musician and those travelling with the band (tour manager, sound person, guitar tech, etc.) when it applies for a Labour Market Opinion, or LMO, to allow those outside workers to perform and work in their... Read More