8-bit highlights from Super Bowl 51 Atlanta Falcons vs New England Patriots, one of the greatest games ever played.
Bumstead Productions President and Founder Larry Wanagas To Retire
After 38 years, music industry veteran, and founder/ President of Toronto-based Bumstead Productions, Larry Wanagas, has announced he will be retiring in August of 2017. Since it’s inception in 1979, Bumstead Productions, has represented a number of artists including, Big Sugar, Colin James, Emma-Lee, Erasure (North America), John Ford, k.d.lang, Madeline Peroux, Peter Elkas, Poor Young Things, Rocketface, Staggered Crossing, Susan Aglukark, The Blue Shadows, The East Pointers, The Lazys, The Modern Minds (featuring Moe Berg), The Trews, Tim Chaisson, Two Hours Traffic and Yukon Blonde.
“I would like to acknowledge the support that Bumstead has received over many years from our artists and business associates including, Ralph James and the team at United Talent Agency, Fred Bohlander at Paradigm, Carl Scott formerly of Warner Bros Records, Seymour Stein/ SIRE Records, Bob Hunka, Norman Perry of Perryscope, Erin Kinghorn at eEK Productions, Susan Abramovitch, Stephen Stohn and Graham Henderson,” said Wanagas. “I would also like to thank all the Bumstead staff, past and present, in particular, Matt Finkelstein, Caitlin North, Aimee Ross, Tim Des Islets and Annie MacDonald, who devoted some of their most formative years to Bumstead, and a special thank you goes to my wife Sheryl Wanagas who has been with me since the beginning of this musical adventure.”
Wanagas began his career in Edmonton as Entertainment Director at the University of Alberta. After two years, Wanagas left college behind to open his own recording studio, Homestead Recorders. At the same time, he launched Bumstead Productions, focusing on artist management, an independent label, and music publishing. Wanagas immediately distinguished himself signing a young k.d. lang to a 360 deal which encompassed, artist management, recording and publishing agreements. Under Wanagas’ guidance this would lead to a 15 year run of successful international tours, multi-platinum album sales, accolades and countless awards.
Wanagas then took the position of President of independent label MUTE Records US in New York City, a tenure that lasted two years until 1996. He then relocated to Toronto in 1999, where today Bumstead Production’s award winning roster includes The East Pointers, The Trews and Tim Chaisson.
Wanagas also serves on the board of the Cultural Human Resources Council, served as Director of the Music Manager’s Forum, Director of the Foundation Assisting Canadian Talent on Recordings (FACTOR), co-founder and General Manager of the Alberta Recording Industry Association, and was on the Music Industry Advisory Committee, Ontario Media Development Corporation. In 2012, Wanagas was honoured with a lifetime achievement award by the Music Manager’s Forum.
GTA-made modern vinyl presses are up and running in Toronto thanks to Microforum
Toronto’s Microforum is the second place in the world to get its hands on new high-tech vinyl pressing devices.
Katy Perry Unleashes New Single, “Chained to the Rhythm”
oday, Capitol Records released “Chained to the Rhythm,” the first single from Katy Perry’s forthcoming album. She will perform the song live for the very first time at the 59th Annual GRAMMY Awards, which will air on CBS this Sunday, February 12, at 8:00 p.m. ET/5:00 p.m. PT. Katy co-wrote “Chained to the Rhythm” with Max Martin, Sia Furler, Ali Payami and Skip Marley. The song is available everywhere for streaming and download here.
http://vevo.ly/DyjRnM
Katy Perry’s cumulative streams now exceed 18 billion worldwide and she is the most-followed person globally on Twitter. She made her Capitol Records debut with 2008’s One of the Boys and cemented her status as a global superstar with the follow-up album, Teenage Dream (2010). PRISM, her 2013 album, debuted at No. 1 on iTunes in 100 countries and has sold more than 12.5 million adjusted albums worldwide. With the singles “Firework” and “Dark Horse” each surpassing the 10 million threshold including song sales and streams, Katy is the first female artist to earn two RIAA Digital Single Diamond Awards. Cumulatively, she has sold more than 40 million adjusted albums and over 125 million tracks worldwide. Katy played to a total of two million people on the sold-out, 151-date Prismatic World Tour and headlined the Super Bowl XLIX halftime show, which set a record as the most-watched Super Bowl halftime show ever.
