Mags reached out to ask me to do a Canadian Music Expert Quarantine guest post. Which kills me because despite her always calling me that, I’m no expert, just a Canadian who loves her music. Like most of us, it’s a huge factor in keeping sane throughout this pandemic. Mags said to go with my Top 5, which is crazy hard to pick. I’m also gonna assume that most people here are American. There’s a tonne (yep, that’s metric) of huge Canadian bands that you guys already know, so why bother with that? I figured I’d go through the vaults for some lesser-knowns. Well, lesser known south of the border, but to millions of Canadians, these songs are touchstones. In all the isolation, it’s music we go to – whether we want to cry, groove, remember, or just rock out and forget everything. As the months in lockdown go by, I find more and more I’m going to my comfort tunes – the ones that make me feel happy & safe, or sad & safe, or funky & safe, but always…safe. Like everything’s going to be okay. I hope you fall in love with them, too. And if you don’t – don’t tell me! I can’t take it right now. Wait, like, a year or something. Here we go! Bedouin Soundclash is a Toronto-based alt rock/reggae/ska band that formed in 2001 and after a nine-year hiatus, they’re still (back?) together. They’ve played with everyone from Ben Harper to Bad Brains to Coldplay. They won the 2006 Juno Award (our Grammys) for Best Canadian Music Group. This was their biggest...
I was interviewed for Bass Guitar Magazine for the August 2020 Issue. I don’t know what to say. It’s so cool and I’m so proud of this. You can read (most) of it below, or even better – Print Edition: https://bit.ly/31ouwuW to hang on your bedroom wall😎 See you on the low end! Love,...
Heylo Hunkerdowners! We have something to show you from our Quarantine Diary! When we’re not crying or drinking or eating or calling each other up in the middle of night because time has no meaning…we’ve been busy learning new things, writing new songs, updating my blog, and taking bass lessons (again). Cool stuff like. And one thing that we’ve been doing is learning Final Cut Pro. *Ahem – by “we”, I mean KG*.We’ve had 3 shows with Tiffany Lyons fronting the band and we nailed “If We Could Let Go” from our 2nd show at The Bitter End. KG* took the audio and spliced up this little ditty from those shows. The footage is from The Bowery Electric, The Bitter End and Pianos. It’s a message about love and tolerance and coming out of all of this crazy stuff on the better side of life. Remember to be kind to each other and to yourself. Enjoy! See you on the low end! Love,...
People talk about honesty in art, about truth, about players’ transformations and how sometimes they lose their heart. Not Jah Wobble. No way…I’ve never seen PiL with Jah, I’ve never seen his solo projects, and I’ve never really paid that much attention to him. And then I did. I bought his book “Memoirs of a Geezer”, I listened to as much of his discography that I could handle (it’s huge and exhausting) and I saw him play with The Invaders of the Heart at Elsewhere in Bushwick, Brooklyn this past October. On stage he came off as the guy in the book – a straight shooter from the East End. Jah mostly sits down while he plays, which I have to say – I equally loved and equally laughed at. He’s still staying true to dub-step and playing hypnotic bass parts and I don’t think his playing has either evolved or devolved. It is what it is. I started to dissect the show and the “performance” and relate his past to what I was seeing in the present, but that was a waste of time. I concluded that he’s truly a geezer. What I saw was what I got. What I would have seen in 1978, I mostly saw in 2018. I don’t have much more to say. I really think this guy’s playing speaks for itself. There is no hidden message, he’s not trying to pull-one off on the audience. He’s just being Jah. Playing the same art and getting better at it…or not, but he’s truly playing and creating from his heart. If you want a good...
Heylo Bassers! Here is another installment of my InterMagsView where I sit down and bribe really cool bass players with food and wine to talk to me about really cool stuff! My interview below is with Sal Maida. We had a very nice chat about his new book, playing bass in the 70s and just shot the breeze over dinner this spring at Kefi on the Upper West Side – Mags: When you sat down to write Four Strings, Phony Proof, and 300 45s what was your intention? Sal: The book started with me just mulling over the idea for a while, but I was always on the road. I played in a band called Cracker for 8 years. I’d been thinking about it and thinking about it, but I never had the time. I really couldn’t start scribbling in hotel rooms because there was always something going on. When I wasn’t touring anymore I went to see Chazz Palminteri do A Bronx Tale, but not the Broadway show. He did a one-man show and I went to see it in Huntington, Long Island. I thought to myself, “Hmmm…I have some stories like that that I could weave into the music stuff.” Then I read Questlove’s book, which weaved records into the timeline of his stories. That gave me the loose idea of what I eventually did and the Chazz Palminteri show gave me the inspiration to write down all these stories about growing up. I also read Neil Young’s book that was out of sequence. I thought, “Okay, it’s going to be out of sequence, it’s going to include my...
It’s been a year since Slyboots had their Cavern Club, Liverpool debut at the International Pop Overthrow Festival. We flew in on Saturday, played Sunday evening at the Cavern Pub, Monday night on the Traditional Stage, Tuesday night on the Main Stage (to a packed house!), and we flew home on Wednesday. Massive love to the original Slyboots members (Beth and Shu) who will always hold a special place in my heart and in the band’s heart. I’ve spent this past year reflecting on the different changes and progress of Slyboots and I wanted to share some of my favorite pictures from our first adventure. See you on the low end! Love,...
