Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

    Here are 19 favourite things I heard this year (in alphabetical order):   Aldous Harding Designer Third album from the New Zealand singer-songwriter hits the mark with engaging, quirky and original folk music for the 21st century.   Angelique Kidjo Celia  The African pop queen pays tribute to Cuban musical goddess Celia Cruz, with the same rich results she had with Talking Heads’ Remain in Light.   Bruce Cockburn Crowing Ignites With his stunning, all instrumental album, the Canadian folk legend proves his exceptional guitar playing deserves as much acclaim as his songwriting.   Bruce Springsteen Western Stars The 19th ...

Even in the Live-Aid era of pop music, when star-studded concerts for good causes have become a fixture on the rock ’n’ roll calendar, it was a landmark event. Amnesty International brought its Human Rights Now! show to Toronto last week, with an eight-hour concert featuring six of pop’s leading artists, kicking off the North American leg of the most ambitious world tour in rock history. The six-week tour, which began in London on Sept. 2, was to touch down in Montreal last Saturday before continuing to scheduled concerts this week in Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco. While pop musicians in the 1980s have increasingly adopted social concerns and appeared in concerts arou...

He’s one of the most famous musicians of the 20th century and a rock guitarist of unparalleled talent. Although his mainstream career lasted only four years before his death on Sept. 18, 1970 of an apparent drug overdose, Jimi Hendrix shone so brightly that today his albums and concert appearances are the stuff of legend. The official Hendrix website, run by his estate, painstakingly catalogues every recording and performance he ever made under his own name. And many devoted fan sites do the same. As most fans know, the Jimi Hendrix Experience performed twice in Toronto: once at the Canadian National Exhibition on Feb. 24, 1968, on a bill with England’s Soft Machine and Toronto’s own Pa...

For much of 1965, guitarist Domenic Troiano, singer George Olliver, bassist Don Elliot and drummer Whitey Glan were the house band at Toronto’s after-hours rhythm & blues club the Bluenote, downtown near the corner of Yonge and Gerrard streets. At the time, they were known as Whitey & the Roulettes. But with the addition of keyboardist Joey Chirowski, the group adopted a harder-edged sound and started calling themselves the Five Rogues. Donning pinstripe, gangster-style suits bought from tailor-to-the-stars Lou Myles, they began living up to their name as ruthless purveyors of blue-eyed soul. By the following year Toronto’s Yorkville district, like New York’s Greenwich Village and Sa...

Like The Ventures, The Shadows and other instrumental guitar bands in the 1960s, Wes Dakus & the Rebels offered a cool alternative to vocal groups of the day. The talented Edmonton outfit got to record at Buddy Holly’s legendary studio in Clovis, New Mexico where it cut such reverb-heavy originals as “Hobo,” “Sour Biscuits” and “Fried Rice.” Now thankfully back in circulation, these highly danceable tracks—including the slinky classic “Rattlesnake”—revive the twanging thrill of Canada’s pioneering beat group.

Rune Halland, of Oslo’s Cruisin’ Records, caught the music bug—you could say a case of rockin’ pneumonia and the boogie-woogie flu—at an early age. At 22, the university student made a pilgrimage all the way to New Orleans, the cradle of jazz and the home of rhythm & blues greats like Fats Domino, Professor Longhair and Allen Toussaint.  While in the Big Easy, Halland heard that his hellcat hero Jerry Lee Lewis was performing in Detroit. He excitedly bought a bus ticket and headed north, only to find when he arrived in the Motor City, after an arduous 30-hour-long journey, that the Killer had cancelled. What to do? After wandering the mean streets of Detroit, in predominantly black ...

Most people know Ian and Sylvia by their signature songs—his “Four Strong Winds” and her “You Were On My Mind”—and think of them as the iconic Canadian folk duo of the early 1960s. But few beyond fans or aficionados are familiar with their fine subsequent solo work, or Sylvia’s with the wondrous Quartette. And fewer still are aware that the talented pair once pioneered the country-rock genre with their excellent band Great Speckled Bird. A superb new collection of live recordings should change all that. Produced by Danny Greenspoon, The Lost Tapes (Stony Plain Records) features 26 tracks recorded between 1971 and 1974, a time when Ian was hosting a popular weekly country music TV show (on wh...

For defunct rock groups, 1983 has become the year of the reunion. Among the acts from rock’s golden years re-forming are The Guess Who, The Animals, The Hollies and Simon and Garfunkel. But the most unexpected return is that of The Band, Canada’s most celebrated rock ensemble. Its farewell concert seven years ago was so lavish and final that it made any suggestion of reunion seem dishonest. Now, with a two-week, 11-city Canadian tour which began in Halifax and ends in Vancouver on July 18, The Band is back, although without the services of guitarist Robbie Robertson. From the heady days of the southern Ontario bar circuit in the 1960s to Martin Scorsese’s touching movie tribute, The Last Wal...

Stepping off a Greyhound bus from Toronto in 1961, a 17-year-old boy found himself in West Helena, Ark., by the banks of the Mississippi River, unable to believe his senses. “It smelled different and moved different,” Robbie Robertson recently recalled. “The people talked and dressed different. And the air was filled with thick and funky music.” The experience left an indelible impression on the budding guitarist and songwriter. Years later, Robertson drew on it to write some of rock’s most evocative songs—including “Up on Cripple Creek” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” And he performed them with his group, The Band, which critic Greil Marcus has called “the best rock ’n’ roll band...

As museum pieces, they are the most humble of artifacts: a few report cards, a black leather jacket, a pair of government-issue eye glasses. Yet for many, the three objects are priceless. Once the property of John Lennon, those treasures are now on display at the recently opened Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, where they are already among its most popular exhibits. Looking at the articles, it is easy to see why: each of them brings the viewer closer to the real Lennon. His elementary school report card reveals that one of his teachers found rock’s future genius “hopeless,” while the well-worn, sloppy jacket somehow perfectly captures the musician’s irreverent charm....