The Smiths running around with some kids, on ITV’s breakfast television show TVAM in Britain, and then Sandie Shaw pops up! This is why the 1980s were so cool!
Kid: “Where are we going?”
Morrissey: “We’re going mad.”
Kid: “I thought we were going to Kew Gardens.”
These amazing photos of Colin James performing live at Toronto’s Massey Hall were taken by Dawn Hamilton (Mini’s Memories). You can contact her for all your photo needs and opportunities at minismemories@hotmail.com
As promised, Depeche Mode continues to roll out their Global Spirit Tour, with the second leg bringing their stunning live show to fans across North America this fall.
Following an extensive European summer tour, the 28 show North American run, exclusively promoted by Live Nation, will kick off on August 23rd in Salt Lake City, UT and will stop in 26 cities across the United States and Canada, before wrapping up in Edmonton, Alberta on October 27th.
Fans can register now for early access to tickets at presale.depechemode.com. By registering, fans will reserve a spot in line for the fan presale, which they can then improve by sharing their unique presale link with friends and family, or by preordering Depeche Mode’s new album Spirit. On March 6, days before tickets go on general sale to the public, fans who have registered will be let into a special ticket presale in waves, based on their place in line.
The European stadium leg of the Global Spirit Tour, running May through July, has already sold over 1.5 million tickets and has sold-out shows across Europe – just the start of what is poised to be a record-breaking global tour. The Global Spirit Tour will later bring the band to Latin America, with details to be announced shortly.
The Global Spirit Tour is in support of the band’s upcoming 14th studio album, Spirit, out on March 17th via Columbia Records. The album’s powerful and timely first single, “Where’s The Revolution”, has already been well-received by critics and fans alike, lauded as a strong “return to form” for Depeche Mode. Spirit has already garnered critical acclaim in early previews, with Q Magazine calling it “the most energized Depeche Mode album in years”.
Pre-order Spirit from digital retailers here: smarturl.it/Spirit
Depeche Mode Global Spirit Tour – Fall 2017 North American Tour
August 23 Salt Lake City, UT USANA Amphitheatre
August 25 Denver, CO Pepsi Center
August 27 Detroit, MI DTE Energy Music Theatre
August 30 Chicago, IL Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre
September 1 Uncasville, CT Mohegan Sun Arena
September 3 Toronto, ON Air Canada Centre
September 5 Montreal, QC Centre Bell
September 7 Washington, DC Verizon Center
September 9 New York, NY Madison Square Garden
September 11 New York, NY Madison Square Garden
September 13 Tampa, FL MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre
September 15 Miami, FL AmericanAirlines Arena
September 18 Nashville, TN Ascend Amphitheater
September 20 Austin, TX Austin360 Amphitheatre
September 22 Dallas, TX Starplex Pavilion
September 24 Houston, TX Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion presented
by Huntsman
September 27 Phoenix, AZ AK-Chin Pavilion
September 30 Las Vegas, NV T-Mobile Arena
October 2 Santa Barbara, CA Santa Barbara County Bowl
October 6 San Diego, CA Mattress Firm Amphitheatre
October 8 San Jose, CA SAP Center
October 10 Oakland, CA Oracle Arena
October 12 Los Angeles, CA Hollywood Bowl
October 14 Los Angeles, CA Hollywood Bowl
October 21 Seattle, WA KeyArena
October 23 Portland, OR Moda Center
October 25 Vancouver, BC Rogers Arena
October 27 Edmonton, AB Rogers Place
On the North American leg of the Global Spirit Tour, the band will continue their charity partnership with Swiss watch maker Hublot, raising money and awareness for charity: water toward their mission of providing safe drinking water to everyone in the world.
The Music Business Association (Music Biz) is proud to present its prestigious Harry Chapin Memorial Humanitarian Award to award-winning choreographer and performer, multi-Platinum recording artist, and beloved television personality Paula Abdul. She will accept the Award from Sandy Chapin, Harry’s widow, on May 18 at 12:30 p.m. CT during the Music Biz 2017 convention’s Awards Luncheon at the Renaissance Nashville Hotel.
