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18-916: The band's core members, Dave MacKinnon and Brian Poirier, were members of the early 1990s alternative rock band Dig Circus alongside Mark Hansen, James Julien and Dave Dreveny. That band released three albums independently, but broke up in the mid-1990s before achieving any mainstream success. They subsequently joined with Ron Hawkins of The Lowest of the Low to form the band Hummer for a one-album project in 1997 before launching Fembots. The Fembots were performing in Toronto by 1998. Their live show included analogue tape loops and prerecorded sound clips. Fembots' first album, Mucho Cuidado introduced their distinctive style of music with toys and power tools as instruments in their songs. Small Town Murder Scene , released in 2003, sounded more commercial than their debut, but

36-411: A four-song demo containing songs that were later recorded by his next band, The Rusty Nails. In 1995, he released his first solo album, The Secret of My Excess . The musicians on this release—Lawrence Nichols (vocals), Christopher Plock (saxophones), Michael Kaler (aka Blitz) (bass)—soon became known as The Rusty Nails, and were joined by Rob Fenton (saxophone, violin), and Mark Hansen (drums). Mark Hansen

54-446: A print edition in 2009, continuing as a web-only publication. The website briefly suspended publication in summer 2011, but its acquisition by andPOP, a Canadian entertainment news website, was announced on November 1, 2011. In 2013, andPop was in turn acquired by Channel Zero . The site laid off its staff in 2017. In 1996, 2000 and 2005, the magazine conducted polls of readers, musicians and music industry professionals to determine

72-505: Is also an accomplished painter. The Lowest of the Low sold over 100,000 copies of their two independent releases , Shakespeare My Butt and Hallucigenia . Shakespeare My Butt was voted by Canadians as one of the Top 10 Canadian Albums of all time by Chart magazine. The band broke up in 1994. After The Lowest of the Low broke up, Hawkins formed The Leisure Demons with former Squirrel drummer Stephen Keeping. The Leisure Demons recorded

90-461: The Low reunited. They performed a reunion tour, which resulted in the live album Nothing Short of a Bullet . They later recorded another album, Sordid Fiction , before splitting up again in 2007. The Lowest of the Low continue to play sporadic shows to this day, including a tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of their most famous album, Shakespeare My Butt , which culminated at Massey Hall on May 7, 2011. The band reformed again and recorded Do

108-587: The Minotaurs (who would join Fembots for their next album). The City moved the FemBots sound in a new direction, as they used more traditional instruments, while maintaining the distinctive emotion and creativity found in their previous albums. The City signifies their experiences in their hometown, Toronto , the good and the bad--"Demolition Waltz", for example, is about the loss of neighborhoods. The City

126-642: The Right Now in September 2017 and Agitpop in 2019. Exclaim! magazine, writing about the album 10 Kinds of Lonely (2009), notes that "the spontaneous results confirm his status as one of our best wordsmiths". Bob Wiseman joined him on keyboards to perform the record live. In 2011 he formed a new band, the Do Good Assassins. They released a double CD, Rome , in 2012 and Garden Songs in 2015. The song "Peace and Quiet" from Garden Songs

144-487: The album was to make it using solely junkstruments, aided by the expertise of their new member, Iner Souster. However, junkstruments could not sustain an entire album and they were used as rhythm tracks. Souster and Lawr also contributed to the songwriting process, a first for Mackinnon and Poirier. The album was released on September 16, 2008, and they toured Canada to promote it. Although never formally breaking up, FemBots became inactive following that album; members spent

162-538: The magazine's Top 50 chart even though its status as the official NCRA chart was transferred to the new publication !earshot . The magazine's primary focus was Canadian alternative rock and indie rock , although they profiled important international acts, and rap and pop music acts as well. At its peak, the magazine had a press run of 40,000 copies per issue, making it the largest paid circulation music magazine in Canada in its era. The magazine ceased publishing

180-461: The next several years as touring session musicians with The Weakerthans . On February 11, 2010, they played a "reunion" show at the Wavelength 500 Festival. ( Wavelength Music Arts Projects ) Iner Souster joined the band Detroit Time Machine and opened an art gallery in Toronto. Nathan Lawr remains with the Minotaurs. The Fembots music is used in the 2009 film Jackpot, and is the soundtrack for

198-601: The site's staff. The site's content is no longer available live online, the domain has been taken over by a usurping commercial website unrelated to music. Much of the old content is still available as web archives at the Wayback Machine . Launched in 1991 as National Chart , the magazine was started by York University students Edward Skira and Nada Laskovski as a tipsheet and airplay chart for campus radio stations in Canada. The magazine soon grew to include interviews, CD reviews and other features. National Chart

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216-476: The true-crime documentary series Farm Crime (2018–). Ron Hawkins Ronald James Hawkins is a musician from Toronto who is best known as a member of the band The Lowest of the Low . He has also released music as a solo artist, and fronted the bands Ron Hawkins and the Rusty Nails and Ron Hawkins and the Do Good Assassins . He has produced albums for multiple independent bands and artists and

234-410: The weekly shows saw Hawkins play every song in his entire catalog before moving on to request nights and themed evenings. Chart (magazine) Chart Attack was a Canadian online music publication. Formerly a monthly print magazine, it was called Chart and published from 1991 to 2009. Online content ceased to be updated sometime between mid 2017 to 2019, after which owner Channel Zero laid off

252-505: Was a member of the Toronto band Dig Circus , which was mentioned in a Lowest of the Low song. The Rusty Nails spent much of 1996 and 1997 touring in support of The Secret of My Excess . In September 1998 their first album, Greasing the Star Machine, was released independently, and was followed by Crackstatic in 2000. The band supported Billy Bragg , The Violent Femmes , Cracker and Big Sugar on tours. In 2000, The Lowest of

270-431: Was also praised by critics. In support of this album, FemBots toured with The Weakerthans and Arcade Fire . The director Malcolm Ingram used five songs from "Small Town Murder Scene" in his 2006 documentary Small Town Gay Bar . For The City , their third album recorded in the spring of 2005, Mackinnon and Poirier collaborated with Krista Muir , Lawrence Nichols and drummers Mark Hansen and Nathan Lawr, frontman for

288-509: Was considered an internal publication for the National Campus and Community Radio Association , Canada's association of campus radio stations, and was not available as a newsstand title. When Skira and Laskovski graduated, they incorporated Chart as an independent magazine, and began to pursue national newsstand distribution. Although it was no longer an NCRA publication, many campus radio stations continued to file airplay reports for

306-528: Was extremely well received by critics. While making their 2008 album, Calling Out , FemBots contributed two songs to the 2007 film The Tracey Fragments , a soundtrack done by Canadian supergroup Broken Social Scene . The band's music was also the soundtrack for the 2007 Ed Gass-Donnelly film This Beautiful City . Calling Out signified a big change for the band, as they moved from Paper Bag Records , their record label for their first three studio albums , to weewerk records. The initial idea for

324-602: Was played prior to every home game at Air Canada Centre for the Toronto Maple Leafs for the 2015–16 and 2016-17 seasons. Hawkins's sixth solo album, Spit Sputter and Sparkle , was released in 2016 on Pheromone Recordings. In 2020, with Canada and much of the world in lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic, Hawkins began hosting live shows broadcast from his living room for fans to watch. Dubbed "Tommy Douglas Tuesdays" (named in tribute to Tommy Douglas for his role in bringing universal health care to Canada),

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