20 Carlton Street, Suite 1032, Toronto, ON  M5B 2H5
                                                                                                                                                                                                                             (416) 677-5883
                                                                                                                                                                                                 langfieldent@rogers.com
                                                                                                                                                                                 www.langfieldentertainment.com

LE NEWSLETTER

February 28, 2008

 

The end of February (finally!) and I've got a special CD giveaway for you to celebrate amazing Canadian talent and the upcoming Juno Awards.  It's the Juno 2008 CD - and it's yours if you can tell me what year the Junos first starting putting out the CD - look under SCOOP below.  Enter HERE and don't forget your full name and mailing address or you don't qualify! 

TONIGHT!  It may not be too late to sign on to the memorial art auction and dinner commemorating the great Chef Keith White at Harlem where friends of Carl Cassell (also of Irie Food Joint) invite you to enjoy this special celebration (and Carl's birthday!). 

I'll be sending next week's newsletter from the 2008 St. Maarten Heineken Regatta, as I've been invited back to cover the exciting regatta!

So much news this week yet again so scroll down and find out what interests you - take your time and take a walk into your weekly entertainment news!

 

::HOT EVENTS::

An Art Retrospective Honouring Late Chef Keith White - Thursday, February 28

Harlem Restaurant creates a chef's bursary through the George Brown Chef School in Keith's name.

On Thursday, February 28th join Carl Cassell and friends in a memorial art auction and dinner commemorating the great Chef Keith White who died on January 28th this year. Many food lovers will remember Keith, who in his later years, helped sparked the culinary path that led the Irie Food Joint to its success on Queen Street West.

The night of fundraising will feature a savoury three-course dinner presented by Master Chef Anthony Mair. DJ Carl Allen, the city's award-winning turntablist, will lay down the evening's sound work, and Carl Cassell's art auction will set the creative backdrop of a 10-year retrospective showcasing his one-of-a-kind pieces in Hair, including portraits of the Urban Vanguard Series I & II.

Come join us in raising our glasses to Keith White and to the young chefs following him in their love of culinary art.

YOU MUST RSVP TO ATTEND or call 416-368-1920.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28
AN ART RETROSPECTIVE HONOURING TORONTO'S LATE CHEF KEITH WHITE
HARLEM
67 Richmond Street E. (at Church St.)
6 pm; Canapés at 7 pm
Three-course dinner served at 8 pm, followed by an evening of music
http://www.langfieldentertainment.com/images/IMAGES%20TO%20KEEP/MAP.gif
RSVP TO ATTEND DINNER at carl@iriefoodjoint.com or call 416-368-1920

::UNIVERSAL SCOOP::

Universal Music Canada To Release Juno Awards 2008 Compilation Album

Source:  Universal Music Canada

(February 5, 2008) (Toronto, ON) – Universal Music Canada (UMC), the country's leading music company, is set to release JUNO Awards 2008, a compilation album featuring some of the most celebrated Canadian artists of the year, on February 26, 2008. The project is a joint venture between Canada's four major labels (EMI Music Canada, SonyBMG Music Canada Inc., UMC and Warner Music Canada) along with the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS). Since it's inception in 2003, each JUNO Awards CD has achieved GOLD status, selling more than 50,000 copies.

The JUNO Awards 2008 compilation album is a not for profit venture with all proceeds going towards MusiCan, CARAS' national music education charity. MusiCan's mission is to ensure that every child in Canada has access to a comprehensive music program through their schools. MusiCan includes Band Aid musical instrument grants, the MusiCan Teacher of the Year Award, Scholarships and other music education initiatives. Since the Program's establishment in 1997, over 2.3 million has been donated impacting more than 120,000 students, their schools and communities, from coast to coast.

Track Listing in alphabetical order:

Bedouin Soundclash

"Walls Fall Down"

Belly feat. Ginuwine

"Pressure"

Jully Black

"Seven Day Fool"

Blue Rodeo

"This Town"

Paul Brandt

"Didn't Even See The Dust"

Michael Bublé

"Everything"

Dragonette

"I Get Around"

Faber Drive

"Tongue Tied"

Feist

"My Moon My Man"

Finger Eleven

"Paralyzer"

Matthew Good

"Born Losers"

Hedley

"For The Nights I Can't Remember"

illScarlett

"Nothing Special"

Kaïn

"Le Bonheur Au Large"

Avril Lavigne

"Girlfriend"

Anne Murray & Nelly Furtado

"Day Dream Believer"

Justin Nozuka

"After Tonight"

Pascale Picard

"Gate 22"        

Serena Ryder

"Weak In The Knees"

Wintersleep

"Weighty Ghost"

Neil Young

"Dirty Old Man"

About Universal Music Canada:
Universal Music Canada, a unit of Universal Music Group, is Canada's leading music organization maintaining an overall 38 % year-to-date market share. For further information on Universal Music Canada please visit www.umusic.ca .

 

::TOP STORIES::

Paul Anka: The Granddaddy Of Swoon

Excerpt from www.globeandmail.com - Michael Posner

(February 22, 2008) NIAGARA FALLS, ONT. — Do you remember that wonderful scene in When Harry Met Sally? An older woman (Estelle Reiner) who's sitting in a diner watches Meg Ryan simulate a two-minute orgasm, then turns to the waitress and says, deadpan, "I'll have what she's having."

