2017 JUNO Award nominees Matt Dusk, Barbra Lica & Heather Bambrick croon the tunes of Shawn Mendes, The Weeknd, Alessia Cara, Sia and Drake. All the artists are nominated for a 2017 JUNO Award.
Queen Announce A Special Edition of Monopoly Board Game Featuring…Them
The surviving members of Queen can say they’ve been honored with their own special edition of Monopoly. Guitarist Brian May announced the upcoming tie-in, telling fans to expect a May release date and adding that they’d been “very secretly developing Queen Monopoly for over a year.” Writing that he’d had “a blast” helping put the game together, May went on to compare the process to making an album and concluded, “We hope you love it! Choose your weapons!”
How Elvis Costello Got Paul McCartney Back On Track
Elvis Costello: I’ve seen people, quite eminent people, completely lose their mind in his company. I didn’t want to turn up and be kind of bothersome in that way. I wanted to get something good done. Something that justified the invitation.
Paul McCartney: I do get a bit of that in life generally, but I’ve adapted, I’ve developed a way of trying to put people at ease that kind of eliminates the vast majority of this syndrome. With Elvis, I didn’t need to do it. He’s sensible enough to know that. We’d sit around and talk and have a cup of tea. By the time we got down to songwriting, we knew the deal.
We just sat on these couches. Each of us got an acoustic guitar. Sat across from each other. I said to him, “The way I’m used to working with a collaborator is really, mainly with John.” And the way we used to do it is sit opposite like this. And the thing for me that was kind of nice . . . because I was left-handed and he was right-handed, as was the case with Elvis, too, it was as if I was looking in the mirror.
Costello: I was sort of a little startled when he made that reference. I think it’s more to just try to explain the immediacy of the way we worked rather than put me in the same bracket as Lennon. I don’t see myself like that. In terms of the immediacy and just the musical role. . . .
I can’t sing above him so I would naturally harmonize below. Which is often the relationship of Lennon and McCartney’s harmonization. That would draw some comparison. Hey, I sing through my nose some of the time. What can I do?
Drake Takes Spotify Crown From Ed Sheeran
It was only a few weeks ago Ed Sheeran broke the Spotify record with over 68million streams in one day. Following the release of Drake mixtape/playlist More Life on Saturday (March 18), the Canadian has set two new 24-hour Spotify high-water marks. Drake has officially surpassed Sheeran’s record for one-day streams, clocking up 76,355,041 plays on March 19 alone. Sheeran’s record was set just two weeks before, on March 3, with 68,695,172 streams. Also on March 19, Drake’s More Life racked up the best first day streams for a single album, according to Spotify. The set totalled 61,302,082 streams in the 24 hours, surging past Divide’s 56,727,861 streams on March 3.
Bob Dylan Extends Never-Ending Tour Into Canada
Earlier this year, news came down about a three-disc studio album from Bob Dylan, Triplicate, released on March 31, featuring 30 brand-new recordings of classic American tunes and marking the first triple-length set of the artist’s illustrious career.Now, with his so-called Never-Ending Tour approaching almost 30 years running, Bob has announced new dates for North America, including a slew in Canada.
Bob Dylan Tour Dates:
June
13 – Port Chester, N.Y. @ Capitol Theatre
14 – Port Chester, N.Y. @ Capitol Theatre
15 – Port Chester, N.Y. @ Capitol Theatre
17 – Dover, Del. @ Firefly Festival
18 – Wallingford, Conn. @ Toyota presents Oakdale Theatre
21 – Providence, R.I. @ Providence Performing Arts Center
24 – Kingston, N.Y. @ Hutton Brickyard
25 – Syracuse, N.Y. Lakeview Amphitheatre
27 – Kingston, Canada @ Rogers K-Rock Centre
29 – Ottawa, Canada @ Richcraft Live at the Canadian Tire Centre
30 – Montréal, Canada @ Centre Bell
July
02 – Barrie, Canada @ Molson Centre
04 – Oshawa, Canada @ Tribute Communities Centre
05 – Toronto, Canada @ Air Canada Centre
06 – London, Canada, @Budweiser Gardens
12 – Winnipeg, Canada, MTS Centre
14 – Saskatoon, Canada @ SaskTel Centre
15 – Moose Jaw, Canada @ Mosaic Place
17 – Calgary, Canade @ Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium
18 – Medicine Hat, Canada @ Canalta Centre
19 – Edmonton, Canada @ Rogers Place
21 – Dawson Creek, Canada @ Encanta Events Centre
22 – Prince George, Canada @ CN Centre
24 – Kelowna, Canada @ Prospera Place
25 – Vancouver, Canada @ Pepsi Live at Rogers Arena
27 – Victoria, Canada @ Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre
Watch Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason Crash A $3 Million Car
This one’s going to hurt for music fans: Former Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason took his McLaren F1 GTR race car out for a spin at the Goodwood Circuit yesterday — and suffered a crash on a parade lap, running into a wall and damaging the vehicle. So good to know Nick wasn’t seriously injured. That car is worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.7 million, or a few weeks of Dark Side Of The Moon sales.
https://youtu.be/KPqEAwUfk9g
Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Isolated Guitar For “Pride And Joy”
From Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble’s 1983 album Texas Flood, Pride and Joy, it was also released as Vaughan’s first single and has become one of his best-known songs. Called “a classic Texas shuffle”, it has a twelve-bar blues arrangement, notated in the key of E (although with Vaughan’s guitar tuned one-half step lower, resulting in the pitch of E♭) in 4/4 time with a moderately fast tempo. The main guitar figure features a bassline along with muted chord chops to produce a percussive-like effect. Vaughan also “extracts extra sound from the guitar by choosing finger shapes that allow the maximum number of strings to ring at a time (often the top E-string [E♭]).
https://youtu.be/Kqb9IFVIIFg
Epic Heavy Metal Remake of Madonna’s ‘Like a Prayer’
Oltedal, Norway-based musician and vocalist Leo Moracchioli from Frog Leap Studios gives an epic metal makeover to Madonna’s greatest song, “Like a Prayer.”