MUSIC: 7 acts you MUST SEE at UP+DT
The city’s final music festival of the year is also one of its best, despite it not getting near as much attention as some of the others. Up + Downtown is back again with a vengeance and fury like no other, and is one of those festivals that no matter how much you think you […]
Miranda Lambert a shining light
At her concert at Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton on Tuesday night, Miranda Lambert alluded to the Las Vegas mass shooting. Due to the recent tragic event that took place right here in our own city, these attacks were on everyone’s minds. She told the crowd, “There’s so many heavy hearts here tonight so I just […]
REVIEW: Working for The Weeknd
A lot of batteries were drained at the Weeknd concert in Edmonton on Monday night. That’s because there were so many slow songs. It was like rich cannabis syrup in there. Great singers like Abel Tesfaye are suckers for ballads – which always demand a tribute of light from fans. In the old days people […]
REVIEW: End of the road for Nickelback!
Edmonton seems to be the place for all these nostalgia bands to wind down their tours. From Peter Gabriel with Sting to Metallica, and recently Coldplay on shows No. 104 and 105 of their two-year world tour, promoters are choosing our gorgeous late summer-early fall nights to close out the concert season. Better late than […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Not the worst band in the world
Make no mistake: Nickelback has been bullied. They are victims of bullies. You should all be ashamed of yourselves! What did they do to deserve such treatment? All they did was create bland, massively popular rock hits that made millions of dollars by catering to the lowest common denominator, by sounding like catchy pop-country hits […]
REVIEW: All hail Coldplay
Coldplay gave everybody a free LED wristband, so the audience could become a spectacular part of the light show at Rogers Place on Tuesday night – and then they blew off the confetti cannons in the first song. Usually that comes at the end. It figures. Coldplay has always set the bar high for themselves. […]
Remand Centre haunts Edmonton singer
Going back to the decrepit, ugly, shut-down old Edmonton Remand Centre for a recent film shoot was an emotionally wrenching experience for Stephanie Harpe – because the local singer and actor was there as a prisoner in the past, “before I got sober,” she says. Harpe tells her story openly, “I was in and out […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Peak Coldplay
This weekend features a lot of awesome talent playing our local music venues, but let’s face it, most music fans are holding their breath and waiting in anticipation for the arrival of Coldplay next week for a pair of shows – Tuesday and Wednesday at Rogers Place. Ever since their start in the mid-1990s, the […]
Protest erupts at BreakOut West
It’s interesting to reflect on the slow and steady increase of how often and in how many ways musicians have been convinced to perform for free – for “exposure.” On the flip side, shouldn’t they be free to do so? The music business is a different beast than it used to be. So here we […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Kaleido scope astounding
What the Fringe is for theatre, the Kaleido Family Arts Festival is for the Edmonton music scene. For there’s a blithering bonanza of live music descending on the Alberta Avenue community this weekend. A not-so-quick count reveals more than 180 different gigs in almost every genre in 14 different venues, indoors and out, alleyways, patios, […]
Win Gene Simmons tickets!
To boldly go where no man has gone before! That should correctly read, “To go boldly where no person has gone before.” Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it – and anyway it doesn’t matter because we’re talking about Gene Simmons today. The KISS bassist is just one of the many celebrity guests at […]
REVIEW: Super Soul Sistas
In their unending forensic probing of pop music for discerning dinner theatre patrons, the Mayfield Theatre is trying something new – well, not really new, but something a little different. Instead of giving us a musical genre (folk music) or a group (The Beatles) or an individual (Buddy Holly, Patsy Cline), they have combined the […]