Change the pronoun, and that's more or less what I wanted to say the other night after watching Paul Anka perform at Fallsview Casino in Niagara Falls.

There he was, sleek and tanned, a bright-toothed puma bounding down the aisles, jumping up on chairs to sing, grabbing women for a brief two-step, and generally expending the kind of energy he did when teenage girls in Paris, Tokyo and New York swooned at his feet five decades ago. The largely middle-aged audience seemed ready to swoon as well, constrained only by a sense of mature decorum.

He's 66, a father and a grandfather several times. And a new father again, with two-year-old Ethan, his first son, with his new partner Anna Yeager, a Swedish-born blonde, his former personal trainer. So his personal life has been a little complicated, and he's known in the biz as a complete perfectionist, hard on himself and very hard on others.

It doesn't matter.

A few evocative bars of You Are My Destiny, Diana, Lonely Boy, Put Your Head on My Shoulder or any of those lush romantic ballads Anka penned while still learning to shave, and it's as if the entire 1,500-seat theatre has been transported back in time, to the bare basements and living rooms of our not-so-innocent youth, where we turned off the lights and danced close, Anka's voice magically emanating through a tiny needle on a vinyl album.

Anka doesn't much love those teenage songs any more — can you blame him? — but he'll be damned if he's going to turn off the nostalgia taps and disappoint his fans. "And here's another one," he says, ripping off his tie and launching into Puppy Love.

Later, he sits down at the piano to reconstruct Diana as a contemporary tune, changing the last line of the lyric to "Oh, please, Viagra." The audience roars and then, sotto voce, Anka whispers, "But not yet."

Thank you. I'll have what he's having.

By this point in their careers, Frank Sinatra's voice was thin and shaky, Bing Crosby and Dean Martin had turned into self-caricatures, and Bobby Darin was dead, much too young. Anka — in Toronto next week to be inducted into yet another Hall of Fame, the Canadian Songwriters (he has, after all, 900 songs to his credit, many of them recorded by other top artists) — is as robust as ever.

His voice is huskier than it was when, just out of high school, he left his Lebanese family in Ottawa and plunged into show business, a handsome, cocky, effervescent kid. "My parents knew I had this thing in my gut," he says. "It's all about that." But he's lost nothing at the margins of his range and, when he wants to rev the engine, he can still sustain notes that last.

The mystery, perhaps, is not how well he's managed to maintain himself, carefully avoiding the myriad recreational and pharmaceutical snares that claimed the careers if not the lives of so many performers he knew. Anka himself, relaxing a few hours before the show in an upstairs suite, dressed in a black sweater and slacks, attributes it to his parents, and to simple, level-headed Canadian values.

But it wasn't just the miasma of drugs and alcohol he dodged. He had his own bathrobe (labelled "The Kid") in the steam room at the Sands, hanging beside Sammy Davis Jr.'s (his was labelled "Smokey the Bear"). But Anka never surrendered himself to that artificial universe constructed by Sinatra and the Rat Pack in Las Vegas, when they'd smoke and drink and gamble until dawn, and Peter Lawford would line up eight showgirls at a time to service the voracious appetite of his brother-in-law, Jack Kennedy, a rising politician visiting for the day. "I kept my nose clean," Anka says.

Anka was always more grounded. He got married at 23, at Paris's Orly Airport, to fashion model Anne de Zogheb, daughter of a Lebanese diplomat, and quite soon became father to the first of five daughters — Amelia, Anthea, Alicia, Amanda (now the wife of actor Jason Bateman) and Alexandra. The marriage lasted 37 years.

Though younger than some of his entertainment industry pals, Anka was, in a way, more sophisticated. He had lived in Rome and in France. He read books. He collected art. And he knew how easily it could all unravel. He'd seen ill-fated star Frankie Lymon shoot himself up before concerts, sensed the demons in Elvis, watched a lung operation in New York just to see the damage two packs a day inflicted. He wasn't going there.

He did not indulge, but he was in that crowd. He was there the night in 1967 when Sinatra, as he had routinely done, asked for credit at the Sands Casino and was denied. The hotel had just been taken over by Howard Hughes, whose lawyers and accountants changed the house rules virtually overnight. Incensed, a drunken Sinatra stood on the craps table swearing, until they finally called the casino manager, a soft-spoken gentleman named Carl Cohen.

"They woke him up," Anka says of the manager. "It was four a.m. He drove over to the back door of the coffee shop, the Garden Room, in his bathrobe, in a golf cart. He sits down. He calmly explains why he can't extend credit to Frank. 'We don't own the place any more, Frank. I can't give you the money.'

"Sinatra starts swearing, 'You fat, fucking little Jew,' etc. Carl — I'd never heard him raise his voice, ever — gets up and punches Frank right in the mouth. He goes down. His teeth are now on the coffee shop floor. I'm sitting there in disbelief. They take him to a Lear jet and fly him out for dental surgery."

Sinatra signed at Caesars Palace soon after.

Anka promises that all of those recollections and more will be part of his ghost-written autobiography, to be published by St. Martin's Press, "now that enough people have died." He's hired researchers to gather material and plans to start working on it this year. "But it won't be called My Way," he insists with a laugh, referencing the classic ballad he wrote for Sinatra. "I'll leave some stuff out, out of respect for friends, but it's not going to be pap. No one is left who saw what I saw. But I never had a problem with them, never was leaned on."

