Canadian Music Week is almost over and we needed a pop fix, so we rocked up to the soon-to-be-closed Kool Haus to see some pure pop fun, including Alyssa Reid, MAGIC!, Kristina Maria, Tegan and Sara and headliner Ellie Goulding. Aside from the obvious snafu of making an English artist the headliner of a big CMW event (full disclosure: this event was organized by CHUM, a CBC competitor), the lineup was nothing to sneeze at. A night of pop goodness was promised and delivered to a sold out - and very diverse - crowd. Here are seven things you missed.

1. Alyssa Reid promised to follow anyone who followed her on Instagram

Not sure how effective this method was, but the pop star who gained international radio play with her ode to Heart's "Alone" (her version was called "Alone Again") made a promise and we hope she keeps it. 

2. MAGIC! and their blue-eyed reggae

MAGIC! exploded onto the world scene a few months ago with their ridiculously catchy tune "Rude", which sounds like a poppy Police track. The Toronto band found massive success in Australia before "Rude" caught on here, but the crowd was on board and very screechy when MAGIC! played their number one hit. If you like pop music, listen to MAGIC! - their (very confident) lead singer Nasri Atweh writes songs for everyone from Justin Bieber to David Guetta to Shakira.

3. Kristina Maria's odd set

Juno-nominated pop singer Kristina Maria is best known for songs "Let's Play" and "Move Like a Soldier". Her performance was a bit awkward (it seemed like she might be having technical difficulties), but she soldiered on. (Get it?)

4. A lot of dancing

No hipster pretence here, folks. The crowd loved a good dance move, even when no artists were performing. It was a Top 40 kind of event, and everyone was on board to have fun. Ellie Goulding even did the running man during her set.

5. Tegan and Sara rocking the Haus

Music industry veterans Tegan and Sara (who are headlining this summer's CBC Music Festival) gave an amazing performance of songs from Heartthrob. (Though, as true fans we really wanted to see some of the old stuff.) The ever-charming monochrome twins did, however, play with tons of energy and the crowd loved every second of it.

6. Ellie Goulding putting on a proper pop show

Say what you want about Goulding's somewhat divisive raspy vocals, the woman puts on a good show. Her hip thrusting, head banging, jumping around was well received by a crowd who had no problem chanting "Ellie! Ellie!" before she took to the stage. A mini-version of her headlining tour, the stage production was impressive, with a great light show and a talented bevy of supporting musicians. 

7. A couple standout covers

Tegan and Sara played a fun and uplifting cover of Pete Townsend's "Let My Love Open the Door" to a rabid crowd (some of whom may not have ever heard of Townsend). Ellie Goulding, who shines brightest when playing up the strength of her voice, played a minimalist electro cover of Alt-J's "Tesselate", which may have been lost on the audience, but was a highlight of her otherwise high-energy set. 

It sounds like a joke: an American brass band on tour in France pulls over on a highway and starts playing for a herd of cows.

But in reality, when the members of the New Hot 5 stopped for a rest and decided to put on an impromptu show for a group of cows out to pasture, they couldn't have imagined the reception they would get.

Check it out:

Welcome to In Tune, your weekly classical news feed on CBC Radio 2. Saturdays at noon, Katherine Duncan shares the classical music and musicians people are listening to and talking about, here in Canada and around the world. Here are the stories she's covering this week:

Jeanne Lamon is retiring from Tafelmusik after 33 years with a series of special concerts and a limited edition commemorative CD.

Don't forget about Mother's Day. Even if you think it's a Hallmark holiday it's as good a day as any to thank the person who sang you to sleep as a baby.

Sad news for fans of cellist Julian Lloyd Webber. He's given up performing because of a serious neck injury.

The original manuscript for Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2 is going up for auction. Imagine owning the actual score that Rachmaninoff used to conduct the premiere and the original source of a pretty famous pop tune.

Vancouver's Sound of Dragon Festival is on this weekend. It celebrates traditional Chinese music and instruments and the way Chinese artists have influenced new music composers and performers.

Who will be crowned the next Chor Leoni idol? Vancouver's male voice choir is holding a karaoke night to raise funds.

The Colorado Symphony is planning a BYOM event. Now that marijuana is legal in the state the industry is getting into corporate sponsorship. The first concert of the "Classical Cannabis: The High Note Series" is scheduled for May 23.

Canadian Running Magazine has a feature about Symphony Nova Scotia bass player Max Kasper. He and some of the other orchestra members are training for the Bluenose Marathon in Halifax, and raising funds for the SNS education programs.

