Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

Charismatic reggae star Michael Rose’s Toronto connections run deep. Rose, Black Uhuru singer-songwriter in the group’s glory days of the early 1980s, wrote one of Uhuru’s best-loved songs, “Youth of Eglington (sic),” about a shooting incident that occurred in 1981 during one of his frequent Toronto visits. And the performer’s brother, Horace, owns Rap’s Place, a popular restaurant in the Jamaican neighbourhood around Oakwood and Eglinton. So it’s fitting that Rose, now a respected solo performer, should help launch Toronto’s newest reggae club, I-Beam (1 Robina Ave., east of Oakwood, off St. Clair) with a headline performance there Saturday. His appearance comes at a time when Black Uhuru i...

Starting in the mid-1960s, Luke & the Apostles—a quintet fronted by the Mick Jagger-like Luke Gibson—were packing Yorkville’s Purple Onion night after night. Although guys were drawn to the Apostlesʼ raw covers of songs like “Crossroads,” “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” and “You Canʼt Judge a Book,” girls were drooling over the sight of Gibson. Off-stage, Gibson was shy and quiet, but on-stage, he was transformed into a writhing, shaking, screaming package of pure sexual energy. With his curly hair and boyish good looks, Gibson was the bandʼs biggest asset. But the Apostles—guitarist Mike McKenna, keyboardist Peter Jermyn, bassist Jim Jones and drummer Rich McMurray—sounded good enough ...

Some of my favourite albums in 2020, with the notable exception of Bob Dylan’s formidable Rough and Rowdy Ways, were by Canadian artists. This is not to say that these recordings were necessarily the best of the year, because my ears were not attuned to as much new music as usual—so who am I to judge? In fact, much of my lockdown listening during this strangest of years tended toward old familiar standbys: aural comfort food for covid times. But these were the albums from the past year that I found most inspiring. U.S. Girls Heavy Light Meg Remy is an American-born artist who records under the name U.S. Girls. She moved to Toronto in 2010 after marrying the Canadian musician Maximi...