Here is a fun and easy music questionnaire for you:

1)     Are you tired of waking up tired?

2)     Have you ever been accused of wearing your sunglasses at night?

3)     Would you say that we are here for a good time as opposed to a long time?

If you answered yes to any or all of the above, you’re going to want to tune in to the CBC for four Thursdays in a row, beginning on August 27th to check out This Beat Goes On and Rise Up—two new documentaries that celebrate Canadian pop music in the ‘70s and ‘80s, respectively.

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Some people look forward to the Oscars. Others, the Emmys. But for hardcore Canadian music fans, The Polaris Music Prize is where it's at!

We've previously covered the shortlist nomination. But just this week, the names of the Grand Jury were released to the public. These are the music critics, industry insiders and members of the media who will be deciding where the $20,000 grand prize will fall. In an exclusive interview with E! Online, Polaris Music Prize founder Steve Jordan explains how the Grand Jury was selected.

"The prime consideration is that none of the shortlisted titles have significantly less or significantly more representation in that room," he says. "The most important thing is that each one of those titles has a very passionate voice defending them. Beyond that, we get into regions, media types, male/female, French/English and all of those other considerations."

Keep reading for the complete list of the Grand Jury...

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Tim McCready / Sabine de Moerloose

Think of some dynamic musical duos over the years: Sonny & Cher. Lennon & McCartney.  Eddie Van Halen & David Lee Roth.

Now, imagine what it would have been like if these duos had made music together, but never actually met in person.

That’s exactly what Canadian hip-hop artist Buck 65 (also known as CBC Radio 2 host Rich Terfry) and Brussels-based musician Joëlle Phuong Minh Lê of Greetings From Tuskan have been doing over the past few years. Their international project, Bike For Three, is a musical collaboration between two perfect strangers.

Mutual admirers of each other’s music on MySpace, the pair emailed audio files back and forth over a long period of time, eventually creating Bike For Three’s debut album, More Heart Than Brains, which is an intensely personal work coloured by Terfry’s emotional state at the time.

“I’d just returned to Canada after living in France for a while…I came back because I broke up with a woman I was in a relationship with in Paris. And it was rough. Terrible... I was kind of a wreck,” he explains. “And then I met Joëlle on MySpace as I’m in this really kind of vulnerable moment…we work out this basic idea that she’ll make the music and I’ll write the words to it. “

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Prada

Forest fires, hail, garbage strikes, ENOUGH! In order to inject a little bit of sunshine into your dreary Canadian summer, we've compiled a list of our Top 5 Celebrity Summertime Girlcrushes for 2009*.

Are you ready for bare limbs, tanned faces and megababe overload? Then let us begin!

(*This list is 100% Megan Fox free)

5) Jessica Alba

When we think of beach-ready bods, Jessica Alba's insane physique is at the top of the list. She's generally more admired by the male population than the ladies, but Jessica gets props from us and about a zillion girlcrush-worthy gold stars for looking utterly phenomenal in a swimsuit two months after the birth of her first child. That's dedication! And/or really good genes at work!

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Shawn McPherson / Ian Brown

If laughter is the best medicine, then Josh Holliday and Andrew Johnston are neurosurgeons. Basically.

Both are Toronto-based comics in the running for the Canadian Comedy Awards. And although you may have not have heard of either of them, you will soon. Other nominees in the running for a CCA include such comedy hotshots as Rick Mercer, Russell Peters, Jeremy Hotz, Debra DiGiovanni, Brett Butt and Seth Rogen.

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AMC

With lower-than-average temperatures sprawled across Canada, summer's been a bit of a bummer so far. The omnipresent cloud cover and thunderstorms are enough to make us want to take up smoking and drown our sorrows in a cocktail. Such as a Tom Collins. Or perhaps a brandy alexander.

Thankfully, the DVD release of Season 2 of Mad Men today gives us a reason to actually enjoy "indoors time". The celebrated drama that effortlessly combines style, wit, intrigue, obsessive historical accuracy, superb acting and the cutest-outfits-you-ever-did-see has acquired quite the loyal following over its relatively brief run. Fans are advised to refresh their memories (and Mai Tais) before Season 3 kicks off this fall and we are once again transfixed by the manifold sins of Team Sterling Cooper.

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Ingram Barss

Members of the Canadian music industry and media gathered at The Drake Hotel’s Sky Yard in Toronto yesterday to learn the ten finalists of the Polaris Music Prize.

