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Statistics |
| Unique Visitors: 0 |
| Total Unique Visitors: 275557 |
| Visitors Out: 598 |
| Total Visitors Out: 598 |
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| McCartney and The Separatists |
| 2008-07-18 08:01:34 |
It’s not everyone who gets a chance to see Paul McCartney live . . especially free. But Sir Paul is going to be playing a free concert to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the founding of Quebec City and, in effect, the French in North America. This should be a great event, right? Well to [...]...
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| Sweetheart of the Rodeo -The Byrds |
| 2008-07-17 15:23:21 |
I own a vinyl copy of Sweetheart of the Rodeo but never got it until 1978. The original was released in 1968 and, although the intention was never there, it became one of the hallmarks of country rock music. It was the “coming out party” of a young prodigy named Gram Parsons.
As a Byrds fan [...]...
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| Rocket Man in Halifax |
| 2008-07-15 07:57:20 |
Well, Elton John is coming to Halifax on Sept. 26 and 27 and judging by the other hot acts that have been here tickets to see the “Rocking’ Knight” will be sold in minutes. In fact, the concert in Regina sold out in 4 minutes.
I saw EJ in 1973 at the Pacific Colisseum in Vancouver. [...]...
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| We Were Never The Beatles in Hamburg |
| 2008-07-11 15:41:16 |
When I watch the “idol” reality shows I can’t help but wonder how good many of these contestants are. I mean they have more talent in one hand than I did at that age. A few of them even have even showed up with their voice teachers. That’s cool. If you got one, go for [...]...
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| PlayTape |
| 2008-07-08 12:32:04 |
A unique little portable tape player emerged around the same time as the 4-track called the PlayTape. They were actually a 2-track tape that could hold around 4 songs and many were self-winding. The key to the PlayTape was portability and it followed in the footsteps of the small radios which had captured the attention [...]...
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| Starting A Band Without Instruments |
| 2008-07-07 15:04:08 |
I can’t get over the price of the musical instruments these days. With the 3rd World countries making guitars and the miniaturizing of sound support you can get a guitar-amp combo for $150 that could blow away a Sears Silvertone and amp of the same price over 40 years ago.
Now starting a band didn’t entail [...]...
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| Powered Speakers |
| 2008-06-27 09:03:09 |
I’m not a techno guy. Although I’m a bit more far removed from the musician who just plugs the stuff in and turns it on I don’t memorize specs and spend hours talking gear. However, i learn a lot from people who do so I would never put down this fascination with electronics.
If you would [...]...
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| Let George Do It! |
| 2008-06-23 14:44:13 |
George Carlin maintained he had a name that never ended: geor - ge - or - ge -or ge.
What George Carlin did for comedy transcends any of his peers or predecessors. He studied the masters and could do great vocal impersonations - Ed Sullivan for one. In fact he was one of Ed’s famous comedians [...]...
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| Martin Backpacker Guitar |
| 2008-06-14 08:02:04 |
I was in Arizona about 13 years ago and a few of us were sitting around the pool on night when I guy came out with a strange-looking instrument that featured a guitar’s neck and a triangular body like a shaved balalaika. The guy started playing and it sounded something between a ukulele and a [...]...
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| Maritime Beatle Event Fulfills the Fans |
| 2008-06-09 09:29:55 |
Last weekend’s Martime Beatle Event thrilled all the lovers of The Beatles and those forever in tune with 1960’s music. Again Hal Bruce filled the stage with eager performers who combined a huge Beatle repertoire with songs from other groups of the 1960’s for an action-packed 12 hours of music.
The music rarely slowed down. Hal [...]...
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| 3rd Maritime Beatle Event Picking Up Steam |
| 2008-05-30 14:18:44 |
The 3rd Maritime Beatle Event is only a week away and ticket sales have been going quite well. headlined by the Hungarian-based band The Blackbirds it proves to be an awesome event.
The event organizer and entertainer Hal Bruce just got back from Louisville, Kentucky where he headlined The Abbey Road on the River Festival
Here are [...]...
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| Where Are the Publicans? |
| 2008-05-25 14:50:20 |
In Victorian England the word “pub” was short for “public house.” In small towns the pub, alongside the church, was a meeting place and there were even a few hangings from the beams. In other words the pub was “public.”
The MC of the pub was called a “publican.” He knew everyone in the pub and [...]...
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| Where Is the Music? |
| 2008-05-23 13:31:33 |
I constantly hear people my age (around 45-50) say that “Music has gone to the dogs, man!” They bemoan rap and dance music, as well as the drugstore cowboys who wail about their own favorite topic: “My baby done gone.” Well, Sparky, as an oldtimer who remembers Bobby Riddell in Bye Bye Birdy, I have [...]...
