The colourful crowd at Deer Lake Park went home happy on Wednesday night after paying great homage to Cyndi Lauper and the other stars of the True Colors tour. If you went, post your photos on our gallery too.

Titty bars are scarce to be seen in Rock N Roll Jesus, the most recent release by the American Bad Ass, which is proof that he really is all about the music.

There’s always been a place in record-nerd world for bands whose publicity stills depict boys and girls picnicking beside sun-dappled rivers, or whose songs are typically about sweaters, boating, and turtles. Indeed, a blog entry on Allmusic last week entitled “Twee as Ducks: Indie Pop Summer Crushes 2008” rounded up this year’s crop of cutesy perennials.

The Ontario writer and musician says storytelling runs through all her work, no matter what form it comes in, but that it’s very rare that a song or a spoken-word piece is born from a single source.

When it came time for Matt Mays + El Torpedo to record Terminal Romance, the follow-up to their self-titled debut of 2005, the Nova Scotia–spawned quartet didn’t mess around. Chris Tsangarides (Thin Lizzy, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest) was hired to produce and engineer, Mike Fraser (Joe Satriani, AC/DC, Van Halen) to mix, and Bob Ludwig (most every rock band in the world) to master.

How do you solve a problem like Frog Eyes? Critically lauded by all the right publications, adored by the tastemaking armies of bearded cognoscenti, and yet for some people utterly inaccessible.

Vancouver’s own Zapato Negro rewarded the early birds who flocked to David Lam Park on June 28 with a sizzling presentation of Afro-Cuban jazz. The quintet, led by bassist Allan Johnston, began with a lengthy version of Duke Ellington’s “Caravan” that gave the classic a bright Latin face-lift.

The Straight’s highly subjective rundown of songs you need to download this week.

If George Michael didn’t enjoy the kind of life that used to make Robin Leach cream his slacks on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, we might actually feel sorry for him. The dude born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou not only has alarmingly perfect teeth and, at age 45, most of his hair, he’s sold over 100 million records over the course of his career.

Any schmuck can hold a record release party; in fact it happens in Vancouver at least three-dozen times a week. It takes a true visionary, however, to come up with an event like a pre-release party, which is exactly what local folk renegade Joey Only and his Outlaw Band will be staging at the Royal Unicorn Cabaret on Friday (July 4). It seems that the only thing standing between Only and a new album is a complete lack of money, which is where you come in.

Even if begrudgingly, one has to give Collective Soul a certain amount of credit. While Live, Bush, and the other faceless acts of ’90s alt-rock had the decency to slink off to the delete bins long ago, the Stockbridge, Georgia, quintet keeps on giving ’er. It doesn’t matter that you and your Ting Tings–obsessed hipster friends couldn’t name a Collective Soul song if Ed Roland had that cattle-gun contraption from No Country for Old Men pressed to your immaculately coiffed head.

Summer in Vancouver is an exceptional time for outdoor events, with music and dancing at the jazz and folk festivals, and Shakespearean plays at Bard on the Beach, there are many ways to pass the time.

From writing symphonies for the Boston Orchestra to playing duets with Willie Nelson, scoring soundtracks for documentaries on his beloved hometown, New Orleans or executive producing a movie, the famous trumpeter does it all.

Over the past 14 years, the Toilet has trudged drunkenly through seven-hour sets, “channelled the universe”, and paid tribute to Bob Dylan’s worst album. Now the group has made "the most amazing disappointing second album ever".

Twenty years ago, if you’d told Michael Occhipinti that the best record of his career would feature the rustic sounds of the Sicilian tarantella he would have thought you were crazy. Of course, he knew what it sounded like: growing up in a musical family with Sicilian roots, it was the soundtrack to weddings and parties throughout his childhood.