Artist Spotlight

Matthew Sweet

  NICK KREWEN Hamilton Spectator Thursday, July 13, 1995     Somewhere deep inside Matthew Sweet, there’s a young filmmaker just waiting to escape. “It’s something I’m thinking more and more about,” concede the singing and songwriting native of Lincoln, Nebraska over the phone from Los Angeles digs. “I’m thinking of getting involved in making a movie, some way some day. I haven’t really figured out what my place is…


Roadside Hip

PUBLISHED IN THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR Thursday, July 13, 1995   NICK KREWEN   Gord Downie really likes Hamilton. In fact, when the 31-year-old singer of The Tragically Hip and his wife were looking for a new locale to live a few years back, they almost moved here. “I know a lot of good people there,” said Downie Monday during a rare phone interview from outside The Hip’s Kingston rehearsal space….


Jewel bakes Alaska for Pieces Of You

NEED TO KNOW: Jewel at The Hideaway, Linwell Plaza, (Linwell Road at Grantham Avenue) St. Catharines, tonight. 8 p.m. Free.   NICK KREWEN Hamilton Spectator June 8, 1995   Jewel Kilcher is folk music’s newest diamond in the rough. Just 21, Kilcher — billed as Jewel — has been living the life of a traveling minstrel, enduring an endless series of one-nighters to promote her new Atlantic album Pieces Of…


Much-Travelled Mike Watt Gets Help From Famous Friends

PUBLISHED IN THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR APRIL 27, 1995   BY NICK KREWEN Ball-hog or Tugboat? Mike Watt, the legendary the bass-playing linchpin who anchored San Pedro underground collage masters Minutemen for six years and followed it up with flannel rocking fIREHOSE for seven, has named his first solo album after one of his favorite armchair hobbies: wrestling. “It’s the only TV I watch, besides Soul Train,” said Watt, recently in…


Big in Europe, dance band tries to get Sparks flying at home

Sparks talks Gratuitous Sax and Senseless Violins   NICK KREWEN Hamilton Spectator March 30, 1995 Credited as the inspiration for British electronic dance pop combos Depeche Mode, Erasure and Pet Shop Boys, Sparks is a modern music anomaly: a California duo that is revered in Europe, but ignored in their own backyard. With the release tomorrow of their 16 th album, Gratuitous Sax And Senseless Violins, Sparks linchpins Ron and…