REVIEW: Big league fun at Edmonton rock fest
Posted on August 10, 2013 By Derek Owen Entertainment, Front Slider, Music, music
If there is one thing classic rock fans know how to do – apart from drinking beer – it’s how to enjoy themselves. It’s hard to imagine people at the folk fest having any more fun than the joyful fans down at Heritage Amphitheatre on Friday Night for the 2013 edition of the Edmonton Rock […]
HIPSTER: Even the word is annoying
Posted on August 10, 2013 By Ben Dextraze Culture, Front Slider, Life, Visual Arts
Hipsters have been criticized from the start. At the beginning of the 20th century “hip” meant being informed on music and fashion that went against the norm. Once the suffix “–ster” was added – like “gang-ster” – you had something even edgier, but still hipsters were denounced as beatniks, hippies, stoners, punks and slackers who […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Folk fest earns indie cred
Posted on August 7, 2013 By Michael Senchuk Entertainment, Front Slider, Music
The best action isn’t always on the main stage at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. Take, for example, Carolina Chocolate Drops. They performed at Interstellar Rodeo last year, and received rave reviews from everyone. The old-time string band from North Carolina, who perform with banjos, jugs, kazoos, bones, quills, a cello and a beatbox, perform […]
Zombie Apocalypse at the Fringe!
Posted on August 6, 2013 By Mike Ross Entertainment, entertainment, Front Slider, Theatre
They may have plopped a James Bond theme onto this year’s Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival – running Aug. 15-25 – but given the number of plays about zombies or death or the End of the World or all of the above, we’re sensing a theme here. Such a vast gathering of theatrical doom and […]
FESTIVAL GUY: Heritage Days expensive, fattening
Posted on August 5, 2013 By Derek Owen Culture, Dining, Food, Front Slider, Life
Is Canada becoming a melting pot? For all the hullabaloo about multiculturalism in Canada, this weekend’s Heritage Festival seemed pretty North American. The festival seemed to serve its product – overpriced food and irrelevant cultural offerings – in a homogenous, inoffensive, stale, typically Canadian package. Meaning: charge too much and make sure it’s deep fried. […]
End of the Earth, by Chad Huculak
Posted on August 5, 2013 By Staff Comedy, Entertainment, Front Slider, Life, Visual Arts
426-5050, whatever happened to the Lydo?
Posted on August 3, 2013 By Mike Ross Culture, culture, Dining, Food, Front Slider, Life, life, Music, TV and Radio, tv and radio
Four-two-six, five-oh, five-oh, if you’re hungry, call the Lydo! Never had such crappy Chinese food gained such a huge local reputation – thanks to the little jingle written to go with their phone number that remains an Edmontonian brainworm 10 years after the place went bankrupt. A lot of people who ordered Lydo vowed never […]
Fred Larose was a ‘musician’s musician’
Posted on July 31, 2013 By Mike Ross Entertainment, Front Slider, Music, music, News
Fred Larose didn’t live to see his own name in lights, but he probably wouldn’t have wanted it there anyway. His legacy will be as a prince among sidemen – the unassuming, rock-steady, hard-working bass player who holds down the crucial bottom end and puts his gifts to the service of making others sound great. […]
MUSIC: No soapbox on jazz crossover from activist folk singer
Posted on July 31, 2013 By Mike Ross Entertainment, Front Slider, Music, music
A folk singer has made a jazz record – is this news? Maybe it ought to be. It doesn’t seem to happen very often. Dale Ladouceur, Edmonton singer, songwriter, producer and the city’s chief practitioner of the 10-stringed “Chapman Stick,” says she didn’t plan for her latest album to be so, you know, “jazzy.” But what […]
End of the Earth, by Chad Huculak
Posted on July 30, 2013 By Staff Comedy, Entertainment, Front Slider, Life, Visual Arts
The Full Mountie revives Klondike at Fort Edmonton
Posted on July 29, 2013 By Mike Ross Comedy, Entertainment, Front Slider, Theatre
All days are Klondike Days at Fort Edmonton Park – and so it’s a natural that the first idea the new artistic director Dana Andersen came up with would be an improvised Klondike melodrama. Pity it comes AFTER Klondike Days is over. The Full Mountie, playing Aug. 1-3 at the Capitol Theatre and performed by […]
Comic, sportscaster to fill Rutherford spot in CHED shuffle
Posted on July 27, 2013 By Mike Ross Entertainment, entertainment, Front Slider, News, TV and Radio, tv and radio
Just a few weeks before 630 CHED’s Dave Rutherford was due to retire, he bit the hand that fed him: criticizing his Corus Radio bosses for what he felt was poor coverage of the Southern Alberta floods. He even suggested that listeners could go elsewhere for their information. Radio bosses tend to frown on that […]