TIM CHAISSON - DISCovery of the week

Prince Edward Island's Tim Chaisson's new album 'The Other Side' drops September 25th. The first single has been released and can be heard Here for free.

BESSE COOPER the oldest living person turns 116

With the spate of celebrity deaths in the past few months it's nice to have a good news story for a change. On August 26th Georgia resident Besse Cooper celebrated her 116th birthday. That's right, kids, Besse was born August 26, 1896!!! She is now recognized as the oldest living human and sits in 10th place on the list of the oldest verifiable people to have EVER lived on the earth (Jeanne Calment of France holds the record at 122 Years, 164 Days).

Here's hoping Besse has another wonderfully historic year!

CRAIG ELKINS "I Love You" CD review

CRAIG ELKINS "I Love You"

For many years now I've made it a mission to not slag independent releases when I review them. A lot of REAL blood, sweat and tears and most probably a considerable amount of personal debt goes into putting together 10 or 12 songs for a CD knowing very well it could take years to do it again based on the personal circumstances of most struggling artists. Ex-Huffamoose member Craig Elkins' latest release was treated with the same reverence. But after two listens to the entire 9 song collection I ejected the CD and tossed it into the back seat of my car. For the first time ever in my 40 years as a music afficionado an artist has triggered the one emotion I've NEVER experienced while listening to music: Anger. It pushed me way outside of my cushy comfort zone. I'm not sure if this was Elkins intent or whether I'm not the person that should be tuning in to his confessionals. To preface this you should know that there are no bad songs on the album. His musical approach is Memphis Alt-country created with the help of Pete Thomas (Elvis Costello), Charlie Gillingham & Dave Immergluck (Counting Crows), Neil Larsen (Leonard Cohen) and a huge team of other contributors. His voice shifts between an emotively over-the-top Adam Duritz or Barney Bentall ("Tell 'em My Story") to the more subdued and conversational Marc Cohn (on the album's best track "I Wanted To, But I Didn't"). But the album plays out like a movie monologue in a smoke-filled seedy hotel room with blacked out windows where a heroin addict is soliloquizing shortly before overdosing. And if you think I'm being harsh just check out the opening track "Offin' Myself" where he goes on about being a prick and he might just kill himself or the directly-to-the-point "I Can't Stop Being a Dick". Every song's a bigger downer than the last - and shifts thematically back and forth between SELF-loathing and PEOPLE loathing. Just check out the closing Randy Newman-like literal lyric acoustic dirge "Human Drag" - "Being a fucking human can be a really big fucking drag".

Even when Elkins' stream of consciousness observations are accompanied by a catchy chorus like "Most of the People" he's still presenting as skid row Emo boy: [Paraphrasing here cause there's no lyric sheet] "Most of the people that you see on the street or in the crowd or at the store/Some in the place in the space that you occupy are gonna die before you see them again". How uplifting. Sounds like Elkins is having a rough life or needs therapy or maybe just a hug. But as a recent comedian once said very succinctly - you know who cares about your problems more than you? Nobody. Some people write about their personal pain in a diary (or on Facebook or have the name Tom Waits). Elkins has committed it to a well produced CD. Jury's still out on whether that's brave or foolish. Maybe I'm missing the point of the whole thing because Elkins certainly has an audience - hell, his stuff has been used on the TV show "Sons of Anarchy" and even in commercials. Or maybe he's just putting us all on. After all, the album is ironically titled 'I Love You' and his tagline is 'Music For Real (Depressed) People'. Craig Elkins Website

RIP - Astronaut Neil Armstrong, 82

Neil Armstrong, the first human to walk on the Moon as part of NASA's Apollo 11 mission in July 1969 has died at the age of 82.

