Canadian Music Week and the Indies

Recently, I had the utmost pleasure of missing a week of classes to go to Toronto, because my band Striker was nominated for Best Metal Band of the Year at the Canadian Independent Awards. The awards were in conjunction with Canadian Music Week, where something like over 800 bands from all over Canada and across the world performed in dozens of venues over 5 days. Furthermore, industry conferences were taking place throughout the week, with speakers such as Sammy Hagar (Van Halen), Nikky Sixx (Motley Crue) and Troy Carter (Lady Gaga’s Manager).

…I’ll be completely honest. The week was a blast. But nothing like what I had expected.

Going to Toronto, we all had the general concept that we would be attending the industry conferences as our main focus of the trip. We’ve gone to a similar Industry conference in Calgary and actually learnt quite a bit, so we were quite excited.

So here we are right… 4 metalheads, who all dished out about $600 of own pockets just to fly to Toronto…Sharing two double beds in some over-priced hotel… just so we can go to these industry conferences. So Thursday morning (the first day of presentations) we all show up to the ticket booth, to try and see if we could get into an event. Turns out our awesome nominee passes didn’t get us in for free. Shitty. Turns out, you can’t just attend specific lectures. Extra Shitty. Turns out you have to buy a pass for the entire week. Really? That sucks. Turns out that pass costs $900 A PERSON!!!!!!!! Like WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!

They call it the Independent Awards, for independent (thus poor) bands obviously, and expect us to dish out $3,600 for passes!?!?!?! Blows my mind. After explaining how incredibly poor we were, I think they were willing to go half price because we were nominated, but that’s just $$$ we don’t have. So needless to say, that was a serious game changer.

So what is a band to do? Sit around doing nothing, being sad about expensive passes? Or go around being an awesome metal band getting people’s attention and promoting the band in every way possible? …Well, we went with the latter. Hit the streets, bars, fancy ass hotel (Royal York, where the events took place) with CDs and Electronic Press Kits.

But what trumps absolutely everything, ever, was the awards night on Saturday. Why you ask?

Because we showed up in a limo, filled with smoking hot models. Hands up if you’ve partied in a limo with models!?...yeah…that’s what I thought.

We did lose the award though, to the biggest band on the list- but really- we won the night.

…Favourite quote of the night: “Holy #$!@ what band you guys!?... You guys got styyyyyle!!!!”

Absolute victory. And honestly, the nomination was a huge honour in the first place, and placed us as one of Canada’s top 5 Metal bands. Which is awesome. And will help booking our upcoming Canadian Tour tremendously.

Check us out at www.myspace.com/listentostriker if you feel so inclined!