MUSIC PREVIEW: Canadian country, California vibes
Welcome to the Hotel Edmontonia! Such a lovely place, such a lovely face. Plenty of room at the Hotel Edmontonia, any time of year … except maybe at this particular busy time if you’ve come into town for the Country Music Week! Building up to the CCMA Awards Sunday night at Rexall Place – and […]
Cartoon Machine thrives in Torontonian urbanity
Stand-up comedians and cartoonists are the only people in the world who can be counted on to tell us the brutal truth – no matter what. We’re lied to on a daily basis by the government, the media, corporations, even our neighbours and loved ones. Someone’s got to do the dirty job of being honest. […]
MUSIC: The habits of Edmonton introverts
Even at North Country Fair – idyllic in its own happy, druggy, timeless way – Energetic Action felt like outsiders. “North Country Fair was our Stonehenge,” says bassist George Synnett (pictured) – and he’s not referring to the famous scene in This Is Spinal Tap. He’s talking about the famously strange Stonehenge Free Festival held […]
SONIC BOOM: What’s My Age Again?
At what point does modern rock become classic? You can be sure that none of the 13,000 fans at Northlands Park on Sunday evening were contemplating this pop culture question as two of modern rock’s most geriatric acts Blink-182 and Weezer headlined Sonic Boom 2013. They were too busy rocking out. Whatever the actual ages […]
Foreign Musician Fee Fracas: It’s not the end of the world
What’s a guy gotta do to get an LMO exemption around here?! There’s a good pick up line next time you’re in your favourite local bar or coffee shop – where you probably be seeing a lot more true blue Canadian live music now that sneaky government fees on foreign workers have been imposed. Employers […]
Brad Fraser to premiere new play in Edmonton
There’s a long list of gifted artists that Edmonton has lost that we still mourn. They’re not dead – they just moved away to greater success in Toronto where the hopelessly hipster citizens imagine that all Westerners hang hitch balls on their pick-up trucks. And they hardly ever write. How dare they?! But then there […]
Holdovers methadone for Fringeheads
To ease the crushing existential pain from Post Traumatic Fringe Disorder (PTFD), three Fringe venues are presenting holdovers of hits through this last, precious week before school starts. It’s hard to go cold turkey from 10 days of more than 200 plays in what turns out to be the most successful edition of the Edmonton […]
Fringe festival stuck with star system
Fringe artists hate the star rating system – and they love the star rating system. Is it time to get rid of it? Fringe artists recently replied, “Yes … but no!” Rest assured that any thespian bestowed a four or five-star review from one of the area print publications will be out there at the […]
FRINGE: Redheads have more fun!
If you’re not already a sucker for redheads, you will be after seeing Rebecca Perry in her creative and original one woman show “Confessions of a Redheaded Coffeeshop Girl” (Venue 42) at the Edmonton Fringe. Perry plays Joanie, a 20-something girl stuck working at a Toronto area coffee shop and trying to figure out her […]
FRINGE: The Tenant Haimovitz will mess with your mind
The first 15 minutes or so of The Tenant Haimovitz (Venue 1) makes about as much sense as Middle Eastern politics does to a New World man. A writer named Daniel – “it’s pronounced Dan-ee-yell” – rents an apartment only to discover he already has roommates which may or may not be figments of his […]
MUSIC: Mayhem by day, Kraftwerk by night
What happens when metalheads make dance music on modular synthesizers? Noisy dance music, that’s what. When local soundman and musician Jason Borys got together with Jeremy Greenspan of Hamilton synthpop duo Junior Boys, the resulting album yielded iterative beats and dark undertones that feel like they belong at a dance party in some seedy, dimly […]