We probably couldn't write one if we tried, but we all know one when we hear it. A smash. A jam. A hit song. But in the case of these little gems, just what were we thinking? How did these songs manage to top the charts?

Check out the 15 worst best songs to hit the top of the charts. Ever.

As a lot of great music discovery stories go, singer-songwriter Haley Bonar’s begins at an open mic. In her case, however, that open mic was run by Low’s Alan Sparhawk, who proceeded to pull the 19-year-old musician from obscurity onto Low’s tour the very next day.

In the decade since, Bonar’s released eight more recordings, toured, won awards and collaborated with the likes of Dave King (Flogging Molly), Andrew Bird and Justin Vernon (Bon Iver).

Last War, her fifth LP (out May 20, you can pre-order it on iTunes), takes Bonar’s sound in a darker direction and features guest vocals from Vernon (“From a Cage,” “Eat for Free”). It was recorded in part at Dave Grohl’s 606 Studio in L.A.

Watch the video for the title track below.

Listen to Dolly Parton's new album, Blue Smoke, for one more day.

Last week, we spoke to Dolly Parton about her career and her new album. She dropped plenty of wisdom, including this pearl.

(Brendon Thorne/Getty Images; design by Samantha Smith/CBC Music)

Some live shows create an unexpected ripple effect. They're talked about for years after the fact, held as a benchmark and influence other concerts that come after them.

Other shows are just really strange, and get talked about for years because people can't believe they happened.

This list has shows that represent both sides of that equation, from the ridiculous to the sublime.

Follow Chris Dart on Twitter: @ChrisDartCOTF

Montreal electro-funk duo Chromeo release their new album, White Women, today.

Described by the band as “Larry David funk” (think funky and macho music but with self-conscious and even funny lyrics), it’s the duo’s most realized album to date, complete with some high-profile guest collaborations from Solange, Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig and Toro Y Moi.

“The crucial thing on this album is that we had a lot of time, so we took a lot of time,” says Patrick “P-Thugg” Gemaye, who plays synth and rocks the talk box. He adds that, for this album, he and singer/guitarist David “Dave 1” Macklovitch also worked in the same city, which is uncommon for them. “We worked together every day, in the same room, 12 hours a day for a year and a half. It was double the effort on everything: recording, songwriting, vocal arrangements, every aspect of it.”

While the album definitely sees the duo pushing themselves to the next level, it’s thankfully not a stylistic departure: there’s funk, there’s disco, there’s Hall and Oates-style soft rock. It’s the perfect soundtrack for the coolest summer ever, so in light of that, we asked P-Thugg to share his top five electro-funk slow jams of all time. And he doesn’t disappoint, going deep into the annals of funk for his picks. Check out his answers in the gallery above.

Follow Jesse Kinos-Goodin on Twitter: @JesseKG

Why should Vitamin C and Green Day get all the attention?

We think that the Canadian indie music world has plenty of songs worthy of being played at prom dances and graduation ceremonies, so we set out to find 10 appropriate picks.

So what makes a good prom song? We kept the following criteria in mind:

1. You should be able to dance to it! Slow or fast, shouldn't matter.

2. It has a catchy chorus or tag with lyrics that tug at your heartstrings.

3. It should give you a healthy dose of nostalgia when you sing or dance along to it with all your friends, whether it's on that night or five, 10, 25 years into the future. 

So here is our list of Canadian songs that should be played at proms, but probably aren't. Click on the photo gallery above to sort through, and press play below to hear them.

Any other songs you think should be played at prom or graduation ceremonies? Tweet us @CBCRadio3 with #PromSongs.

Each day, Rich Terfry and Radio 2 Drive wraps up your day with music and stories about the interesting things going on in the world. 

REAR VIEW MIRROR: 

Each week on Rear-view Mirror, Rich Terfry and the Radio 2 team look back at a great R&B/soul song from the good ol’ days. In today's story, we look at the protest song disguised as a joke, the Coasters' "Run, Red, Run."

When you think of protest songs in pop music, you probably think of the '60s and acts like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. But before all of that, there was a song released in 1959 by, of all groups, the Coasters.

The Coasters started out as a doo-wop group and became known for novelty songs like "Charlie Brown" and "Yakety Yak." But they, and the songwriting team behind them, had something to say, too.

