Montreal songstress Neema’s debut album, Masi, is highly intellectualized pop music accompanied by probing philosophical insights. She is making two intimate stops in Halifax: at The Economy Shoe Shop on August 30 and on September 1 at One World Cafe. “The talented François Turgeon is joining me at both shows,” she says by phone […]
Music
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Posted inArts + Music
Cuff love
Cuff the Duke frontman Wayne Petti is sitting in a ferry terminal in Kitchener. Together with drummer Matt Faris, lead guitar player Jeff Peers and bassist Paul Lowman, he has just finished a 26 hour haul from Winnipeg and is waiting for a boat to take him to play his slot at the Wolfe Island […]
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The Karen package
New York’s architecture is laid on an invisible foundation of stories. From Breakfast at Tiffany’s to Jonathan Lethem’s requiem for a Motherless Brooklyn, there are few cities in the world that have inspired as many tales of hope, love, loneliness and utter despair. Although it’s early in the morning, you can already hear evidence of […]
Posted inArts + Music
Goodspeed you! Jazz emperor
The afternoon’s as hot as Beelzebub’s hip pocket when musician Jeff Goodspeed shows up for a chat about what’s got him so stoked about Cuban jazz. His trio is playing a wedding reception in an hour. Which explains why, on a scorching day better suited for baggy shorts and flip-flops, he’s turned out in black […]
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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 […]
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Live to tell
In the early ’80s, the done thing for any self-respecting Clash fan was to squat in the riotous, terminally unemployed south London neighbourhood of Brixton. That’s where I landed fresh out of university in fall 1984, sharing a busted row house with a messy pile of ex-pat Haligonians. It was all roses and tequila until […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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Lemme at ’em
When you think about Lemmy from Motorhead—and what true rocker doesn’t?— what do you think of first? Maybe his bullet belt. The Rickenbacker bass guitar and shower-stall-style microphone. His Marlboro Reds washed down with a Jack Daniels and Coca-Cola meal plan. Killer tracks like “Killed By Death” or (for you young ones out there) “Shake […]
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Alternative CKDUniverse
This year CKDU turns 20. Two decades of FM broadcasting after a start on closed-circuit radio hooked up to Dalhousie University residences. Like most campus/community stations across Canada, CKDU lasts because of volunteers. Each September, with the flood of new students on campus, people keep making the climb to the fourth floor of Dalhousie University’s […]
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Blues Theory
f you’ve ever seen Al Tuck play, you know whatI’m talking about. Before every other song, you get a bit of tuning and twanging, maybe half an anecdote, more tuning, at least one false start, a slug of beer and finally, he’s off. As a performer, Al’s never been known to come sharp right out […]
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 […]