KLAATU releases 35th Anniversary 'Hope' remaster CD

DAREDEVIL reboot in jeopardy

Fox Studios' new Daredevil reboot is in jeopardy of heading back to the property owners at Marvel as the film continues its run of production delays; the film lost director David Slade and 'A-Team' director Joe Carnahan was brought on board to work on the Frank Miller/David Mazzuchelli graphic novel tale 'Born Again' which finds Daredevil knee-deep in a gritty early '70s mob story featuring Kingpin. But Fox let the clock run down on the character license that is owned by Marvel Studios. The deal expires shortly and despite two extensions on the deal, Daredevil will most likely revert back to Marvel leaving Carnahan's film dead on the table. It would be a coupe for Marvel who had licensed out most of their character properties in the 1990s - currently Fox still controls the universes of The X-Men and The Fantastic Four. In recent years Marvel regained control of Iron Man and Blade from New Line Cinema and The Hulk from Universal. But with Daredevil heading back home, insiders fear that the violent 18+ 'Born Again' story line will be a turn off for Marvel's parent company Disney. Daredevil may once again become the lame ass Saturday morning kiddie fare that Ben Affleck portrayed in the 2003 Daredevil film. Here's hoping someone can save the franchise and Frank Miller's killer storyline. Fox has released a teaser trailer for Carnahan's vision of the movie you may never get to see:

MARTA PACEK "Rebel Baby" CD review

MARTA PACEK “Rebel Baby”

The title of Marta Pacek’s third record is truly deceiving. The word rebel conjures up either cinema icon James Dean or Civil War re-enactors pointing bayonets at each other on sweltering July weekends in Gettysburg. Pacek is neither of these things. In fact, her songs and her music aren’t so much against the status quo as they are a measure of her ability to alter the perception of the music listener. A rebellion would mean a single, monosyllabic drive against authority. Instead, what we have on this record is controlled anarchic diversity – it pushes AND pulls simultaneously. Hmm…maybe that’s the rebel’s job after all. Pacek flirts with all manner of country-equated styles throughout the 12 tracks: Canadiana (“These Days”, “Milk & Honey”, “A Way to Fall”, “Nobody’s Crying”), uptempo and boppy 1950s Kitty Wells-styled shuffles (“A Girl Gets By”, “Over to Your Side”), Edith Piafian Romanish/Gypsy folk (“Twisted With Love”, “Let Me Down”), Alt-Country (“Back In the Middle”, “Annie”), and even melodic Everything But the Girl post-punk Brit pop (“In the Name of Love”, “Think It Over”). Pacek’s voice recalls the more dynamic pursuits of Cowboy Junkies’ Margo Timmins and 10,000 Maniacs’ Natalie Merchant. There’s a little for everyone here and repeated listens reveal the subtle contributions of the album’s other players including the guitar presence of co-writer Neil Murchison. Pacek herself wrote, co-wrote and co-produced the majority of tracks on the album with the lone ‘cover’ tune being “Nobody’s Crying” by Patty Griffin. The album is a great collaborative listen and is recommended for those looking for something completely removed from the Country music genre but orbiting the same solar system. Marta Pacek Website

TREWS perform at New Brunswick Highway of Heroes dedication

Canadian band The Trews along with the Harvey Volunteer Fire Department were among those on hand in Fredericton, New Brunswick on August 12th for the dedication of the New Brunswick leg of the 'Highway of Heroes' honouring fallen Canadian soldiers.

GOTYE goes meta and out smarts the impersonators

In a move reminiscent of Frank Zappa's brilliant 'Beat the Boots' boxed set where he stole back bootleg recordings of his own live shows and issued them as legitimate albums, Gotye has taken all the YouTube cover versions of his "Somebody That I Used To Know" and made a 6 minute mash-up. Don't worry, you won't have to endure the droning lyrics - it's a dub version featuring the cornucopia of imaginative instrumental interpretations. The payoff comes at the 3.50 mark with a brilliant bit of comic parody.

SARAH SMITH "Stronger Now" - review

SARAH SMITH “Stronger Now”

Smith has been beating about Canada for a decade as the lead vocalist/guitarist for rock leathernecks The Joys. I was blown away by their last album with its rough-n-ready blues rock stance and Smith’s vocal versatility – covering all the angles between a smoky Sass Jordan and a controlled chanteuse like Amanda Marshall. In a complete surprise, especially to this scribe, she decided to take the plunge and go solo. More surprising was getting the new album ‘Stronger Now’ and finding out it was steeped in New Country-isms. Producer/engineer Kevin Doyle (he of Canadian rock production fame) has helped Smith carve out a slick by-the-numbers ten song debut that is perfect – that is, not a single musical hair is out of place: every guitar line, every solo, every bridge is exactly where it’s supposed to be. In other words, the rough edges and unpredictability that endeared me to Smith initially has been sanded down and lacquered. Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing.

