PRETEND YOU’RE IN… PARIS
The range of cultural options available in Paris makes travellers hyperventilate just from looking at a guide book. Opening the official program for our city’s own TD Canada Trust Jazz Festival (June 26-July 5, www.tojazz.com) produces a similar reaction. It’s not cheating to flip a coin when deciding whether to see Sonny Rollins, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings or The Bug — it might just save your sanity. Same goes for marathon club crawl North By Northeast (June 17-21, various venues, www.nxne.com), whose lineup is as diamond-studded (Black Lips! Mr. Lif! The Homosexuals!) as the shop window of the finest jeweller on the Champs Élysées.
PRETEND YOU’RE IN… SYDNEY
Toronto’s beloved venue on the water doesn’t have the same striking sail design, but the events through the summer at Harbourfront World Routes (July 1-Sept. 7, www.harbourfrontcentre.com) won’t strain your wallet like a trip to the Sydney Opera House; in fact, a lot of them are free. From the now-legendary Canada Day bash (July 1) featuring The Constantines and Chad VanGaalen to the México: Beyond Your Expectations fest (July 16-19) featuring actual lucha libre wrestling (no Jack Black), you’ll be desperate for a lakeside breeze to slow your racing pulse.
PRETEND YOU’RE IN… KELOWNA
BC’s far enough away to be considered exotic, right? If you want to trade city noise for a place where the only sound is the rock-induced ringing in your ears, your dreams are but a short drive away, whatever your musical taste. Wolfe Island Music Festival (Aug. 7-8, www.wolfeislandmusicfest.com) has your inner indie purist covered with Holy Fuck, Woodhands and Rural Alberta Advantage, while Hillside (July 24-26, Guelph Lake Island, www.hillsidefestival.ca) splits the difference between hippie (Buffy Sainte-Marie, Xavier Rudd) and indie (Tokyo Police Club, Final Fantasy). Not that there’s that much of a difference to split.
And it hasn’t been announced yet, but there’s a rumour that the reason V Fest’s website says “Ontario” rather than “Toronto” is that they, too, are taking to the north….
PRETEND YOU’RE IN… JAMAICA
There are three levels of heat corresponding to each of these three sweaty good times. The first is hot, and the TIME Festival (July 25, Sound Academy, www.time-festival.com) guarantees you’ll need water and a sit-down after you’ve shaken it to the dance vanguard’s leading lights, including A-Trak, Jeff Mills and those pesky Crystal Castles kids — consider staying away from the front of the stage. Then there’s tropical-hot, namely Caribana (June 6–Aug. 2, www.caribanafestival.com). Between the parade and the nightclub events, it’ll take more than an ice pack to keep you from passing out on the subway trip home. Lastly, there’s desert-style smokin’ hot, and if you make it through both days of the continent-wide range of music at Afrofest (July 11-12, Queen’s Park, www.musicafrica.org) without being hospitalized for exhaustion, you win at summer.
PRETEND YOU’RE IN… GRADE 11
Who said you could only fantasize about travelling through physical space? Whatever your choice of tonic for being mad at your parents — and whether or not you’ve “outgrown” it, as though grown-ups have less annoying authority figures to drown out — your options are covered. Rock The Bells (July 5, Molson Amphitheatre, www.rockthebells.net) seems to have shaken off its old curse, so expect all the rappers, including Nas, EPMD and K’naan, to actually be there; with both Billy Talent and Alexisonfire on the bill, Edgefest (June 20, Downsview Park, www.edge.ca) has your recommended dose of screamo, plus Metric and AFI. And for those of you who’d rather pretend no time has elapsed at all, NOFX are headlining the motley punk legions of Vans Warped Tour (July 10, Arrow Hall, www.warpedtour.com) while Slayer and Marilyn Manson remind you that anger is a soothing balm at the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival (July 28, Molson Amphitheatre, www.mayhemfest.com). Now click your Doc Martens together and repeat after me: there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home….