Settling into the second half of its four day 12th anniversary festival, Wavelength took over the Great Hall with a typically eclectic batch of local heroes and visiting weirdos.

Not many bands get to play a sold out room for their debut show, but then again, not many bands are made up of ex-members of Broken Social Scene and the Stills like Eight and a Half are. The Drake Hotel was absolutely packed with too many well-known Canadian musicians to name, as well as tons of agents and promoters eager to get a first look at the new project (who mainly crowded the back bar and stairs, chattering incessantly as industry types tend to do).

We couldn’t fit all of the Wavelength anecdotes into the print version of our feature on the indie institution’s 12^th Anniversary Festival (plus Friday night’s headliners Fucked Up were apparently on a cruise in the Bahamas), so here’s some additional memories of one of the most important artist-run non-profits of the past decade in Toronto’s music scene.

In the aftermath of the untimely death of pop diva Whitney Houston, few of her fellow superstars were willing to say anything negative about the icon, or even directly address her well-documented substance abuse problem. You could call it respect, but amidst all the whitewashing, there was something refreshing about Celine Dion’s surprisingly candid response on ABC News. Dion (who was heavily influenced by Houston) doesn’t shy away from talking about the circumstances that are assumed to have led to her death, nor does she attempt to paint the situation as an anomaly.