Happy New Year!!!

I hope everyone had an awesome 2009 holiday season and brought some good cheer into the New Year with them. Our holidays rocked ending with New Year’s Eve and rising stars of Girls Gone Wild in the Progressive/Alternative/Rock scene Nabweekly is psyched to feature in our 2010 New Year Post.

Our holiday season turned out to be one of the best with many lessons learned and great people we met to end off our 2009 to bring us into a very optimistic 2010. My husband with our 12 year old daughter in tow spent his time this season working/volunteering at one of the Salvation Army Kettles at Wal-Mart here in Fort Erie and was surprised by the generosity of so many people who passed through the region Unfortunately, not all the kettles in the Fort Erie area did as well with donations this year but in a hard hit economic community for 2008/09 any donation was greatly appreciated.

We would like to take this time to thank all the people out there who contributed to the Salvation Army Kettles still under the cloud of a downed economy, with that kind of generosity it helped many families who struggle in the holiday season the most if anything see a smile on their children’s face with a good meal and gifts under the tree. There truly is a Santa Claus and he comes in the spirit of many people every year.

Adding to the kindness of giving Wal-Mart Canada donated $100,000 to help the Salvation Army from coast to coast to coast that had a harder time raising the funding they needed mainly North Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Halifax/Dartmouth.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Salvation Army in Little Rock, Arkansas as one of their beloved members Maj. Phillip Wise, only 40 years old gunned down Christmas Eve as his three children stood from behind while outside the community center of the Salvation Army detachment, picking up his wife at the centre also a Major in the department.

Two armed men approached Maj. Wise, demanded money then shot him. Maj. Wise and his wife were the adoptive parents of three children 4, 6 and 8 all siblings who were from an abusive home.

Maj. Wise also ran a food pantry, youth programs and church services in a low-come neighborhood troubled by gangs and drugs.

The continued mission of Major Phillip Wise and The Salvation Army did not die with him but enlightened our knowledge of how many spirits a man like this touches that will double overtime by paying it forward.

Major Wise was also a great lover of music playing the tuba and using his love of music to help others, Maj. Harvey Johnson described Wise’s message “He encouraged kids in music as an alternative to the life they were living,”

We also remember with great respect our fallen soldiers and those who have past, present and future served in our arm forces who wear the uniform for the rest of us to have hopes and dreams to bring into a new year to fulfill. We also thank Glass Tiger as one of the Niagara New Year’s Festival headliners for the tribute on stage dedicated to our men and women in the military and for those who put their lives at risk to get the important stories out to the rest of the world.

Our year in the Niagara Region has been very enlightening and encouraging as the year passed, we did a lot of first times since moving here and spending New Year’s Eve in the heart of Niagara Falls was one of them.

30,000 people were expected downtown and as we arrived at the 6:30 hour, crowds were scattered about getting ready for the final countdown to ring in 2010 with lesson’s learned and positive energy.

The Hardrock Café hosted the Fallsview Ave. street party with live bands and heated tents, Queen Victoria Park led the way to host the headliners Centre Stage of Moeraes Fate, Glass Tiger and Styx and the Festival of Lights display.

We didn’t stay long enough into the night to see Styx performance with feeling the temperature dropping and light snow showers continued, we left after Glass Tiger’s tribute to our fallen soldiers.

I wanted to write a review on the band that blew me away the most on New Year’s Eve but I couldn’t have expressed it better then the review I read in Garage Band.

Moeraes Fate (Formerly known as Dame) was the first to get the party started, and what I watched and heard took my senses by total surprise. When you first hear a band opening, Darryl from Rock 95 said it best on the waves the other day, sometimes you’re not sure how to react, if you really like the sound or performance but sometimes they blow you away and you know they’re going places.~

With tunes like “No Son of Mine”, “2012”, “Intervention” to name a few gives new meaning to Lady Rock!

CBC’s The Hour and our boyfriend George Stroumboulopoulos, veteran producer, songwriter, and musician Greg Godovitz and Bob Donovan of indieintune.com are just a few mentioned with their outstanding recommendations for their future in the music industry.

With the ladies influences named as Led Zeppelin, Tools, and the Beatles with the sound of Alice in Chains, Audioslave, The Deftones, Ali Stead on Lead Guitar, Kayla Faye on Drums and Katie Lee, Lead Vocalist and Bass rocked my world, as their sound and the help of the big screen brought their performance closer while feeling my heart beat to the sound and the energy they drew from 2009 to pay if forward into 2010.

In a very touching moment they gave an outstanding performance to “Man in the Mirror” showed great respect for the end of the year with the loss of a beloved late music icon, Michael Jackson. A song always worth remembering, a song that changed my outlook in life only a short few years back.

Check out Moeraes Fate tribute to the late Jimi Hendrix on their MySpace page.

When we left downtown to make our way home and catch the last hour of the Niagara Festival on Global with our wine to toast and my computer to immediately Facebook this band’s MySpace page with this update “Great night down at the Falls, Moeraes Fate ROCKED the stage! Left at 10 to get home in time to watch the last hour on the tube with bottle of wine and Rockin and Rollin into 2010, Listening to Classic Hits with “September” as Number 1 for the 70’s era by Earth, Wind and Fire !!”

On New Year’s Day I went to Moeraes Fate MySpace page and Bio and was again blown away at the reviews and accomplishments they’ve achieved but the one that took me over the edge, all three of these young ladies are under the age of 18!

I immediately added them to my own MySpace growing list and posted this comment on their wall “The Real Girls Gone Wild!!–Thank you for that Awesome performance and great feeling of Karma you pulled out of 2009 and fed into our 2010, my readers are going to enjoy the experience I write adding this band to the list of the best new experience of 2009.
Rock On Girls! ..m/”

Moeraes Fate (formerly known as Dame) dates back with a growing list of accomplishments since 2006 and its logic to say these stars shined bright on a cold snowy winter night where Fate is the word for 2010

Photo and Video courtesy of Moeraes Fate, by Brian O'brien