Hercules & Love Affair Announce New Album And Return With “Controller” Single
Hercules & Love Affair return to the fray with “Controller”, a pulsing, propulsive new song that signals the first salvo from their long-awaited new album. Featuring The Horrors’ Faris Badwan on vocals, it takes the Hercules’ disco-house heritage and fuses it with starker post-punk stylings.
“Recently I’ve been aesthetically interested in the raw experimentation of early 80s electronic dance outside the glossier new wave pop music we know from the time,” admits head honcho Andy Butler, “Cabaret Voltaire, lots of noisier older music. It’s funny that I ended up in Belgium, considering all of the music that came from here – Front 242, Telex, and so on.”
“When I became aware of music, aged around 12, I was listening to the Jesus & Mary Chain, Cocteau Twins, Ministry, “ he recalls, “That was my formative music, the college album charts, what became alt-rock. I found I could relate to this outsider music, stuff that wasn’t pop- I already had a love for Yazoo and Depeche Mode which got me into synthesizers. It was a rebellious, angst-ridden period and I was an industrial goth kid, stockings and make-up, which then dovetailed into the whole grindcore extreme stuff. But at 15 I heard LFO’s ‘Frequencies’ and was like whoa– I walked away from vocal music initially, walked away from that aggression towards psychedelic utopia and acid house…”
With ‘Controller’ he’s reconnected. He knew he wanted a male voice for the song “a vocalist who flirted with the darkness, someone who had a touch of an Ian Astbury or Andrew Eldritch about them, or even of Ian Curtis.”
In London, working with fashion designer James Long, Andy came across The Horrors’ live version of Frankie Knuckles & Jamie Principle’s seminal Chicago house cut ‘Your Love’. He realized he’d found his voice, a rock artist willing to engage with dance culture’s history.
“Controller” is the result, a contagious song containing a hint of seamy ‘80s electro-pop underbelly, but also recalling edgy early house records by the likes of Lil Louis and Bam Bam. And then there’s the whole sub-dom, master-and-servant thing going on in the lyrics…
“That’s a fair assessment,” Andy laughs, “but actually the new album is a lot about spirituality. Faris was happy to engage with that. He went into the recording booth, would come out with something, and I’d say, “Did you just sing, ‘I love what you’re making me do’?” He’d say, “No, but that sounds cool.” That’s how the song was made, it unfolded out of an unconscious process. It’s about being used by a higher entity but there’s this second layer which is a play on intense sub-dom sexual roleplay!”
As raunchy and contentious as it is catchy, ‘Controller’ is the first single from Hercules’s fourth album on which they consolidate this sonic palette yet further, while never losing sight of their following on the dance floor. Details to be announced soon…..
Bill Murray Is Performing At Toronto Royal Conservatory Gala
The one-and-only Bill Murray will read Hemingway, Capote, and Mark Twain, dance a tango, and sing on the Koerner Hall stage. An ensemble led by his friend, cellist Jan Vogler, will perform works by Bach, Piazzolla, Ravel, and Bernstein, in this evening where music and literature meet in a clash of words and notes. Tickets go on sale Friday, February 10 at 10am here.
Guy Performs Charlie Daniels Band’s ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia’ With His Noisy Washing Machine
“The Devil Went Down to Georgia” is a song written and performed by the Charlie Daniels Band and released on their 1979 album Million Mile Reflections. The song was the band’s biggest hit, reaching number three on the Billboard Hot 100, and would have gone even higher had a washing machine been a part of the band…wait…what?
Bedford of Bedfordshire’s Community Calendar With John Oliver
John Oliver helps Stephen Colbert look into what’s happening this month in John’s English hometown, Bedford.
Ricky Gervais Attempts the ‘Hot Ones’ Spicy Wing Challenge
Ricky Gervais steps into the hot seat for the (vegan) wings of death and some scorching questions from First We Feast’s Sean Evans. Accurately dubbing Hot Ones “a cross between Charlie Rose and f*%king Jackass,” the comedian gets pummeled by the likes of Zombie Apocalypse and Da Bomb Beyond Insanity.
Will Arnett Prank Calls Toy Store as LEGO Batman
Will Arnett takes on AlphabetiCall on The Matt Edmondson Show on BBC Radio 1. All he has to do is make a phone call where each sentence starts with the next letter of the alphabet, in character, as Lego Batman. Simple?