Articles of Section 'Music Choices'.

Music Choices

Rodney DeCroo

It’s tempting to ask Rodney DeCroo to stop hiding his light under a bushel, except that he isn’t hiding his light under a bushel. Put the gruff-but-sensitive singer-songwriter in just about any other Canadian city besides Vancouver and you’re looking at a sold-out show and maybe even a little bit of hysteria over one of the finest tunesmiths out there. Just check his live album War Torn Man for the sound of Edmonton losing its shit over DeCroo.

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Music Choices

Finntroll

A mere six million people worldwide speak Finnish. So why, in the sweet name of Jyrki Lumme, would a Finnish folk-metal band like Finntroll choose to sing exclusively in Swedish? The Swedes don’t need any language-preserving help: with their domestic population of nine million, the extinction of Swedish is as unlikely as ever getting ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” out of your head. Original Finntroll vocalist Jan “Katla” Jämsen once claimed it’s because Swedish sounds “so damn trollish”.

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Music Choices

Stone Temple Pilots

Cashing in on the reunion dollar is a tricky business. Obviously, if your band has achieved legendary status, you can pull the old “when hell freezes over” thing. And sometimes, just sometimes, if your group has enough retro-camp appeal (à la Duran Duran), you can depend on your greying fans to come through at the box office. Seeing as Stone Temple Pilots doesn’t fall into either category, God knows how the outdated faux-grunge phonies are going to pack GM Place on Saturday (August 30).

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Music Choices

Airbourne

What ever happened to Chevy Novas with mag wheels and a lot of Bondo? Why do so few people cut their mack jackets off at the waist anymore? These questions don’t bother the members of Australia’s Airbourne, because as far as they’re concerned, 1979 never ended.

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Music Choices

Simple Plan

The problem with punk rock is it’s kind of weird and scary. Thank God for Simple Plan, then, the well-scrubbed Montreal outfit that has done as much as any band since Sum 41 to turn the genre into something safe to play in your mom’s SUV while she’s giving you a lift to the mall. And hey, make sure she’s loaded up your official Simple Plan MYplash gift card so you can score a bunch of Role Model Clothing, by Simple Plan.

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Music Choices

3 Doors Down

The bullet-headed bozos of 3 Doors Down must be very proud of themselves these days, after landing their song “Citizen/Soldier” in a TV commercial for the U.S. National Guard, no less! Serving God and country makes a lot of sense if your tunes ain’t good enough for the devil, and cozying up to the cold steel of the American war machine never hurt Elvis’s career or anything. You want a world that’s safe for your kids and more importantly your favourite nu rock and alt-metal bands?

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Music Choices

John Jackson

Fuck man, it’s been seven years since John Jackson first started giving us a reason to blaze up, and we’re still riotously baked. Right after Jack Johnny put out In Between Dreams in 1995, we quit our jobs as corporate lawyers and began spending our days on the beach, chowing down on weed-flavoured bananas and pancake-flavoured weed, all the while spinning ultra-mellow tunes like “Banana-Pan Weedcakes”. A bowl full of Maui wowee and a little bit of John Johnson, and we’re fucking set for the day.

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Music Choices

Oasis

It must truly blow to be bigger than Camilla Parker Bowles’s knockers in England, and yet be seen in North America as monobrowed cavemen whose last Stateside hit was 1995’s “Wonderwall”. There are many reasons to pity Oasis, at GM Place on Wednesday (August 27).

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Music Choices

Priscilla Ahn

Priscilla Ahn’s old-school credentials go beyond sporting the same first name as Elvis’s ex. While many solo artists augment their sound with laptops, the Pennsylvania-bred singer-songwriter opts for the stripped-down Dylan-Shakey setup: acoustic six-string and harmonica neckgear. But don’t expect the weird grit of “Maggie’s Farm” when Ahn comes to play the Media Club on Monday (August 25).

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Music Choices

Radiohead

There was a time when certain members of Radiohead swore blind that they’d never come back to Vangroover. The year was 1995. The Oxford-based boffins had just released their second album, The Bends, when a weird little acoustic tour brought them to the Railway Club, where a handful of, let’s say “high-spirited” hecklers managed to drive Thom Yorke off-stage by the fourth song.

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Music Choices

Mighty Sparrow

There’s a wonderful clip on YouTube of Mighty Sparrow performing his classic ditty about interracial cunnilingus, “Congo Man”, and then admitting that—contrary to any claims made in the song—he has indeed eaten “the white meat”.

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Music Choices

Shout Out Out Out Out

Armed with two drum kits, four basses, two samplers, and—most crucially—two vocoders, Edmonton’s Shout Out Out Out Out makes exuberantly kitschy indie-dance music that will have even the most too-cool-for-school scenesters shaking their skinny-jeans–clad asses when it plays Richard’s on Richards on Sunday (August 10).

