Before we get on with the show permit me a short rant about show start times… Why is it that every gig at the Attic STARTS at 11 pm. The last three shows I’ve been to there (Pride Tiger, The Golden Dogs, last night’s pop explosion show) have gone way into the wee hours of […]
Cultural Festivals
Fall Arts Guide: November 2007
by Sue Carter Flinn, Sean Flinn, Mike Landry, Lindsay McCarney, Shannon Webb-Campbell CAL LANE: CRUDE Cal Lane’s vision is like no other in Canadian art. Turning everyday, hard-working objects into art, Lane elevates the potential meanings of wheelbarrows, oil cans, shovels and more. If we’re to use a spade, for example, to help beautify our […]
Fall Arts Guide: September 2007
by Sue Carter Flinn, Sean Flinn, Mike Landry, Lindsay McCarney, Shannon Webb-Campbell That doe’s a dead deer but the Marquee is alive, and we all scream for ice cream at the Jim Jarmusch film survey. PROSPECT 12: DUSTIN WENZEL When up-and-coming sculptor Dustin Wenzel pictures a deer he doesn’t imagine a doe running through the […]
Fall Arts Guide: October 2007
by Sue Carter Flinn, Sean Flinn, Mike Landry, Lindsay McCarney, Shannon Webb-Campbell GRAY’S ANATOMY: MYSTERIES OF THE HUMAN MACHINE Last June the amazing Wellcome Collection, a museum based on the intersection of art, medicine and science, opened in London, UK. Based on the collection and original endowment of Sir Henry Wellcome in 1936, the Wellcome […]
Multiples of one
Max Tundra, Seahorse, 10:30pm Ben Jacobs (aka Max Tundra) energized the fairly packed Seahorse crowd with inventive music – turns, twists and shifts aplenty – but also with his dedicated dancing. A short man, his arms were surprisingly long and he flailed them tirelessly, like a multi-armed mythical creature. Multiplicity was the night’s theme. Tundra’s […]
tent shows in monsoon season
It was a life-changing event when sax player and educator Jeff Goodspeed went over to the Cuban side. Since then, for years, he has tirelessly engineered musical interchanges between Nova Scotia and the Caribbean Island famous for some of the hottest music this side of planet Mercury. High school-aged Nova Scotia honour jazz students and […]
Playing with paint
Shan Arsenault’s Great Guitars, Andy Cragg Nonet, 3pm/4pm at Main Stage Festival Tent I’m a little confused. On the Atlantic Jazz Festival web site, the Men With Gloves Trio was listed as being accompanied by painter Holly Carr. But when Shan Arsenault’s Great Guitars act was on stage, so was Carr. Though she was finishing […]
Simon Fisk at the Argyle Gallery
Stuff happens. Like travel funding falling through for your band mates in Calgary when you’ve got a gig at the Atlantic Jazz Festival in Halifax. And continues to happen. You arrive at the gig. You, with your double bass. You, the one-man trio. But then, in strolls a pal from St. FX jazz school days, […]
Fair warning
Through the ribbon of glass running along one wall in Halifax Regional Police chief Frank Beazley’s office, a rainbow flag is visible, draped on an apartment balcony. The icon sits perfectly off the shoulder of deputy chief Chris McNeil, who’s borrowing his boss’s office while he’s away. Dressed casually, a blue HRP pin on the […]
The march of progress
Ian McKinnon has been going to gay pride parades on and off for the past 26 years. For the last three years, it’s been “off.” Lacking substance. Middle-class conservative. Normal. These are the words he and others use to describe the parade—not just the Halifax Pride parade, but gay pride parades in general. Pride parades […]
His and hirs
JT Davis had reached his breaking point. The then-20-year-old New Glasgow resident called his girlfriend. They’d had an intense discussion about transsexuality earlier that day, and the focus of the conversation had stayed with him. When she picked up the phone, he said, “You know that thing you were talking about? I think I’m it.” […]
The art of musical language
Language Arts, Wednesday July 18, 8pmArgyle Fine Art Sound Gallery Series Vancouver-based Language Arts will hopefully return to Halifax soon, perhaps on a bill in a club, because they’re ready for it. They certainly attract a crowd, judging from the enthusiastic folks on the stairway and some seat-dancers down the middle. All got smiles from […]