Abdul is active as a spokesperson and advocate for national charity organizations. Selected to be an ambassador of We.org, she uplifts and empowers tens of thousands of youths in cities all over the globe as a speaker for We Day — a movement that brings together world-renowned speakers and performers to celebrate the power young people have to change the world. This year, Abdul partnered with Turnaround Arts, a signature program of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, to adopt a school in Brooklyn, NY, and to help foster arts education in impoverished schools across the nation. In 2014, the Avon Foundation for Women tapped Abdul to become their Avon Global Ambassador for their international #CheckYourself digital campaign in support of Breast Cancer Awareness month. Abdul, alongside the Avon Foundation, directed, produced, choreographed, and starred in the campaign, which garnered half a billion media impressions around the world.
YouTube hit a big milestone in 2016: people around the world are now watching a billion hours of YouTube’s incredible content every single day. A Billion.
Let’s put that in perspective. If you were to sit and watch a billion hours of YouTube, it would take you over 100,000 years. 100,000 years ago, our ancestors were crafting stone tools and migrating out of Africa while mammoths and mastodons roamed the Earth. If you spent 100,000 years traveling at the speed of light, you could travel from one end of the Milky Way to the other (and you wouldn’t age a day!). And if you searched for 100,000 years on YouTube, you’d find a really killer KISS track.
Ed Sheeran joins Jimmy Fallon and The Roots in the Tonight Show Music Room to perform “Shape of You” with classroom instruments.
Minot’s Wheel is an minimal record player. It’s only a wheel. Simple, pure and easy to use. Just place a record on Wheel and it will play the bottom. All functions are controlled by the center stick. All technology is built into Wheel’s platter, below the record. You have an unobstructed view of your precious record, and the delicate stylus is well protected.
Everything happens behind the scenes. Because it’s a closed shape, all technology is safely hidden from dust and accidents. Wheel is very easy to use. Wheel is the most compact true turntable you’ve ever heard.
The construction of Wheel allows it to be used horizontally or vertically. You can put it flat on a table, place it upright on a stand, or hang it on the wall.
Wheel’s linear tonearm is built around the beautiful AudioTechnica AT95E cartridge. With our tonearm, the AT95E offers a warm, rich sound, and outstanding clarity and detail. For a perfect match, the entire arm is micro machined out of a single piece of laminated mahogany.
By using a single type of cartridge, Wheel can fine-tune each tonearm for damping, resonance and weight distribution to make Wheel sounds its best.
Want one? Go to their Kickstarter and be one of the first!
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Iconic Canadian rock band ALEXISONFIRE has announced a limited engagement of performances this June. The five members will come together to perform four shows in June at Toronto’s Danforth Music Hall – including three 19+ shows presented by Budweiser’s Discover What’s Brewing series – as well as a special appearance at Montebello Rockfest. Having established a reputation worldwide for their killer live shows, AOF recently surprised fans lucky enough to get tickets to one of four sold-out Moneen concerts in Toronto when they hit the stage for a secret set at Lee’s Palace last month. The set precipitated a string of Australian Alexisonfire headline shows including Unify Gathering 2017. Alexisonfire enjoyed the Aussie tour and recent club play so much, they looked for a hole in their individual schedules to squeeze in some shows of their own. The band eschewed interest from numerous festivals, opting instead to capture the energy and excitement of playing for their rabid fanbase in a smaller, more intimate setting.
Although the five members have not made any plans to reunite in a traditional sense, they remain very close and open to opportunities and holes in their busy schedules that bring them together to perform. Says frontman George Pettit, “We hope we can show up and play in random cities from time to time.” Case in point, on Monday Alexisonfire surprised fans at the Air Canada Centre after headliners Billy Talent invited the band to perform a few AOF songs during their show.
In order to ensure fans under 19 don’t get left out in the cold, the first Toronto date at Danforth Music Hall on June 18 is All Ages. Tickets for all show dates go on sale Friday, March 3 at NOON EST. See below for show dates and links to purchase tickets. These are the only show dates the band will perform this summer.
