Ticketmaster facilitates sales of massive amounts of tickets to secondary sellers? Apparently. A new investigation by the CBC and the Toronto Star is going to be a PR nightmare. There’s a division of the company called Trade Desk not only helps resellers/scalpers circumvent the usual 6-8 ticket purchase limit placed on the general public, but [&hellip.. more
I ate too much. I drank too much. I wandered in the hot sun too much. I didn’t hydrate enough in the evening. And I had a blast. The sixth annual Life is Beautiful Festival is now complete. The stages are coming down, the temporary turf rolled up, the fencing removed, the streets reopened and [&hellip.. more
Now that the regular Polaris Music Prize is out of the way for another, the next order of business is to induct some albums into the Polaris pantheon that came out before the award was founded. The Slaight Family Polaris Heritage Prize takes a look at Canadian records from several eras: 1960-75, 1976-85, 1986-95 and 1996-2005. [&hellip.. more
It’s generally acknowledged that the boys who would become U2 first met in the kitchen of Larry Mullen Jr’s house on September 25, 1976. Last year–one year beyond the band’s 40th anniversary–a group of fans decided to declare September 25 “The International Day of U2. What does one do to mark the occasion? According to [&hellip.. more
You may already have heard that Disney is going to adapt Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity for a TV show that will run on The Mouse’s new streaming service. Anyone who’s read the book or seen the movie version with John Cusack and Jack Black knows that they should be regarded as a documentary for anyone [&hellip.. more
Artist: Brother Reverend Song: “Charles Ng” Album/EP: The Tables Turn Too Often Swelling and groovy retro rock with a stomping drive and a hell of an organ feature, “Charles Ng” is a cheerfully pleasant little ditty. Some slight rocksteady influences pair quite well with the late-60s classic vibe Brother Reverend lay down. CCR would be proud. [&hellip.. more
Back in the home office for a few days, long enough for the dogs to recognize me again. Here’s what’s going on with music news for September 25, 2018. And there’s LOTS to talk about. Weekly Canadian music sales and streams vs. this time last year: Total albums, -19.3%; digital albums, -19.8%; physical albums, -19.0%; [&hellip.. more
Ticketmaster president Jared Smith seems like a really decent guy. I know because I had a chance to interview him at Canadian Music Week earlier this year. He’s now the person who has to tackle the mess created by the CBC/Toronto Star investigation into TradeDesk, the Ticketmaster division that works with secondary sellers and scalpers. [&hellip.. more
You may have seen this story about Global New earlier today. Toronto’s beloved radio station, Q107, is returning to rock in a new way. Monday marks new beginnings for Q107 as they welcome their brand new station voice, Alan Cross, who’s well-known as Canada’s resident rock music expert. Cross has earned this title through his time and [&hellip.. more
I’m just back from the wonderful LIfe in Beautiful Festival, a music event that takes over 18 square blocks of downtown Las Vegas for a long weekend each September. And like all festivals, it attracts some interesting human specimens. For example, I witnessed some poor sod puking his brains out into a garbage can. Maybe [&hellip.. more
[This is my weekly column for GlobalNews.ca. It’s published every Sunday. -AC] A couple of years ago, Ticketmaster embarked on a makeover. The company, long regarded as a faceless inhuman monolith with a death grip on the sales of concert tickets along with a large percentage of tickets to sporting events and theatre productions, decided it needed [&hellip.. more
I spent the weekend at the Life is Beautiful music festival in downtown Las Vegas (i.e. not the modern Strip but the old area that fell on hard times when the money shifted south). Here are a few more impressions from the experience. Wait: Before you go any further you may want to read the [&hellip.. more
The Reality of Music, a new exhibit of the prescience of Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, arrived in Toronto on September 20, culminating with a special evening September 25, the day of Gould’s birth. I’m involved with this one (see my write-up here). And there’s now a trailer for the event.. more
The latest round of good fun on the interwebs comes courtesy of NASA with a shout out to David Bowie! It turns out the ‘Spiders from Mars’ are not only the name of David Bowie’s band in the well-known concept album from 1972, but are real-life geological features etched across the surface of the red [&hellip.. more
It’s not every day a performer gets tossed from the bill at a music festival. Especially when it relates to their social media posts. A performance by former Misfits lead singer Michale Graves has been cancelled by the Up + Downtown Music Festival in Edmonton over views he expressed on social media. The festival announced [&hellip.. more
I used to have a gig supplying music programs to Air Canada. Every month or two, I’d provide several hours of programming, complete with commentary which would then be loaded into the airline’s infotainment system. But then XM Satellite Radio struck a deal to provide music-only programs (i.e. no hosts, just straight music flow), so [&hellip.. more
Artist: Shiragirl Song: “Get Em Hot” Album: Single From their newly released EP Brooklyn Goes Hollywood, Shiragirl shows off punk rock with a 80s dance-pop twist. The official video is a fun punk-meets-80s jazzercise mashup. Watch: Artist: AVEC Song: “Under Water” Album: Single This Austrian singer-songwriter is gaining popularity online and has played at various [&hellip.. more
Winging home from Las Vegas today, so an entire day is lost to travel. But before I boarded my Air Canada Rough (yes, that’s how I spell it) flight–a flight with zero WiFi–I did manage to find some music news for September 24, 2018. Ticketmaster is now facing a class action suit over the whole they-help-scalpers [&hellip.. more
Imagine this: An eco- and socially-conscious entrepreneur based in Las Vegas helps build an online shoe-selling company which is then sold to Amazon for $1.2 billion. He takes his proceeds of that sale and buys an Airstream trailer, which he sets up in a downtown trailer park in Vegas. The bigger junk of his money [&hellip.. more
Well, that’s quite a way to open your set at Los Angeles’ Greek Theatre! Arcade Fire performed Funeral in full for the first time last night, opening their set at L.A.’s Greek Theatre. They’re rumored to be doing the same at Greek Theatre shows tonight and tomorrow in Berkeley, California, according to Arcade Fire Tube. [&hellip.. more
[Mike Carr has put together a massive volume on Canadian music history entitled Canadian Alternative & Indie Reference and Collector’s Guide. It’s an incredible discography of hundreds of bands. This is the latest excerpt from his book. – AC] The Veer Union is an alternative hard rock band from Vancouver, British Columbia. The band was formed in [&hellip.. more
Glenn Gould was an innovator. His creativity knew no bounds and his life and music continue to influence to this day. These hologram tours are going to be more frequent in the years ahead. It’s appropriate he should be on the leading edge. Live music’s premier hologram production company Eyellusion and Primary Wave Music Publishing [&hellip.. more
New report on concert ticket resellers is a PR nightmare for Ticketmaster
September 19th | by
Reflections on America’s most unusual music festival: Las Vegas’ unique Life is Beautiful, part 3
September 25th | by
Vote now for the Slaight Family Polaris Heritage Prize
September 25th | by
Today is the second annual International Day of U2
September 25th | by
