Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | The Spice Of Life
In my second year of college, my brother and I shared one unit in a Belleville, Ont., triplex. One of our favourite things to do was watch American variety...
Thunder Pie | Once Upon A Time In Asbury Park
The way things happen gets lost to time unless you write them down. This is why I need to tell this one story the best I can. So that...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | Watching the Detective
How do Canadians celebrate American Thanksgiving? By watching Turkeys Away, of course. WKRP In Cincinnati was only in the second month of its first season when their classic Thanksgiving...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | You Might Like To Hear My Organ
Someone in my family needs an organ transplant, and we're worried they may not be well enough to receive one. I've found myself going down research rabbit holes about...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | Singing The Song Of That Song That They Sang
It must be some kind of record (no pun intended). Steve Miller manages to slip four self-references into the first verse of his big 1973 hit, The Joker. Here's...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | The Pitter-Patter of Little Feat
I was drawn to Little Feat before I ever heard a note of their music.
When I was 15, I bought a copy of the Harmony Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock....
Thunder Pie | Creamed Onions & Giblet Gravy
“Isn’t there anyone who knows what Thanksgiving is all about?”
– Charlie Brown
Mom-Mom was pudgy, jittery, and kind. On her one hand she had a ring made of a spoon...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | What Sweet Music They Make
Normally I read a mountain of music biographies, but I decided to re-read Bram Stoker’s 1897 gothic horror masterpiece, Dracula. My gawd, it's well written. There's no music in...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | Good Vibrations
My partner Chelle is fantastic at helping me come up with ideas for this column. One evening recently, she suggested blind musicians and proceeded to show me a series...
Thunder Pie | Lovesong.
“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.”
— Zelda Fitzgerald
Parked outside of her house, leaning back on the dull gray Plymouth Volare I had...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | We Like What We Like – And So What?
I am in the middle of Mick Fleetwood's lovefest autobiography at the moment. Specifically, I'm at the part where he and his Fleetwood Mac bandmates are recording Rumours in...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | Psychedelic Exploitation
Crown Records had a reputation as "the king of junk record labels." It's a bit shocking considering the label was the brainchild of the Bihari Brothers — one of...
Thunder Pie | Chestnut Charlie Butterfly Soldier
“It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but only retire a little from sight and afterward return again.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Charlie...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | Peter Green (Slight Return)
I wasn't the only grown man gathered in the Mojo tent who was visibly emotional watching Peter Green perform Albatross at London's Fleadh Festival on June 8, 2002.
I still...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | So Many Cults, So Little Time
Blue Öyster Cult, The Cult (fka Southern Death Cult), Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam, Cults, Living Color’s Cult of Personality... There are loads of cults in popular music —...