The real mystery with Anka is why, after five remarkable decades, 130 albums, more than 40 million records sold, the only artist on Billboard's Top 50 charts for five consecutive decades, why he still feels the need every three days to spend an hour and 45 minutes on stage swinging to an 18-piece orchestra.

The answer is that, in many ways, nothing in him has changed. The same impetus that made him get up on stage at 13 to sing in Gatineau talent contests also made him, at 15, approach producer Irvin Feld at a Fats Domino concert in Ottawa and tell him, "You're going to hear about me, Mr. Feld." A year later Feld signed him.

It's the same ambition that took him in 1957 with his unfinished song Diana (about his unrequited love of high school friend Diana Ayoub) to meet legendary producer Don Costa in New York, where Anka slept on a mattress in a bathtub in a friends' room at the President Hotel. It's why, three years ago, he released Rock Swings, an album of covers of more contemporary pop songs, and devoted half of Classic Songs, My Way, his last album, to the same kind of tunes.

"Paul is a perfectionist," says music journalist Larry LeBlanc, who wrote the biographical notes for Anka's last album. "He can be charming. He can be difficult. Certainly his intensity can be unsettling. He expects a person to be as professional as he is. In this world, that doesn't happen much."

And there's another dimension to Anka that's often overlooked: his business acumen. He was only 21 when, in 1962, he parted company with ABC-Paramount and committed his entire savings — $250,000, a fortune in those days — to buy back the masters of his own songs. He started his own publishing company, Spanka Music, and began licensing the it songs of artists from France, Italy and elsewhere, as well as the rights to the James Brown catalogue in Europe.

He was an astute judge of talent as well. He nurtured the early careers of singer/songwriters John Prine and Steve Goodman, as well as Canadians Corey Hart and David Clayton-Thomas. And it was only after Anka lined up $500,000 with a single phone call to finance crooner Michael Buble's first album with David Foster that Warner Bros. decided it might be willing to bankroll the CD. (In the end, Foster used his own money.)

It was also Paul Albert Anka who, in 1963, told his managers, the Feld brothers, about a long-haired British group called the Beatles that he'd seen perform in Paris. He suggested they bring the band to America, and they did.

In April, he's off to Europe for a six-city tour. He watches what he eats, lifts weights — he has a set of barbells in the hotel suite's living room, and does short sessions of intense aerobic activity. Last year, Anka sold his 5,700-square-foot mansion above Beverly Hills for $5.8-million (U.S.), and then bought a similar sized home a little farther north of Los Angeles, in Thousand Oaks' Lake Sherwood district, to house Anna, Ethan and Emily, Anna's daughter from her previous marriage. He and Anna aren't married yet, Anka says, "but we're talking about it."

How long will he keep going as a performer? "Until I can't continue any more. There's something about performing, I can't give it up. I'm at the top of my game. There's a large black hole," he says, "between the creative process of writing a song and performing it."

Anka could easily live on the royalties of a few songs alone. It isn't enough. "When you get out there and you see the tears, that's the payoff," he says. "Why would you give it up when it's easier to travel?"

"And there are things I still haven't accomplished," he continues. "What am I going to do? Retire at 50 and sit home and do what — become angry? No. I haven't put my flag in the ground yet."

Golden Night For Coens

Excerpt from www.thestar.com - Lee-Anne Goodman, The Canadian Press

(February 24, 2008) LOS ANGELES–Joel and Ethan Coen took home Oscar gold on Sunday night, winning best picture, best director, adapted screenplay and best supporting actor Academy Awards for their blood-soaked "No Country For Old Men."

"There are too many people to thank for this ... we're very thankful to all of you out there who allow us to continue to play in our corner of the sandbox," said Joel Coen, referring to the siblings' lifelong filmmaking efforts that included a childhood movie called "Henry Kissinger, Man on the Go," as he picked up the best director prize.

Javier Bardem won best supporting actor for his role as a ruthless serial killer in "No Country."

"This is pretty amazing and I want to thank the Coens for being crazy enough to think that I could do that and put one of the most horrible haircuts in history on my head," Bardem told the cheering crowd, referring to the Coens' decision to fashion his character with an incongruous page boy.

Daniel Day-Lewis won best actor for his role as a histrionic oil baron in "There Will Be Blood," an expected victory in stark contrast to what was arguably the biggest upset of Oscar night – French actress Marion Cotillard's best actress win for her turn as Edith Piaf in "La Vie En Rose."

"That's the closest I'll ever come to getting a knighthood, so thank you," the soft-spoken Day-Lewis said to presenter Helen Mirren, who played Queen Elizabeth in "The Queen" last year.

"This sprang like a golden sapling out of mad beautiful head of Paul Thomas Anderson," Day-Lewis said as he paid tribute to the film's director.

Cotillard's win was something of a stunner. She beat Christie, whose performance as a woman suffering from Alzheimer's disease in Canadian Sarah Polley's powerful "Away From Her," garnered her a Golden Globe and BAFTA award in the best actress category.

"It's true there are some angels in this city," the visibly overwhelmed Cotillard told the crowd.

Her win came on a night of relatively few surprises. Tilda Swinton took best supporting actress for her role as a pathologically ambitious attorney in the legal thriller "Michael Clayton," a category some speculated might go to Cate Blanchett for her Bob Dylan imitation in "I'm Not There."

