Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | How to Avoid Buying American-Made Records
If you're a record collector like me, at least half of the records you buy are brand-new pressings. Here in Canada, this usually means that record was either made...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | Does Dan Hill Have Any Bangers? (Spoiler Alert: No.)
Thanks to one of my girlfriend's little skits, I woke up today with Sometimes When We Touch in my head. I realized this while I was brushing my teeth,...
Thunder Pie | Boy Cloud Winter Car
It’s early morning in my car and I’m driving some kids to school. Charlie, 10, is riding shotgun and my stepdaughter, Milla, 13, is in the back. She tucks...
Albums Of The Week: Ambrose Akinmusire | Honey From A Winter Stone
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Composer and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire’s Honey From A Winter Stone is — to use his words — a self-portrait. But it is also something more.
“This...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | What If It Totally Was A Popularity Contest?
Would you take Messina instead of Loggins, Garfunkel over Simon, Oates before Hall, Sonny in the face of Cher, or Dave when offered Sam?It seems almost every time I...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | I Miss Rick Moranis
When I was a kid, there was nothing funnier than SCTV. The Canadian comedy program — aka Second City Television — was around for six years and served as...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | Supercilian Rhapsodies
Thank gawd for Alexa, Shazam and the like.
I hear enticing music in films, podcasts and TV all the time. You can't always rely on the lyrics to tell you...
Thunder Pie | Marah Jawns / Ep. 1
“If there was a wrong note, it didn't matter as long as it was rocking.”
— Malcolm Young
jawn one.
We played a show at Penn State in State College, Pa. It was...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | 2024 Addendum
I am not going to complain, but it's a little frustrating. Less than two weeks after my "best of 2024" list was published, two more albums came into my...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | Smiles Everyone, Smiles
In the previous Stylus Counsel I examined the famous musicians who somehow found themselves among the "special guest stars" on a standalone episode of The Love Boat.
There were dozens...
Thunder Pie | Scroll of Jawns: Episode 8
jawn /jôn/ noun (chiefly in the greater Philadelphia metropolitan area) used to refer to a thing, place, person, or event that one need not or cannot give a specific...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel: Set A Course For Adventure
There used to be a slew of prime-time TV shows that routinely had "special guests."
I'm not talking about obvious stuff like celebrity game shows, variety or talk shows where...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | Black Jack Shellac
By adding a shellac-playing turntable to my home system, I did my bit to help honour my partner Chelle's beloved great-grandparents.
Chelle inherited her great grandpa Gus’s portable wind-up gramophone...
Thunder Pie | Playin’ Makeup, Wearin’ Guitar
“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
— Groucho Marx
Two years ago in Goodwill I spotted a copy...
Four Poems & A 12-Bar Blues For Jimmy Page’s 81st Birthday
Guitar wizard. Double-neck Gibson SG salesman. Violin bow abuser. Theremin pesterer. Green laser-pyramid dweller. Dragon-pants model. Aleister Crowley acolyte. Presumably reformed recreational drug and teenage groupie enthusiast. The Firm...
