I’ve just caught shit from the drummer of Sleater-Kinney. In asking Janet Weiss about the state of women in music, I should have known better and she lets me know it. “How do you feel about men in music?” Weiss fires back. “I feel like you’re putting me in the ghetto just asking that question. […]
Johnston Farrow
Posted inArts + Music
Stills standing
A band releases a great record and tours its collective ass off, playing its music to thousands of eventual converts and achieving the status of a band with a bright future. But over the thousands of traveled miles and similar sounding records being produced by sound-alike acts, the group starts to question itself and the […]
Posted inArts + Music
Nothing personal
Add one more talented singer-songwriter to the list of those who call Halifax home. After more than a decade in the local music scene, Norma MacDonald finally releases her first debut solo album, Nothing Is Where It Was, this Saturday at Stage Nine. “I feel like I’m starting something completely new,” the 30-year-old MacDonald says. […]
Posted inArts + Music
Cutting crew
It’s Saturday night at Stage Nine. Sharp Like Knives are set to play their CD release show. The place is packed, almost too packed for skinny, mop-haired and bespectacled frontman Paul Hammond. “This is almost overwhelming,” Hammond says, looking around at the nearly shoulder-to-shoulder audience threatening to swallow him up. “I didn’t think there’d be […]
Posted inArts + Music
The smooth talker
Massari, AKA Sari Abboud, lives the life of a smooth talker. His words are like the fine-tailored white suit he wears on the cover of his debut CD—silky and sleek. A request for background information turns into a calling card for a burgeoning Don Juan at a singles’ bar. When asked how old he is, […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Finding Fudge
The crowd is still the same, a group in search of a drink and a good time, and welcoming any gender, race and sexual preference. People still frequent the club for weekly events such as karaoke and dancing on Friday and Saturday nights. The renovations, new sign, and new ownership and staff indicate there’s been […]
Posted inArts + Music
Buck and change
Movie director Vincent Gallo saved Richard Terfry’s music career. Living in near-squalor in a run-down apartment above the Black Market on Grafton Street, Terfry found himself in a deep hole musically and emotionally. His latest release at the time, Man Overboard, seemed headed toward the same relative obscurity as his previous work and his mother […]
Posted inArts + Music
Air supply
Dictionary.com defines the word “contrived” as an adjective: 1: showing effects of planning or manipulation; “a novel with a contrived ending” 2: artificially formal; “contrived coyness”; “a stilted letter of acknowledgment”; “when people try to correct their speech they develop a stilted pronunciation.” This is an apt assessment of the music made by the Halifax […]
Posted inArts + Music
Death from above the 49th Parallel
Make no mistake—Death From Above 1979 is huge. But if you’re an average Canadian, you probably don’t know that. What many people don’t know is Jesse Keeler and Sebastien Grainger are rock stars in a lot of countries. Their first single “Blood On Our Hands” hit the Top 40 on the UK charts and the […]
Posted inArts + Music
About a boy
Not everyone liked the kid from Enfield right away. In fact, if he had to guess, most people couldn’t stand him. Big odds are something that Classified (AKA Luke Boyd) has been facing almost all his musical life, all the way back to his first Halifax performance. It was 1995, one of the most fertile […]
Posted inArts + Music
Big, big plans
Thank God for bingo. Members of Wintersleep have taken a time-out from preparing for the release of their new, self-titled record for a shot at some prize money at the local bingo hall. It happens to be one of the coldest days of the season, and the sound of numbers and letters over the loudspeaker […]
Posted inArts + Music
Understanding K-OS
It’s safe to say that k-os is in a good place at the beginning of 2005. And it’s no wonder, because with his second album, Joyful Rebellion, k-os has reached the top 10 on the Canadian pop charts and can be heard on hip-hop, Top-40 and college radio stations. He is supporting the album with […]
