Pat Blythe: Women of Rock – Part 1

The impetus, for what has now become a series, was my discovery of an old vinyl record by Maggie Bell. I came across it going through one of my many purge cycles. Suicide Sal, released in 1975, was my introduction to the blues….I just didn’t know it then. I wasn’t in the habit of labeling types of music in my younger years, I just knew what I liked. Greg Simpson, who happened to be managing the now defunct Records on Wheels in London, Ontario, recommended the album, thinking I might like it. I loved it and still do. Thank you Greg!

Roxanne Tellier: Sad Day In Texas

Fifty years on, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy still sparks painful memories in the hearts and minds of North American Baby Boomers. Where were you on November 22, 1963, when the American “Camelot” ended?

Kennedy was an impossibly exotic vision to the families of the 60’s. He was the first Irish Catholic to be elected President, something that at that time seemed as impossible as there ever being an African American in the White House. (Or a woman, for that matter, but that will happen too.) He was young, a war hero, from a large and seemingly happy family, and he seemed so very much what we all wanted our families to look like.