Morning Music Notes – Juno What Happened Last Night?

Juno Awards Recap

Apologizes for the terrible (or brilliant?) pun in the headline – my tea is still brewing. Last night, the Juno Awards were held in Ottawa. Canadian music has done extremely well worldwide over the past few years, making the Juno Awards much more exciting and relevant…until this year. If you recall when PHM listed the Juno nominees, we were none too pleased that TWO of the five Albums of the Year were Christmas albums – that’s laughable (no offense, Michael Buble and Justin Bieber). Even more laughable? When one of those Christmas albums WINS the Juno, beating out the commercial and critical acclaim that was given to Nickelback Drake.

The Junos weren’t well attended by the nominated stars either. Justin Bieber went to the Kids Choice Awards (ouch!), Drake was away on tour (and didn’t have to face the upset in person), and Buble was off recording a Halloween Award set to win next year’s Junos.

WIlliam Shatner, who is 81 (dare I say he looks good for an 81 year old?), was actually decent as host. Best joke? Kicking out Chad Kroeger from Nickelback and joining himself, calling the band NickelShat. Pretty sure that’s what people call them now anyway.

Some of the other winners: The Sheepdogs for best new single (I Don’t Know), Feist for Artist of the Year, Dan Mangan for Best New Artist of the Year, City and Colour (read: Dallas Green) for Best Canadian Songwriter, and Best Dance Record to worldwide phenomenon Deadmau5 Dragonette and Martin Solveig. The Junos head to Regina, Saskatchewan next April for the 2013 Awards.

New Music Festival in Delaware

This new music festivals are popping up everywhere. The latest one – the inaugural Firefly Music Festival in Delaware (via Consequence of Sound). On July 20-22, at the Dover International Speedway, acts such as Jack White, the Killers, the Black Keys, the Flaming Lips, Girl Talk, Death Cab for Cutie, Bombay Bicycle Club, and more will be playing the new, 3-day festival. Camping will be available, and you don’t need flashlights because of all the fireflies. Tickets go on sale this Thursday for $178 USD. Grab them at the Firefly Festival website.

What do Wayne and Garth think about in Delaware? Skip ahead to 1:12 if you don’t want the one minute flashback to the early 90s.

Wayne and Garth Go to Delaware

More April Fools’ Day Pranks on the Web

It’s seems to me that April Fools’ Day in this technological world is becoming more about spoof articles and videos than it is about actual pranks that might fool people. I don’t care either way, because I love comedy, and there were some gems yesterday. In addition to the ones PHM outlined yesterday, here are some other ones that made the rounds.

Gmail Tap – Using Morse Code to Send Messages

Why have 26 letter keys on a cumbersome keyboard when you have a dot and a dash, just like the Morse code? Bonus points for an LL Cool J cameo.

The YouTube Collection

You can now view YouTube videos – on your DVD player! Why have the problem of finding a video on YouTube when you can have the convenience of sorting through DVDs, and mailing in comments by filling in a comment form?

Flickr Dials Back the Resolution

Flickr changes the default of all your uploaded photos to nice, grainy photo from decades past. Check it out.

Google Self-Driving Nascar!

Google might be patenting the self-driving car (which is now legal in the US state of Nevada), but how about the new partnership between Google Racing and Nascar?!

“Having skidded around a parking lot last week myself, I’m pretty sure that none of those test miles were as hard as it will be for one of our cars to hold its own in a field of 43 jacked-up, 800-horsepower beasts screaming down a straightaway within inches of each other at upwards of 200 miles per hour. I can’t imagine a more exciting challenge for our team than to race our autonomous vehicles against their carbon-based competitors.”

Skype for String

It seems like jokes yesterday were either futurist (Virgin, Google Racing) or retro (Flickr, YouTube). Skype falls into the retro pile, with its Skype for String invention.

“To make an audio call:

-Wait for your friend to pick up their cup.
-Lift the cup to your mouth and speak into it clearly.
-Place the cup over your ear to listen to your friend’s response.
-If your friend doesn’t respond, speak more loudly.

Brilliant.

Listen! The Dandy Warhols – Sad Vacation

New music from The Dandy Warhols, ahead of their new April 24th release date of This Machine. The track has been made available for download, but in an effort to minimize my effort, there’s an unofficial SoundCloud link below. It’s still legit (right?).