Classified gets in touch with Inner Ninja on No. 1 album
Like a lot of white rappers of a certain age, Classified, aka Luke Boyd, listened to Snoop and Dr. Dre when he was a kid. The stuff wasn’t easy to find in Enfield, Nova Scotia, where he came of age in the mid-1990s. Cassette tapes were treasured possessions. He says he and three other dudes […]
Boys club at the Edmonton Music Awards nominations
The nominees have been crunched and the numbers are in – and the 2013 Edmonton Music Awards seems to have delivered a healthy cross-section of names to represent Edmonton’s music scene. Corb Lund, Jay Sparrow (right) and Mitchmatic lead the pack with six nominations each – a bit of a boys club, but stylistically diverse, […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Derivative Muse bombards the senses
There are plenty of adjectives one can use for Muse’s show at Rexall Place on Super Bowl Sunday: Bombastic, pretentious, overwhelming, dazzling, even stupefying – but in a good way. It was a fierce bombardment of the senses, a visual extravaganza that overloaded your auditory and visual faculties to the point of no return. The […]
REVIEW: Jacksons all about the groove, the love, in Edmonton
The Jacksons showed us the love at the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce Ball on Saturday night – a slick, polished show, yet with lots of heart. The annual soiree at the Shaw Conference Centre began by having that big show feel, backlights coming up slowly to reveal two sets of two keyboards, drums, bass, big […]
THEATRE: Actor pretends to be a bastard in Private Lives
When I was very young, I wanted to be a fire truck. So, naturally, I pretended to be one. I didn’t realize it then, but I was acting. Acting is a solitary exercise. There are other actors on stage with you, and an audience watching, of course, but you’re on your own – pretending. Noel […]
TV: Sperm brings Even More Modern Family together in Seed
The war on maturity continues to rage hard on all fronts – and “Seed” is just the latest surge. This isn’t just some amusing Canadian sitcom about a charming slacker who sells his sperm and winds up meeting children he thought he’d never see after his sperm bank donor data gets hacked. No, it’s even […]
OPERA: A carnival named desire in Les Contes d’Hoffman
This Hoffman is one messed-up dude. First he falls for a chick who’s clearly a robot and only finds out when her arm comes off. Then he falls in love with a woman who’s so frail she sings herself to death, then with some floozy who leaves him for a cowboy the moment his back […]
WEEKEND MUSIC: Method to Madness to Muse
You’d be hard pressed to go almost anywhere nowadays without hearing “Madness.” At least the song. Muse’s new track from their most recent and sixth studio album, “The 2nd Law” is getting huge airplay in this city. The supporting world tour comes through Edmonton Sunday night, when the band will perform at Rexall Place. It’s […]
THE UNLIKELY COMIC: Craig Martell is his own punchline
Craig Martell doesn’t claim to be a real stand-up comedian – so does that make him a better stand-up comedian? It’s all so terribly confusing. He doesn’t fit the usual stand-up comedian profile. First of all, as co-owner and party captain of the Wunderbar Hofbrauhaus, he’s a pretty upbeat guy. “It seems like most comedians […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Amy Grant show a musical Pentecostal service
A full moon hovering over Shaw Conference Centre during Amy Grant’s performance at Break Forth 2013 brought no portents of imminent danger – and for a non Christian attending a Christian music concert, it was a new experience. This wasn’t your usual rock concert. After years of going to heavy metal shows, I was allowed […]
In Alberta, a government-approved disaster monthly
If you just looked at the numbers, you might think Alberta is one of the most dangerous places on the planet: after all, the number of natural disasters declared here has increased seventeen-fold in the last 12 years. Floods, fires, hail storms, acts of God that crippled entire industries. We’ve got it all. But critics […]
EDMONTON RADIO: Hotter AC fuels Fresh 92.5 FM launch
You can launch like a mighty rocket roaring into the sky, and everybody says “Wow!” Or you can do it like a balloon full of hot gas, until someone notices, “Hey, how’d that get up there?” In Radioland, this is the difference between a “hard” launch and a “soft” launch. The perfect example of the […]
