KICK ASS SASS A CONVERSATION WITH CANADIAN QUEEN OF ROCK & WINEMAKER SASS JORDAN Sass Jordan has been a rock star, actor, Canadian Idol judge, and a Juno and Billboard award winner… is there anything she can’t do? Now, she has added [...]
Abby Zotz w/ Shout Sister Choir @ Beach United Church, Toronto January 26, 2019 Despite the sub-zero temperatures outside, there was plenty of warmth in the room for this double bill in east Toronto. The Concert of Hope benefit featured sets [...]
Alice Merton Mint Mom + Pop Music Somewhere in the shadows of modern rock is a netherworld where confessional singer-songwriters become alt-pop divas. If you visit this place, ask for Alice Merton. She is well-known to the inhabitants, for she [...]
Carpenters Carpenters With The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Universal Music In recent years, there has been a spate of music reissues by acts from the classic rock and pop era of the late 20th Century. Box sets, outtakes, bootlegs, extended jams [...]
Corey Hart @ The Lounge At Live Nation, Toronto November 29, 2018 Never surrender, and never say “never”. Five years after giving a nearly four-hour “farewell” concert in Montreal, Corey Hart will be embarking on a new Canadian tour next spring. [...]
Don Ross w/ The Ontario Philharmonic Strings @ Regent Theatre, Oshawa November 17, 2018 For the uninitiated, Don Ross is a Canadian acoustic guitar icon. He has been releasing albums of fingerstyle guitar music since 1989, with his most recent [...]
Roy Orbison Unchained Melodies: Roy Orbison With The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Legacy Recordings/Sony Music How do you add a greater sentimental feel to music already fraught with emotion? By adding an orchestra, of course! A recent addition [...]
Various Artists A Life In Yes: The Chris Squire Tribute Cleopatra Records Sitting here, listening to prog rock and considering the redundancy in the phrase “self-indulgent wank-fest”. But wait – what’s that sound? How does a music producer [...]
The Kids In The Hall: One Dumb Guy & Two Kids In The Hall (Paul Myers Book Launch) @ The Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival/Crow’s Theatre, Toronto October 29, 2018 On a brisk October night in Toronto, the Toronto Sketch Comedy [...]
Whispering Sons Image Cleopatra Records It’s a handy little tag, to refer to a band using the statement, “If Joy Division were female-fronted and Belgian”. One certainly gets the concept right away, and the comparison is well founded. Image, the [...]
10,000 LIGHT YEARS AGO A CONVERSATION WITH JOHN LODGE OF THE MOODY BLUES “I was never really interested in music. It was really strange. We used to have ‘quiet’ periods in my school, where they used to put a record on, of classical music. I [...]
Christian And The Sinners The Perversion Of Something Good (Live At CIUT) Independent Their press release calls their music post-punk noir. I call it dark and dangerous. The Perversion of Something Good is the first release from Christian and [...]
BOOM – A FILM BY JORDAN ALBERTSEN SCRATCHED VINYL FILMS September 30, 2018 “Do you know this band…The Sonics?” The answer to this question varies, depending on who you ask. Many folks will give you a shake and a shrug. But if you ask a fan [...]
Joe Symes And The Loving Kind Phase II Truly Independent Records Joe Symes and the Loving Kind is a three-piece alternative rock outfit from Liverpool, UK. They first emerged on the British music scene with the release of their debut album, the [...]
MELODIC. ENTERTAINING. CHALLENGING. HONEST. A CONVERSATION WITH STEVEN PAGE “I hum, chronically, but it’s annoying to people around me, ’cause I don’t even know I’m doing it. It’s obviously just some neurotic tic, I don’t even know what I’m [...]
Steven Page Discipline: Heal Thyself, Pt. II Fresh Baked Goods/Warner Music Canada Steven Page is one of those musicians who walks the line between “entertainer” and “artist”. A self-described record nerd who cut his teeth on pop music, and [...]
The Proclaimers Angry Cyclist Sony Music Angry Cyclist is the first collection of new music from The Proclaimers since 2015, and it is a sonic treat. Leave it to twins Charlie and Craig Reid to give us the old sneak attack – as if we didn’t see [...]
Fränder @ UpCap Café, Whitby July 15, 2018 The Swedish/Estonian acoustic band Fränder is making its way across Canada this summer. Hot off an appearance at Mariposa Folk Festival, Fränder took the stage on a warm July evening in Whitby, Ontario, [...]
WHY THE HELL NOT A CONVERSATION WITH MIKE McDONALD OF JR. GONE WILD “Ford tried to throw me out of the van while we were on the highway between Montreal and Halifax. He had me halfway out the van, and my head was on the trailer hitch. Our sound [...]
INSPIRATION, MOVING FORWARD, AND INVOKING THE DEVIL A CONVERSATION WITH DAVID CLAYTON-THOMAS Woodstock headliner. Grammy winner. Road warrior. Creative force. Icon. What does an artist do, after they’ve done it all? If you’re David [...]
David Clayton-Thomas Mobius Independent Label Services/Universal Music The temptation for many artists from the classic rock era is to hit the nostalgia concert circuit, dragging out their greatest hits. Though touring was quite lucrative, [...]
Nick Lowe Tokyo Bay/Crying Inside Yep Roc Records It’s confession time. I have always been a bigger fan of Nick Lowe the rocker than I am of Nick Lowe the elder statesman artist – the main reason being that there was just so much energy and [...]
40 YEARS OF SONGWRITING, TOURING, AND POSITIVE PUNK POLITICS A CONVERSATION WITH JOE KEITHLEY OF D.O.A. “If you have a situation in your town, then people will fight back, or organize, and maybe get some changes done,” says Joe Keithley of [...]
D.O.A. Fight Back Sudden Death Records It’s always interesting to observe bands that have the staying power to endure through many decades, and D.O.A. is one of those bands. They have been able to create consistent, memorable works within their [...]
