Pat Blythe – It’s March, it’s Music, it’s Mayhem…..

What in tarnation is going on with the world?! Just which planet is in retrograde this month??? We have Orange Man spewing idiocies south of the 49th; supposed Russian collusion in the White House; Samsung (one of South Korea’s largest companies and Apple’s biggest competition) working the PR (and denial) machine as their chief-cook-and-bottle-washer Lee Jae-yong is about to be indicted for bribery, embezzlement and corruption along with four more Samsung executives; a right cock-up at the Oscars; an extremely temperamental and indecisive Mother Nature here in Ontario (shorts and sandals one day, snow the next); friends falling like bowling pins to a rather nasty flu/cold bug creeping around, (and this one comes back to haunt you if you’re not careful); an accused abuser wins a Best Actor Oscar.

Nadia Elkharadly: Fabulous Frontwomen

My whole life has put me in situations where I’m the only girl.  I’m the sole girlchild in a pack of four siblings.  At my day job, I am usually the only woman at the meeting table on any given day, be it in my team’s daily meetings, on certain projects, sometimes even in line at the cafeteria.  When I’m at a big show taking pictures, I’m usually the only gal tromping through the pit in my motorcycle boots, trying to shoot around, beside and sometimes ducking underneath the lenses of my usually taller and burlier male photographer counterparts.  Sometimes the world, especially the music world, can feel like one big old boys club, and I’m sure I’m not the only gal about town that feels that way.  On many stages in the indie music scene, women tend to stand alone on stage, surrounded by their penis packing bandmates.

GARY PIG GOLD: TWELVE YOU MAY HAVE MISSED IN 2012

Those Beach Boys and Rolling Stones weren’t the only septuagenarian rockers celebrating 50th (give or take) Anniversaries over the past twelve-or-so months, absolutely not. Just about each and every singer/songwriter/guitarist still standing – well, those with lucratively deep catalogues ripe and ready for recycling, that is – had multiple multi-media packages (and, in the Stones’ case, four-figure-plus concert tickets) competing for what remained of a loyal boomer’s nest egg throughout 2012.