Saturday, December 6, 2014

Toystock 2014 Fallout, Coverage, And Media!!

As hinted over the past week, here at last is our first fallout post from the third annual Toystock fundraiser concert at The Canadian Nightclub this past Sunday! We'll start with some local news coverage, as SooToday's Donna Hopper was among the attendees at the annual Christmas Cheer benefit, posting this article later that night that both outlined the saga of the Kraft Dinner box and the concert at hand. Donna couldn't stay long though, with her photos split between Lorrie Lynn & The Sinners' set and Toystock attendees during and around Santa Claus' arrival. Solid pictures all around though (and in colour), so give them a look above! If you're looking for photos of more of the day's bands, local photographer Roy Iachetta will have you covered, as his Facebook page features a few dozen shots of every act (including Killabeatz) that you can see at this link and here, but I'll give the caveat that the photos are not in chronological order, and are spread out between the two albums linked above. Great photos though, and kudos to Roy for sticking around all day!

In terms of videos, Sault Online's Mike Caruso was also on hand all day to film each band, just like he does each year at Rotaryfest! Note that he didn't get a video of Killabeatz, but to be fair, his mini-sets weren't advertised in advance. His videos were largely uploaded to his YouTube channel over the past week, starting with this news piece that begins with a brief interview by Mike with Toystock co-promoter/Bone Yard frontman Greg Simpson, so what's discussed there? In the interview portion, Greg talks about the event's theme and purpose, how it began, and the charitable causes behind everything, and while it's short, it's informative! The rest of the video features abbreviated clips of all 10 of from Mike's full performance videos, so if you prefer to watch the full videos, this will admittedly be redundant save for the interview. Give it a look below!



To avoid an extremely long post, we won't feature all of the videos that Mike shot in this post, but we'll outline the first few chronologically so you know what happened in the early hours of Toystock III! I'll note off the bat though that Mike's videos are generally of each band's first song, they all look auto-brightened, and they all use multiple camera angles. They're well edited and capture the bands nicely, but on occasion, the audio quality jumps when the camera angle changes. Mike's videos led off with local country/bluegrass act The Stumpy Coldwater Trio covering The Steeldrivers' "Guitars, Whiskey, Guns, and Knives", Mike Case's Junior All Stars covering Hot Chelle Rae's "Tonight Tonight", Lorrie Lynn & The Sinners playing her original "Swear When I Pray", and first for hard rock videos, The Pixo Control playing their original song "Land of the Moles"! One of the guys' more familiar tracks, it was well performed here, and has a well-aged spirit to it, so give it a look below!



Mike's next Toystock videos were of country veterans Thin Ice covering Jason Aldean's "The Only Way That I Know", as well as his own version of all-female classic rockers Domina covering Pat Benatar's "All Fired Up", but we'll close things for today with his video of local alternative/hard rock cover quartet Lucky 13 covering The Cult's "Wild Flower". Definitely better in quality than our video of this song (and of "All Fired Up" too), though Ed's vocals could be a bit more forceful and loud in the mix. We'll recap Mourning Wood, Mannapool, and Bone Yard's videos, plus extra fallout in an upcoming post, so stay tuned for that, and now, here's Lucky 13 on Sunday!



That's all for today, but stay tuned for more news and notes in the coming days! Thanks everyone!

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