"Run Red Run" is essentially a song about civil rights, wrapped up in the Coasters' signature comedic style. On the surface, it tells the story of a man named Red, who teaches a monkey how to gamble and get drunk. But a closer look reveals a song about racism, challenging stereotypes and overcoming oppression and injustice.

It was written by the team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who wrote not only many of the band's signature hits, but some of the biggest songs in rock 'n' roll history - songs like "Stand By Me," "Jailhouse Rock" and "Hound Dog."

Asked about the meaning of the song, Leiber said "once the monkey knows how to play poker, he knows how to understand other things. And once he understands that he's being cheated and exploited, he becomes revolutionary."

The twist in the tale, and perhaps the strongest moment in the song, comes when the Coasters frontman Carl Gardner sings the line "Monkey said Red/ you made a man out of me/ now I'm going to make a monkey out of you." You can hear Gardner's wicked smile and his satisfaction as he sings the line.

The protest era in pop music was still several years away in 1959, so the genius of the song is that it's veiled as a novelty song and given a pop polish. It wasn't the biggest hit the Coasters ever had, but it did crack the top 40. So here it is, perhaps the very first pop protest song from the most unlikely of sources.

 

Here are some other great editions of Rear-view Mirror:

The Clash/London Calling

Phil Spector and the Ronnettes/Be My Baby

Os Mutantes/Ando Meio Desligado

The Diamonds/Little Darlin

Captain Beefheart/Yellow Brick Road

Elton John/Bennie and the Jets

Hank Williams/Long Gone Lonesome Blues

R.E.M./What's the Frequency, Kenneth?

Tom Waits/Jockey Full of Bourbon

Neil Diamond/Sweet Caroline

The Who/Pinball Wizard

Buffalo Springfield/For What It's Worth

Five Man Electrical Band/Signs

Band Aid/Do They Know It's Christmas

John Lennon/Imagine

The Ugly Ducklings/Nothin

Bob Dylan/Tangled Up In Blue

The Beatles/Norwegian Wood

The Pursuit of Happiness/I'm An Adult Now

Bruce Springsteen/Born To Run

Arcade Fire/Wake Up

Gnarls Barkley/Crazy

Big Joe Turner/Shake Rattle and Roll

Martha and the Muffins/Echo Beach

Wilson Pickett/In The Midnight Hour

The Band/The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

Fleetwood Mac/Go Your Own Way

The Animals/House of the Rising Sun

Ian and Sylvia/Four Strong Winds

James Brown/Please Please Please

John Cougar Mellencamp, 'Pink Houses'

Leonard Cohen/Suzanne

The Ramones/I Wanna Be Sedated

Blue Rodeo/Try

The Guess Who/American Woman

U2/I Still Have't Found What I'm Looking For

Janis Joplin/Me and Bobby McGee

Gordon Lightfoot "If You Could Read My Mind"

The Byrds "Eight Miles High"

Simon and Garfunkel "The Sound of Silence"

Bill Haley and his Comets "Rock Around The Clock"

The Velvet Underground "I'm Waiting For The Man"

Johnny Cash "Folsom Prison Blues"

Bobby Fuller "I Fought The Law"

Big Star "September Gurls"

The Hollies "Bus Stop"

Joy Division "Love Will Tear Us Apart"

Booker T and the MGs "Green Onions"

Jimi Hendrix "Hey Joe"

Neil Young "Rockin' in the Free World"

Dolly Parton "Jolene"

The Left Banke "Walk Away Renee"

Lou Reed "Walk On The Wild Side"

James Taylor "Fire And Rain"

The Clash "Should I Stay or Should I Go"

Marvin Gaye "Sexual Healing"

Radiohead "Paranoid Android"

M.I.A. "Paper Planes"

The Animals "We Gotta Get Out of this Place"

Dusty Springfield "Son of a Preacher Man"

Screamin' Jay Hawkins "I Put A Spell On You"

Cheap Trick "Surrender"

Mott The Hoople "All the Young Dudes"

Beach Boys "Sloop John B"

Amy Winehouse "Rehab"

New York Dolls "Personality Crisis"

Modern Lovers "Roadrunner"

George Jones "He Stopped Loving Her Today"

Bruce Springsteen "Born in the USA"

The Beatles "With A Little Help From My Friends"

Rolling Stones 'Miss You'

The Coasters 'Run Red Run'

Elvis Costello, 'Alison'

James Brown, 'Hot (I Need to be loved loved loved)'

Inner Circle, 'Tenement Yard'

Ray Charles, 'I Don't Need No Doctor'

