We've already mentioned this weekend's Whistler Music Festival so there's probably no need for us to remind you of the stellar line-ups planned for Saturday and Sunday. Things will get heated up early both days, with the show starting at a non-hung-over-friendly time of 11AM each day.

But with performers like Thievery Corporation, The Roots and Broken Social Scene on the ticket, it's the kind of weekend to make an exception for an early start. Even more so if you have free tickets - and we have three double passes for either day to give away to three lucky winners right now.

Interested in joining the Beyond Robson team? We're looking for writers for all our coverage areas including food, fashion, music, arts, film, the environment and general and random news about Vancouver. Keep reading for more details on current openings and how to get in touch with us.

People in Planes, the five piece indie rock band from Cardiff Wales, are in Vancouver this Thursday for a show at the Biltmore. With a new album - Beyond the Horizon - scheduled for release later this summer, expect to hear new tracks like Pretty Buildings as well as slightly older faves like If You Talk Too Much (video directed by Joaqin Phoenix).

Thanks to their new label, Wind-up records, we've found ourselves with seven pairs of tickets to give away to the show. Want to go? Keep reading for contest details.

Buck 65 is currently on a cross-Canada tour. (Check out the review of the Toronto show on blogTO) He's visiting 18 cities in 30 days including Vancouver's Commodore Ballroom on Wednesday May 7th. Also on the ticket is Cadence Weapon. As luck would have it we've found ourselves with a bunch of copies of his latest album Situation as well as a pair of tickets to the show. Want some Buck 65 for yourself? Keep reading for contest details.

The end of the year is always a time for reflection and looking back at the year that was. Here at Beyond Robson we feel that 2007 could have been better. We feel that the site has let many of you - our dedicated and perhaps increasingly infrequent readers - down. We've struggled through technical issues like the comments not working and the inconsistency of the quality and frequency of our posts.

The goods news is that many of the technical challenges seem to be behind us and looking forward to 2008 we'll be making many improvements, including incorporating some of the more popular features from our sister site in Toronto.

We'll also be making some wholesale changes to our team of contributors. In fact, we're looking to almost completely revamp the team and, starting with this post, we are now officially beginning our search for editors, writers and other contributors who want to be part of the new and improved Beyond Robson.

Posting will be a little slow over the weekend as we make some changes to address site performance issues and our comment feature. Stay tuned for an update once we've got it all figured out. Thanks for your patience.

Photo by markhoekstra on Flickr