Polaris Founder and Executive Director Steve Jordan called the picks “an ambitious crop” and dedicated the proceedings to Toronto radio DJ Martin Streek, the deep-voiced and opinionated rock radio stalwart who took his own life on Monday.

Keep reading for the nominees:

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Jim Spellman/WireImage.com

It's been a rough week, kids. The world lost Carson sidekick Ed McMahon, Charlie's Angel Farrah Fawcett, King of Pop/Arguably Most Famous Man Ever Michael Jackson and salesman extraordinaire Billy Mays. Tears!

As fascinated as we are with the lives of celebrities, it seems we're even more fascinated by their deaths. That goes a long way towards explaining the phenomenon of the Celebrity Death Hoax.

Not long after Michael Jackson's death was confirmed, rumours circulated about actor Jeff Goldblum's supposed demise off a cliff in New Zealand. But this was never confirmed, and Goldblum and his enormous bobbing Adam's apple will see another day.

Here are a few of the more famous celebrity death hoaxes that have been dreamed up over the years:

1969: DJ Russ Gibb at WKNR-FM in Detroit received an anonymous call from a listener, declaring Paul McCartney dead and claiming that he was replaced by a lookalike. The proof? Numerous clues scattered throughout Beatles albums, including the lyric "The Walrus is Paul" on the song Glass Onion and the fact that McCartney('s alleged doppelganger) sported a mustache on Sgt. Pepper, hiding plastic surgery scars.'

2001: Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake were rumoured to have died together in a car crash. There have been multiple Spears death hoaxes. We sincerely hope that Brit-Brit lives a long and healthy natural life, but really? What are the odds of that happening?

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Clark & Faria

Andy Warhol once said that art is anything you can get away with. If that’s the case, Douglas Coupland certainly gets away with a lot.

The famed Canadian author (Life After God), screenwriter (Everything’s Gone Green) and artist (Canada House) has a new show called "Atelier" in Toronto’s Distillery District that plays off of Warhol’s iconic imagery.

There’s the glamourous face of Marilyn Monroe, spattered with corporate logos and banana stickers. And instead of a gun-totin’ Elvis Prestley, there’s a fading triptych that features the portrait of an entirely different  kind of hero; Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

If Andy Warhol was Pop Art, then Douglas Coupland is Pop Art Eating Itself.

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Sonia Mansillo / E!

It's kind of like Christmas for Canadian musicians. The Polaris Music Prize Long List was announced this morning, and includes such ace contenders as the legendary Leonard Cohen, singer-songwriter Martha Wainwright (sister to Rufus) and socially conscious purveyor-of-hip-hop K'NAAN.

Modeled after the UK's Mercury Music Prize, the Polaris Music Prize was established in 2006 and awards $20,000 (that's twenty freakin' grand, people!) to the album judged by a jury of music journalists and broadcasters to be the best Canadian release of the year.

This ain't the Junos, kids. The Polaris Music Prize cares not for album sales or mainstream success. It only aspires to award bona-fide artistic brilliance. We can totally get behind that!

Previous winners have included Final Fantasy and Caribou.

Keep reading for the complete Polaris Music Prize 2009 Long List:

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Rock-It Promotions Inc.

At Toronto's trendy Drake Hotel tonight, green is the new black.

The 2009 Earth Day Gala is shaping up to be a star-studded celebration of all things ecological.  A lavish celebration of leaders of the environmental movement, the evening will be hosted by comedian Sean Cullen. Previous host Mark McKinney (Kids in the Hall, Saturday Night Live, Less Than Kind) is now the gala's producer and calls it "one of the best evenings going...it's food, it's wine, it's presentations and it's honouring some of the people leading environmental causes across the country."

McKinney explains that he has been concerned about the state of the environment since his teen years.

"I guess its origins were when I was in grade 11," he says.  "I had a really forward-thinking biology professor who was all over the green stuff years ahead of it ever making it into the news. So I've always had an awareness of environmental issues...it was a really good fit."

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Paul Warner/WireImage.com

The Loch Ness Monster. Unicorns. Bernie Madoff's conscience. The Neil Young Archives. 

Only one of these things actually exists.

Indeed, having achieved a near-mythical status among fans, Volume 1 of the Neil Young Archives finally sees the light of day today. 

Arguably the most important figure in Canadian music history, the prolific singer-songwriter has inspired countless musicians, been awarded countless honours, and rended countless hearts with his special brand of countrified folk-rock. Young's songs have been covered by a Who's Who of music; everyone from David Bowie and The Pixies to Annie Lennox and Radiohead.

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