REVIEW: Yukon Blonde pops the rock, rocks the pop
Yukon Blonde is the closest hope we have for the new Knack – and this is good news. The world could use more of these bouncy, major-key kinds of bands. Where did they go? They’re lurking and bubbling up from the indie scene, that’s where. Like Yukon Blonde. For a small but enthusiastic crowd at […]
REVIEW: 54-40 gets intimate
I guess I picked the right (if differently spelled) Osbourne to go see on Saturday night – Neil Osborne, that is, from 54-40, leading his band in an acoustic show at Festival Place. Black Sabbath, meanwhile, was forced to cancel its Saturday show in Edmonton, and also Calgary Feb. 1, because Ozzy is suffering from […]
REVIEW: Steven Wilson far beyond prog
Steven Wilson represents something quite rare in today’s music industry: An artist who’s remarkably creative and actually writes interesting material – in case you thought they were all dead by now. More than 700 prog rock fans sold out the Myer Horowitz Theatre Monday night to see their hero perform his first-ever gig in Edmonton. […]
REVIEW: Future is grim for Marilyn Manson
For those mystified why Marilyn Manson is still doing his shtick after all these years, it’s not that difficult to understand. Just imagine April Wine, oh, about 20 odd years ago, trying desperately to stay relevant, but needing to trade on past glories to pay the bills, while playing for long time fans in their […]
Motley Crue ‘not worthy’ to open for Alice Cooper
If Motley Crue truly plans to retire for good at the end of their 2014 tour, they sure went out with a flash-bang during their nearly two hour set Tuesday night at Rexall Place. The excess of your average ’80s hair metal show was exceeded with such ease – MORE dry ice, MORE pyrotechnics, MORE […]
REVIEW: Fleetwood Mac plays to its strengths
For a band so relentlessly intent in telling us to forget yesterday – as in their 1977 hit Don’t Stop, Fleetwood Mac sure makes a lot of money keeping the past alive, as evidenced by the full house at Rexall Place Saturday night on their current “On With the Show” Tour. In the years before […]
Pixies review: Where Nirvana really came from
The strangest yet one of the most influential bands of the 1980s gave a few really good reasons why their music continues to attract sizable crowds – like the one Pixies drew Monday night at the Shaw Conference Centre. This young, urban group of bespectacled, plaid-clad hipsters weren’t going to be flicking their Bics in […]
REVIEW: Boz a mixed bag
Full disclosure – we were all brought in by the promise of Silk Degrees. Okay, that might be making too much of an assumption on behalf of the audience who came out to see Boz Scaggs at the Jubilee Auditorium Monday night, but not by much. Silk Degrees, after all, was a monster hit, an […]
REVIEW: George Thorogood b-b-b-boring
Vigorously played classic rock sends some people into fits of screaming, shouting, foot stomping, rampant high fiving and lots of odd yelping, but for others, like me, it can send them deep into a catatonic state that lasts several hours and ends up in the middle of a field wondering where everyone went and just […]
REVIEW: Black Sabbath kicks ass in Edmonton
Whether lapsed Catholics or apostate Protestants, fans of all religious persuasions gave roaring approval to the solid, reliable shift that Black Sabbath put in at the doom metal factory on Tuesday night. It wasn’t hard to see why 18,000 Edmonton fans flocked to see these metal legends get their hands dirty at Rexall Place. When […]
REVIEW: Great concert? Yes!
About 2,000 Edmontonians took a trip to a parallel rock ‘n’ roll universe for the duration of the Yes concert Monday night at the Jubilee Auditorium. Lucky for fans of the band – now spanning six decades since its inception in 1968 – this is exactly what they came for. How many bands in 2014 […]
SONIC BOOM: What’s My Age Again?
At what point does modern rock become classic? You can be sure that none of the 13,000 fans at Northlands Park on Sunday evening were contemplating this pop culture question as two of modern rock’s most geriatric acts Blink-182 and Weezer headlined Sonic Boom 2013. They were too busy rocking out. Whatever the actual ages […]
