MUSIC PREVIEW: Gary Numan still in driver’s seat
“It’s the only way to live: In cars” – talk about a song for the times! It’s an anthem for automobile culture, or something. Gary Numan’s global hit Cars made such an impact that many people say the song was single-songedly responsible for the 1980s and all the new wave goodness that followed therein, even […]
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 […]
Barber of Seville: Where’s the wabbit?
If Bugs Bunny could use Gioachino Rossini music without permission, then any opera company doing The Barber of Seville should be able to use Bugs Bunny to help sell tickets. Right? It’s only fair, to heck with public domain. Opening Saturday at the Jubilee Auditorium, Edmonton Opera’s production of The Barber of Seville ought to […]
One Direction comes to Edmonton in July
Let the screaming commence: One Direction is coming to Edmonton next summer – for the first time ever! The fivesome of singing lads will include the Commonwealth Stadium – Tuesday, July 21, 2015 – on its On the Road Again world tour to support the new album, entitled Four. It’s the band’s fourth album. Tickets […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: The B’s of Brainy Beats
The reason there are so many weird rappers in Edmonton is because Edmonton has no rap scene! Just kidding. There are a number of gifted hip hop artists working in town, if not exactly making a living at it. The scene is so small and isolated that people elsewhere would laugh at the prospect we’re […]
Wundi and the Track: It’s not the bar, it’s the booker
With the love Edmonton music people have for Wunderbar – officially known as Wunderbar Hofbrauhaus, or “Wundi” to regulars – it’s easy to compare it to the Sidetrack Café. If you’re old enough. Ah, good times. So sad. Old-timers rue the day the beloved ‘Track was bulldozed for condos. Others – Wundi regulars, for instance […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Once a college band, always a college band
Sloan has to be one of the strangest yet most wonderful rock bands in Canada. From early campus success, “back in the day,” they’ve been compared to the Beatles for their sultry popcraft – epitomized by such masterpieces of heartbreak as The Other Man – and the fact there are four of them, each basically […]
INTERVIEW: The Unstoppable Shawn Bernard
Shawn Bernard survived losing both of his parents and his sister to drug overdoses. He survived poverty, living on streets, becoming a drug dealer, gang leader and drug addict himself. He survived jail. In an inspirational story he’s told to youngsters across Canada countless times since, he prevailed over all these trials to break the […]
Better Alf an Oo than no Oo At All
Area classic rock fans are rejoicing that The Who is coming to Edmonton as part of their 50th anniversary tour. Man, has it been that long? Sure has. So a year of anticipation won’t be much more compared to half a Century of rocking! Featuring originals Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend – the only originals […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Up + Downtown = Festival Time
After the highly acclaimed Ryan Adams (not Bryan Adams) plays the Winspear Centre on Thursday, the biggest gigs of the weekend are part of the city’s final music festival of the year, the Up + Downtown Festival which – you guessed it – includes a vast raft of venues in Edmonton’s downtown area. Arguably the […]
Pixies review: Where Nirvana really came from
The strangest yet one of the most influential bands of the 1980s gave a few really good reasons why their music continues to attract sizable crowds – like the one Pixies drew Monday night at the Shaw Conference Centre. This young, urban group of bespectacled, plaid-clad hipsters weren’t going to be flicking their Bics in […]
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 […]