The Scottish Swinton paid tribute to a close colleague as she fondly took in her Oscar statuette.

"I have an American agent who is the spitting image of this," she said. "Really, truly, the same shape head, and it has to be said, the buttocks. And I'm giving this to him, because there's no way I'd be in America at all, ever, on a plane if it wasn't for him."

"Juno," the beloved teen pregnancy comedy from Montreal-born Jason Reitman, took home just one Oscar, but it was a prestigious one – Diablo Cody, the onetime stripper turned screenwriter, took home the prize for best original screenplay.

"I want to thank Jason Reitman, whom I consider a member of my family and whom I'm in awe of as a filmmaker," an emotional Cody told the crowd.

Reitman has said he fell in love with Cody's script the first time he read it and felt compelled to make the movie soon after. It was the first script she'd ever written.

Page, from Halifax, got the most cheers when her name was announced in the best actress category for her role as a pregnant teen in "Juno."

"There Will Be Blood" won the prize for best cinematography, ``Ratatouille," the blockbuster animated flick about a rat, won best animated feature, "The Golden Compass" won for best visual effects. "Taxi to the Dark Side" won best documentary, beating out the high-profile "Sicko" from Michael Moore.

"Sweeney Todd" took home the prize for art direction, Austria's ``The Counterfeiters" won best foreign-language film and "Falling Slowly," a moving love song from the Irish film, "Once," won best song. "Atonement" won for best score.

One of the most sober moments of the night came during the annual tribute to actors and filmmakers who have died over the past year. When the tribute ended with a focus on Australian actor Heath Ledger, who died last month in a drug-related death, the broadcast cut immediately to commercial.

Critics were almost unanimous in predicting "No Country" would take home the best picture Oscar and that the Coens would nab the directing prize.

The brothers took the stage early in the night to accept the statue for best adapted screenplay, a category in which they beat out Toronto's Polley, who was nominated for "Away From Her."

Sunday's televised show, watched by an estimated billion people worldwide, got underway with a special effects extravaganza showing film characters lining Hollywood Boulevard before host Jon Stewart got down to his opening monologue.

A chilly drizzle fell throughout much of the day, and celebs showed off their award-show finery on a red carpet draped by a tarp. Despite the showers, shrieking fans packed the streets around the Kodak Theatre.

The nominated Canadians were out in full force, taking in the sights and sounds.

Reitman – accompanied on the red carpet by his parents, longtime Hollywood filmmaker Ivan Reitman and his wife, Genevieve – has been on the party circuit for days assuring anyone who's asked that he didn't have a chance to win the best director Oscar. "Juno" was also nominated for a best picture Oscar.

The film won best picture at the Spirit Awards honouring independent film on Saturday night, while Page won the best actress Spirit Award and Cody took home the prize for best first screenplay.

"Juno" has wowed Hollywood since its release in mid-December, becoming not only a critical but commercial smash – easily the most successful film among the five best picture nominees.

Even Stewart made reference to the film's popularity in his opening remarks Sunday night.

After joking that Hollywood needed a hug for turning out so many dark and bloody films in 2007, he added: "All I can say is, thank God for teen pregnancy. I think the country agrees."

"Juno" was the lone comedy in a best picture field that was rounded out by the wartime romance "Atonement," the oil-boom epic ``There Will Be Blood" and "Michael Clayton."

Canadians were nominated in the animated short category but lost out to "Peter and the Wolf," and three Canadian sound mixers also lost out to the crew from "The Bourne Ultimatum."

Perennial Oscar bridesmaid Kevin O'Connell, another sound-mixing nominee for "Transformers," lost again, his 20th time striking out at the Academy Awards.

The winners at the 80th annual Academy Awards.

Best film: “No Country for Old Men”
Best actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, “There Will Be Blood”
Best actress: Marion Cotillard, “La Vie en Rose”
Best supporting actor: Javier Bardem, “No Country for Old Men”
Best supporting actress: Tilda Swinton, “Michael Clayton”
Best direction: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, “No Country for Old Men”
Foreign language film: “The Counterfeiters,” Austria
Cinematography: “There Will Be Blood”
Costume design: “Elizabeth: The Golden Age”
Animated feature film: “Ratatouille”
Documentary feature: “Taxi to the Dark Side”
Documentary short subject: “Freeheld”
Makeup: “La Vie en rose”
Visual effects: “The Golden Compass”
Art direction: “Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street”
Live action short film: “Le Mozart des Pickpockets (The Mozart of Pickpockets)”
Animated short film: “Peter & the Wolf”
Original screenplay: “Juno”
Adapted screenplay: “No Country for Old Men”
Original song: “Falling Slowly” from “Once”
Original score: “Atonement”
Sound editing: “The Bourne Ultimatum”
Sound mixing: “The Bourne Ultimatum”
Film editing: “The Bourne Ultimatum”

Jack Johnson Saving The Earth, One Tune At A Time

Excerpt from www.globeandmail.com - Simon Houpt

(February 23, 2008) NEW YORK — For a laid-back Hawaiian guy who ambled his way from making surf movies to a spot as a leading purveyor of easygoing acoustic pop, Jack Johnson speaks with a surprising sense of urgency. Last October, when he lit out from his Oahu home for a one-week publicity tour that brought him to New York, he dragged himself down to the lobby bar of the Bowery Hotel early one morning, where out tumbled a stream of feelings and thoughts about the state of the world. This, without benefit of coffee.