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| Storytelling is a Music Art |
| 2008-05-21 07:17:41 |
“And the evening sings in a voice of amber, the dawn is surely coming,
The morning road leads to Stalingrad, and the sky is softly humming.”
Al Stewart - Roads to Moscow
It’s a chicken-and-the-egg question: Which came first, the music or the lyrics? I guess you’d have to get a good definition of what each word means. [...]...
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| Everyone’s Gone to the Moon |
| 2008-05-19 15:09:14 |
Streets full of people, all alone
Roads full of houses, never home
Church full of singing, out of tune
Everyone’s gone to the moon
- Jonathan King, 1965
One of my favorite all-time songs of the ’60’s was Jonathan King’s Everyone’s Gone to the Moon. It peaked at #17 in 1965. In fact I liked it so much I [...]...
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| Guitar Lesson World |
| 2008-05-11 11:38:31 |
I just came across a great site called Guitar Lesson World that gives a great background to anyone interested in learning the guitar.
Years ago we had to hike and bike across town to watch someone play “barre’ chords because we’d never seen them before. And when I learned finger-style guitar from a teacher in Vancouver [...]...
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| Crippled Inside - Is It About McCartney? |
| 2008-05-09 09:28:26 |
“You can wear a mask and paint your face
You can call yourself the human race
You can wear a collar and a tie
One thing you can’t hide
Is when you’re crippled inside”
John Lennon: Crippled Inside from the Album, Imagine
When you look at the personalities and follow the chronology the break-up of The Beatles was inevitable. Because unlike [...]...
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| Apocalyptica |
| 2008-05-01 12:25:35 |
I always watch for the musician who does something different. Sure, just like the Beatles did and the antics of others like Tom Waitt. In February 1998 I attended the Mid-Atlantic Tourism Conference sponsored by Icelandair and one of the bands playing after the banquet was a finnish cello quartet called Apocalyptica. Yes, the [...]...
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| Live Music, Like Gold, Is Where You Find It |
| 2008-04-28 09:24:55 |
I was out in Calgary recently and saw a band called The Beautiful Unknown from Toronto. A bunch os kids, really, but boy could they play. Their stuff was all original, some “Green Day-ish” style songs and this was okay with me. I was probably the oldest guy in the place!
As I looked around the [...]...
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| Danny Hull - Doobie Brothers |
| 2008-04-16 07:38:08 |
Last week I was in Calgary and had the chance to see a band at The Dickens Pub featuring Dennis Davies, Marty Antonini and a fabulous horn and harp player, Danny Hull. For those of you not familiar with Mr. Hull, his resume includes the Doobie Brothers.
Danny started out playing sax and blues harmonica in [...]...
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| From Bricklayer to a Trogg in One Day |
| 2008-03-26 14:30:35 |
In 1966 Reg Presley (no relation to Elvis) was a bricklayer when the song With A Girl Like You came into his head. His band, The Troggs, had been signed by CBS with help from Kinks manager, Larry Page. And much like The Kinks they spent a lot of time fighting amongst themselves.
Troggs was [...]...
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| We Had a Neil Aspinall |
| 2008-03-25 07:16:06 |
Neil Aspinall, a road manager and later head of The Beatles’ Apple Corp., died a couple of days ago at 66. he was around when the Pete Best Beatles were taking the bus to gigs and he was the one who bought a van to take them around. A childhood friend of McCartney and Harrison [...]...
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| Music Competitions |
| 2008-03-20 09:14:47 |
I used to hate music competitions. The practicing leading up to the date wasn’t the bad part. I would put the time and effort into the studies and my teacher would be happy with my progress. However, on the day of the big event I would lose my self-confident veneer. This was the fear of [...]...
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| The Ventures Make Hall of Fame |
| 2008-03-19 07:42:34 |
It always interests me how history is re-interpreted by each new generation. For example, a month ago in Russia Vladimir Putin began rattlings that Joseph Stalin was a great leader and wanted to resurrect his memory. What that means is to reinvent the man and ignore him as Hitlers’ bunkmate for the greatest genocide [...]...
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| The Million Dollar Session |
| 2008-03-18 20:10:01 |
On December 4, 1956, in Sam Phillip’s Sun Records recording studio, Carl Perkins and his brother, Buck, has just finished recording Your True Love with a cocky young session player named Jerry Lee Lewis on the piano. In the control room Sam Phillips was really happy with a tune and piped through the studio speakers, [...]...
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| Scales |
| 2008-03-04 18:48:14 |
Scales. I used to hate ‘em. I used to fiddle and fudge on my piano bench to waste the 30 minutes I had to practice. It was pure torture. Fortunately, my kids don’t think that way.
Everyone knows you have to play scales. They improve you ear and dexterity, whether it be major, minor, melodic minor, [...]...
