NEW ROCKERS OF THE PEERLESS AGE by JAIMIE VERNON

I’m updating the Canadian Pop Music Encyclopedia once again. This time it has a global purpose and will soon be available to music researchers via a data base known as Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale worldwide to Colleges, Universities, and libraries. It is literally my life’s work and is expected to remain available in perpetuity. To that end I’ve been tasked with updating annually until, well, I’m dead. I can just see me now in a senior’s home skipping Bingo and sing-a-long nights while I sit by the glow of the Google engine looking for the elusive catalog number of Whaleman’s 1991 “Sings!” album and gumming a soft-bun and apple sauce for 4.30 dinner.

Pat Blythe – Much Music, Pics and Other Stories…..

Baby’s got a new camera!!!! Chris’s camera finally bit the dust….shutter is stuck in the closed position, the “motherboard” is cooked. Ahhh….the digital age. ….and yet, his two 31-year-old “analogue” Nikons are in perfect working order. Complete with two motor drives, three lenses and a flash. Pop in a film canister and away we go. Planned obsolescence? Good question. Same goes for cars, major and minor appliances….just about everything we use today is all run by computer, and yes, computers run out of gas. That brain we call the motherboard, well….she just stops firing on all cylinders, or maybe, shoots off the wrong command. Her synapses aren’t synapsing (so to speak). I then found out today (being Tuesday) that digital cameras actually have an internal “odometer”. There are only so many pics that can (or should) be taken, then….sputter, sputter….you’re shooting on a wing and a prayer. Those aforementioned Nikons? Odometer? I think not. There is truly something to be said for analogue, vinyl, cassettes, 45s, my mom’s wash machine, stuff that was made to last a lifetime…..literally.

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.

Nadia Elkharadly: 2012 – A year of musical discovery

I’m going to open this column with a very cliché statement:  I can’t believe the year is nearly over!  While it may be cliché, it’s true – 2012 has flown by!  And with the passing of another year comes a time to reminisce about musical discoveries past, and this year there were many.  This isn’t a standard “Best of the year” list.  I’m not sticking to just bands or live shows; there is so much more to music, and specifically to LOVING music than that.  So in no particular order here are some of my most memorable musical discoveries of 2012.

Nadia Elkharadly: The Feminine Mystique – Musical Edition

It’s surely not news by now that I tend to find mainstream music, for lack of a better word well…lacking.  While flipping stations on the radio, I came upon yet another Adele single written about whatever heartbreak she’d suffered in her young life.  Don’t get me wrong, “Rolling in the deep” is a killer song.  The girl has an amazing voice and puts serious passion into her songs…but the subject matter is always the same.  Blah blah boys, blah blah sad, blah blah…blah.