Johnson, 32, evidently has a lot on his mind; his new album, Sleep Through the Static, which has sat atop the Canadian album charts for the two weeks since its release, is run through with anxiety. Not that you'd know it from the music itself, a slightly more produced, fatter and occasionally electric version of the stripped-down sing-along campfire style he's been offering since his 2001 debut, Brushfire Fairytales.

But Johnson is a committed environmentalist and the lyrics for the opening number, All at Once, are braided with hints of a planet on the verge of collapse. That tune segues into the title cut, a hip-hop-influenced number that is as clear an attack on the United States' recent military misadventures as you're ever likely to get from a surfer dude: "Who needs please when we've got guns? / Who needs peace when we've gone above," Johnson sings in the chorus.

Sitting here now, sporting three days of stubble and bloodshot eyes from jet lag and last night's late drinks, Johnson explains that songwriting is for him normally a laborious process. "I usually write one verse and it sits around for a year sometimes, or months, and then I'll write another verse to a whole different melody, and then I'll realize they're talking about the same thing and I'll put 'em together."

The song Sleep Through the Static, however, was written in about 10 minutes. "I just sat there and wrote two pages or so," explains Johnson.

"When I write a song like that, it's just goin' off a feel. I'm not the type of person who could explain to you the politics of this war and exactly why it's the way it is, but I get a certain feeling just from the bit of newspaper articles I read about it, or the conversations I have with friends, that we've gone too far in this particular war, just to even enter that war was to go too far."

At the same time, the song is an indictment of those citizens who would choose, as Johnson says, to sleep through the static.

"We're in a culture where we don't really need to see what we do - whether it's bombing another country or it's simple things like using plastic bags at the store and you use it for three minutes and then all of a sudden it's sitting in a landfill for 2,000 years, or whatever it is. You don't have to see those repercussions."

The environmental issue is the one closest to Johnson's heart. The studios where he recorded the album, both at home and in Los Angeles, are fuelled by solar power, and when he goes out on tour this year he will seek to make it as green an endeavour as possible. (Promoters buying carbon offsets, merchandise made from organic materials etc.) He and his wife administer the Kokua Hawai'i Foundation, which supports environmental education in his home state through funds raised at an annual Earth Day concert. Lately, Johnson has taken to visiting schools to sing to kids about the merits of "the other three R's" - reduce, reuse and recycle.

Johnson's career didn't begin with aspirations to spread any message beyond the need for good times. At first, his musical tastes were rougher: In his teens and early 20s, he listened to a lot of Nine Inch Nails and Fugazi, and played in a punk band. But in time, he found himself returning to the style of music he played when he first learned guitar, at age 14.

After graduating with a degree in film, he spent some time making surf movies and travelling through the Pacific and Indian oceans. When he wasn't filming, he would kick back on the boat and compose wordless songs that would serve as a soundtrack. After a while he and his friends decided to release the music itself on CD. "When we got into it, we had a real goal, and it was to sell maybe 20,000 to 30,0000 [albums]. The surf movies we'd made had sold about that many, so we kind of figured there was that built-in audience.

"When it went beyond that, it was bizarre, and it kept growing and growing and growing, and it really seems unrealistic and a huge surprise to all of us."

Even as it has gone way beyond that - Johnson's total album sales now reach over 15 million - he has apparently stayed humble. As he is speaking, a waiter wanders over and asks if he needs something. "I'd like a mochachino, maybe?" Johnson says politely. Informed there is no chocolate syrup in the house, he shrugs and opts for coffee. When the waiter delivers the bill to Johnson rather than his manager or publicist over in the corner, Johnson pauses to take care of the matter, ensure there is enough of a tip, and thank the waiter.

It is a manner that plays well with families: Two years ago, Johnson gained a whole new audience when he wrote the soundtrack for the animated film Curious George. He tested the songs with his own focus group, playing every number for his then two-year-old son. "He'd either want to dance, really get into it, or just be like - a blank stare, and walk out of the room," Johnson chuckles. "And I'd have to get back to the drawing board."

Johnson and his wife, whom he met at college when he was 18, now have another son, and when he sets out on tour later this year - he is headlining both the Coachella festival and the new All Points West fest - the family will be coming along. Family is very much on his mind right now. On the second day of this week-long publicity burst last fall, he is already missing his wife and children, and thinking about his 19-year-old cousin, Danny Riley, who is dying of a brain tumour back in California. Riley sang backup on one of the new songs, and Johnson says another tune, While We Wait, is obliquely about him.

"A lot of the record's about letting go," he explains, citing a couple of the more apolitical tunes. "Whether it's letting go of somebody you've been with for years and you're just trying to walk different ways, or just letting go of somebody you love that has to pass away. Or even just letting go of my kid, letting him swim, and how much to let go. I think we can't hold on to time, it keeps moving."

Two weeks later, Riley died. Johnson dedicated the album to his memory.