Someone that’s been at it this long deserves a fresh start with a more mature, more accessible release that might very well get her the respect she’s deserved for too long. A lot of others believe in her talent as well. Her and award winning songwriter Tim Thorney (Cassandra Vasik, Joel Feeney) co-writes five of the album’s songs here – including the hooky and single-worthy “Shine Bright” and the Michele Wright-esque “Can’t Wait” plus a rolling, dreamy prairie ditty called ‘The Lucky One’. She also takes a shot at a song written by the co-genius behind Amanda Marshall’s early success, David Tyson, and his co-write with Matt Nolen and Ryan Tyndell called ‘Wake Me Up’. Unfortunately, the song doesn’t quite hit the mark – maybe because, lyrically, it’s not Smith’s own thoughts and she sounds removed from its immediacy. Smith shines brighter, and with more conviction, when she writes with Thorney or with the album’s parade of stunt writers from the Rock genre – Honeymoon Suite’s Derry Grehan (“Into the Light”), the power-balladish title track with Harem Scarem’s Harry Hess or the best track on the album, “More”, with Simon Wilcox (daughter of David). Tacked onto the end of the album, almost as an afterthought is the lone Sarah Smith written acoustic track called “Reload” – the most personal and best executed song on the disc. Her voice soars and her vulnerability bleeds for the entire three minutes: “I’m hiding beneath your little wing now/’Cause I’m a fragile little toy gun”. My hope for this album, and Sarah Smith, is that by standing on the shoulders of her mentors, she can parlay that into commercial success and one day reclaim more of her own personality on future releases; ‘Cos there’s a great singer and a great songwriter waiting to break out and we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg here. Sarah Smith Official Website

ERIN SAOIRSE ADAIR needs your help!

ERIN SAOIRSE ADAIR is a diverse composer, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist based out of Ottawa, Ontario. Recently, she has become a prominent and popular voice in the local folk scene, and has garnered accolades for her bluesy, accessible and deeply relevant messages. Inspired by poets such as Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath, by songwriters such as Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell, and by contemporary composers such as Igor Stravinsky, and Yann Tiersen, Adair’s music is a unique blend.

Erin Saoirse Adair’s songs reflect the influence of folkloric traditions in her music and though her musical arrangements are complex, Adair’s goal on stage is to tell a story. Over the past few months, she has been earnestly writing, polishing, and performing new songs and is now working towards the release of her debut album in the fall of 2012. Founder and part of feminist folk trio Three Little Birds, Adair is a strong collaborator, and the group recently released their debut CD with the help of Dean Watson of Gallery Studios. She has performed recently with Three Little Birds in many venues including features at, the Ottawa Jazz Festival, The Tulip Festival, Ottawa University’s Frosh Week, and the Ontario Conference for Folk Festivals. Solo, she has performed at various venues in Ottawa, including Ottawa Jazz Festival, Ottawa Fashion Week and Women’s World 2011, a global feminist conference.

Help Ottawa's Erin Saoirse has finished her album and needs to raise funds to get it mastered and manufactured: Indiegogo website

BACKBEAT - The Birth of the Beatles Musical

We live in a very unique time. Pop culture is such a big part of our everyday existence that we are able to watch a rare breed of genius rise and zenith in real time. It’s hard to imagine being there when Bach or Beethoven performed their most celebrated Sonatas and Symphonies for the first. It is so long ago that their stories and their music seem like stuff of myth – we don’t even have recordings…just modern interpretations from the sheet music they left behind.

