January 2012

AMERICAN IDIOT - KNOCKOUT MUSICAL BURSTS WITH PASSION!

Submitted by cashbox on Fri, 01/13/2012 - 15:59

Guest Journalist: Julia Rytell

NOT only fans of the band Green Day will love this show! It is a compact and artfully staged musical, showcasing the talents of some amazing young rising stars along with live music from a 6-piece band (and the cast members at times as well). Visual vitality and meaning is added to the music with this interpretation; a true musical, for very little is said, most is sung.

Director Michael Mayer’s script for Green Day’s American Idiot music, with lyrics by Billie Joe Armstrong, introduces three young male characters who leave the suburbs for city life to fall into different paths. Johnny (Van Hughes), electrifies the stage with his frustrations, vices, and confused emotion. He has the most presence and energy of the three; constantly in motion. Will (Jake Epstein) sinks into torpor on the couch for most of the production with a bottle for comfort, unwilling to deal with his girlfriend’s pregnancy, rising from time to time to unleash a sorrowful but glorious voice. Tunny (Scott Campbell) takes another route and joins the military, losing a limb in the service, which brings us a hospital scene with a moving, very sweetly sung and cutely executed soldiers’ quartet, followed by a dreamy morphine-induced aerial dance with the Extraordinary Girl.

Len Nevin

Submitted by cashbox on Fri, 01/13/2012 - 13:32

Len Nevin was a Northern Ontario Country Music Hall of Fame inductee who made music for more than 40 years.

Nevin died January 6, 2012 at Sault Area Hospital after a brief illness. Nevin was 74. With his wife, Yuanita, he toured Ontario and Michigan with his Country Ramblers band. That group disbanded in 1991, but the Plummer Hospital tradesman kept performing. Nevin played bass with Happy Days Band, featured Wednesday afternoons at Royal Canadian Legion Branch 25. Two other groups, Yesterday's Wine and Friends, entertained seniors in nursing and retirement homes.

"It's such a thrill for me to see that my God, we're getting through to a few of these people," he told The Sault Star in 2007. "I've seen it happen. It's fantastic." Not only was he "a good musician," he made sure to arrive early before the rest of the Happy Days Band to set up before a show at the Legion Hall, said bandmate Bob Jenkins. "He moved so much equipment without ever complaining," he said. "He was very generous with his time. He was a really kind guy."

His efforts on the technical side paid off. The band's sound "wasn't great" at first, but picked up after Nevin joined the group. "He'd really look after the details," said Jenkins. When Nevin was inducted to the Northern Ontario Country Music Hall of Fame in 2004, it was Jenkins who did his portrait. "He couldn't do enough for people," he said. "He was most generous with his time, for everybody."

The Music, The Piano, The Voice: Burton Cummings

Submitted by cashbox on Fri, 01/13/2012 - 13:24

On Thursday, March 22, delegates of Slacker Canadian Music Week 2012 will have a rare opportunity to look behind the scenes into the life and career of a Canadian treasure and legend Burton Cummings as he speaks in an exclusive one-on-one at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in Toronto.

With a career spanning more than 40 years, Burton Cummings has cemented his place in Canadian music history as both a solo artist and as the celebrated lead singer and co-writer for The Guess Who. Through timeless classics such as "American Woman" - recently ranked the greatest Canadian single of all time in bestseller The 100 Top Canadian Singles and the first Canadian song to reach number one in the US - "These Eyes", "Laughing", "No Time", "Stand Tall", "Break it to Them Gently", and "You Saved My Soul", he has endeared himself to audiences worldwide to become one of the most distinctive voices in rock.

As a member of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame, six-time JUNO Award winner, recipient of the Order of Canada, the Order of Manitoba, the Governor-General's Performance Arts Award, and 22 SOCAN Awards for over 1 million airplays of his songs, Cummings' success and acclamations have been rivaled by few. He has the distinction of being the only individual to be inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame twice and with 80 platinum and gold certifications has amassed more hit records than just about any other Canadian performer in history.

AMERICAN IDIOT Sony Centre for the performing Arts Toronto

Submitted by cashbox on Fri, 01/13/2012 - 13:08

Toronto

Green Day is a compact and artfully staged musical, showcasing the talents of some amazing young rising stars, with music from a 6-piece band (and the cast members at times as well). Director Michael Mayer's script for Green Day's American Idiot music, with lyrics by Billie Joe Armstrong, introduces three young male characters, two of which leave the suburbs for city life and fall into different paths.

Johnny (Van Hughes), electrifies the stage with his frustrations, vices, and confused emotion. He has the most presence and energy of the three; constantly in motion.
Stay at home Will (Jake Epstein) sinks into torpor on the couch for most of the production with a bottle for comfort, unwilling to deal with his girlfriend's pregnancy, rising from time to time to unleash a sorrowful but glorious voice.

Tunny (Scott Campbell) takes another route and joins the military, losing a limb in the service, which brings us a hospital scene with a moving, very sweetly sung and cutely executed soldiers' quartet, followed by a dreamy morphine-induced aerial dance with the Extraordinary Girl.

'21 Guns' and of course the title track do fill the theatre, along with other GD faves. The song "Wake me Up When September Ends" is accompanied by projections of sheets of paper falling upward, all around the walls of the stage, a simple, yet hauntingly effective reference to 9/11.

Sacred Balance: Sacred Balance

Submitted by cashbox on Fri, 01/06/2012 - 12:16

Independent

Montreal’s Pouya Hamidi and Toronto’s Chloe Charles both have heavy reps within their scenes as avant composer and edgy vocalist respectively. So yeah, quirky expectations were afoot from the moment Sacred Balance formed, although some wondered just how quirky a band named after a sombre work by enviro-activist David Suzuki could get.

So yeah, we gotta be looking at more than electrobeat trance pop. Best news here is that this stuff isn’t as balanced as the title suggests but has its own shade of reckless cool.

The opener is a thing of flair and promise, primal drum stomp, dissonant chords with a delirious femme chorale floating atop, and plenty of fuzz toned guitars to keep it grounded in its Montreal anarcho-pop roots.

Track two is even more pop-giddy but kept from floating off by Hamidi’s sinuous and claustrophobic keyboard/programming work and a slippery rhythm section.

Track three is a highlight, a set piece for the wrecked and wistful cabaret style vocalising of Chloe Charles set against the most shamelessly baroque right outa Phantom of the Opera organ riffs. Abruptly, she’s outa there and sailing into the cosmos on a soundtrack from a lost Lost In Space episode. Funny shit, all very retro-futuristic and it works as edgy trance, if that’s a thing.

The next track starts promisingly enough with mournful violin atop swirling synth patterns and then quickly strolls onto Norah Jones turf and hangs there, content to leave the atmospherics to the instrumentation. Mark this one as a ‘time out’ and move on.