News/Updates

» La Villa Strangiato welcomes Phil Beaudoin on board as a host! October 24, 2007

I would like to introduce a new co-host, he's already done the show a few times with me and Gilles, his name is Phil Beaudoin. Phil has been a fan of the show for many years, a very serious prog fanatic with over 1500 CDs in his collection. Phil specializes in Neo-Prog but is not afraid to sink his teeth into heavier and more obscure stuff as well.

I (Gary) need some time to listen to everything I've received in the last 7 years on my radio show, I wasn't fair to some artist and my mission in the coming months is to listen to the CDs I have in my library and to host the show once in a while to play these albums. Gilles will also be doing the show less as well since one hour doesn't justify him driving all the way from Thurso, however he will be doing the show once in a while as well in a solo setting. Feel free to send us an email for any comments or suggestions you might have.

» New time slot for the show, Progtoberfest gets a myspace page and The Rebel Wheel signs a record deal July 25, 2007

The show will be moving again, at least this time it's not another day, it moves from 9PM to 8PM BUT we do lose 30 minutes, as of September 1st the show will be held from 8PM till 9PM on Thursday evenings.

Progtoberfest III now has a myspace A huge thanks to Rick Barkhouse for getting the ball rolling on this and Alex Jasperse for taking over, Alex's band Transitaural had to bail out of the festival due to medical reasons, they have been replaced by Hunter Eves from Toronto.

Also Gary's band, The Rebel Wheel just signed with 10T Records for 2 albums. Diagramma is being released on August 14th, we're also playing a gig on that very day @ the Avant-Garde Bar in Ottawa.

» Progtoberfest III poster June 27, 2007

Looks like our poster is pretty much done for the mini-prog festival in the nation's capital, have a look. A huge thanks goes to Rick Barkhouse of Widow's Walk for designing the poster!

» Funding Drive 2007 and Progtoberfest III March 5, 2007

Our funding drive shows will be March 8th and 15th. The number to call is (613) 562-5967 during the show. Anything helps, please support CHUO and La Villa Strangiato :) Also the Progtoberfest bands have been listed on the concerts page. We will have more information as it becomes available including a MySpace page and a schedule. It will be held again at the Alumni Theater of Ottawa University.

» Happy Birthday La Villa Strangiato! September 5, 2006

It's already been 10 years since Yann Grenier and François Laflame approached CHUO with the possibility of doing a prog show. Well hey look at us now! Yann and Greg, the 1st and 2nd host for La Villa will be joining us that evening as well as Louis Éthier and a few other surprise guests. This special evening will be held on September 14th and we really hope to do it a 3 hour show, nothing confirmed yet. We'll be giving away goodies if you could answer some skill testing questions. On a side note we had no show last Thursday since there was problems with the antenna.

» Progtoberfest II final details AUgust 23, 2006

Join us for an evening of progressive music on October 14th, all the details here. I will be playing some music in between sets and Gilles Potvin will be your host, if you hear some crickets in the hall, don't ask who it is! Hopefully this will be success and we could make a 3^rd one next year with bands from Montreal. Please come and encourage the prog music scene in the nation's capital!

» New contact info for presskits/CDs and Progtoberfest II May 31, 2006

I have moved so if you're a band or a record label sending me promo CDs please send me an email and I will give you my new snail mail address, I will send an update out very soon with the new address but this is in case that I might have forgotten you.

Talks are in the works for Progtoberfest II, if you liked the first one you will be quite impress with this one. We should have updates pretty soon! Long live Prog in the Nations Capital!

» La Villa is being host in a new time slot! March 16, 2005

Just to let you know as of March 23, 2006 the show will be held from 9PM till 10:30PM, so in other words it's moved up 90 minutes, it will still be held on Thursday evenings.

» Are you ready for the First Annual Progtoberfest? September 26, 2005

It's been a while but I think it's time for some update uh? I'd like to thank everyone who made it to the first Casse-Tête gig on Saturday. We got very good feedback and we even got members of Nathan Mahl and Permanent Waves @ the gig. Progtoberfest will be held @ Maverick's on October 26 and the line up for the night will be.

Casse-Tête (Mix of prog, jazz, gothic and whatever else)
Widow's Walk (Local Prog rock/metal band, this will be their first gig and certainly not their last, these guys will surprise a lot of of people featuring ex keyboardist of Crimson Sunset Rick Barkhouse!)
Year of the Gone (Still working on their first album, more mellow prog but very tasteful and atmospheric)

Doors open @ 7PM and the cost is just 7$. Please contact me for tickets or just come to the show! We're hoping this will be a success and be a tradition in the years to come for Progtoberfest!