Curtis Mayfield, 'Freddy's Dead'

Gang Starr, 'Beyond Comprehension'

Bo Diddley, 'Bo Diddley'

Aretha Franklin, 'Rocksteady'

CCR, 'Have You Ever Seen the Rain'

Howlin' Wolf, 'Smokestack Lightning'

Bobby Womack, 'Across 110th Street'

Roy Orbison, 'In Dreams'

Foggy Hogtown Boys, 'Man of Constant Sorrow'

Pink Floyd, 'Wish You Were Here'

Neil Young, 'Cortez The Killer'

Bob Dylan, 'Subterranean Homesick Blues'

Little Eva, 'Loco-Motion'

Elvis Costello, 'Watching the Detectives'

Jimmy Cliff, 'The Harder They Come'

The Verve, 'Bittersweet Symphony'

Roberta Flack, 'Killing Me Softly with his Song'

R.E.M., 'Radio Free Europe'

Radiohead, 'No Surprises'

Led Zeppelin, 'Ramble On'

Rolling Stones, 'Beast of Burden'

Glen Campbell, 'Wichita Lineman'

JUNK IN THE TRUNK:

Rock climbing bears: 

Australian shower surprise: 

Dog with a case of Beatlemania: 

RICH'S PICK: "Pretty Polly" by Lee Sexton:

MARK'S PICK: Lauren Mann and the Fairly Odd Folk! Your Searchlight 2014 winners!

In 2002, Eminem stirred up controversy when he called his mom a "bitch" on vitriol-fueled song Cleanin' Out My Closet,' from The Eminem Show. Now the rapper apologizes and says he went too far in a new video for "Headlights," released on Mother's Day.

Directed by Spike Lee, the video features the 41-year-old rapper reuniting with his mother, Debbie Mathers, for a hug. 

"Headlights" was included on last year's The Marshall Mathers LP 2 and deals with Eminem's regret for the way things turned out. "I'm sorry, Mama, for "Cleaning Out My Closet," at the time I was angry. Rightfully maybe so, never meant that far to take it though. ... That song I no longer play at shows and I cringe every time it's on the radio," he raps.

Watch the video below.

For the final day of Canadian Music Week, punk rock supergroup Off! played Lee's Palace along with Australian band Twelve Foot Ninja, Toronto's Organ Thieves, London, Ontario's Single Mothers and Brooklyn-based Cerebral Ballzy. 

For those of you who don't know, Off! is fronted by former Circle Jerks and Black Flag vocalist Keith Morris, and features the Burning Brides' Dimitri Coates on guitar, Redd Kross' Stephen Shane McDonald on bass and Rocket from the Crypt's Mario Rubacalba on drums.

Here's what you missed.

1. The magic weirdness of Single Mothers’ frontman Drew Thompson

In addition to having a delivery that moves between snotty old school punk and borderline spoken word, Drew Thompson is a wonder to watch on stage. He poses like Freddy Mercury, thrusts, rolls around on the floor and waggles his butt at the audience. He doesn’t even stop moving between songs.

2. Cerebral Ballzy being everything you want in a hardcore band

Every song by Brooklyn punks Cerebral Ballzy is introduced with something like "this song is about skateboarding," or "this is about a girl we know," and is a two-minute long burst of intense sonic violence, helmed by a man who looks like a scarecrow and sounds like the Tazmanian Devil. It's amazing.

3. Cerebral Ballzy having an ongoing dialogue with the sound man

As much as they sound like a an old school, DIY New York hardcore band, Cerebral Ballzy sure seemed to be fussy. Over the course of their half hour set, they asked for more reverb on the mic and more guitar in the vocal monitor at least twice, more vocals in the guitar monitor, "more guitars everywhere" and less guitar in the drum monitor.

5. Keith Morris proving that age is indeed a state of mind

While he may be in his fifties, Off! frontman is just as high energy, just as angry and just as razor sharp as he was 30 years ago. He still mocks the crowd constantly, he still sings like a man possessed, and he still really hates Black Flag guitarist Greg Ginn. (Off!'s "I Got News for You" is the punk version of a diss track, aimed squarely at Ginn.)

5. People losing their mind for new music from old guys

Generally, when a veteran artist plays new material, that's when everyone heads to the bar. With Off!, that doesn't happen. People are there for the express purpose of hear a group of guys in their late 30s through mid 50s play new punk music. No one came out wanting to hear Morris sing "Group Sex." (Although if he did, that would be cool, too.)

