Bass

The band Max Webster, almost Canada’s Next Big Thing in the 1970s and ’80s, gets the coffee table book treatment

From 1972 until 1981, the band created five wonderfully idiosyncratic studio albums and toured incessantly — even headlining Maple Leaf Gardens three times within 18 months. By Nick Krewen Special to the Star Up until very recently, Kim Mitchell had forgotten that day in Indianapolis in 1981 when he performed “Battle Scar” with his Toronto rockers Max Webster and a man wearing a mask of ex-U.S. president Richard Nixon snuck…


Christian McBride and Joe Sealy double bill mixes Black history with the music.

McBride’s The Movement Revisited and Sealy’s Africville Stories about destroyed Black Canadian community will be part of Meridian Hall double bill. By Nick Krewen  Special to the Star Four powerfully influential U.S. figures and one Canadian tragedy. That’s what’s in store for appreciators of Black History Month when a potent jazz double bill of Christian McBride and Joe Sealy takes to the Meridian Hall Stage on February 17.  For the…


Green Day’s drummer on the song that has changed the band and ‘opened the floodgates’

By Nick Krewen Special to the Star When California punk rock superstars Green Day finally reconvened to plan their first album since 2016’s Revolution Radio, only one decision plagued them. “Were we going to pick up where we left off or strip it all away and start from scratch?” drummer Tré Cool told the Star recently down the line from California, prior to the Monday release of Green Day’s 13th…


Clairmont The Second is up for a climb

Nick Krewen Special to the Star July 20, 2019 Clairmont The Second may be one of the more ambitious rappers out there, but he’s in no rush to achieve the lofty stardom to which he aspires. “We knew from the start that it was going to be the long game,” said the Juno-nominated hip-hop artist born Clairmont Humphrey, who hails from the Jane and Weston area of Toronto and brings…


Commentary: Rock of Ages…

We’re barely six weeks into 2018 and this year is already shaping up to be a cold, hard truth for music lovers: mortality is rearing its ugly head. The ailment avalanche, affecting some of our greatest pop and rock performers, began in mid-January and seemingly hasn’t let up since. The first shocking admission occurred during a Globe and Mail interview published on January 16 with Rush guitarist extraordinaire Alex Lifeson,…