USS INTERVIEW: Skewering Human Kebab
Based on a true story: After shouting at some kids to get off his lawn, an old man gets into his car one Friday night, turns on Sonic 102.9 FM radio and is pleasantly surprised to hear the familiar strains of Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2. But something is terribly, terribly […]
Motley Crue ‘not worthy’ to open for Alice Cooper
If Motley Crue truly plans to retire for good at the end of their 2014 tour, they sure went out with a flash-bang during their nearly two hour set Tuesday night at Rexall Place. The excess of your average ’80s hair metal show was exceeded with such ease – MORE dry ice, MORE pyrotechnics, MORE […]
REVIEW: Fleetwood Mac plays to its strengths
For a band so relentlessly intent in telling us to forget yesterday – as in their 1977 hit Don’t Stop, Fleetwood Mac sure makes a lot of money keeping the past alive, as evidenced by the full house at Rexall Place Saturday night on their current “On With the Show” Tour. In the years before […]
Nickelback to return to Edmonton in March
Can we all just admit that bashing Nickelback is so old that even pointing out that it’s old has itself become old, and move on already? There are far more hateful bands to hate on, for as someone wise once said, haters gonna hate. With that, the news is out that Nickelback has announced an […]
Joey lied: DOA is back!
Joey “S***head” Keithley said that DOA would never play again – but here they are headlining a show at the Pawnshop in Edmonton on Wednesday night as part of the “unfarewell” world tour, with new music in the works for next year. So he lied – and doesn’t that make him the perfect politician? Having […]
REVIEW: Boz a mixed bag
Full disclosure – we were all brought in by the promise of Silk Degrees. Okay, that might be making too much of an assumption on behalf of the audience who came out to see Boz Scaggs at the Jubilee Auditorium Monday night, but not by much. Silk Degrees, after all, was a monster hit, an […]
The Tea Party returns in December
The Tea Party is back. No, not the American political movement, which never left, but the Canadian power trio, which cut a swath through the Canadian rock fields in the mid-1990s, broke up, reformed and have since stuck to their guns and did NOT sell their Internet domain teaparty.com despite rumour of a giant offer […]
Bryan Adams returns with the best years of his life
If Bryan Adams got his first real six-string in the summer of 1969, he would’ve been nine years old at the time. “Me and some guys from school had a band and we tried real hard,” he sings. “Jimmy quit, Jody got married. I should’ve known we’d never get far.” These events must’ve happened at […]
Beware the Invasion of The Voice judges!
What band at what festival recently had a song along the lines of “There is not any rest for the wicked?” We honestly can’t remember, because it’s onto the next thing already. Concert announcements are dropping like flies. This just in, the Invasion of The Voice Judges continues (Maroon 5 with Adam Levine just announced): […]
REVIEW: The smalls go big at Sonic Boom
Fears that the smalls were going to be out of place – and out of their league – for their reunion show at Sonic Boom 2014 were banished soon enough. Greatness shines through. Performing a suppertime set at Northlands on Sunday, the smalls are different, no doubt about it. Next to a weekend sparkling with […]
Mac DeMarco: ‘Might as well try something weird’
It was the strangest thing: A boiling mosh pit in a crowded, stinking, sweaty bar packed with millennials (what we’re calling “the kids today”) – not for punk, not for death metal, but for the sort of breezy easy listening music you’d be more likely to hear at that surf festival they used to have […]
REVIEW: Killer Queen defies the cynics
When you get as big as Queen – all 250 million or so records sold – you can do whatever you want. And that includes hiring a new lead singer from one of the most popular television shows in the world – and then defying all cynical expectations that they’re just doing this for the […]
