Few songwriters can make as much with so little as Texas-born, Nashville-trained, New York newcomer Steve Earle can.
Three or four chords, a gruff and meaningful drawl, a lyrical bead on a good idea and some vigorous, relentlessly rhythmic picking and strumming have served him well. They add flesh to humanist songs that testify to his battles with addiction, failed relationships – five divorces, in fact – and political convictions that place him well outside the country music mainstream.
Avril Lavigne kicked off her Best Damn Tour in Victoria Wednesday night with a sparkly, choreographed rendition of her hit single Girlfriend, but it wasn’t until things slowed down that she really got going.
Lavigne’s third song, a low-key version of Complicated, followed by another earlier hit, My Happy Ending, were a welcome change in tone, coming off the brash opening tunes Girlfriend and I Can Do Better (coincidentally the first and second songs on her current CD The Best Damn Thing). They allowed Lavigne, 23, to take a breath (quite literally), concentrate on her singing, and get behind her guitar – where she seems most comfortable.
How odd that the would-be defender of emerging Canadian musicians is our federal broadcast regulator, an organization as hip as a polyester leisure suit.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is accusing radio stations of saturating Canadian airwaves with hit songs from established acts, at the expense of up-and-coming artists yet to find a wide audience. The regulator convincingly claims such practices “hinder the development of a dynamic Canadian music industry.”
MONTREAL — Jazz great Oscar Peterson and nationalist cleric Lionel-Adolphe Groulx undoubtedly never met during their lifetimes. But now the two men and their legacies are converging – in the most unlikely of places.
A grassroots campaign has taken hold in Montreal to rename a busy subway station after Mr. Peterson, the Montreal-born music legend who died in December.
The problem is that the station, located around the corner from where Mr. Peterson was born and raised, is currently named Station Lionel-Groulx.
OTTAWA–A new law that would change federal guidelines on tax credits for movies and TV shows is headed for Senate hearings where critics who claim it opens the door to government censorship will have their say.
Bill C-10, a tax bill amendment, will be debated at the Senate banking and commerce committee after Canada’s entertainment industry voiced concern that it would revise criteria to exclude tax breaks for shows that bureaucrats regard as offensive or not in the public interest.
“We will hopefully come up with a solution which will be suitable for Canadians. Censorship is not a suitable solution,” Liberal Senator Yoine Goldstein said yesterday.
Now that Blu-ray has won the high-definition disc format war, the industry is moving on to the next step: recruiting companies to produce players and media.
And to help that process along, MPEG LA, the standards and licensing group, is floating the concept of a creating an organization that will be able to license all of the patents necessary to make Blu-ray products.
Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 today, available via adownload page.This beta is aimed squarely at Web site developers, but onMicrosoft’s IE8 blog, the company encourages anyone to try it out.
You might want to proceed with caution before tryin IE8, though. I forged ahead and installed the beta–and I experienced more browser crashes during my hands-on than ever before. Prior to installing the IE8 beta, I had Internet Explorer 7 happily running along.
It’s a manoeuvre familiar to anyone looking to use a laptop in an airport — the circling, swooping dance to locate and secure access to wireless Internet (wi-fi) and power outlets.
Breidenbach, a Spokane, Wash.-based senior data architect for IBM Global Business Services, is on the road an average of 45 weeks a year. To cope, she’s memorized plug locations in her favourite airports — she’s found them by the main poles in the seating area in Denver International Airport; by the workstations at Chicago’s O’Hare and New York’s LaGuardia; still others near particular restaurants in Minneapolis, where she can grab a bite while charging her laptop and Palm handheld.
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