Category Archives: Music

Still don’t care for Björk, thanks. I suppose she was mildly interesting for a few months there back in 1987. Otherwise, no. Hey, I’ve picked my heroes; I’m sticking with them.

Or, at least, I thought I was. Re-enter one Johnny Marr. Time was that the man could do no wrong by me. The guitarist responsible for those impossibly infectious Smiths guitar licks. The man who managed to appear cool even in the face of Morrissey’s woe-is-me whining. Easily the coolest member of the last great British singles band. (Arguably, the last great British band.) True, in terms of coolness the competition within The Smiths was far from fierce. Still, how cool was Johnny Marr?

This cool! Continue reading →

There’s a list of 100 “influential” albums making the rounds on Facebook. Not the 100 most influential, to be clear, but 100 albums that have influenced somebody. Somewhere. At sometime.

I’ll confess to having perused said list, as I had earlier fallen for CBC’s list of Canada’s 25 greatest guitarists — if only to see where Paul Hogan, The Mighty Popo and Patrick Lawlor were ranked. (Curiously, all three failed to make the cut. But then, with Alex Lifeson rated as the greatest Canadian guitarist ever to have walked the earth, the list may well have been intended as a joke.) Continue reading →

Right, then, I’m back from the land where breweries rally round the cry: “We are the four per cent!” And I can tell you, as mentioned last week, the debate over gun control has got nothing on the demand for live-vocal control. I can also tell you waking to news that your favourite local pub has been destroyed by fire, rather sucks.

Still, onward and upward, eh?

Just ask the singing sisters I first saw years ago performing under the billing Sara and Tegan. (The latter twin explained to me that the duo would shortly be changing its name out of respect for the fact that she is the older of the two.) The week has so far belonged to the veteran performers, the press breathlessly reporting that the new Tegan and Sara release is a “pop” record. Something you can even dance to. A new direction, it says here. Continue reading →