Edmonton’s ‘Princes’ of punk party with Yakuza rockers in Tokyo
Local punk rockers N.N. somehow missed all the deadlines for most of North America’s major new music festivals in 2010 – but at least they made it to Japan. On a website for a guitarist they all admired – Tokyo’s Nikolas Faraguna – they noticed a banner for Japan Music Week. On a lark, they […]
GIGGLE CITY: ‘Dirty’ comedy gets serious
Darren Frost says he’s received death threats for some of his jokes – which takes heckling to an entirely new level. Too far? Too soon? Never. Comedy is dangerous, and the comics who performed for the XXX-rated “Beauty and the Beasts” shows at Yuk Yuk’s over the weekend – Frost, Kenny Robinson and Kathleen McGee […]
Underground supergroup Darlings of Chelsea unleash ‘Panic’
Darlings of Chelsea have been around. Names like The Black Halos, Robin Black and CJ Sleez are likely familiar to anyone following the underground music scene across Canada over the past decade or more, and in 2009, a few longtime rockers who paid their dues as members of the above banded together in Toronto to […]
Kathy Griffin cancels Canadian tour
Bad news for area Kathy Griffin fans – her Oct. 12 show at the Jubilee Auditorium has been cancelled. “Scheduling issues” is the official reason given for the decision, which includes all four Canadian dates, also including Saskatoon (Oct. 13), Calgary (Oct. 14) and Vancouver (Oct. 15). Ticket refunds are available at the point of […]
GIGGLE CITY: Kenny Robinson goes over the line
There’s always a “line” in comedy. Even when they say there isn’t a line, there’s a line – and the comedians featured in Beauty and the Beasts at Yuk Yuk’s this weekend intend to cross it. Kenny Robinson, Darren Frost and Kathleen McGee are all fond of “working blue,” but in order to make a […]
EIFF rides into sunset with winning films
As the Edmonton International Film Festival rides into the sunset – as riding into sunsets is one of the greatest film clichés of all time – let us celebrate the winners of our annual cinematic celebration. Yes, there was a contest, too. Fittingly, “Wild Horse, Wild Ride,” a documentary dealing with wild horses, was named […]
Was Edmonton actually Richler’s kind of town?
Ten years after his death, Mordecai Richler’s name remains mud in Edmonton for comments he made about the city in a 1985 essay for the New York Times on Wayne Gretzky, but questions remain about whether the legendary author was slaying the Alberta capital or actually celebrating it. The essay, called “King of the New […]
REVIEW: Tom Wood stunning as tragic hero in Death of a Salesman
Even non-theatre people are familiar with Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller’s bleak tale of Willy Loman and his family that ends in Loman’s death and dissatisfaction all around. It’s part of the high school canon of literature, and with good reason: life hasn’t really changed much since the show’s premiere in 1949. The Citadel […]
Pains of Being Pure at Heart earns buzz from fuzz
The New York indie pop band whose name is so long its acronym is still longer than most other band names – Pains of Being Pure at Heart, or POBPAH – is being talked about non-stop not only in the Blogosphere and Twitterverse, but in some of the largest music magazines in the world like […]
Ninjaspy creates its own scene
It only makes sense that unconventional music should be released in an unconventional fashion. Ska/metal band Ninjaspy’s upcoming EP No Kata, a 10 ½-minute piece of music employing its trademark genre-hopping and warped time signatures, will feature an accompanying graphic novel in which the song’s lyrics make up the narrative and dialogue. The effort is […]