The Beatles, on the other hand, are still casting long shadows in a world where so many living people saw them, heard them, and met them as that history was being made. The planet has lost entire forests for the printing of books that have told their story. And it’s the same story – over and over and over again with the occasional nuggets of new information. Every aspect of their lives has been scrutinized, analyzed and rationalized. But the majority of those stories begin with band’s drummer Pete Best getting fired in 1962, Ringo Starr being instated behind the kit and the Beatles living out fame and fortune until their implosion in 1970. Then we were handed another decade of solo pursuits, marriages and reunion rumours before the tragic death of John Lennon. Since then there’s been vault cleanings of old Beatles recordings, a Threetles reunion and the death of George Harrison. Currently we’re watching Ringo and Paul McCartney live out their, and our, Golden Years of Beatles history. We are on the cusp of moving from history-in-the-making to legend and myth. Thankfully, history has recorded more of the former and less of the latter. And one of those legendary stories, rarely told and passed off as a quaint lead-up to what became Beatlemania, is the actual birth of The Beatles.

The origin story, ‘Backbeat’, was director Ian Softley’s first movie and was released in 1994 after extensive research and collaboration with Beatle confidantes and friends Astrid Kirchherr, Klaus Voormann and the family of the late Stu Sutcliffe in 1988 and a touched up script by screenwriter Stephen Ward. For those whose Beatles knowledge begins with “I Want To Hold Your Hand” and ends with “The Long & Winding Road” these names might be alien to them. To die-hard Beatles aficionados they are the catalysts in turning a motley group of late 1950’s Teddy Boy leather-clad musical imitators into, arguably, the greatest musical group in the world.

The film received a BAFTA Award nomination (Britain’s equivalent to the Academy Award) and won Softley a London Film Critics’ Circle Award and Empire Magazine award for ‘Best Newcomer’. It was always Softley’s intention to turn the movie into a stage production. It took him 16 years to mount the first run of ‘Backbeat: The Birth of the Beatles’ at the Glasgow Citizens Theatre in Scotland which corrected some complaints about the movie (like Lennon singing “Long Tall Sally” which he never did). A second production at The Duke of York’s Theatre in London, England began its run in September 2011. The majority of the cast, crew and production staff from the London production has now taken up residence at Toronto’s Royal Alexandra Theatre for a five week run. And what a production it is!

As a monster Beatles fan and having seen Softley’s original 1994 movie I had a general idea of what to expect in terms of how the storyline might unfold. What I wasn’t prepared for was the sheer spectacle of the production and exceptional performances – musically and dramatically. The overview of the production involves the Beatles career and personal battles covering the pre-fame years 1960 through 1963. This was the period that found the five-piece band – John (Andrew Knott), Paul (Daniel Healy), George (Dan Westwick who is the only member of the ‘band’ not from the original London production), Pete Best (Oliver Bennett) and Stu Sutcliffe (Nick Blood) - being shipped to Germany by historically forgotten early manager Allan Williams to play shows in Hamburg’s famed Reeperbahn – a red light district filled with all manner of sex, drugs and Rock and Roll. A house gig rotating with other Liverpool acts at the hands of nightclub proprietor and ball-breaker Bruno Koschmider (Edward Clarke in a light-hearted role requiring parts Barber of Saville, Colonel Klink of ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ and a working vocabulary of German) at the Indra Club on three and six month rotations meant the band had to play seven days a week – sometimes six to eight hours a day. The Beatles are initially offended that they are not starting out at the famed Star Club. “It is called the Star Club, heir Peetles…and you are not stars,” responds Koschmider. The band is also daunted at the thought that they’d have to expand their repertoire beyond the 50 rock and roll classics they’d learned up to that point. But the paycheques, free beer and copious sex encounters were good – the drugs, used to enhance their stage performances, even better. And so, the story begins with a group of green teenaged blue-collar kids with little vision of their own futures having to “Mach Shau” (‘make show’) to impress the underbelly of a post-World War German proletariat.

