REVIEW: Zombies bring psychedelic ’60s back to life

Keyboard solos have become a lost art – as Rod Argent reminded everyone at the Zombies on Sunday night. The 66-year-old founding member of the British band pounded the keys like a lion, and made them roar like nobody’s business. With fellow founding lead singer Colin Blunstone and the support of a tight band, the […]

Swedish metal kings Opeth still crushing stereotypes

It’s either a testament to the endlessly repackaged nature of pop music or the brutal honesty of good metal that the two musical elements don’t seem to really get along. Take Opeth, as close to a death metal megaband as you get — but in no way, really, a traditional death metal band. The Swedish […]

Avril Lavigne’s Four Step Program of Romance and Revenge

Avril Lavigne’s Four Step Program of Romance and Revenge

And so the young ladies of Edmonton did commune with the Alpha Elders of the Tribe of Womyn in a not-so-secret shamanic ritual to learn the mysterious ways of the Goddess Incarnate. In short, it was another Avril Lavigne concert [2022 edit: She performs Thursday, May 19 at Rogers Place] Like it or not, pop […]

CONCERT NEWS: George Canyon, sold-out Selena Gomez and more Jon Lajoie

It takes a real man to cry – and an even realer man to make that man cry. George Canyon may be that man. Find out when the archetypical cowboy country singer pulls into the River Cree Casino on Saturday, Dec. 10, bringing with him a heady mix of good ol’ Canadian boy country rockers […]

WHERE THEY ARE NOW: Christian Mena, Sabor Divino and Maracujah

Christian Mena was supposed to have become this big-deal Broadway star when he went away to join the touring production of Rent. How he wound up living back in Edmonton with a wife and kids and running a restaurant is a good topic for a VH1 “Behind the Music” special. But since there’s no tragedy, […]

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 […]

WEEKEND MUSIC PREVIEW: Zombies rock tonight

What we lack in big names this coming weekend we make up for in depth. The opening weekend of the National Hockey League season features more than enough reasons to get out of the house after the early game is over, including two release parties on Friday night (Fuquored and N.N.), and the major event […]

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 […]

METAL: Enslaved escapes scene that took black arts literally

Enslaved guitarist Ivar Bjornson is probably one of the youngest musicians to celebrate his band’s 20th anniversary – he was just 13 when Enslaved plunged into a grim Norwegian black metal scene that would soon make headlines for its connections to church arsons and murders. After spreading the darkness across North America this month, however, […]

THEATRE: The nerds shall inherit the Earth in Trent Wilkie’s Book on Tape

At the rate human evolution is going, it won’t be long until the archetypical “nerd” so scorned in the past will become the ultimate male ideal of the future – nearsighted, into Star Trek, fond of over-explaining every little nerdly thing they get into. Make way for Homo Nerdectus! Trent Wilkie, whose nerd credentials seem […]