This newsletter is an extension of the 2022 Summer Album Guide, and will evolve to include writing about the community, the city and the world in areas other than hot vinyl and vital music. But for now consider it a gesture to continue the art of the album review, forever disappearing from our print newspapers. - Dave Bidini
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Nickelback
Get Rollin (Deluxe Reissue)
Things I’d rather hear than the recent deluxe Nickleback reissue: a portly man farting on a bench; the prolonged belching of a ketchup bottle; an endless muzak version of “Sometimes When We Touch” that plays in an elevator on your way to see your divorce lawyer; a tv signal cutting out-- zrrrr-- during the middle of The Price is Right while you ate lunch at your least favourite aunt’s house in 1978; a tiny hamster weeping; “How many Cups has your team won?”; a bus suddenly grunting to life while you wait beside it on your bike sweating and panting in 35 degree heat; Mungo Jerry’s Greatest Hits, Volume 1; Thunderstix and vuvuzuelas; anything that goes splat, like the bloated dead raccoon that fell at Gordie Wilson’s feet from atop a huge stack of old newspapers in his landlords’ garage where it had gone to die; nose blowing; throat-horking; Country and Western singers who rap; Howie Mandel; a burping athlete in a sagging jockstrap; “Up, Up and Away (In My Beautiful Balloon)”; Mungo Jerry’s Greatest Hits, Volume 2; anyone who tells another person that what they’re doing is “en fuego” (unless they’re actually “en fuego”); a barber who talks too much; a doctor who doesn’t talk enough; losers when they cry; winners when they cry; Pierre Pollievre; and anyone who sounds likes Pierre Pollievre.
Penske File
Half Glow
If the 90’s are back — I see the trends, but I don’t see the royalty cheque — it’s good news for Junior Gone Wild, The Fastbacks, Lowest of the Low, and a handful of other bands whom Burlington’s Penskie File summon on their latest album. For those who haven’t heard the group, the music is the kind that’s played by guitarists and bassists with their legs parted and heads lowered down as if gently nosing the bodies of their instruments. It all sounds like great fun, and if it’s lacking, say, the Weakerthans’ poetic depth, it delivers a lyricism — “Package your bible with the ‘Lord of the Flies” from the opener, “Bad Dreams” — that is next-gen Ron Hawkins and company, holding reality sideways while making sure to plump up the mosh pit. Bands like Nirvana and Radiohead and RUN DMC pushed the first half of the 90’s forward by creating something purely unique and good, but what I remember most was that, like the late 50s, legions of guitar-bass-drums-vocal bands existed to celebrate themselves and each other, from Rancid to Plumtree to Buffalo Tom. So much of 80’s culture was about speeding into the future that 90s musicians wanted to dwell in the safe past just a moment longer before giving it all over to the robots.
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