Lord of the Logos: Black Metal AF

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 […]

NYE PREVIEW: The Secretaries play to type

NYE PREVIEW: The Secretaries play to type

As the year concludes, this weekend’s live music opportunities center around – no surprise – New Year’s Eve. There’s a bevy of options for everyone, from folk to rock to folk-rock, from electronic to pop, and lots in between. One of the best shows, and the best values, may be at Ritchie Community Hall, where […]

Edmonton music measured in awesomeness

Edmonton music measured in awesomeness

It was an interesting year. Edmonton gained a lot of new venues. It lost some more. Yet through it all, the city’s music scene endures, perseveres, resiliently plows through, pulling itself along on a cord thrown out for the city’s vast catacombs of master musicians. The city’s music scene cannot be captured in one or […]

End of the Earth

End of the Earth

Toruk the stuff of recurring dreams

Toruk the stuff of recurring dreams

Toruk – The First Flight, from the world’s largest theatrical company Cirque du Soleil (100 productions and counting), is taking flight in Edmonton. At Rogers Place until Dec. 26, the show is based on James Cameron’s box office juggernaut Avatar using Cameron’s lush, vividly imagined world of the planet Pandora. Cirque strips away Cameron’s least […]

Alan Thicke plays against type in last film

Alan Thicke plays against type in last film

Alan Thicke died of a ruptured aorta on Dec. 13 after playing hockey with his 19-year-old son Carter – who happens to have a bit part in the last feature film his father starred in, It’s Not My Fault and I Don’t Care Anyway, shot in Edmonton. They did a lot together. “You could tell […]

MUSIC PREVIEW: A visit from Cadence

MUSIC PREVIEW: A visit from Cadence

The cat came back. They all come back, sooner or later, these former Edmonton artists who moved to greener pastures. Even if it’s just a family visit at Christmastime. Performing a homecoming show Friday at the Needle Vinyl Tavern, Cadence Weapon may be thriving out East, but the rapper born Rollie Pemberton was raised in […]

PLAYBILL: Christmas wholesomeness

PLAYBILL: Christmas wholesomeness

‘Twas the night before wombat and all through the snerse, not a weeful was starping, not even a cherse. The weppels were hung by the stabbage with hair, in the clam that snat eelix would carter the snare. And nox in her keppitch, and meal in my lap, was flopping and keeling like mice in […]

End of the Earth

End of the Earth

Beauty from the ashes in Burning Bluebeard

Beauty from the ashes in Burning Bluebeard

If you are going to enjoy the unique Edmonton Actors Theatre Christmas neo-pantomime, Burning Bluebeard – until Dec. 24 at the Roxy on Gateway – there are a couple of points that in other circumstances might be regarded as “spoilers.” First of all, there will be no happy ending. Second, it is based on a […]

MUSIC PREVIEW: Remembering Steve

MUSIC PREVIEW: Remembering Steve

The Edmonton music scene lost a good friend and panjandrum a few weeks back in a tragic accident, as Steve Steffler, one-time co-owner of Bohemia and founder of Sometimes Music, passed away, the victim of carbon monoxide poisoning. Always a music lover, always willing to give an act starting out a leg up, always a […]

PLAYBILL: Burning Bluebeard: Too soon?

PLAYBILL: Burning Bluebeard: Too soon?

Why is OK to make light of the Titanic and not 9-11? What about a deadly fire in a crowded Chicago theatre that happened more than 120 years ago? Such questions are set aside for the new production of Burning Bluebeard, at The Roxy on Gateway Dec. 13-24. Jay Torrence’s 2011 play is based on […]