Hadestown one HELL of a musical
The first thing you see when you enter the theatre is a vast empty space with a huge bleached tree reaching out with leafless arms. Winter’s coming. It’s a powerful invitation and a warning of the wonders and dangers that are to come in the new musical Hadestown. It’s a simple enough start to a […]
Tegan and Sara share queer agenda in Edmonton
Tegan and Sara are Alberta-bred – twin sisters and openly queer. They used to play at the old Edmonton institution known as the Sidetrack Café. The connection to Edmonton is fitting because the crowd who filled the Jubilee Auditorium on Tuesday night looked like a throwback to the good ol’ days at The Roost with […]
REVIEW: Halloween Scream a place of belonging
The sidewalks along Jasper Avenue were alive on the night of Scream Edmonton – one of the biggest Halloween raves in Western Canada. The line-up for entry to the sold-out Shaw Conference Centre on Saturday night was long, and you could sense that everyone was preparing themselves for the night of their lives. The fans […]
Shatnerd vote sewn up at Edmonton Expo
There is something unique about the Edmonton Comic and Entertainment Expo. It is a place where shy teens wearing homemade body armor can have their picture taken by a woman with three breasts; a place where a mother and daughter, both dressed as Power Girl(s), discuss in utter disbelief the fact that the knives sold […]
The Royal Foundry melts down genre
Edmonton’s next big thing is getting a little tired of being pigeon-holed. If you want to call The Royal Foundry anything, call them a pop band – and if you’ve been paying attention to pop radio you’ll know it encompasses all genres of music: Rock, folk, punk, electronic dance, jazz, Latin, Caribbean, hip hop, classical, […]
Interstellar Rodeo a civilized festival
There were no complaints overheard at Interstellar Rodeo. That’s because I was too busy not complaining myself, sitting there in the front row (the “obstructed view” seats were usually open) with a bowl of delicious coconut curry chicken with sesame cranberry cabbage salad from Filistix, and a (plastic) glass of the finest Medici Ermete Concerto […]
EDMONTON: City of bad names
The $2 million rebranding of Edmonton as “Edmonton” may have made Edmonton the laughingstock of the world, but this is just the latest boneheaded move in the rich history of Edmonton’s embarrassing problem with names. Look at that: “Edmonton” four times in one sentence. Pay me now. Recall the last branding blunder: K-Days. Short history: […]
Punk artist reveals deep roots
The Blueberry Bluegrass & Country Music Festival is lucky to own the latest creations from Edmonton artist Spyder Yardley-Jones: a mandolin bigger than a bull fiddle, a towering acoustic guitar and a Brobdingnagian banjo. The fiddle next time. The heavy plywood sculptures will be paraded around Parkland County in an antique truck before being put […]
Last Toke in the Big Pink
With weed about to become legal in Canada, I’m comfortable with a full disclosure: I smoked a lot of dope inside MacEwan University’s Jasper Place building when I was a music student there in the early 1980s. After a farewell party on April 28, the campus will be abandoned, the arts programs moved downtown. A […]
HISTORY: From Hawaii to hockey to Hollywood
Get ready to feel super old, People of a Certain Age: The “Super Oldies” record label has reissued the self-titled 1980 album by the Edmonton band Footloose. Meanwhile, the Wayne Gretzky statue has been uprooted from its original home at Northlands Coliseum after 28 years, and moved to the new Rogers Place arena. It’s no […]
Lord of the Logos: Black Metal AF
Seriously, metal dudes – what’s the point of having such a beautiful logo when you can’t read the name of the damned band?! For an answer, we turn to the Lord of the Logos himself: Christophe Szpajdel, the prolific Belgian metalligrapher whose customers include Metallica, Rihanna and Foo Fighters, among an estimated 10,000 bands over […]
A Tribe Called Red: We are the human beings
Chances are this was the first time First Nations pow-wow dancing was seen at the Union Hall – a room for sloppy rock shows and big drunken blowouts, much better suited to its previous name, The Thunderdome, literally like in the Mad Max movie. There’s a first for everything. A Tribe Called Red was in […]