::TRAVEL NEWS::

Heaven, Short Term

Source:  Melanie Reffes for www.movieentertainment.ca

(March 2008) The getaway of choice for Canadians escaping winter’s icy sidewalks, Jamaica is also a tropical treasure trove of Hollywood history and a magnet for A-listers who pay top dollar for the sun, surf and privacy. Four hours from Toronto via Air Jamaica or Air Canada, Jamaica is a short commute to a world away. Its two big cities — Kingston and Montego Bay — are an hour’s flight from each other or a leisurely three-hour drive along the coast. Hotels run the gamut from ultra-luxe to no-frills-on-the beach. The Rooms brand is the best bet for a bargain stay in Ocho Rios, with high-season rates as low as $100 U.S. a night.

The Pegasus in Kingston suits the business traveller. The Ralph Lauren-designed Round Hill Resort in Montego Bay, the film set for How Stella Got Her Groove Back and where Taye Diggs returned to marry his bride, is $590 a night for an oceanfront suite. As close to heaven as you can get without the long-term commitment, a stretch of beach on the northwest coast lays claim to a curious nugget of cinematic history. Laughing Waters on St. Ann’s Bay is where Ursula Andress emerged from the sea in an oyster-coloured bikini in the first Bond flick, Dr. No. During the Second World War, Commander Ian Fleming arrived in Jamaica to attend a naval conference. “When we have won this blasted war,” his biographer reports him as saying, “I am going to live in Jamaica, swim in the sea and write books.”

Fleming wrote 14 Bond novels in his bungalow overlooking a cove on an abandoned donkey racetrack in Oracabessa, a stone’s throw from Ocho Rios. Fleming’s friend Noel Coward, who rented the house before building his own nearby, dubbed it “Golden eye, nose and throat.” Acknowledging the shortcomings of the modest home without hot water, Fleming observed it has “shower baths and lavatories that hiss like vipers and ululate like stricken bloodhounds.” In 1977, after a deal with Bob Marley fell through when the singer decided the villa wasn’t to his liking, Goldeneye was bought by Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, who had worked on the Dr. No. set. Today, with Fleming’s red-bullet wood desk still in Room 007, Goldeneye is the haute hideaway for glitterati like Pierce Brosnan, U2 and Naomi Campbell, who come to frolic under the giant banyan trees.

Blackwell, who owns other swank resorts in Jamaica, has expanded Goldeneye to include a three-bedroom villa with a private pool and price tag of $3.3 million U.S. With no buildings taller than a palm tree, Port Antonio was the original playground for glamour girls like Audrey Hepburn, Bette Davis and Ginger Rogers, who partied with swashbuckler Errol Flynn. His third wife still lives there, breeding cattle and growing coconuts. Heard to observe the lush land in the mountains “is more beautiful than any woman I’ve ever seen,” Flynn made quite a splash by hiring banana-ferrying bamboo rafts to pole his famous pals up the jungle fringed river.

The Molsons, Tiffanys and Woolworths built mansions there, and Canadian biscuit billionaire Garfield Weston once owned Frenchman’s Cove. It was said to have been the most expensive hotel in the world at the time and a favourite of Queen Elizabeth, who wintered at the grand resort.

Although less glamorous these days, Port Antonio still attracts big names like Tom Cruise, who juggled martini shakers in Cocktail. Robin Moore penned The French Connection near the Blue Lagoon, where Brooke Shields famously bared it all in the film of the same name. Recent Jamaican royalty includes Bob Marley, Harry Belafonte and even Johnny Cash, who had a house in Montego Bay. When rocker Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale named their firstborn Kingston, they didn’t consult baby name books for inspiration. No strangers to Jamaica, No Doubt hired the prolific team of Sly and Robbie to produce their hit CD Rock Steady in the same Kingston studio where Bob Dylan, Joe Cocker and Mick Jagger also get irie with the vibe.

If You Go: Jamaica tourist information:

www.visitjamaica.com
Air Canada: www.aircanada.ca
Air Jamaica: www.airjamaica.com
Rooms by the Beach: www.superclubs.com
Pegasus: www.jamaicapegasus.com
Round Hill Resort: www.roundhilljamaica.com
Port Antonio tourist information: www.portantoniojamaica.com
Goldeneye Resort: www.islandoutposts.com
Imperial War Museum: www.iwm.org.uk

Melanie Reffes is a Montreal-based travel writer and broadcaster.

::MUSIC NEWS::

k.d. lang - ‘It's Great Coming Home'

Excerpt from www.thestar.com - Greg Quill, Entertainment Columnist

(February 22, 2008) You don't have to be a disciple to appreciate how completely k.d. lang inhabits a song.

More than that luscious and assured voice, with its strident, almost operatic baritone lows and silvery, ethereal highs, it's her obsessive devotion to the song she's singing at any given time that makes lang one of the most engaging performers on the planet.

At last night's sold-out show at the Courthouse – it was one of several small, intimate-venue events booked prior to the release of her latest album, Watershed, in cautious expectation of less extravagant reviews than it has received – the 46-year-old Consort, Alta., native, now a Los Angeles resident, proved again that she needs very little in the way of showbiz trickery to sell a song and bring an audience to its knees.

With a kind of cabaret folk band comprising two guitarists, a pianist/organist/accordionist, a drummer and a stand-up bass player, lang served up a seductive, languorous, almost unplugged set comprising mostly new songs – standouts were "Once In A While," "Thread" and "Sunday" – as well as a couple of obscure early pieces and a few favourites from her Canadiana grab bag, Hymns of the 49th Parallel (Neil Young's "Helpless," Jane Siberry's "The Valley," Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah").