6. One man’s repeated stage diving failures

Going down on your back is always better than landing on your stomach, and your angle was way too low. All four times.

7. Punk as a intergenerational affair

The audience was equal parts 40-plus '70s and '80s punk scene veterans, 30-something members of the Warped Tour generation of '90s punk revivalists and kids who were almost certainly at their first 19-plus show. The bands covered a similar spread, from youngsters Cerebral Ballzy to cranky oldsters like Morris. We ran into at least one father-son combo in the crowd. It's nice to see multiple generations getting down together. It was almost like a family reunion, albeit one with way, way more slam dancing.

This series asks songwriters to describe their writing process, and what influences them. Here, songwriting legend Dolly Parton: 

“I don’t know that my [songwriting] process has changed much through the years. I can write anywhere, any time, for any reason.

If I get commission to write something, say for instance when I did the musical 9 to 5, I had to buckle down and do that tailor-made for what they needed and wanted. But left to my own, I love to just come up with thoughts and ideas. I carry a little tape recorder and [have a] notepad handy all the time so I can put down a melody if something comes to me and I don’t have time to work it then. Same with a few lines or chorus or somethin’ of a song.

But my favourite thing to do is to be able set aside some time every year, a couple of weeks, to say, ‘Don’t bother me. I’m going away. I’m going to go write songs,’ and where I can actually do that day in and day out until I get tired of that.

I have a couple places, I have my old mountain home in east Tennessee... and it’s really set up really nice. If I’m working on something with a back home kind of feeling or a country album, I love especially to go there. I have a great little lake house in Nashville so I spend a lot of time there, and I have a little place in Los Angeles, that if I’m writing the more uptown kind of songs, there I do well kind of getting in a freer, more uptown state of mind. So I actually just pick little places where I think I would like to write and I’ve been blessed to be able to find those pretty easy, but I can write a song in the bathtub if I need to, and often have!”

First Play: Preview Dolly Parton's new album, Blue Smoke

In 1989, Roy Orbison's Mystery Girl was a bittersweet posthumous release. Though 25 years have passed, the fantastic anniversary edition, Mystery Girl Deluxe (which you can listen to above one week in advance), fills the soul with warmth and the throat with a touch of choked-up melancholia. Orbison knew the sound of beauty so perfectly, and all its complex nuances (tension, loss, loneliness). One can't help but wish his life hadn't been cut short at 52 years old.

Coming just two months after his 1988 death, Mystery Girl radiated love, longing and gratitude. On Orbison's part, the country-pop crooner was still almost dizzy with bliss that his comeback had lasted long enough to become a glorious second act. He was touring and recording, despite massive exhaustion, right up to his final moments.

After his passing, Orbison's famous musician friends (Tom Petty, T-Bone Burnett and Bono, to name a few) rallied and readied Mystery Girl for a speedy release. The album took its name from the chorus of "She's a Mystery to Me," penned for Orbison by Bono and the Edge and the first track, "You Got It," became an instant hit.

Mystery Girl Deluxe delivers on the promise of its name. There are 19 audio tracks, including previously unreleased studio and work-tape demos which offer great behind-the-scenes glimpses and takes of the songs as works in progress. The major draw, though, is the previously unheard track "The Way is Love." Orbison's three sons stripped it of everything but his vocals and added their own guitars, drums and backing vocals. The junior Orbisons recorded in their dad's friend's studio — the Man in Black, Johnny Cash, and recruited John Carter Cash to play guitar. 

The album releases May 19 and is available for pre-order here. 

In the early years following the Cold War, Billy Joel was one of the very few American musicians allowed entry into the motherland. That makes his 1987 concert in Leningrad, commemorated on the new concert DVD, A Matter of Trust: The Bridge to Russia, a fairly historic moment.

As such, Joel did not disappoint his Russian fans. During a barber-shop-quartet-style rendition of "For the Longest Time," a typically pretty mellow song, he dove into the audience and crowd surfed, all while finishing the verses. Watch it below.

"I can't believe I did that," he said after being returned to the stage. Frankly, neither can we. "And So It Goes" always seemed like his most mosh-worthy song.

Of course Tom Waits loves Jolie Holland. Her voice is like raw honeycomb, luxurious and tough, and it's the perfect anchor for the rambling guitar licks and cacophonous arrangements that propel her new album, Wine Dark Sea. Listen to it by clicking on the player above, one week before its May 19 release via Anti-. You can pre-order the album here.

