Indie Week (Canada) and Cashbox Radio has assembled a diverse panel from Sweden, Spain, Colombia and Canada with backgrounds in online radio, magazine, network TV, and artist management for an Indie Week Panel on September 15^th at 1 PM EST.

Four Industry Professionals will be discussing the new importance and value of online radio and media exposure on a global level. The moderator is Darryl Hurs, Founder/Owner of Indie Week/ Director of Market Development Canada at CD Baby.

Panelists:

Sandy Graham
Cashbox Radio: Program Director/On-Air Host
Cashbox Magazine: CEO/Editor-in-Chief

This week we highlight Eastview Neighbourhood Community Centre at 86 Blake Street, a member of the Daily Bread Food Bank that has been operating for over 40 years. Monetary donations can be made online, while members of the community are also encouraged to reach out to find out how to run a successful food drive in schools or workplaces. Open Tuesday and Thursday from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m

Back in June, The Dead Centuries released their catchy sun-baked vibed song “Pop a Soda”, and drunk on carbonated joy, their second summer single “Crystal Summer” is ready for ears August 28.

Many artists follow all the rules and advice that are given to them at conferences, online or in workshops, etc. One rule seems though seems hard for them to understand: format.

Format is how the general audience listens and how music presented to them. You have every artistic right and freedom to not follow these format rules. You need to be aware that you are excluding yourself from a lot of listeners. No, you cannot change people. Either you change for them or you accept a smaller range of audiences. Either way is the right way for you, it's your choice. Right now, however, we have too many people that have chosen to leave formats and then doing PR and efforts that are in a format world, and then complaining that they don’t get the same chance as other artists and that the world is too shallow.

This week highlighting the Flemingdon Community Food Bank 10 Gateway Blvd Toronto.
Hours Mon-Fri-10 am-1.30 pm. 416) 422-4322

Stepping out with a new single from the always adventurous and highly accomplished Lori Cullen. Born in the crucible of fear and confusion that is CoVid 19, Cullen channelled her own dire misgiving into a heart rending take on Joni Mitchell’s ‘Both Sides Now’. Yeah, we’ve heard it covered in all sorts of ways but you ain’t never heard it done like this. So let’s hear from the lady herself.

June 2020

I don’t feel well.
Everything has changed too fast.
All of my paid work is gone.
I have to teach my child and I am failing.
I have no more time to myself.
I’m worried about money.
I’m worried about everything and everybody.
Grocery shopping feels like going to battle.
I have to do something to remind me of who I am, to give me hope and to pull myself out of the mud.

It seems like we need to know what value things have nowadays. Salt had huge value in the middle ages. Today you can buy salt fairly cheap. Things that used to have value might lose it now in our current times.

That is how to look at recordings. Just thirty years ago recording was an expensive endeavour. You needed quite a large financial investment to do a record that required a lot of money. And then you also thought twice about what to record and chose your songs carefully.

Today, I can just go down to the local electronic store, buy a kind of cheap microphone (or take the microphone that is built in a laptop) and just record a song. And then just put it on any social media channel in seconds, and even get it out on Spotify within 24 hours.

The problem here is that many think that the value of that recording is the same as the recordings of The Beatles on Abbey Road.  It’s not. Technology has provided us to have better equipment to record than The Beatles had ever dreamt about when they recorded Abbey Road. With that though came the idea is that everyone thinks they can write a song like “Yesterday”.

Without Salome Bey and Howard Matthews, there would be no Diana Krall, no Drake and the music theatre scenes would be very different.

Salome Bey, a true American original, jumpstarted Black Culture in Canada with her partner in life, Howard Matthews.  Until Salome's and Howard are passing, the Bey-Matthews family was the first family of the arts in Canada. Their restaurant “The Underground Railroad” was the unofficial Black Cultural Embassy of Canada.

Salome Bey’s spiritual approach towards the arts, music, culture, theatre revealed an authenticity seldom displayed today, with a profound love and respect for the music and its composers.

If you had ever seen Salome on a theatrical or concert stage, she shared that love with the audience and instilled that love for authenticity into her students and young performers she taught.

We all know that we are consuming too much for the planet. A third of all food we produce is thrown away as waste. That is 50,000kg or 11,0231lb a second thrown away as waste in the world and as Greta Thunberg has pointed out it’s not sustainable.

In an interview not long ago Marcus Ek from Spotify told artists that they need to release more content when he was questioned about Spotify and how they paid out so little to artists.

I just feel that we are doing the same stupid mistakes in the music business as we do in our food consumption. The new streaming economy is just one click and then forget it.

Same as the food; we produce a mountain of apples so you can have just one. And we produce a mountain of songs for you to listen to just one. Of course, this will affect the quality. To be able to produce a mountain you need start by giving fertilizer to the project, and you want everything to grow faster. Yes, you will get a decent product but it is not that perfect product that you had before.

The Kings: Live at Heatwave is Set to Add to The Kings’ Already 7.3+ Million Streams Across Spotify & YouTube.

