Category Archives: Music

So, PEI has a 10 hour outdoor rock concert to talk about this summer. 3 heaadlining bands: Train, Five For Fighting and Fountains of Wayne.

I cannot begin to tell you (actually, by writing this, I guess I am beginning… how about you replace ‘begin’ with ‘bother’…carry on…) how many people I overhear saying something like this: “I’m looking forward to Train and/or Five For Fighting, but I couldn’t care less about Fountains of Wayne. I’m so sick of Stacy’s Mom.”

See, to me, it’s exactly the opposite. The only band that really interests me, of the three, is Fountains of Wayne. I understand why people think of them as “that Stacy’s Mom band”, but they’ve got a whole parcel of great power-pop songs in their repetoire.

Like Ron Sexsmith (see post below), their one radio song doesn’t really do them justice. I expect the people who go to the concert will leave thinking Fountains of Wayne stole the show.

Power Pop rocks, man.

Of course there are all kinds of reasons why so many good songs and performers get ignored by private radio. Just as there are all kinds of reasons why lame songs get played.

Whatever the reason, it’s nice to hear Ron Sexsmith finally making it into a rotation on Magic 93 as of the past week or so. It is long overdue.

It’s too bad that the song isn’t, in my opinion, one of his better songs. Here’s hoping that Ron Sexsmith catches on and more and more of his songs end up on the radio.

The Beatles’ album Let It Be – Naked was released this week. As much as I am not a fan of the over-orchestration of the 30 year old Phil Spector-produced ‘original’, it’s quite evident, after listening to ‘Naked’ that some form of production was required to make these songs come ‘alive’. As the album title implies, the songs presented on ‘Naked’ are in their most basic form, and as such, are pretty flat and unexciting.

Somewhere between the over-produced Spector version and the un-produced Naked version, lies a better version of this album.