The songs shift from fully realized blues-soaked burners to sparse broken ballads that you might hear tumbling out of the quiet aftermath of one of those Before Sunrise nights, when you meet a stranger and dance around love and mystery and what-ifs until the morning breaks.

Holland, one of the founders of Vancouver's the Be Good Tanyas, alternately drawls, purrs and snaps her way through the songs, with almost dizzyingly insular effects, adrift in a real wine dark sea of her making. But it's not a sober, sombre affair. Rather Holland's sense of humour creeps through in various delightful ways, be it in the odd tensions of her band's rhythms or the vernacular of her crooked, lyrical poetry. Even the liner notes are rife with gems, such as fantastic credits like "the more artful and beautiful guitar," a "backwards piano moment" and "space cows coming home to roost." 

Come hang out with me on Twitter: @_AndreaWarner

So, here's what happened in the world of live music this weekend.

New York City paid tribute to proto-house DJ Larry Levan

The good folks at the Red Bull Music Academy closed a block of King Street in New York's Hudson Square neighbourhood, in front of the former location of Larry Levan's Paradise Garage nightclub. They threw a giant dance party, featuring Levan's colleagues like François K and David DePino, as part of a larger initiative to name the same block Larry Levan Way. The whole thing was streamed over the internet.

If you don't know who Larry Levan is, click here.

Burlington's Sound of Music festival is going to be the most Canadian thing ever

The Sheepdogs, Sloan, Gord Downie, Classified, Teenage Head and Maestro Fresh Wes are among the dozens of acts who will play what's being billed as Canada's largest free music festival. The party will run from June 12-15, and is sponsored by Tim Horton's.

Morrissey and Tom Jones played a show in Los Angeles

The Pope of Mope kicked off a new tour last week, and while he won't be playing Canada, he brought Tom Jones along to open for him. No, you're thinking of the right Tom Jones.

Lily Allen is taking Sheezus on the road

Lily Allen will be touring North America for the first time in over five years this fall, in support of her new album, Sheezus. The tour includes three Canadian dates, in Montreal and Toronto on Sept. 27 and 28, and in Vancouver on October 5.

Dave Bidini, a founding member of the Rheostatics, is releasing his third album with his solo project BidiniBand on May 29, but you can stream it below now.

A press release describes the Motherland as a "10-song collection that musically runs the gamut from prog to country rock, while lyrically taking pointed jabs at the current state of the nation under the Harper regime."

Recorded over six days at Toronto's Revolution Recording, the Motherland features drummer Don Kerr, guitarist Paul Linklater and bassist Doug Friesen.

BidiniBand will kick off the album with a launch party May 29 at Toronto's Dakota Tavern. The tracklist and full album stream are below. For more, go to DaveBidini.ca

The Motherland Track List:

1. The Grey Wave
2. The Motherland 
3. The Fatherland 
4. All Hail Canada 
5. (The Return Of) Fat 
6. Hey Jesus! 
7. Ladies Of Montreal 
8. Everyday Superstar 
9. The Motherland Part 2 
10. Say The Names 

In new footage acquired by TMZ, Solange, an R&B singer and sister of Beyoncé, attacks Jay Z in a hotel elevator at the Met Gala on May 5. 

In the clip, which you can watch below, Solange kicks and punches the rapper while Beyoncé stands off to the side. Jay tries to calm his sister-in-law down and makes no effort to retaliate. A security guard succeeds in separating them after several efforts. 

The reason for the fight is still unknown, but of course, #WhatJayZSaidToSolange is already trending on Twitter. 

Protests were held this past week at concerts in Vancouver and Toronto to demonstrate against Russian conductor Vladimir Spivakov’s pro-Putin support.

Spivakov is criticised for being on the long list of cultural figures to sign an open letter of support for President Vladimir Putin's position on Crimea in Russia’s Izvestia newspaper.

In Vancouver, approximately 25 peaceful protesters held signs saying, "Spivakov, your violins play for violence" and waved Ukrainian flags outside of the Chan Centre at a performance by Maestro Spivakov and the Moscow Virtuosi on May 6, according to the Facebook group Vancouver boycotts Spivakov.

A similar protest was held at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto on May 9, where the above video was shot. One protester also held a banner during the performance from above the stage.

Maestro Spivakov and the Moscow Virtuosi are in the midst of a world tour to celebrate their 35th anniversary. The group was also greeted by protest at a performance in Boston on Sunday night.