WELL HAVE A BETTER LIFE AND DO SOME FUN SHIT (for a good cause)!

The summer’s largest outdoor patio party FOAM (Festival of Art and Music) is going down on Saturday at the Evergreen Brick Works! Beer, S’mores, Taxi Guy vouchers and all kinds of other stuff. Yeah, s’mores, alcohol and beer! Molson is sponsoring the event along with Red Bull, Bacardi, Barefoot, and some other companies to make it the event of the summer! Musicians, artists, DJs and more. It’s going to be like a live mixtape. Oh and there’s also going be tons of food too. Fran’s Restaurant crafting the menu.

Charity? You got it! FOAM is held in support of motionball, which is a not-for-profit that introduces the next generation of supporters to the Special Olympics Canada movement. They’ve already donated over $2.7M to the Special Olympics Canada Foundation!

19+ because teenagers at a party is totally lame. Yeah I said it. It needed to be said. Those fakakta all ages events are always the worst.

Get your tickets now though, word from insiders say they are going quickly and at $35 a pop, it’s a great deal. Oh, and did I mention they have a shuttle service provided from Broadview Station AND from Yonge+College?

Twitter: @FOAM_TO
Facebook:  FoamToronto

Well, let me say this right off the bat… this isn’t some lame horse and pony show. It was actually one of the most impressive shows I’ve seen in Toronto in recent memory… second only to Cirque de Soleil perhaps. See before I walked in, my thought was that this was just going to be a bunch of people on horseback doing tricks… boy was I wrong.

The entire show was crafted to tell an odyssey spanning forests, deserts, winter, floods, and more. The visuals were truly fantastic. The horses, were even more impressive. Many of the horses moved around the stage unassisted and in a very choreographed way. In packs of 5-10 they would know where to go, then know when to split up, when to come back together… it was wild. I can’t even imagine the training that has to go in to making a show like this possible.

Then the performers, they are actively involved in stunts that made me weep. Honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever be in the kind of shape that these people were… As I sat there at intermission eating desserts provided to us with access to the Rendez Vous lounge, I couldn’t help but be mad at myself for eating the treats. Just amazing… especially the twins which I developed a crush on quickly. Go see the show and try not to, guys. Then there was a group of black guys who were flipping, jumping and really creating a fun atmosphere. They added a lot to the fun of the show and often provided great stage comedy for the crowd as well as crowd participation.

Overall, the show was not at all what I was expecting… which was great. I highly recommend checking it out because it really was a great show.

The show runs all through May and into June, if possible, I recommend going for the VIP Rendez Vous experience. Open bar, great food (shrimp, smoked salmon, pasta, chicken) and a dessert and fruit selection at intermission alone will make the added expense well worth it. You can purchase tickets and see show times on the Cavalia website. A great show for all ages. You won’t be disappointed.

It’s apparently pretty highly sought after based on my searches… so I figured, why not share it here in hopes that it helps someone else find the music quicker! I think that’s the great thing about ads using real music, when you pick the right track for your ad, people are going to remember it for a long time. Never discount the power of music!

The track to the William Hill ad is called Rival Consoles by Kid Velo.

William Hill are pretty good at choosing the right music for their ads, another one of theirs that I was looking for about a year ago and found was this:

The first time this every happened to me was for a Toyota car back in Summer of 2005… the ad was original aired in theaters, which I remember because I saw about a dozen movies that summer and that ad was always one of my favourite parts of seeing a movie. I spent months trying to find the track with a little recording I had made on my cellphone at the time…

Here’s that ad…

What about you? Any ads in your memory where the music really connected you to the brand/ad?

Back then I was a teenager, heavily into punk rock (Anti-Flag, Casualties, Protest The Hero, to name a few, but also lighter stuff like the Bouncing Souls, Thursday and Taking Back Sunday. Ehh, punk is a complicated genre, I guess some of that is metal, ska, emo and punk. Whatever.) and saw Rise Against play live at I believe it was the Phoenix. So to have an opportunity to remind myself where I was at a decade ago with a familiar band, seemed like a cool experience.

Sitting in my seat, lower bowl adjacent to the Chairman’s Platinum Club, was a wild experience for this kind of concert. But, I enjoyed it. Rise Against are a really great band, and their music is real music that you can actually get into. It’s not this bullshit Disney music we’re all being fed (with exception of Call Me Maybe, that’s just awesome.) But there I was sitting and enjoying the sounds of live music. Should have been no problem right?

Well, it would have been no problem if I wasn’t sitting behind the naggiest of naggy women. This woman was insistent that I wasn’t properly enjoying the concert. She, on several occasions, felt the need to lean over her chair to make sure that I heard that I was supposed to be doing something different. Then as the concert was coming to it’s end, I went to the washroom and found her approach me directly in the quiet of the Platinum Club hallway where she laid out all the things I did wrong.

Without further ado, allow me to give you her 7 Simple Rules for Going to a Concert…

1. You’re not allowed to sit down. It’s music you need to be on your feet to listen properly and see the music.
2. Clap to the beat. That’s what a concert is for.
3. You should be smiling the entire time. A live concert should be making you smile non-stop.
4. Wearing a band tshirt is a requirement. If the singer sees you at some point and you’re not wearing a band tshirt, that’s not cool.
5. Wearing a jacket at a concert is silly.
6. Concerts aren’t about the music, it’s about the experience.
7. If you don’t buy any merchandise from the bands, you’re an ass.

So there you have it! If you’re planning on ever going to a concert, these are the 7 rules you must follow according to a naggy ninny of a woman.

PS. Rise Against was awesome!