Like a lot of people, I didn’t think that much of George Michael at the outset. Wham! was a huge pop act in the early and mid-Eighties, and were hard to escape. Nothing really against… Read More
“No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.”— W.H. Auden So wrote the British poet W.H. Auden, during a period of his life after he had… Read More
In November 1986, I went to see New Order at the Congress Centre in Ottawa. Peter Gabriel was playing that same night in an arena across town; instead of a nosebleed seat there, I went… Read More
Last Saturday, I went to see Mumford and Sons in Toronto. It was a great show (some notes follow below), and I also learned that there is a big difference between Rogers Centre and Rogers… Read More
“Never apologize, never explain — didn’t we always say that? Well, I haven’t and I don’t.”— Marianne Faithfull Those words appear in the first of Marianne Faithfull’s memoirs, Faithfull: An Autobiography, which was published in… Read More
“Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom, in the pursuit of truth as in the endeavor after a worthy… Read More
“I had friends, for sure. Lots of them. But I still really enjoyed, mostly, being alone and going home and getting under the dining room table after school. And there was this long cloth over… Read More
“I think I learned years ago that you don’t get songs that have that long stride and that pivot-hinge ability if it’s too much diary entry.”— Leslie Feist Feist made this observation about her songwriting… Read More
“I don’t think people listen with their ears. I think they listen with their soul.”— Herb Alpert I heard Herb Alpert — the legendary trumpet player, producer and career-maker — say these words in the… Read More
Jools Holland is probably best known as the host of the long-running BBC music series Later …, which has been showcasing live performances since 1991. He’s also a bandleader and pianist, and was a founding… Read More
“It was a pudding, you know? It really was a pudding. It was a pudding of new ideas, and we were terribly excited, and I think we took it on our shoulders that we were… Read More
Goodness, did the boys in Keane actually look like boys when we glance back more than two decades to their breakthrough hit, Somewhere Only We Know. It seemed to be everywhere in 2004. The trio… Read More
We went to see Man of the Year, the first-ever musical from the theatre company Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland, on Wednesday evening. Dom has been playing in a band for at least 30 years, but… Read More
Here’s a moment of joy for you. Dozens of people dressed in red, wearing stockings and black sashes, waving their arms just like Kate Bush in the most famous video she made for her 1978… Read More
Jazz on a Summer’s Day was released in 1959, and was filmed the preceding summer at the Newport Jazz Festival. Its opening moments combine the dappled, reflected sunshine in a harbour with a jazzy rhythm…. Read More