IllScarlett @ Tattoo Rock Parlour

So Canadian Music Week. It was a long three days but it was three very interesting and very exciting days.Thursday March 10th was my first day covering Canadian Music Week and Canadian MusicFest. And it was definitely far from uninteresting!

The day started off with the Celebrity Interviews with Nikki Sixx and meeting up with my fellow crazies @Zebraprintsky and @frontrowlady. The one hour interview was informative and interesting and although I've never been a Motley Crue or Nikki Sixx fan I was engaged and thorougly enjoyed everything he'd said throughout. A post about his interview will be posted seperately, later on.

Next stop was helping Zebraprintsky film some interviews with Monday Rose's Ari Lyon, and the boys (Ash and Human Kabob) behind the music of USS, and then finally Alex Norman of Illscarlett before we headed out to see Ryan Malcolm's band Low Level Flight and then scooted BACK to Tattoo Rock Parlour to see the highlight of the night, Illscarlett.

If I had to choose one phrase to describe their shows it would have to be 'out of control'. No matter how many times you see them live, their energy is always off the charts and the crowd easily reciprocates. Sticking to mostly familiar songs like "Mary Jane", "Nothing Special", "Life of a Soldier" and "Rally" they really got the crowd pumping.


The Tattoo Rock Parlour was electric. The venue itself is unique as it's a bar and a tatto parlour so to add great music, it's just something special. I'd been there the year before to see 100 Monkeys perform and while they were just as good, they didn't have the spark that our hometown hereos Illscarlett posessed.

While they did play a few new songs, I felt that they were still playing it safe by sticking to their guns and playing what they knew the crowd would love. I personally have nothing wrong with that but it would have been nice to hear what they've been working on for the last little while. I'm sure the crowd would have agreed with me. Nonetheless, the songs they did perform were full of life, feeling and of course authenticity.

Overall it was a rocking good time full of crowd surfing, a few joints (anybody who was there couldn't deny it) and an at capacity crowd going a little crazy. Illscarlett lit up the night and was a great way to end off day one of Canadian Music Week 2011.