Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

There's plenty to love about Martin Scorcese's new Netflix documentary about Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue tour. There are some illuminating present-day interviews with cast members including the masked ringleader Dylan himself, although he claims to barely remember anything about the tour, as he wasn't "even born yet." The story itself is one of rock's great dramas. Rolling Thunder was an entirely different way of touring. It began with the idea of Dylan, his buddy Bobby Neuwirth and mentor Ramblin’ Jack Elliott playing small venues while traveling around in a station wagon. When that proved impractical, it grew into a larger, illustrious cast of characters that included Joan Baez, Roge...

It was 52 years ago today, June 18, that the Monterey International Pop Festival opened, kicking off 1967's Summer of Love with a star-studded lineup that included the first major American appearances by the Jimi Hendrix Experience and The Who, the first large-scale performance by Janis Joplin and the introduction of Otis Redding to a mass American audience. Others on the bill for the groundbreaking three-day festival were San Francisco's Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, the Mamas and the Papas, The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Eric Burdon & the Animals and Simon  & Garfunkel. Monterey also marked the big U.S. debut of Canada's The Paupers, a band on the cusp of greatnes...

From the exotically primitive portrait on the album’s jacket to the untamed sounds inside, Whomanfoursays is a daring album. The recording, Toronto-born Lisa Dabello’s first in three years, signals a dramatic departure from the singer’s carefree pop style. Part of the credit must go to her musical partnership with guitarist-producer Mick Ronson (David Bowie, The Payola$). But Dabello, as she now calls herself, has obviously undergone a profound personal metamorphosis as well. Insipid love songs have given way to complex, unsettling pieces about passion, domination and doubt. On the lusty “Gonna Get Close to You” she sings about stalking her romantic prey “like a hungry criminal,” while on “A...

Mouth of Steel marks the return of Canada’s legendary bluesman King Biscuit Boy to recording after an unfortunate 10-year absence. Biscuit, also known as Richard Newell, of Hamilton, Ont., apprenticed with Rompin’ Ronnie Hawkins and served with the Canadian blues band Crowbar before striking out on his own. His confident comeback album ably showcases his gutsy voice and mournful harmonica style. The piano boogie of “Route 90” and the Latin-tinged instrumental “Necromonica” display his considerable talents and those of his skilful session players. The album’s real gem is “Done Everything I Can,” on which Biscuit bends harmonica notes as soulfully as he contorts his own gravelly vocals. Mouth ...

With last year’s Caribbean crossover album Killer on the Rampage, Guyana-born Eddy Grant proved he could create a successful solo album by working alone in his Barbados studio. Grant wrote, arranged and produced every song on that album, including the gritty hit single “Electric Avenue,” and played all the instruments as well. But his follow-up album, Going for Broke, suggests that he is now suffering from artistic isolation. The circus-style reggae of “Only Heaven Knows” and the somnolent ballad “Blue Wave” reveal senseless content and inexcusably sloppy technique, while an irritating, indulgent guitar solo mars the vigorously rocking “Romancing the Stone,” which he wrote for the recent fil...

CANO, the Franco-Ontarian group from Sudbury, has changed the focus of its music and language—from folk to rock and French to English—so many times that even the group’s closest fans have become bewildered. Now, CANO has issued an all-French album, Visible, but the chaos has taken its toll, and the quality of the material is uneven. “Pauline” begins as a touching ballad about two lovers separated by war, but a cheerily sung chorus soon shatters the tragic mood. The title song offers more mood shifts than most complete albums, but the track’s inventiveness strays. Still, in “Fond d’une bouteille (Bottom of the Bottle)” an alcoholic’s desperation provides some dramatic imagery, and “J’ai bien ...

A mystical master of Gaelic rhythm and blues, Van Morrison has for more than 20 years served up musical puzzles to which he has offered no answers. But on A Sense of Wonder, his first album since Warner Brothers, his long-time label, reportedly dropped him, the Irish-born singer has stopped asking questions altogether. The result is lacklustre music with none of Morrison’s usual gut-wrenching soul. On the title track, Morrison contemplates nature’s beauty; with “Ancient of Days” and “The Master’s Eyes” he thanks the Creator for His generous ways; on the dirge-like “Let the Slave” he delivers the 18th-century visionary poet William Blake’s “The Price of Experience” in rapid monotone. Only on ...

Like a ballroom orchestra high on amphetamines, the Los Angeles-based Chicano band Los Lobos conjures up contradictory, even comic, images when it is performing its frantic norteño music--an infectious hybrid of Mexican dance and German polka styles. How Will the Wolf Survive?, the quintet's refreshing debut album, opens with blistering rockabilly, and Cesar Rosas' gravelly vocals on "Don't Worry, Baby," and switches to a sweet country ballad in "A Matter of Time." On the carnival romp of "Corrida #1," David Hidalgo's speedy manipulation of his button accordion produces a euphoric, yodelling effect. Add some full-blooded rock 'n' roll in the style of Bo Diddley, one traditional Mexican ...

Mose Scarlett specialized in songs from bygone eras – jazz, blues, ragtime and swing – and always dressed the part, neatly turned out in a three-piece suit and fedora or, more informally, a waistcoat and workingman’s flat cap. Within Canadian music, he was an anachronism, a performer cheerfully out of step with the times. But that was also a big part of his charm. Blessed with a deep, resonant singing voice and a self-taught, fingerpicking guitar style often described as stride, Mr. Scarlett was similarly old-fashioned in his personal demeanour. Bruce Cockburn, who met him in 1969 when he and his then future wife, Kitty, stayed at Mr. Scarlett’s apartment in Toronto’s east end, recalls being...

Reggae music, product of the shantytowns of Jamaica, has often echoed the turbulence of its Caribbean birthplace. When reggae star Peter Tosh, 42, was gunned down in his Kingston home on Sept. 11 during an attempted robbery, his murder added yet another violent chapter to the history of The Wailers, the celebrated band that Tosh and Bob Marley founded in 1963 with Bunny Livingstone. No Nuclear War (Capitol), a new collection of Tosh's protest songs, arrived in record stores just a few weeks before his death. Although none of the material matches the standard of "Get Up, Stand Up," the classic anthem Tosh coauthored with Marley, the album does serve as a fitting postscript to his provoca...