Hailing from St. Catharines, Alexisonfire rose up out of the Southern Ontario underground in late 2001, to become one of the most successful indie bands in Canada. The band’s success also reached far beyond Canada’s borders. AOF released four hugely successful studio albums, Alexisonfire (2002), Watch Out (2004), Crisis (2006), and Old Crows / Young Cardinals (2009). Crisis debuted at #1 on the Top 200 Soundscan chart (Canada), and Old Crows / Young Cardinals debuted at #2, and charted at #9 on the US Billboard Independent Album chart. Watch Out helped earn the band New Group of the Year at the 2004 JUNO Awards. Their first 3 albums achieved Platinum certification in Canada while Old Crows / Young Cardinals reached Gold certification. The band also topped charts and graced several notable music magazine covers internationally (Kerrang, Blunt, Big Cheese, Canadian Musician, Exclaim!). AOF’s sold-out 10th Year Anniversary Farewell tour in December 2012 touched down on four continents in 24 days, illustrating how meaningful the band still is to their legion of fans around the world.
Alexisonfire will release a new version of Crisis as part of Record Store Day (Canada) on April 27, 2017. Pressed on a white vinyl as a single LP for the first time, the Record Store Day (Canada) release will be hand-numbered out of 1977. Crisis debuted at #1 on the Top 200 SoundScan and is one of the band’s most successful albums with sales topping 130K in Canada alone. The LP hit #5 on Billboard’s Top Heatseekers chart, #18 on the U.S. Nielsen SoundScan Independent Album chart, and made waves worldwide charting in the UK and Australia’s ARIA charts. With songs ranging in subject matter from the Blizzard of 1977 which paralyzed portions of the Niagara and Northern New York region, to disenfranchised workers, the album embodied a much darker theme than previous Alexisonfire recordings which the JUNO-award winning quintet attributed to returning home from traveling around the world with a fresh perspective. The album also marked a much more “rhythmically liberal” process in the studio with AOF stripping everything down to write and record an album that captured the essence of the band’s live sound, without looping or overdubs or layers. For updates and more information, visit Alexisonfire’s official website.
For a list of roughly 150 participating Canadian stores, visit Record Store Day’s official website: http://www.recordstoreday.com/Stores
AOF 2017 SHOW DATES:
June 18 – Toronto, ON @ Danforth Music Hall (AA) – Ticket Link: http://bit.ly/2mxA0MO
June 19 – Toronto, ON @ Danforth Music Hall (19+) – Ticket Link: http://bit.ly/2mxA0MO
June 21 – Toronto, ON @ Danforth Music Hall (19+) – Ticket Link: http://bit.ly/2mxA0MO
June 22 – Toronto, ON @ Danforth Music Hall (19+) – Ticket Link: http://bit.ly/2mxA0MO
June 24 – Montebello, QC @ Montebello Rockfest (AA) – Ticket Link: http://bit.ly/2mEAZdg
Soundgarden have announced their first US tour in three years. Additionally, they’ve confirmed work on a new studio album, the follow-up to 2012’s reunion LP, King Animal. Along with the upcoming album and tour, Soundgarden will release a deluxe reissue of their debut full-length, 1988’s Ultramega OK, on March 10th.
Soundgarden 2017 North American Tour Dates
4/28 — Tampa, FL — WXTV Rockfest
4/29 — Jacksonville, FL — Welcome to Rockville
4/30 — Ft Myers, FL — Fort Rock Festival
5/3 — Atlanta, GA — Fox Theatre
5/5 — Concord, NC — Carolina Rebellion
5/6 — Tuscaloosa, AL — Tuscaloosa Amphitheatre
5/7 — Memphis, TN — Beale Street Music Festival
5/10 — Indianapolis, IN — Farm Bureau Insurance Lawn
5/12 — Council Bluffs, IA — KIWR Rockfest
5/13 — Somerset, WI — Northern Invasion
5/14 — Kansas City, MO — Starlight Theatre
5/17 — Detroit, MI — Fox Theatre
5/19 — Columbus, OH — Rock on the Range
5/20 — Maryland Heights, MO — KPNT Pointfest
5/22 — Denver, CO — Fillmore Auditorium
5/25 — Houston, TX — Revention Music Center
5/26 — Dallas, TX — Bomb Factory
5/27 — Pryor, OK — Rocklahoma
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Eric Alper is a 6-time nominee for Publicist of the Year during Canadian Music Week and has overseen the publicity campaigns for over 183 JUNO Award-nominated albums (and 16 in 2025), 45 Grammy-nominated albums, including 47 JUNO Award, 58 Canadian Folk Music Award, 126 Maple Blues Award-winning albums and is also truly honoured to work with some of the biggest and most important artists of our time.
Contact me: eric@thatericalper.com
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