Tonight's the 24th annual MTV Video Music Awards and us crazy canucks can watch it live on CTV at 9pm. For years this was my favourite music awards show of them all. The best artists were always on the bill and the coolest videos for great songs often took home
As sad as it is to admit this, I'm getting used to hearing my favourite tunes exploited to sell products. For a long time I had a serious issue with this and bitched every time an artist sold out. Now I'm okay with it so long as it's a fairly
I'm just catching up on my YouTubery. This is a sweet performance of "1234" by Feist on Letterman the other night. Check out those back up singers. You'll see members of Broken Social Scene, the New Pornographers, Grizzly Bear and The National.
The Ongoing History of New Music is discussing bands that were around in the 70s and continue to make music to this day. That got me thinking about my favourite bands that were making music twenty years ago and are still making new music today. To qualify for this list,
One of the best things about John From Cincinnati was the opening credits. It was cool grainy surfer imagery with Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros' "Johnny Appleseed" playing overtop. I had never heard "Johnny Appleseed" before but I'm now a big fan. Download the song in MP3 here and watch
Last night's concert at the Molson Amphitheatre opened with Kill Hannah and closed with Velvet Revolver but for me it was all about Alice in Chains. I spin the crap out of Dirt regularly and find the Alice in Chains sound appeals to my sensibilities like very few band do.
The latest single from Arcade Fire is "No Cars Go" from their Neon Bible album. It's a great single, and I'll probably throw it on SLS18, but any fan of Arcade Fire has heard this song before. Arcade Fire has covered themselves. Before Funeral, Arcade Fire had a self titled
The Associated Press has a story entitled "Singer-songwriters, or just singers?". It's about Chantal Kreviasuk's recent comments regarding Avril Lavigne's songwriting ability and whether artists actually co-write all the songs they get credit for. As a Canadian, I was caught off guard by the opening paragraph of this article. Of
Back in 1989, I was a member of Columbia House. Almost all of my disposable income was going toward CDs, so I whipped out a calculator and figured the 7 discs I'd get for a penny made up for the 4 or so I'd have to buy at $20 a
There are eight songs in my collection with the word "heartache" in the title. Here's the counter punch for the heart songs I listed a couple of years back. Good Morning Heartache - Billy HolidayTonight The Heartache's On Me - Dixie ChicksThat's When Your Heartache Begins - Elvis PresleyNothing But
The White Stripes played a secret gig in St. John's, Newfoundland. They didn't play a very long set, in fact, they played a single note. Jack White picked up the guitar and hit a C-sharp, putting Newfoundland in the books as the final province The White Stripes would play on
Somebody named Steve Varga took exception to this entry about Avril Lavigne's Girlfriend being a little too similar to The Rubinoos' I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend. It was a rather interesting comment, so I'm reposting it here. The spelling and grammatical errors belong to Steve. This goes out to anybody
There are 1623 complete albums in my collection. That's a lot of music. Imagine if you had to start your collection from scratch but you were capped at twenty discs. Which twenty albums would make the cut? It's a ridiculous question, because in reality there is no 20 CD maximum,
Last weekend we loaded up the van and hit the road for a little road trip. It was about a six hour round trip, so I filled up my new iPod Shuffle, plugged it into my FM transmitter and shuffled my way to Pinery and back. Never underestimate the positive
The Polaris Music Price is meant to recognize Canada's best album based on creative quality, regardless of musical genre or sales figures. It's essentially our Mercury Prize. Last year's winner caught me off guard, so this year I'm predicting Chan VanGaalen will win. I never heard of him/her/them,
ShowClix is a live music search engine that helps music fans find, track and share live music online. Here's a direct link to concert listings in Toronto: http://toronto.showclix.com. Lynsie wants you to know that they're celebrating their Canadian launch by giving away concert tickets. In Toronto, they're
Eddie Vedder's been busy with his solo stuff. He's finishing some new music for the upcoming Sean Penn-directed film "Into the Wild" and an album of his songs is due in September. Vedder likes to work on Penn films. He's all over the "Dead Man Walking" soundtrack and he recorded
It's been quite the journey. We kicked off our quest to assemble the greatest Canadian songs in the history of the world back on May 15 and here we are, a month and a half later. It's unlikely everyone will agree with all 100 choices, many great songs were left
Pete, I don't know if you're reading this, but your bro "borrowed" your copy of Neil Young's Live at Massey Hall 1971 and lent it to me. I've been spinning it all morning, and it's heaven. Young was 25 and on his game. It sounds brilliant, and his words and
I heard "Icky Thump" on the way to work this morning. I turned up the volume and funked out. It was so raw, so catchy, and those lyrics are super cool. It's a tremendous single. Then I started to think about other radio singles from The White Stripes. They're all
Did somebody mention Cypress Hill? How about some Beastie Boys and Cypress Hill performing "So What'cha Want", for Kic and anyone else out there with a soul. Awesome.
Checking my feeds this morning, I saw that FameWrites had linked to a new MP3 blog. Sure, there's are lots of MP3 blogs out there, but this one specializes in Canadian hip-hop and rap. living underwater starts strong by sharing a compilation of Canadian rap artists from 1991. In the
Here's Journey performing "Don't Stop Believin'". Those who know, know. Those who don't, don't. Don't stop.
When I wrote about "Icky Thump" a couple of weeks back, I embedded a fan-made video for the tune. Now I can share the real video. It's an awesome tune. It's organized chaos and it rocks. Truer words have never been spoken than "You can't be a pimp and a
How does Kelly Clarkson top "Since U Been Gone"? First, she gets royally pissed at a dude, then she swallows a jagged little pill and lets this poor dude have it with "Never Again". I wrote briefly about this new single from Kelly Clarkson when I wrote about the recent