August 2020 marks not one, not two, but three crown-worthy milestones in the land of Canada’s long-iconic band, The Kings:

1. 40 years ago this month, they released their Bob Ezrin produced debut album, The Kings Are Here on US major label Elektra Records.
2. That same month, their smash hit single “This Beat Goes On / Switchin’ to Glide” first entered the BillboardHot 100.
3. And on August 23rd, 1980, The Kings closed the now-legendary Heatwave Festival, holding court alongside fellow rock royalty Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, The Pretenders, Nick Lowe and Rockpile, Teenage Head, the B-52’s, and more

It’s that third one — their midnight appearance at the now-storied Toronto-area festival — produced by John Brower--that’s inspired the exclusive release of The Kings: Live at Heatwave, a 30-minute concert movie available in a premiere at 8pm on August 23rd.

Watch and listen to “California Girls” (Live at Heatwave) here:

Hunger never takes a holiday. Highlighting Thistletown  Community Services Unit (22) Food Bank 248 Jamestown Crescent. Hours may have changed to COVID. Please call (416) 745-2822.

Rain Coast Altrock heavies Yukon Blonde shared their first music of 2020 with the single “Get Precious”, already climbed to #2 on the CBC Music Top 20 and is rapidly climbing up the Top 20 at the National Alternative Radio Chart in Canada. The Vancouver band shares another new track, “In Love Again”, which sees keyboardist/vocalist Rebecca Gray take over on lead vocals for the first time.

This week we spotlight the Parkdale Community Food Bank, formerly St. Phillip’s Pantry and serving West Side needy for 38 years. 416-532-2375  1499 Queen Street West

Open to the public for food service Wednesday 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM, Thursday 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM
Friday 10:30 AM to 1:30 PM (Seniors & People with Disabilities only) Saturday 10:30 AM to 1:30 PM.

Is the battle to take The Tragically Hip’s place on? Hailed as the next big band you haven't heard yet, Kingston indie rock sextet The Wilderness are set to release their first full-length album Until Tomorrow August 21st. The 2nd single from the album 'If I Have To Die' is out today on all digital platforms, along with the official music video created by Chris Mills of Number Four Films (Modest Mouse, Interpol, Metric).

Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW6Zdd3ugyA

It’s a very uncertain world we now currently find ourselves living in. On one hand, the music industry feels so far away right now. It’s now summer and no shows and more or lesser releases. At the same time, the whole machinery is going on under the surface.

Negotiations are ongoing with new clubs, festivals, and other outlets. The difference is that during the planning we don’t know if it will happen with the dates we are discussing. It will all eventually happen but when?

I guess it is all one's death and the other one's bread. I just recently got several jobs during this crisis. Probably because people that didn’t make it want to move over to another business.  I also think this will be the time where we see who will remain on the stage for a living and who are just there because they think it’s a fun hobby that they just keep up while they work in their ‘real job.’

36 years on, that headline above makes the fact all the more impressive. canadian classic rockers honeymoon suite hope you “find what you’re looking for” in this, “latest release previewing new album, their first since 2008.

The newest preview for the iconic band’s forthcoming album, “Find What You’re Looking For” has been eagerly ushered in by fans and critics alike, hitting the Top 30 rock charts in Canada in no time flat. It’s their first chart-climber in 19 years, and follows late 2019’s “Tell Me What You Want” — their first single release since 1992.

Watch and listen to “Find What You’re Looking For” here:

The two tracks lift the curtain, revealing the latest in what’s to come from the band who’ve long made themselves a household name. Early listens show the release has an unmistakably fresh energy to it, while still keeping true to the classic Honeymoon Suite sound fans have loved for nearly four decades.

This week we spotlight Thornhill Food Bank 1 Leaside Park Dr Unit 5B, Toronto, East YorkOffice phone647-428-9755

Email: thorncliffefb@icnareliefcanada.ca

COVID19 -- Food bank open by appointment only, call and leave message at any time but please do not call Mon or Thurs * counselling service by phone -- call for appointment or visit website to register.

Stepping off to the beat of JUNO Award-winning Toronto-based singer, songwriter and harmonica master Paul Reddick lauds life’s bounties of great friendship, great music, and great surroundings in this, his new release — Alive in Italia — available now.

“This record is somewhat of a love letter to Italy and our friends there,” Reddick muses. “If I had one wish come true today, I would be sitting on a patio on the narrow, cobbled streets of Italy’s SestriLevante…. I’d be kept cool by a sea breeze, and be drinking a glass of red wine.

Lately, I have seen some really smart new things that bigger artists are doing. They just quit the current social media frenzy that has been going on.  I can really see this breaking through as a lifestyle after the pandemic.

For the past ten years record labels, managers and others have told artists that they should own their fans and a lot of the success has been how many followers you have on different social media accounts. Right now it seems like all the bigger labels have a race to pick up things form TikTok. It has been this way in all parts of the music industry with the exception the live scene.

Don McLean is hardly known for his blues work or output. But as the guy who wrote one of the most important songs of a generation, around fifty years ago, with ‘American Pie,’ he hit the global charts, the airwaves and the world for a cert home-run.  One copy of the original, hand-written lyrics alone fetched over a million bucks at auction and McLean laughs at the thought and says he has a few other hand-written copies still on hand.

When the opportunity again arose to speak with McLean at home (one of four houses, he tells me) in California’s Palm Springs area, I couldn’t pass up the chance of catching up with the guy, picking up on themes we touched on when his last album, ‘Botanical Gardens’ launched in 2018. McLean is always warmly friendly, much as might be expected from a modern US roots music master who generally keeps one strict personal rule in place - writing his own material and seldom, if ever, recording the work of others.