EXPLODING THE POP EXPLOSION

Safe to say we’ve got a lot of events under our belts in the more well-traveled parts of our country, but what about the sleepy seaside towns, the picturesque nooks and crannies of Canada? Don’t they deserve a little rollicking, a fair share of mistakes? They do!

The Halifax Pop Explosion may be one of the more under-appreciated music festivals but there is really no reason for that. It’s 5 days of shows, parties and donair-gorging in a town with more bars and schools per capita than any other place in Canada, an intersection devoted to pizza, where the streets all slant downward to gently guide you home. Halifax is a place with a special talent for churning out more musicians than it can handle and this is the one time of year most other bands finally get up off their asses and haul-ass out there. To be precise, it is a meeting of the minds if those minds were only concerned with riffs and shreds and falling down until the sun came up. Plus there is a tall-ship on the top of a hill in the middle of town like some ruddy I’s-the-By just got too drunk and forgot it up there.

Us and Jägermeister are kicking things off at the Paragon Theater October 19th, with Oakland’s High On Fire, and Southern rockers Torche and Kylesa. We once heard an unassuming band locked themselves in a utility closet there and had to break out when they came-to the next morning, fleeing the province in all the sloppy likeness of an East Coast hurricane — maybe this time it will be you.