Avril Lavigne plays Edmonton’s Rexall Place Oct. 10
She was, indeed, a Sk8tr girl. Then some dude in Hollywood gave her a record deal. Now, she’s an aging pop princess from Ottawa. Will fans keep supporting Avril Lavigne? She plays Rexall Place Oct. 10 with openers yet to be announced. Hmmm…. time will tell. It’s the great unknowable, whether a young artist will […]
Scalping tickets legal in Alberta, government has no plans to stop resales
Two years ago a firestorm erupted in the concert ticket business when complaints alleged that Ticketmaster, which had recently purchased the online ticket reselling business TicketsNow, was automatically diverting customers from its own website to the scalping one. The outrage over the perceived conflict of interest grew so loud that new legislation was drafted in […]
Katy Perry whips up a little mindless fun in Edmonton
The stark reality of the debate over pop and culture and folk like Katy Perry is that framing it in terms of arguments about quality is…like…soooo stupid. Cue gum chewing and snapping. But as much as people worry that cookie cutter pop is somehow destroying culture, they’re usually missing an important half of the equation: […]
NYC’s Pains of Being Pure At Heart adds Edmonton show
There was no press release. There was no announcement on a local radio station. But one of the biggest buzz bands of the year – The Pains of Being Pure At Heart – added a number of dates to an already lengthy tour late last week, and one of those is in Edmonton. The New […]
PREVIEW: The Devil’s Music gets right with the Lord at Edmonton church benefit
Jack Semple, playing hot electric blues to a liquor drinkin’ crowd …. in a church? No, it’s not the closing guitar duel scene from a Ralph Macchio blues flick. Surreal as that sounds, it’s what you’ll get this Friday night when the Saskatchewan blues guitar maestro cooks up some bid’ness at McDougall United, with proceeds […]
STAGE: Cirque Du Soleil goes far out with the far east
There are few odder sights than a performance of Cirque Du Soleil in full flight and fewer odder success stories. When Le Cirque rolls into E-Town in July for its performance of of its new show Dralion at Rexall Place, it won’t be quite the rare spectacle a Cirque performance used to be, back in […]
Kid Rock brings one long party to Rexall
Kid Rock is an interesting dude. My colleague Mike Ross likes to note that Rock was the first guy who managed to sell rap to southern white country kids, which would make just about anyone shake their heads. That’s not an easy task and few have pulled it off, none as successfully. From “Cowboy” off […]
PREVIEW: A worthy blues cause without selling your soul
The blues can be fickle. If you take your blues – and your blues music – really personally, for their curative qualities, you may be inclined to find a blues contest kind of silly, preferring instead a dingy bar with low light and lower prospects. But you’d be wrong. Blues contests have a long and […]
