Review: Buddy Guy at Massey Hall in Toronto, April 1, 2023

Can you use one big smile emoji for a concert review? Or like 5,000 of them to fill the space? Because that’s what Buddy Guy is for me. Just endless smiles. It may seem ironic considering he’s a blues musician, and blues is associated with sadness, but not so much for Buddy’s blues. So much of it is joyful blues.

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44. Oxygène, Jean-Michel Jarre

Oxygene Jean-Michel Jarre

This post is in honour of my father, who we lost on August 11, so I’m breaking rules. I didn’t listen to this on shuffle and it’s not a song, it’s an entire album. And it’s a weird album. And it’s an album that scared the living daylights out of me as a kid because of the earth-skull album cover you can see above and because the music just creeped me the hell out. It’s also the only album I ever knew my dad to buy or care about in any way.

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The Spirts of Dear Rouge’s “Spirit”

The “About” page on Dear Rouge’s website currently asks the reader, “What does the word ‘spirit’ invoke in you?” I purposely didn’t read further because I wanted to think about this. It means a lot of things to me. It means your essence, almost like a soul; the light within you; everything that makes you you. It can suggest a kind of internal joy. Sometimes it’s a sense of inspiration. And there’s the obvious ghostly connotation.

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R.I.P., Taylor Hawkins

It’s so sad to have to type that headline. So shocking. Taylor Hawkins seemed like a man so full of joy and life. And that came through so strongly in his drumming. It seemed like he was always having fun behind that kit. Even though he wasn’t always smiling back there. Often when you looked at his face, he had the determined look of concentration and exhaustion that you see on a marathon runner mid-race. Teeth gritted, almost wincing.

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