“There’s baseball on the radio, and I’m playing Harvest by Neil Young;Mom says singing songs like that you could save everyone.” – Joe Crookston, “The Nazarene” These lyrics, cited from one of my favourite Joe Crookston compositions, speak to the undying love artists have—not just for Neil Young, but for Harvest. Long before the Internet, generations of aspiring […]
Record Rewind: Men Without Hats’ ‘Rhythm of Youth’ Turns 40 By: David McPherson “I got the message and the message is proof / There really is a thing they call the rhythm of youth / It will pick you up and it will make you wiggle this way / Et c’est facile a dire and it’s […]
A dozen songs that clock in just shy of 50 minutes with hooks aplenty, I bought Road Apples in Grade 12. In the ensuing decades, it’s been played more than most of my 1,500 CDs. I also own the vinyl. Thirty years on, I still know the words to every song. And, when I sing along […]
March 2020. North America is in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses close. Families are separated. Isolation and loneliness set in as imposed quarantines keep loved ones apart. The Masters, a spring tradition, had been cancelled for the first time since the Second World War. Which meant professional golfer Mike Weir, who became a […]
Scars, we all have them. Some are visible; others are hidden deep. Human nature is to bury these secrets — keeping the most harrowing stories for our ears only. The problem is these memories of past traumas circle our brains like caged animals, gnawing away and fraying the wires, hoping for release, a little bit […]
Julian Taylor: Perseverance and Patience –– A Life in Music Julian Taylor is not the first artist — nor will he be the last — to grow disenchanted with the music industry and shelve his dreams of making hit records for a living. The lifestyle of a Canadian touring musician is hard. You watch friends […]
Throughout history, tragedy, heartbreak, and unfathomable loss are experiences that have inspired artists to write songs. While they start from a personal place, when combined with the zeitgeist when they were written, these songs can resonate with generations long after the songwriter is gone – because of the shared feelings evoked by the words and the music.https://www.youtube.com/embed/il7DWoLySW8 […]
A vital cog of the alternative and indie scene on Vancouver Island, this past October Logan’s Pub closed its doors for good. Another live music venue casualty due to the pandemic. For more than three decades, Victoria’s arts community found a home here. Live music rained from its rickety rafters six nights a week. From […]
A little boogie-woogie, buckets of blues, and heaps of rock ‘n’ roll. That’s Crowbar. Frank Davies, owner of Daffodil Records, the label that released three LPs by these musical miscreants from Hamilton in the early 1970s, knows this cast of characters better than most. He introduces us to the band behind Bad Manors, Crowbar’s debut, which […]