FRINGE REVIEW: Zack Adams an existential time traveller
The premise of Zack Adams: Zack to the Future (Venue 2) involves a failed Fringe playwright who travels into the future to try to discover his identity and assuage his existential angst about career choices that led to becoming a failed Fringe playwright. He ends up discovering a couple of unexpected things: that no quantum […]
FRINGE REVIEW: Mac Attack bombs
Imagine going to McDonald’s, ordering a Big Mac and being given a Filet o’ Fish. Any reasonable response would be to say “Yuck, I didn’t order this” and hand it back. No such luxury is afforded audience members at Fringe plays that turn out to be something completely different than advertised. You just have to […]
REVIEW: Big league fun at Edmonton rock fest
If there is one thing classic rock fans know how to do – apart from drinking beer – it’s how to enjoy themselves. It’s hard to imagine people at the folk fest having any more fun than the joyful fans down at Heritage Amphitheatre on Friday Night for the 2013 edition of the Edmonton Rock […]
FESTIVAL GUY: Heritage Days expensive, fattening
Is Canada becoming a melting pot? For all the hullabaloo about multiculturalism in Canada, this weekend’s Heritage Festival seemed pretty North American. The festival seemed to serve its product – overpriced food and irrelevant cultural offerings – in a homogenous, inoffensive, stale, typically Canadian package. Meaning: charge too much and make sure it’s deep fried. […]
FESTIVAL GUY: Interstellar Rodeo a triumph of Edmontonian proportions
“Eclectic” may be too generic a word to describe the mish-mash of musical genres thrown together for this year’s Interstellar Rodeo – everything from Americana from Steve Earle to the electronic art rock from Edmonton’s own Shout Out Out Out Out. There seemed little cohesion between the different artists at the weekend’s cosmic soundwave soup […]
FESTIVAL GUY: Taste of Edmonton satisfies relish for adventure
Much like Edmonton’s weather, The Taste of Edmonton had become predictable these last few years. Green onion cakes? Can’t not have those. Chocolate covered strawberries? Big seller. Ginger Beef? Can’t miss it. I understand the need to play to the masses. Someone has to like Justin Bieber. But do organizers think that the same 500,000 […]
FESTIVAL GUY: Crowds not a problem at Works
If Toronto put on a street festival that referenced Henry David Thoreau’s dictum “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see” – the theme of this year’s Works Art & Design Festival – you’d have people clamouring to try to catch a glimpse of Rob Ford smoking crack. But this is […]
REVIEW: Rihanna a rock star at Rexall Place
Rihanna would need the assistance of Iron Maiden to rock her way out of a wet paper bag – but she sure carried the attitude of a swaggering lifer to the hedonic world of rock ‘n’ roll excess at Rexall Place on Wednesday night. Led Zeppelin, Queen, Maiden, and yes, even you guys in Spinal […]
OSCAR FILM: Searching for Sugar Man about art for art’s sake
Imagine you wrote and recorded a couple albums only to find them with $1.99 tags in the delete bin at the old A&B Sound a couple weeks later. Now imagine finding out 20 years later that you were bigger than Elvis Presley in some country on the other side of the world. It’s hard to […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Amy Grant show a musical Pentecostal service
A full moon hovering over Shaw Conference Centre during Amy Grant’s performance at Break Forth 2013 brought no portents of imminent danger – and for a non Christian attending a Christian music concert, it was a new experience. This wasn’t your usual rock concert. After years of going to heavy metal shows, I was allowed […]
ONE FINAL YEARENDER: Eight Edmonton news items of 2012
And here you were hoping the Mayans were right and you could FINALLY get out of having to read one more “top stories of the year” list. Sorry. Given Pre-Columbian prophetic abilities, surely the Mayans wouldn’t have been able to accurately predict any of these events either: Former Edmontonian Heads Bank of England It was […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Journey treats fans to ’80s delights
The last time Journey played Edmonton, Wayne Gretzky was 21 years old and the Oilers were two years away from winning their first Stanley Cup. Thirty years later, both Gretzky and the Cup are long gone, but ‘80s rock is still going strong. Just ask the 11,000 people who came out for Tuesday’s night show […]
