www.myspace.com/timhalperin

Well, I got a nice surprise on MySpace the other day. I thought I recognized the name Tim Halperin in my friend requests, so I clicked through only to realize 1) I must’ve been thinking of somebody else, and 2) this kid makes some pretty decent tunes!

He’s a piano playing songwriter dude, sort of like Ben Folds, who’s a personal god to me, so I’m curious to see where this guy’s going to go from here. He’s presently unsigned, but I think it’s just a matter of time.

I only wish I could work in a Toronto angle to the story so I could feature him on blogTO & spread the word further, but alas, he is a Texan, so that’d be a bit of a stretch. Someone give this boy some money and send him on tour.

i just posted an article about T.O. band the Deborahs at bolgTO …

http://blogto.com/music/2008/01/groovin_with_the_deborahs/

 Check it out.

The new year is upon us, and with it comes a whole whack of ill-advised promises to do better this time around. I just wanted to take a few minutes to mention what I’d like achieve in the next twelve months as far as this blog and others are concerned. So, without further ado …
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Yup, another year’s over. I figured before I got all carried away about the next year, I’d take a moment to reflect upon the last twelve months and share some of my favourite things with you. Read the rest of this entry »

I may have finally found my dream job. Sure, the pay is lousy, but the gig is a blast.

I’ve wanted to take a kick at the music journalism can for pretty much my whole life, and now that I’m doing it I couldn’t be happier. It’s a totally new situation from me. Before, when I was desperate to play in a good band, I’d network my ass off to get a musician’s phone number just to have them ask me never to call again (I had no idea at the time that guitar players are a dime a dozen).

Nowadays, thanks to the magic of the internet, I’ll an drop interesting musician an email through his/her website asking to help promote their show and they gladly send me their phone number, usually within twenty-four hours. And so far they’ve been a pretty decent lot to talk to as well.

Tonight, I get to talk to Richard “Demon Rich” Underhill, the brains-of-the-operation behind the Shuffle Demons. I can’t wait!

(BTW, has anyone else noticed that the spellcheck tool in the Google Toolbar doesn’t recognize “internet” as a real word? Oh, the irony is richly ironic.)

Just in time for Christmas, it’s time for another video from Fredo Viola. This time, the New York-based singer is joined by Nils Christian Fossdal all the way from Norway via the magic on the internet (thank you, modern telecommunications).

This also marks the historic occasion of being the first time I’ve been able to pay Fredo for anything. The track is available on iTunes, so I grabbed it first thing this morning. I highly recommend you do the same. Here are the links:

• iTunes Canada
• iTunes USA
• iTunes UK
• iTunes France

Evidently, I can’t get enough of this blogging stuff. So, I’m pleased to announce that as of today I’m writing a music column with blogTO.com.

The focus of my column is live music in Toronto, including touring musicians visiting our fair city, and new releases by Toronto-based artists. The first article is about local multi-instrumentalist Christine Bougie.

‘Tis the season and all that jazz, so with no further ado, here it is, in no particular order, my top five list of the most popular Christmas tunes in our house this year:

• Christmas Time is Here: Rather unconventional for a yuletide song, this Vince Guaraldi minor key jazz waltz perfectly captures the melancholy of the season.
• What Christmas Means To Me: From Stevie Wonder’s 1967 album Someday At Christmas, this absolutely righteous tune have one of those grooves you could only get out of classic Motown. Plus, Stevie plays a kick-ass harmonica solo on this one!
• Wonderful Chritmastime: Only Paul McCartney could take a couple of crappy sounding synths, pump them through far too much delay, and still have me singing along.
• The Christmas Song: Chestnuts roasting on an open fire! Nat King Cole has always done it for me, and that’s all there is to it.
• You’re a Mean One, Mr Grinch: All hail, Thurl Ravenscroft, the un-credited voice actor who sang this tune in Dr Suess’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas. Perhaps one of the deepest and definitely one of the most notable voices in the business, he was also the man behind Tony the Tiger. He’s grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat!

Well, after a few solid months of offering up all my stray thoughts to the blogosphere, it looks like I have the opportunity to become a music writer for one of T-dots larger blogs. But in order to do it right, I need stuff to plug. I know a ton of musicians in this town, but to the best of my knowledge they aren’t doing a whole lot at the moment.

So, if you’re a Toronto-based musician/band that’s actually got releases coming out soon or some upcoming shows in the area, or if you’re not from Toronto but you’ll be playing here soon, I need to hear from you. Go to my contact page at www.stevechatterton.com/contact to get in touch with me and tell me all about what you have going on.

And hey, if you’re not a musician but you know one, do me a huge favour and forward this note to them.

thx - stv

Have you ever read/listened to/watched an interview and wondered to yourself why the interviewer asks such bloody asinine questions? I have, on many occassions, so I decided that when I started putting interviews into my blog I’d open things up and let people have a say in what gets asked by providing a form where they can submit their own questions.
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