Something delightful happened this week. Labi Siffre, the British singer-songwriter whose work is perhaps better known than his name, released a new single. It’s a prelude of what will be his first album of new… Read More
Neil Hannon has been performing as the Divine Comedy since he was a young man in Northern Ireland in the late 1980s, and he’s still going strong. I think he’s a remarkable songwriter, and so… Read More
On Sunday afternoon, we joined a full house at the refurbished Majestic Theatre in downtown St. John’s for a beautiful performance. Anita Best and Pamela Morgan have been singing together for decades, and they do… Read More
On Friday afternoon, Joni Mitchell’s official Facebook page shared again a photo that makes people of a certain range of ages and temperaments smile. “A yearly return to this heartwarming moment at David Hockney’s solo exhibition at… Read More
For a while there, X were arguably the coolest band in Los Angeles. They’re often called a punk band, even though they never quite sounded like the Ramones, the Damned, etc. That said, John Doe,… Read More
In the movie Bend It Like Beckham, there are sequences where the young girls playing soccer football seem like they’re about to fly into the air. They’re moving at speed, there’s joy all around, and… Read More
Happy weekend. Here are some things I’ve been looking at. Not all that long after everyone hopped on Facebook in the mid-2000s, we saw a phenomenon play out: people indicated they were planning to go… Read More
“We can’t just stay with the old. We need to acknowledge and still refer to and still play and be connected to older artists. But you can’t just do that because we’re all dying… Even… Read More
Late in 2011, Kate Bush released her 10th album, 50 Words for Snow. The whole project is wintry, with all of the songs connected and fitting a seasonal theme. For the title song, Bush recruited… Read More
“Beauty may be skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone.”— Redd Foxx Redd Foxx is best-known for playing Fred Sanford in the show Sanford and Son, although many people didn’t know that Sanford… Read More
Curtis Mayfield’s Move On Up is a firecracker in every iteration, but you need to hear the album version — volume up, please — to get the full effect. Decades on, it still gets me…. Read More
Last week, the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra achieved a key performing goal — putting bums in seats — with three consecutive Winter Pops concerts at the Arts & Culture Centre in St. John’s. It was 70s… Read More
In June 1970, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young released a searing single called Ohio, just a few weeks after the shootings in Kent State, when the National Guard opened fire and killed students. “Four dead… Read More
I like a Gershwin tune, how about you? My favourite version of A Foggy Day — a 1937 film tune from George and Ira that was introduced by Fred Astaire — was made about two… Read More
Michael Penn may be best known as the brother of Sean Penn, perhaps as the husband and sometime collaborate of Aimee Mann, but I think of him primarily for his debut single. No Myth is… Read More