The sound was both lush and organic, a live version of the subtle acoustic exotica that characterizes the sonic architecture of Watershed, and while lang, dressed in a baggy, three-piece charcoal suit, a black silk shirt and white tie, swayed and sashayed like an old-world cabaret star to the gentle rhythms of the music, it was clear she was entranced by the intent and purpose of every lyrical nuance, every double entendre, every shifting shade of meaning.

In fact, she seemed reluctant to break the spell, to step outside the songs longer than it took to acknowledge the crowd's devotional whoops and hollers with a couple of brief asides.

Seeming to offer a comment on the cold weather in one pause, she remarked, "My Canadian blood is thin ... but my Canadian heart beats strong. It's great coming home."

And before the patriotic applause died down, she had already stepped back into the domestic romance of the song "Coming Home."

That kind of Zen-like attentiveness is what holds together lang's new songs – mostly confessional declarations and aching romances. They are not conventional structures bound by predictable chord progressions and pretty melodies. While the compositions are remarkable for their avoidance of cliché, what makes them so effective is the lack of apparent structure; the mood and spirit of her delivery give them all the substance they need. It's one thing to reach that rarefied elevation in an insulated recording studio, and quite another to do it onstage in front of 400 or 500 enthusiastic fans.

Yet that's exactly what lang and her new assembly of empathetic band mates did last night. That this astoundingly original singer and songwriter can still reach levels of such luminous musical grace in a room with a 10-metre ceiling, overwhelming natural resonance and a chattering cluster at the bar speaks volumes for her dedication to the art of song.

It also bodes well for a warm welcome when she returns for much larger gathering at Massey Hall May 31.

Buck 65 Announces Canadian Tour

Source: Warner Music Canada

(February 27, 2008) Warner Music Canada recording artist Buck 65, aka Richard Terfry, returns home to Canada for his first national tour in support of his ninth full length album, Situation.  Since being released on October 30, 2007, Buck 65 has already toured the United States, Australia and Europe, and will stop in 18 Canadian cities including a special appearance with Symphony Nova Scotia on April 18th in Halifax.  Cadence Weapon and Skratch Bastid will be on the road as guests, except for the symphony performance mentioned above.  Tickets for the Canadian tour will go on sale this Friday.  Dates listed below.
 
Situation has garnered two nominations at this year’s Juno Awards.  Skratch Bastid is up for the Jack Richardson Producer of the Year award and Felix Wittholz is nominated for the CD/DVD Artwork Design of the Year award for their work with Buck 65.
 
Buck 65’s new single ‘Dang’ has been launched via a remix contest through Dose.ca in conjunction with Exclaim! Magazine.  Entrants have the opportunity to remix the track and the winning submission will be released on a limited-edition 7” vinyl single.  The video for ‘Dang’ has just been shot by director Christopher Mills with inspiration from Atlantic Grand Prix Wrestling, a television staple from Terfry’s childhood.
 
Hailing from Mount Uniake, Nova Scotia, Buck 65 has proven time and again that his brand of hip hop is not only unique, but creative and innovative at the same time.  So much in fact, he has won two Juno Awards (2004 – Alternative Album of the Year / 2006 – Video of the Year) and has been nominated two other times (2003 – Alternative Album of the Year / 2005 – Songwriter of the Year).
 
For more information, please visit www.buck65.com.

Jim Cuddy On The Road Again

Excerpt from www.thestar.com - Greg Quill, Entertainment Columnist

(February 23, 2008) Rock stars with Jim Cuddy's mileage usually remember the high times first: those moments of extravagance or transcendence; meeting the rich, the famous and powerful; and the unexpected privileges accorded a consistently productive and enduringly popular band with a history going back 20-odd years.

But topping his memory, as he eases back into a severely abused sofa in Blue Rodeo's well-camouflaged office/studio bunker just off the Danforth pub strip, is the low-grade busking stunt the band pulled one sunny day last fall, when its thrice Juno-nominated 11th album, Small Miracles, was released.

"It was just us on acoustic instruments and singing without amplification," he explains. "I've never felt so naked. I remember looking at (co-front man) Greg (Keelor) and the other guys on the street outside Union Station and we all just swallowed and shrugged and started playing, fearing the worst. It wasn't announced, no one knew we were going to be there. But in a few moments we had a crowd of 60 to 100 people standing around ... they'd recognized us and were on their cellphones calling friends and taking pictures."

The busking tour, which took Blue Rodeo to street corners all over the downtown core that day, from the Royal Ontario Museum to the TD Centre and ending at Princess Margaret Hospital, brought the band back to the ground, returning them to origins humbler than those they experienced during their early years in Toronto's clubs and small concert spaces. And it brought them face to face once more with the reality of what their music – music in general – means to the people whose faces are usually invisible in the darkness beyond the footlights, lost in a sea of distant noise and colour and movement.

"It's the smiles I remember," Cuddy explains. "The music made them happy ... it took them out of themselves, even for a moment. At the hospital, people were so grateful. I guess they don't get much entertainment there. One man told me it was the first time in years that he'd felt like putting on his shoes and dancing."

In the dead of winter, Blue Rodeo's traditional touring season, the memory seems to warm him. On this rare day at home during a gruelling cross-country schedule that will bring them to Toronto for three nights at Massey Hall Thursday through Saturday, then off to the western and southern U.S., Cuddy is happy not to be on the move.

