Blues music is remarkable because it's humble roots in the call-and-response cotton fields have grown to an omnipresent worldwide phenomenon. From the wood and steel basics to the classic rock, metal, roots and kid pop you hear on AM radio, the patterns a

Eclectic. Whenever I see that word I'm filled with equal parts of anticipation and dread. To me, it means an art form based on a widely accepted model that has been heavily modified with the uniquely personal in such a way to attract as many converts as i

There are few originals in the arts as the art form almost always supersedes the individual. I'm music, the early influences that shape a performer are themselves an amalgamation of the ethos personified in the ones who went before. Jake Heibert was and i

On this very night the most famous female singer in the world was performing her sleight-of-ear in Toronto and Ivy James couldn't care less. Oddly at odds with the stupid and banal, this Oakville chanteuse has more rings on her tree of life than seems pos

When it's metal you want, Steel City has a shitload of it - all kinds of it. This town likes it rough, tough and real, no quarter either taken or given. Within the genre, the brand that sells best around here has its roots in the classics, the masters and

Sometimes it's hard to keep track of all the good, new, original music out there these days, what with all the choices we can find on the web. Like it or not, the Internet is today's record store, library and fan mag all in one. If you want to get noticed

Music can be in the background, it can serve as a fanfare - or it can be front and centre as is the case with Colour Film, the Kodachrome vignette from Matthew de Zote that is at once both a vehicle and an identity. Drawn from the spools of cellulose that

Rock and roll is both a fantasy and a vicious game, and it's a long way to the top if you want to do it. Born from the mixture on American culture and music forms, evolving from the gyrations of Elvis to the myriad of styles in the sub-genre.

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We've seen Jo Boudreau a couple of times on the show as the front man for the sweeping opus that was The Monarch Project. Comprising six or seven members, the band served the pageantry and splendor of Boudreau's arrangements well and the interplay spoke t

Every once and awhile we have a show that shines for all the right reasons - and baby, this is one of them. Sarasin has been making heavy metal thunder in the Hammer for 30 years now, a band of brothers steeped in the blackest of sabbaths and bluest of cu