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Music Choices

Crüe Fest

Those guys again? Really? Oh, well. Even if Mötley Crüe has yet to write a good song, at least the veteran Sunset Strip sleaze-rock quartet doesn’t take itself too seriously, most of the time. That’s a sound policy when the rest of the world refuses to take you seriously, by the way. And, in spite of its musical shortcomings and enough “character quirks” to keep the Betty Ford Center in business for the next two decades, the Crüe understands the value of spectacle.

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Music Choices

Shugo Tokumaru/Mia Doi Todd

After a day of stuffing your stomach with salmon shioyaki and your ears with taiko drumming at Oppenheimer Park, why not continue your Powell Street Festival experience with something soft and strange? Tokyo’s Shugo Tokumaru (above) and Los Angeles–based Mia Doi Todd share a PSF–sponsored double bill at the Firehall Arts Centre on Saturday (August 2).

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Music Choices

Black Francis

Frank Black (aka Black Francis) certainly has himself a good little gig going—and who can begrudge him, considering he practically invented the loud-quiet-loud template that nine out of 10 “alternative” bands have spent 18 years ripping off? Should he require a down payment for that third house on the ocean in Fiji, he simply grits his teeth and gets back together with the Pixies, who spent the middle part of this decade pulling down obscene paycheques on the reunion-gig circuit.

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Music Choices

Dixie’s Death Pool

Sound-sculptor Lee Hutzulak describes the new Dixie’s Death Pool CD as “the remarkable collision of a hazy, magical past and a brilliant, imagined future”, and that’s entirely apt. Scarlet Lake is based on Hutzulak’s four-track recordings from the early 1990s, elaborately reinvented here using contemporary digital technology. The result combines the unfettered imagination of an artist just beginning to explore his medium with the sonic sophistication of a mature experimentalist.

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Music Choices

Nicole Atkins

Sultry, dark, intoxicating… And that’s before she’s uttered a single note. The lovely Ms.

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Music Choices

Kids these days

The tears may flow when Kids These Days plays the Railway Club on Wednesday (July 30), since this will likely be the last show for the local indie superheroes. Guitarist-vocalist Marc Morrissette is joining the eastward exodus to Hogtown, Ontario, where he’ll reestablish his main gig as Octoberman.

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Music Choices

Lyle Lovett

You might have read recently that Lyle Lovett has “never made a dime” from record sales, which fairly boggles the mind when you consider he’s sold 4.5 million of the damn things in the U.S. alone. Mr. Lovett has presumably accepted that quality is its own reward, because he keeps pumping them out anyway, and they’re never less than great. His last one, It’s Not Big It’s Large, did particularly well—for someone, at least. Large Band, large talent, very large head—tiny wallet.

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Music Choices

Whistler Music Festival

Seems like cred-heavy musicians from around the world are heading for the hills—the ski hills, that is, or at least the area around them. If you can barely wait for the Pemberton Festival, set to run the last weekend of this month, pack up the van for the first-ever Whistler Music Festival, taking place on Saturday and Sunday (July 19 and 20) at an amphitheatre on the mountain.

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Music Choices

James Taylor

As soft-rock icon James Taylor is no doubt aware, there’s an old saying that he who laughs last laughs best. How does this apply to the edgeless (not to mention increasingly hairless) superstar behind easy-listening staples like “Fire and Rain” and “Sweet Baby James”? Well, let’s just say that in 1971, a certain loudmouth—let’s call him L. Bangs, or, on second thought, maybe Lester B.—was running around penning rock-critic manifestos like “James Taylor Marked for Death”.

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Music Choices

DJ AM

Go ahead and just admit it. Pathetic star-gazer that you are, the big attraction of seeing DJ AM at Republic on Wednesday (July 23) isn’t the fact that he’s one of the most famous crate diggers of the past decade. No, the only thing you give a shit about is the fact that he used to be engaged to the human Q-Tip with eyes known as Nicole Richie.

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Music Choices

16 Volt

Is the intense summer sun causing your architecturally impossible black hairdo to wilt a little? Do you tend to take a black umbrella and a copy of the Necronomicon when friends drag your reluctant and pasty butt to Kits Beach? Do you feel that cannibalism is perfectly fine between consenting adults? If you answered yes to at least two of those questions, we expect to see you beating the heat wave with a little coldwave when 16 Volt comes to the Media Club on Sunday (July 13).

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Music Choices

The Skatalites

If everything you know about ska was taught to you by No Doubt or Goldfinger, it’s time to get that skinny ass of yours back to cool school—aka Richard’s on Richards tonight (July 10)—for the heavy, heavy boss sounds of the mighty originators themselves, the Skatalites. It was over 40 years ago that these guys invented the genre that made the porkpie hat a symbol of undying cool.

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Music Choices

Stevie Wonder

“I Was Made to Love Her”, “My Cherie Amour”, “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours”, “Superstition”, “You Are the Sunshine of My Life”, “Higher Ground”, “Living for the City”, “Master Blaster (Jammin’)”… What can we possibly say about Stevie Wonder when the above titles say it all? It should be mandatory for every human being to be packed off to at least one of his concerts in his or her lifetime.

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