In 2017, I wrote a brief tribute to Tom Petty that barely scratched the surface of his impact and influence on me as a musician, music fan, and writer. It started with seeing the music video for supergroup The Travelling Wilburys “Handle With Care”. I thought this bloke picking away on a bass looked like […]
It was a hot summer day and I was recently transitioning from Canmore to Calgary. I finally landed a decent-paying job with a local printing company. I was living with a couple of friends thinking all was going to be well. (It fell apart quickly). I was thinking of music and maybe owning a kind […]
Old red was the first instrument I ever owned. My music lessons as a kid to that point was through piano training. Fourth grade and I wanted to just grow my hair long and play loud music. A classmate introduced me to heavy metal music. The guitar players seemed to get all the girls. I […]
It is one of my oldest friends, and enemies. I have four representations of the instrument in my home office. A beat-up Samick 4-string which I paid a hundred bucks for at a local shop in Halifax. A 6-string Ibanez which saw a great deal of work on stage and at many a drunken jam […]
A few days ago I spun a great track from one of my bass heroes who happens to also be a terrific songwriter and guitar player. The song is a great piece of Canadiana called “That Kind of Blue”. The voice is Jay “Jimbo” Semko. Jay is the legendary bassist and songwriter of The Northern […]
As a teen I would spend hours on end reading different articles in Bass Player Magazine. I was spending more time playing regularly just in the neighborhood with a few others. Others who would be doing the same thing some evenings. Sitting in their rooms listening to music and reading the publication of their chosen […]
For most of the first 20 years of my life, this was one of the places I called home the most. It was the first place I ever knew as a home. Even while living a 10 minute drive away on and off through my teens, this was known to me as a home. In […]
3 of the founding original members of metal legends Black Sabbath are currently on tour supporting the most recent offering. 13 is a brilliant slab of pure heavy metal from 3 of the greatest talents in the genre. A brilliant metal record is long overdue. It has put so much of the newer material from […]
Special Guest Post by C.B. Bannerman In Canada, Nova Scotia has a healthy yet hidden history of metal music that been kept from mainstream media. While many great metal acts have come and gone, there is a constant re-occurrence of musical releases from a duo who are not well-known for their brand of comically brilliant […]
Charles Mingus stood for many things. He was just not a musician, composer and bass player. He was an individual voice that spoke loud and clear. When I first read about the work of this great composer and bassist it was in a copy of Bass Player Magazine which I had lying around a room in […]
Dann Alexander 