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.

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.)

Well, it looks like the folks over at BC Hydro want to give a bunch of money to help sick children, and you can help, too. All you have to do is click on the picture below and play the game to make them give an extra $.25

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.

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

As a relatively new blogger, I found it odd when I started having articles showing up into news aggregators, sites that automatically pull in blogs related to a certain subject based on keywords they look for. The odd thing is that I’m showing up aggregators that have absolutely nothing to with I’m writing about. It’s a flaw in the system, I guess. The first time it happened to me, I wrote about the day my car broke down on Pottery Road in Toronto. Picking up on the word “pottery,” the article got listed into an aggregator that seemed to grab articles related to pottery and gardening.
Read the rest of this entry »

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.
Read the rest of this entry »