REVIEW: 5 Finger LIFE Punch
Five Finger Death Punch turns out to be more kind and sensitive than their name suggests. Oh, sure, they showed their hard side at their concert in Northlands Coliseum Saturday night. Their badassed side. They even brought a bunch of children on stage to take part in a rousing rendition of Burn MF. The former […]
Book of Mormon rings doorbell of your heart
They’re back – ringing doorbells and promoting The Word according to Joseph Smith. A pair of mismatched Mormon missionaries donned the official uniform of white shirt and black tie on Broadway five years ago in Trey Parker, Matt Stone and Robert Lopez’s smash hit musical The Book of Mormon. Parker and Stone are famous for […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Country rockets launch Rogers Place
What we have here is a “perfect storm” of Big Gigs occurring on one weekend. Something’s gonna blow. Could Rogers Place have picked a better headliner for its opening concert on Friday night than Keith Urban? He’s a favourite in this market, and a hunka hunka burnin’ love to women the world over. Fun fact: […]
Culture Club comes to Coliseum
Of course we don’t want to hurt Boy George. The man’s made some mistakes here and there, but who hasn’t? Besides, he’s made some memorable music as the main driving force of Culture Club, a fixture of 1980s pop culture – and we’re glad he’s still going for it. Nostalgia among area fans will surely […]
David Crosby passes Canada test
A lot of American celebrities joke about moving to Canada if Donald Trump gets elected – but David Crosby sounds serious. The ‘60s survivor with the trademark silver skirted eggshell mentioned it a whole bunch of times during his beautiful but talky show at the Winspear Centre Monday night. He said he was checking out […]
Simon and Garfunkel Story stuck in the pleasant
Tom and Jerry will be holding forth on the stage of the Mayfield Dinner Theatre for the next seven weeks – at least that’s the name childhood friends Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel gave themselves back in 1957 when they were breaking into the music business by trying to sound like the Everly Brothers. It […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: David Crosby lights up Winspear
It’s one of those weekends on the live music scene that features a wide range of sounds, from folk to Americana, from hip hop to a lot of punk. The biggest name is definitely David Crosby, who plays the Winspear Centre on Monday night. Yes, that David Crosby. Well, really, there’s only one. Only ever […]
The Lumineers turn Sonic Boom to folk
It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment where the mainstreaming of folk music reached maximum saturation and jumped the shark. Certainly that recent KIA commercial with Nathaniel Rateliff is very embarrassing. Some point to the X-Ambassadors having their lead single, Renegades, an otherwise fine song, permanently branded to the Jeep Renegade. Can’t hear it without […]
Sonic Boom a cold and rainy circus
Every successful new band has a gimmick – sometimes more than one. Twenty One Pilots has at least as many as their name, and showed them all closing out the first night of Sonic Boom 2016 in Borden Park. They wore alien masks, did back-flips off the piano, crowd surfed the entire drummer and his […]
Brit channels legend in The Simon and Garfunkel Story
It’s not enough that the British defeat us hapless Colonists in all things to do with Rock ‘n’ Roll (just go to the scoreboard: The Beatles, The Stones and The Sex Pistols vs. Elvis, Dylan and Bon Jovi – it’s no contest) – but they have to come plunder our beloved American icons, too. Dean […]