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| Jeff Healey |
| 2008-03-03 15:25:18 |
There are hundreds of eulogies going out to Jeff Healey today and rightly so. The guy was a marvel. Now only did he learn how to play incredible guitar - including Hendrix - he did it while he was blind and on a guitar played on his lap. I know there have been many blind [...]...
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| The Magic of Piano Duets |
| 2008-03-02 18:53:23 |
For those of you who have never paid attention piano duets are amongst the liveliest and most entertaining performances to come off the keys. (I once saw two players change places three or four times in the space of a tune, alternating between primo and secundo)
The duet performance was supposedly started by Wolfgang [...]...
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| A Fond Goodbye to Mike Smith of the DC5 |
| 2008-02-29 07:39:21 |
Mike Smith, the voice and personality of the Dave Clark 5, died of pneumonia yesterday in a London hospital just 12 days before his band was to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of fame.
As I’ve said in a previous posting the Dave Clark 5 was one of the most under-rated bands in [...]...
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| 3rd Annual Maritime Beatle Event |
| 2008-02-28 08:46:36 |
Well, Hal Bruce has just announced that the 3rd Annual Maritime Beatle Event will be held on Saturday June 7, 2008 at the Olympic Gardens in Halifax. This year the world’s favorite “Other Ringo,” Jay Goeppner will be back as is Ticket 2 Ride along with Hal’s great show.
The first two events were runaway [...]...
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| The LP - Long Playing Record |
| 2008-02-26 14:43:18 |
If the 50’s and ’60’s is exemplified by the 45RPM record then the ’60’s and ’70’s was the 12″ long play gramophone record or LP. In technical terms it is a analogue storage medium utilizing a spiral groove which ran from the outer edge to the center of the disk but we just called [...]...
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| The $10 Diskette |
| 2008-02-25 18:38:18 |
In 1986 I bought the Holy Grail of sequencers, the Roland MC-500 for $2195. I got the MKS-7 sound module to go with it (Half price $1200) and set down to learn how to program songs (I add a Yamaha drum module with Latin percussion sounds for $495). In a few days I had my [...]...
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| Piano Bar Primer - Part VII - You-Tube |
| 2008-02-24 13:55:52 |
In a previous blog I gave you a chilling account on how we used to learn songs before the advent of the tape machine. We would dump a couple of quarters in the jukebox and play the same song 6 times. Then, we would compare notes and fill in the blanks with whatever we thought [...]...
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| Piano Bar Primer VI - The First Song |
| 2008-02-22 18:25:58 |
Tonight, this is the greatest place in the world!”
- How Jerry Lee Lewis greets his audience in almost every show.
There’s an old saying that goes something like this: “There’s only one chance for a first impression.” So that’s why the first song of the night should be something with which you can set the pace [...]...
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| The Beatle Invasion.com |
| 2008-02-21 17:44:31 |
I just came across this site and I’m having fun going through the archives. Gilan Israel has put together the quintessential site for site for Beatle fans because, as a blog, it moves and breathes with every comment.
Let’s face it, no one person knows everything there is to know about The Beatles. But with a [...]...
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| Brian Jones Fan Club |
| 2008-02-20 19:52:44 |
When I was writing Brian Jones’ Diary I came upon The Brian Jones Fan Club site where the editor Trevor Hobley has amassed a vast website of Brian Jones information, pictures and even a place to buy Rolling Stones bootlegs.
Hobley writes, “Our first member joined the newly reformed Brian Jones Fan Club on the [...]...
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| Go Go Boots |
| 2008-02-19 14:59:56 |
“Only a go-go girl in love with someone who didn’t care
Only twenty-one, she was a young girl just in from somewhere.”
Go Go Round - Gordon Lightfoot
If you watched Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, one od the prominent 1960’s features, along with paisley and his stereotypically-English bad teeth, is Elizabeth Hurley’s “Go-Go boots.”
Go-Go boots [...]...
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| The Lagerphone |
| 2008-02-18 13:29:41 |
Years ago I was at a Bush Dance outside Brisbane, Australia, watching the ghostly figures dance while engulfed in the fine dust. The band was called Bullamakanka, one of the country’s top “bush bands,” groups that played Aussie music and American country favorites. In more than a few of their songs the leader was shaking [...]...
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| eBay Raises Hackles As Well As Rates |
| 2008-02-17 19:09:43 |
There are many thousands who make more than a bit of coin by buying and selling stuff on eBay. And almost all of these online merchants will have already heard that eBay Inc. is messing with its charges again. Many of these sellers say it is out of greed. That is, they are of the [...]...
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| Brian Jones = Slide Guitar |
| 2008-02-16 15:39:52 |
In 1957 Brian Jones visited a local jazz club and became hooked on Jazz. He was 15 and begged his parents to buy him an alto sax. Then he spent hours teaching himself to play the reed instrument.
The skiffle music craze was sweeping England at the time and Jones began playing [...]...
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