Lady Gaga twats Edmonton
By Frank Moher
Could Edmonton mayor Stephen Mandel have been any more humourless in his response to Lady Gaga’s cheerful twit-pic from Rexall Place on Saturday? (That’s it to the left.) Crews had removed the letter “O” from a sign to position a spotlight; our lady, or one among her entourage, grabbed a shot of the [...]
Calgary Jazz Festival plays itself off
By Brian Brennan
Chick Corea was supposed to play Calgary this Friday night, followed by Ben E. King on Saturday night. But that won’t happen now because C-Jazz, the local organizers of the Calgary Jazz Festival, have abruptly pulled the plug on the annual event.
Is it possible the shows will still go on? Likely not. [...]
Miley Cyrus’s secret
By Rachel Krueger
Proposition: Ostensible tweenstress Miley Cyrus is, in fact, an aging dowager.
While her bio and her boobs say she’s still well shy of 20, Miley Cyrus’s actions have all the quiet desperation of a washed-up starlet three times her age. The navel-exposing Myspaced photos “leaked” in 2008 are the closest to a sex-tape Hannah [...]
Todd Butler’s Act Two
“Nimble-fingered maniac” Todd Butler makes the leap from concert stage to the theatrical kind ~~
By Jan Beecher ~~
On a gentle west coast evening, Todd Butler is opening the Islands Folk Festival at Providence Farm near Duncan, BC. I have just arrived along with a thousand or so other people for a weekend of music and [...]
Todd Butler’s Act Two – page 2
Continued from page 1
On his latest, Hamburger Soup, Butler has tried to further squelch his laughabilly half by making the album strictly instrumental, but again — consider the title. He’s still fighting off the ha-ha’s. Looking at the track list on the album still wasn’t enough to convince me this wasn’t just another collection of [...]
Stradivari’s Secret
What makes the violins of Antonio Stradivari stand out in quality beyond those of any maker since? What is his secret? Perhaps there is none, and this idea that no maker can equal or surpass the Cremonese master is nonsense, hype, a myth. Perhaps Stradivari was simply a master craftsman who produced violins at the [...]
Y’all come out west, Billy Bob
By Frank Moher
You have to give Jian Ghomeshi credit for the way he handled Billy Boob Thornton’s meltdown on his radio program “Q” on Wednesday morning.
Respeck, too, to his long-suffering bandmates, who have obviously become practised in the fine art of prima-donna handling. At least they understood they were there to try and get an [...]
Joaquin a fine line
Remember when Joaquin Phoenix played Emperor Commodus and made being power-mad kind of sexy? Remember when Joaquin Phoenix played Johnny Cash and made being tormented and hopeless kind of sexy? Remember when Joaquin Phoenix stopped showering and made unwashed vagrancy the world’s most uninteresting controversy?
Since his shock-seeking announcement last October that Phoenix is [...]
It’s Rihanna’s business
Super-ultra-pop-star Rihanna is a lot of things: model, former beauty queen, Barbadian youth cultural ambassador (!), frequent Billboard presence, wackadoo fashion icon, and a scant “score-and-one” years old. After an alleged argument that ended in alleged violence with boyfriend-singer Chris Brown a few weeks ago, however, it seems the media would like to cram [...]
