Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | Hey, Isn’t That … ?
Nobody sings TV show themes anymore. I used to have one of the many volumes of Television's Greatest Hits, which compiled awesome TV theme songs from the ’50s to...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | Retired Seems To Be The Hardest Word
Elton John’s farewell tour has been going on longer than the entire career of some musicians. I've been a fan of ol' Reggie since I was four years old,...
Thunder Pie | Something In The Night
Long before I understood what it means to be alive, I felt isolated on leafy streets. At the bus stop in the morning, I would stand there calmly: observant...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | No. 1 With A Casket
I'm not sure about the first time I remember liking a new song by a dead person — It's either something from Double Fantasy or Elvis Presley’s Guitar Man.
Two...
Thunder Pie | Three People in Line At The Echo Cluster
One look up and down this street, in all this sunshine, and I connect with it. Some towns are nothing. You climb down out of the van or step...
20 Questions With Justine Blanchet
Justine Blanchet puts her heart into her work. In more ways than one. The Montreal country-pop singer just released her 10th single Heart Less, a girl-meets-bad-boy story of loving,...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | Vanished!
In the salad days of my journalism career, I was a newspaper editor in rural Renfrew County, Ont. — in a community which was home to many American expatriates.
On...
Thunder Pie | And Then We Have Breakfast and Then We Meet Up with...
Many years ago when I was a boy, I began to wonder about God. My mom said she believed and I guess she did. But it was half-assed by...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | Mom’s Just Not Cool Enough
There are loads of examples of musicians recording or performing with their parents or their kids, but almost nobody seems to have their mom in the band. I'm kind...
Thunder Pie | The High Lonesome Penns Valley Blues
“I shall not leave these prisoning hills
Though they topple their barren heads to level earth
And the forests slide uprooted out of the sky.
Though the waters of Troublesome, of Trace...
20 Questions With Bob Gaulke
Bob Gaulke is probably not somebody who believes less is more. Or that a little is enough. That much is obvious from the Bronx singer-songwriter and bassist’s absurdly prolific...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel: Hits That Nobody Misses
OK, I'll admit it. I bought a copy of the Didn't You Kill My Brother single by Alexei Sayle. I just watched the video now. Holy cats, is it...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | Makin’ Them Look Mean
There's a great line in the ’70s Paul Newman hockey movie Slapshot, where one of the Chiefs players is bashing dents in the side of the team bus, inspired...
Thunder Pie | Stabbed In The Neck By Some Kid With A Pencil: Tiny...
Pee-Paw Decides What to Write About.
Coffee. Folgers. Or Walmart brand. Cheap coffee, with like two or three fingers of milk and a healthy/ unhealthy dose of sugar. No fake...
Area Resident’s Stylus Counsel | Killed By Death
John Lennon has been dead for three years more than he was alive — and more than twice as long as he was famous. But the beloved Beatle will...