Well, everyone but bass player Stu Sutcliffe. Sutcliffe wanted to stay in Liverpool, enroll in Liverpool Art College and become a famous painter; A fact that’s played with ample parts James Dean sunglasses-toting cool and geeky teenage hipster angst by a chiseled and suave Nick Blood. John Lennon – a cartoonish imagining featuring his most vile, comic and abrasive Scouse traits by the scene chewing Andrew Knott - had talked Sutcliffe into holding onto his rebel spirit long enough to learn three notes on a bass guitar and cajoling Sutcliffe into leaving his respectable art dream behind for the more unattainable rock star dream that was The Beatles goal of reaching the ‘uppermost of the Poppermost’. Lennon and Sutcliffe, long before Lennon and McCartney, were inseparable buddies. Sutcliffe would follow Lennon to the end of the world. Or Germany as it turned out. But when a young German artist, Klaus Voormann (played with level headed Bohemian panache by Dominic Rouse), becomes ‘the First Beatles fan’, Sutcliffe’s world begins to both crystallize and unravel after falling in love with Voormann’s photographer girlfriend Astrid Kirchherr played by Isabella Calthorpe. Calthorpe, who is unburdened by a musical instrument on stage, elevates the proceedings beyond a story about Five Lads from Liverpool. Because we don’t have any reference point to compare Sutcliffe to his actual character we must assume that Nick Blood portrays a reasonable facsimile of the real man based on anecdotes. With Kirchherr, we are watching her words and her reaction to the events on stage as if Calthorpe is wearing Astrid Kirchherr’s skin – right down to the bastardized German/English dialect and visually stunning exotic appearance.

As one would hope, the musical performances are above par (especially the incredible vocal talents of Daniel Healy as Paul McCartney) despite the fact that the real Beatles started out as barely functioning thrashers at the beginning of their German run. The equipment is authentic for the era, the sound is live and the multi-track audio is crystal clear. Meanwhile, the song choices – almost exclusively non-Beatles cover tunes from the band’s heavily documented early history (“Johnny B. Goode”, “Long Tall Sally”, “You’ve Really Got a Hold On Me”, et al) – propel the dramatic sub-plot along. But, it soon becomes clear as the production unfolds, with incredibly executed atmosphere and rapid fire set changes, that the music itself acts more and more as a backdrop to the love triangle between Sutcliffe-Kirchherr-Lennon. The love story turns tragically Shakespaerian and The Beatles as a band are relegated to playing second banana in their own story. McCartney attempts to stop it from de-railing the band altogether and manages to pull off a coupe by getting The Beatles a backing gig with crooner Tony Sheridan (Adam Sopp) through legendary German producer/conductor/bandleader Bert Kaempfert (Charles Swift) for a truly amazing and humorous recreation of their floor stomping arrangement of “My Bonnie”.

By the second act, Beatles classics like “P.S. I Love You” and “Love Me Do” –prefaced by a brilliantly comic Lennon-McCartney writing session - are only there as dramatic punctuation to the tension on stage. For those who came for a rock show the last 1/3 of the evening grinds slowly. For those who came for the acting, it’s Stratford upon Angst as Calthorpe, Blood and Knott go 100% Tennessee Williams or, rather, Marlon Brando playing Tennessee Williams. Realistically, it would have been impossible to have framed it any other way. The Beatles lost both Sutcliffe and Pete Best within a year under different circumstances which left a pall over what would become the end of an incredible beginning to one of the most celebrated groups in history. ‘Backbeat’, unfortunately, can’t effectively rebound from the dark corner that the real story has painted them into. Oh, they try really hard with a brilliant recreation of the band’s discovery by manager Brian Epstein (in an accurately terse businessman-like reading by Mark Hammersley who has to deal with the Beatles’ patented snark) at the Cavern Club and The Beatles’ first recording session with George Martin (in a brief turn by ensemble member James Wallace) at Abbey Road studios putting the finishing touches on the ‘Please Please Me’ album. But it lacks the kick and the high octane found in the first act when the band was unfettered and living off adrenaline. To their credit, Softley and co-director David Leveaux are quite self-aware of how the mood of the crowd has been manipulated. Do yourself a favour…do NOT leave after the cast take their bows which some of my friends regrettably did. There is a third act – and it fully restores the feel-good mood started at the beginning of this 2 ½ hour sonic, visual and emotional extravaganza. I guarantee you’ll be dancing out the theatre doors. Editor’s note: Those attending should be aware that atmospheric smoke and herbal cigarettes are consumed feverishly throughout the evening in an effort to accurately recreate the time period. The language is also strong and not recommended for children under 12. http://www.mirvish.com/shows/backbeat (**** ½ out of 5)