Edmonton folk singer on a roll
Maria Dunn will use some of the $8,000 she won for the Edmonton Music Prize to travel to Ottawa in April for the Juno Awards – where her album Gathering is nominated for Traditional Roots Album of the Year. “It warms my heart,” Dunn says of the recent double honour, and this is no faint […]
Dinner party implodes in powerful Disgraced
Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Disgraced is a worthy member of a theatrical sub-genre that might be described as the “imploding dinner party.” A group of people gather in a living room for an evening of civil conversation, there are already tensions in the air when the evening starts and everything goes south from there. […]
REVIEW: We were so stupid back then
Watching the checkered history of gay rights in the United States, which continues in headlines still today, it’s tempting to point a superior Canadian finger. But our record is not that distinguished, either. As recently as 1981, Toronto police raided a series of bathhouses rousting out and charging homosexuals with the resultant destruction of their […]
NOFX a madhouse in Edmonton
Fat Mike is an unlikely catalyst for the furious blast of disturbing male energy that greeted NOFX at the Union Hall Monday night. He’s so laid back – but he seems to be holding a lot of anger inside. Turning 50 in January, Mike Burkett is a big hairy tattooed guy with a disheveled Mohawk […]
Stiff Little Fingers fires up old punks in Edmonton
The day the Stiff Little Fingers 2016 Canadian tour was announced on social media was an incredibly happy day for thousands of Canadian punks, old and young. The notion of the Belfast band playing anywhere in Canada other than Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal never came up. It was just silently assumed it would never happen. […]
REVIEW: Drake takes the cake
While Keith Urban was the artist who christened Edmonton’s shiny, new downtown arena last Friday night, it was Drake who gave Rogers Place its first landmark concert. On Tuesday night, the Canadian hip hop mogul brought his Summer Sixteen tour to E-town for a sold-out concert, the first of two at Rogers Place. It was […]
The price of fame at Edmonton Expo
There is one huge unwritten rule at the Edmonton Comic and Entertainment Expo happening this weekend – bring money. Oh, sure, you could just stand around and gawk at all the cool nerds in their awesome costumes, but what fun is that? A lot of fun, actually … never mind. Fans spend college-tuition sums of […]
Video of racist incident in Edmonton goes viral
A video of a racist incident on the streets of Edmonton has gone viral – more than 200,000 views in less than 24 hours. The video, captured while local entrepreneur and actor Jesse Lipscombe was filming a PSA promoting downtown Edmonton, shows a car full of people pull up to an intersection. One of the […]
The Tragically Hip’s heartbreaking goodbye
Gord Downie is wrong about one thing: Courage does matter, and it couldn’t come at a better time. Without courage, he could never have mounted what may well be the last Tragically Hip tour ever – in the face of a devastating diagnosis of terminal brain cancer. The 52-year-old singer is obviously feeling well enough […]
KISS STILL ALIVE!
“Let me remind you that patriotism is always cool!” declared Paul Stanley at Rexall Place on Tuesday night. There was general agreement among the 10,000 members of the Edmonton regiment of the KISS Army. Cue O Canada – the proper version – sung by a proper member of the Canadian military: Maj. John Kim. Man […]
REVIEW: Blink-182 comes on strong with the new guy
Shuffling band lineups are nothing new in music. It’s a rarity to encounter a group with any sort of longevity behind its name that hasn’t endured its fair share of turnover. But losing a key member, particularly one whose voice has become a band’s hallmark, can be a make or break moment. Blink-182 doesn’t appear […]
Fire Aid so Alberta it hurts
There’s something about Commonwealth Stadium that makes Edmontonians nostalgic for all of the big events held there throughout their lives. There’s the long list of Edmonton Eskimos’ games (are we ever going to change that name?), Grey Cups, the 1983 Summer Universiade, Oilers Stanley Cup Parades, and the visit of Prince Charles & Lady Di, […]