» Special shows lined up! (Updated) October 20, 2004

I'd like to thank Gilles and Greg for their great job with the show on October 7th. As most of you know Christina Abraham was in the studio last week with her band to promote the show for Unexpected and Trance of Mine. So the Gothic show scheduled for the 21st will not happen as a result. However, Gilles Potvin will feature a night of classic progressive rock by himself on November 11, don't miss out classic prog fans!

» A few updates! August 23, 2004

Listen to the show on August 26th, I will be selling 2 tickets ($20 x 2 = 40$) to go see Frogg Café and Miriodor in Montreal October 10th. To whoever buys these tickets will receive the 2 Frogg Café CDs and a ride to the concert, good luck to all.

You will notice an update in the playlist section, the playlist are now showing up monthly instead of having them all on the screen at once.

Dream Theater is coming to town on September 1st!!! Don't miss this chance and let's show them we know how to Prog and Roll!! Buy your tickets via Tickemaster of directly from Record Runner.

» The show moves again! May 26, 2004

Thursday Nights: 7:30 PM - 9PM as of June 10th.

June 1st will be the last time the show is aired on a Tuesday.

» A change of co-host! April 7, 2004

For a little while now Gilles Potvin has been giving me a hand and hosting the show with me every other 2 weeks or so. Gilles has a lot of experience in the classic prog era. He had the chance to see bands in the 70s like Gentle Giant, Genesis, Uriah Heep and a heap of others. Please help me to welcome Gilles aboard as the official co-host for the La Villa Strangiato show. Louis Éthier had to step down because of work priorities but he offered his service to replace once in a while, thank you Louis for your contribution in making the show a success in the past.

As most of you have noticed, the show has been airing till 8PM and it will contibue to be this way for a while. You could enjoy 30 minutes more of good solid prog music in the Nation's Capital.

» A New Year! January 28, 2004

Let's hope this year rocks as much as the last two. If you would like any changes to the format of the radio show, or have any requests please let me know via email philippe.neoprog.beaudoin@gmail.com .

» New Look! November 7, 2003

A big thanks to Rick Barkhouse (who's also the keyboaridist for Crimson Sunset) for helping out with converting the graphics to a nice blue. I also did some minor tweaking to make the site a little more tidy.

» Good news and Bad news.... October 29, 2003

The Bad: It looks like my radio show won't be 2 hours after all. CHUO wants to keep the punk show which is after mine an hour and a half because it's the only francophone punk show in the area and they want to keep it, which is totally understand but I just wished the could of told me that last week, oh well... We might get an extra half hour sometime in the future.

The Good: Gilles Potvin will be joining me as a co-host for a few weeks, he will be swtiching spots with Louis off and on. It gives Louis a break as well and gives us the opportunity to hear lots of classic prog, this is where Gilles shines. There will be sometimes like maybe next week which you will hear all 3 of us so this will definately be exciting. Gilles' first show with us will be Tuesday, November 4th, also I have a special surprise for you prog metal fans that week.

It came to my attention that the website for the La Villa Strangiato radio show has reached 10000 hits so that's really cool. As a result of my appreciation I would like to give away 3 Inside Out sampler CDs to the first 3 persons who will email me @ lavilla@yantz.com (like I said above these went away pretty quick). You don't have to live in Ottawa I will take care of shipping. Good luck to everyone!

» Album vedette played a bit earlier... August 13, 2003

The album vedette will be played at around 6:45 PM instead of the usual 7PM, it will still be 30 minutes long. The reason we chose this decision is that sometimes if someone hears the album vedette, and then our show ends they probably have no idea what we just played, at least now we will be doing some talking at the end of the album vedette to inform our listeners what we just played.

» Next week's show marks the 2 year anniversary for Gary as the host! July 23, 2003

July 29th 2001 was my first show as a host. Next week's show will be special because I will play most of my favourite tracks and some of the most known bands in the prog industry. I will also be giving away some CDs so make sure you tune in!

» About section updated and site in english only! June 19, 2003

About section has been modified, also I forgot to mention the site will be in english only. I figure everyone knows english and it's simply way too time consuming for me to start translating and taking care of a bilingual site, at least the show remains in french :)

» Here it is! June 18, 2003

Well as you can see the new site is here as of yesterday, a HUGE thanks goes to Karinne Legault who took the time to re-design it and did a FANSTASTIC job if I could say so myself. She's still working away on the playlist section, there will be an archive section coming soon. I'd also like to thank Greg Yantz who built me a Database input mechanism that allows me to simply input a few fields of the playlist section and Presto, it's live on the site. In the past I had to modify the page itself and it was very time consuming.

» Got a co-host! June 5, 2003

Congrats to Louis Éthier for my being my official co-host for the show, thanks for Stephane for assisting me during those 2 weeks but because of complications he had to bail out. Louis started on June 3rd and did a good job.