Avril Lavigne’s Four Step Program of Romance and Revenge
And so the young ladies of Edmonton did commune with the Alpha Elders of the Tribe of Womyn in a not-so-secret shamanic ritual to learn the mysterious ways of the Goddess Incarnate. In short, it was another Avril Lavigne concert [2022 edit: She performs Thursday, May 19 at Rogers Place] Like it or not, pop […]
WHERE THEY ARE NOW: Christian Mena, Sabor Divino and Maracujah
Christian Mena was supposed to have become this big-deal Broadway star when he went away to join the touring production of Rent. How he wound up living back in Edmonton with a wife and kids and running a restaurant is a good topic for a VH1 “Behind the Music” special. But since there’s no tragedy, […]
Edmonton’s ‘Princes’ of punk party with Yakuza rockers in Tokyo
Local punk rockers N.N. somehow missed all the deadlines for most of North America’s major new music festivals in 2010 – but at least they made it to Japan. On a website for a guitarist they all admired – Tokyo’s Nikolas Faraguna – they noticed a banner for Japan Music Week. On a lark, they […]
WEEKEND MUSIC PREVIEW: Zombies rock tonight
What we lack in big names this coming weekend we make up for in depth. The opening weekend of the National Hockey League season features more than enough reasons to get out of the house after the early game is over, including two release parties on Friday night (Fuquored and N.N.), and the major event […]
GIGGLE CITY: ‘Dirty’ comedy gets serious
Darren Frost says he’s received death threats for some of his jokes – which takes heckling to an entirely new level. Too far? Too soon? Never. Comedy is dangerous, and the comics who performed for the XXX-rated “Beauty and the Beasts” shows at Yuk Yuk’s over the weekend – Frost, Kenny Robinson and Kathleen McGee […]
Underground supergroup Darlings of Chelsea unleash ‘Panic’
Darlings of Chelsea have been around. Names like The Black Halos, Robin Black and CJ Sleez are likely familiar to anyone following the underground music scene across Canada over the past decade or more, and in 2009, a few longtime rockers who paid their dues as members of the above banded together in Toronto to […]
GIGGLE CITY: Kenny Robinson goes over the line
There’s always a “line” in comedy. Even when they say there isn’t a line, there’s a line – and the comedians featured in Beauty and the Beasts at Yuk Yuk’s this weekend intend to cross it. Kenny Robinson, Darren Frost and Kathleen McGee are all fond of “working blue,” but in order to make a […]
THE SHEEPDOGS: On the cover of the Rolling Stone, at Starlite Dec. 17
If you liked the Sheepdogs when they opened for Kings of Leon the other night, prepare to like them a second time when the Saskatoon band headlines its own show at the Starlight Room on Saturday, Dec. 17. Tickets are a mere $20 and go on sale Friday at Ticketmaster (here). Along with the hit […]
EIFF rides into sunset with winning films
As the Edmonton International Film Festival rides into the sunset – as riding into sunsets is one of the greatest film clichés of all time – let us celebrate the winners of our annual cinematic celebration. Yes, there was a contest, too. Fittingly, “Wild Horse, Wild Ride,” a documentary dealing with wild horses, was named […]
Was Edmonton actually Richler’s kind of town?
Ten years after his death, Mordecai Richler’s name remains mud in Edmonton for comments he made about the city in a 1985 essay for the New York Times on Wayne Gretzky, but questions remain about whether the legendary author was slaying the Alberta capital or actually celebrating it. The essay, called “King of the New […]