"I was backstage at one of Rush's shows – and they do really big shows that are physically so much more demanding than ours – I remember (guitarist) Alex (Lifeson) saying, `I love it, but I'm so tired.' And I knew exactly what he meant. After so long and at a certain age, the constant grind can wear you down."

Especially since Blue Rodeo are touring on the heels of Cuddy's own solo tour fronting his eponymous band following the release of his second solo album, The Light That Guides You Home, in late 2006.

Blue Rodeo also has so much more concert competition in a season that they once had to themselves for so long. They tour in winter in order to spend summers with their families and children, an important part of the band's modus operandi, Cuddy explains.

"And now everyone's out there – Michael Bublé, John Mellencamp, Bon Jovi, Rascal Flatts."

Adapting is something Blue Rodeo does well. It's built into a long-term survival strategy that has provided principal songwriters Cuddy and Keelor, and their sidekicks, bassist Bazil Donovan, drummer Glenn Milchem, lap-steel specialist Bob Egan and keyboardist Bob Packwood, with a comfortable existence, a relatively novel concept in the music game.

"We have a small, specialized market, and we come to it frequently, like regular visitors," Cuddy says. "They can count on us, and that keeps them coming back."

That audience is also broad enough – from diehard alt.country fans to suburban moms and dads, and now their children – to allow the band to indulge in a rich and adventurous musical palette.

"We're even doing a bossa nova on this tour, one of Greg's songs from the new album ... most country bands can't go there," Cuddy chuckles. "And within the band there has always been a pretty strong will to change our recording methods each time out. We have very different, very strong personalities in Blue Rodeo, and nothing is done the same way twice."

And contrary to rumours, a recent flood of solo recordings by Blue Rodeo band members Cuddy, Keelor, Egan – and Donovan's various off-site gigs with other artists – aren't signs that the core band's spirit is on the wane.

"Just the opposite," Cuddy says. "As well as we do with our solo stuff, it's always Blue Rodeo people want to see. Ninety per cent of the audiences at my solo shows would rather see me with the band. They accept our solo efforts as a diversion, not a threat to Blue Rodeo. While the band is and always will be a collection of strong individuals, it's really about the collective.

"When I bring in songs for consideration, the other guys are my judges and jury. It's like playing for six different producers, each working on ideas for the arrangement. Sometimes I've abandoned songs completely after they've been rejected two or three times by the band.

"They're bruised ... they go away, sometimes never to be heard again."

Getting personal with Jim Cuddy

1. What was your first job?

A paper route in Montreal during the summer of Expo 67. Everyday I would go to Expo during the day, come home and do my route and then head back to Expo.

2. What's on your iPod?

The Weakerthans' latest, Iron and Wine's The Shepherds Dog and a lot of the (XM Satellite Radio) Bob Dylan Theme Time Radio Hour.

3. What's the last good movie you saw?

Away From Her.

4. If you weren't a musician, what would you be doing?

I had law school deferred three times before I decided to be a musician, so I'd probably be a very unhappy lawyer.

5. What TV show do you always have to catch?

Nothing I have to catch on a weekly basis. Really, I only watch the Leafs.

Jim Cuddy miscellanea

"Countrywide Soul," one of the key songs on Cuddy's 2006 solo CD The Light That Guides You Home, was rejected three times by the other members of Blue Rodeo and languished for a couple of years till Cuddy revived it with his side outfit The Jim Cuddy Band.

Blue Rodeo's "Till I Am Myself Again," one of the band's most popular and empowering songs, was written from the perspective of a close friend who was battling alcohol addiction and needed time, spiritual strength and the patience of his loved ones to recover. Happily, he did.

Blue Rodeo will perform for Canadian troops in Afghanistan next month.

Cuddy, 52, has been married for more than 20 years to actress Rena Polley. They have three children and are actively involved in the east-end Toronto neighbourhood where they live.

Jim's brother, Loftus Cuddy, was a Conservative candidate for the riding of Toronto-Danforth in the 2004 federal election. Jim did not vote for him.

Blue Rodeo was well into recording Small Miracles when Cuddy observed that most of the songs he and bandmate Greg Keelor brought to the sessions had the same theme: "We are who we are, and we're never going to change – let's deal with that."

Pete Rock Premiered New Album On Myspace

Source: kimberly@theorchard.com

(February 27, 2008) New York's finest producer, Pete Rock, premiered his latest and long anticipated album, NY's Finest, on Myspace.com, nearly a week before the album becomes available in stores.

NY's Finest is Pete's first album in four years and is produced almost entirely by Pete himself, with one track contributed by DJ Green Lantern.

Guests include Jim Jones, Styles P and Sheek Louch, Redman, Little Brother, Raekwon, Masta Killa, Papoose, and more. The album hit stores yesterday, February 26 via Nature Sounds records.

Verizon subscribers can download the album using their VCast music store, and ringtones are available by texting the SMS codes below on most mobile carriers.

     Pete discussed the inspiration and motivation behind NY's Finest in recent interviews.

"To me real music is the key because what's done from the heart and soul is so important," Pete explained to All Hip Hop, a theme he touched on again with SixShot.com. "There's a lot of the music today that sounds just effortless.  It doesn't stick to you and ten years from now it's not even a classic."

NY's Finest draws its inspiration as much from Pete's status as one of New York's finest produc