After a successful world tour (Yazoo: Reconnected) that saw her reunited with her old bandmate Vince Clarke of Erasure, I was hoping for a more electric show. Instead we were treated to a handful of hits from her Yaz days (Don't Go, Situation, Only You) interspersed among some lesser-known songs from her solo career, accompanied by a five-piece band.

The crowd was made up of nostalgic couples in their late thirties and forties, most of them men. Not too unlike the Blondie show earlier this year. It was great to see the enthusiastic crowd cheer her on, even though they were sparse in number. The venue could have easily held 1,500 but the show was less than half sold.

I didn't know whether to cringe or laugh when a particularly enthusiastic guy in the front row stood up after each song and hollered in approval, only to sit down again with the rest of the audience until the end of the next song. And so on. The entire show. It's nostalgic acts like this that bring out the giddy fanboy in all of us.

It's so rare nowadays you get a chance to see 1970's gay porn on the silver screen. There's something magical about the jerky camera zooms, the appalling dialogue about "cornholing" and of course the winsome 19-year-olds having bareback sex.

The only thing that could heighten the experience is a live orchestra of some of the top musicians in Canada, including Owen Pallett of 'Final Fantasy'.

Thursday night, 11:30 PM. A Rivoli-esque bar called 'O Patro Vys'.

When I was a kid I was obsessed with Archie Comics. I had 300 of them.

On a fateful trip to New York City, when I was about eleven, I decided to try to find a C.D. by 'The Archies'. They were featured regularly in the comics but their real life music was difficult to find in pre-Napster Toronto.

His Dad was a pioneering hip hop DJ in Edmonton, so I guess it's also in the genes. Cadence Weapon released his debut album Breaking Kayfabe in 2005 and just released the very amazing follow-up Afterparty Babies on various indie labels around the world. The first single "In Search of the Youth Crew" has made it's way around the blogs and it's a perfect blend of futuristic hip hop and underground house. He just got back from a European tour and he also played some of the biggest festivals in the UK this summer.

Cadence Weapon plays Lee's Palace next week. I exchanged some words with Rollie about his goals as an artist, his new album, and plans to form a futuristic power gang.

The album in question is their first full length CD release and this whole shebang will be going down in the swanky Centuries Lounge which can be found in the basement of The Old Lady of Shuter Street herself, Massey Hall!

But before you go any further, you may want to catch up on our story thus far...

Thursday morning, 1:30 AM. Montreal's Portuguese Association.

The crowd wobbled like a large, amorphous junkie. It was begging the empty stage for a hit of filthy electro pop.

In the past two years, Motionographer has grown to be one of the best online sources for motion graphic work. From high-end to student-based work, you can surely find some inspiration there any day of the week. As a result, the site has evolved into a great community for artists and enthusiasts in the animation/motion-graphic industry.

A few days ago, Toronto's own Woodhands were featured with their new video for I Wasn't Made For Fighting, one of my favourtie songs from their album Heart Attack.

Known for being a band with strong leftist political views (you may remember their somewhat startling video launch on the PETA site for the 2006 song "Ready to Fall"), the timing of the tour (right the middle of bitter election battles on both sides of the border) couldn't be better.

Want to see them live on Friday? blogTO has a pair of tickets to give away.

Both residing in Roncesvalles Village, and pretty much across the street from eachother, neither Stephan nor Eric are new to the music business. With several years of experience under their belts, both bands have played regularly in Toronto and all over Canada with no signs of stopping. Coming together in this new project to croon about love, loss, and everything in between, their sound is solid, smooth, and romantic. You'd never guess that weeks prior they were screaming and thrashing around on stage in front of hundreds of excited rock fans.

I grabbed Stephan and Eric for a quick chat about their joint project.

But to double your Pop-ish pleasure, I also have the 5th and final preview in this series lined up below. Just click the giant play button:

Podcast | Get the podcast here.
iTunes | Add the Weekend Playlist Podcast to iTunes.
RSS | Add the Weekend Playlist Podcast feed to your RSS Reader.
Search | Search the audio on Podzinger.

Or click on over to Midnight Poutine for the full lineup of tracks in this podcast.

Photo of Spiral Beach by edwardfwong in the blogTO Flickr Pool.

Earlier, during a one hour media scrum I cornered a few of tonight's nominees and asked them for their predictions on who was going to walk away with tonight's $20,000 prize. Watch raw videos below of Shad, Caribou and Holy Fuck. Here's Caribou's Daniel Snaith:

Chad Vangaalen's recently release album Soft Airplane has been called "wistfully grim" and has garnered some much-deserved front-page attention.

blogTO has a few CDs to pass on to our music readers, and a pair of tickets to the show. All you have to do is have good timing and tell us how she found them and she killed them...