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Brad Roberts, the Crash Test dude, is no dummy. Although he’s a Grinch who hates Christmas, can’t stomach turkey and is practically Scrooge-like in his refusal to buy presents for people or accept gifts from others, he knows that Christmas music is too good a thing to pass up. And what better way to use The Voice—that infamous basso-profundo instrument of his—than to have it reverberate in all of its woofer-shredding glory on centuries-old hymns and carols? But Roberts, once dubbed “Professor of Irony at the School of Postmodernism,” didn’t stop there. He gave some of his favorite seasonal songs the sort of oddball twist that made Crash Test Dummies such a worldwide phenomenon. The result is...

Oasis is either the best, balls-to-the-wall rock ’n’ roll band of the last decade or the worst case in recent memory of media notoriety trumping musical talent. Blame the group itself for these wildly divergent views. While Oasis has been often capable of crafting crowd-pleasing, stadium-size rock anthems, the battling Gallagher brothers have also undermined their artistic credibility with binges, brawls and generally boorish behavior. Liam, in particular, has earned his yobbo stripes through fits of arrogance, cussing like a dockyard worker and talking shite, to use one of his own favorite expressions.  With the release this month of the two-disc, career-summarizing Stop the Clocks and...

Some people call me a teenage idol/Some people say they envy me/I guess they got no way of knowing/How lonesome I can be   “Teenage Idol” by Ricky Nelson     Justin Timberlake knows all too well what Ricky Nelson was singing about. From his days as a 12-year-old Mouseketeer on TV’s Mickey Mouse Club through his teenage years as a member of the superstar boy band ’NSync, Timberlake experienced pop fame even before he learned how to shave. Handling female-fan adulation and media attention came as naturally to him as smiling or pursing his perfectly bee-stung lips. But the transition from ’NSync teen idol to solo star at 22 hasn’t been quite so easy. First there was his famo...

Nadine McNulty remembers well the day that K’naan appeared at Toronto’s Afrofest. The year was 2000 and McNulty, as artistic director, had booked the then-unknown Somali-Canadian rapper to appear in the afternoon on the main stage at the popular outdoor festival. Rain showers failed to dampen the crowd’s enthusiasm for K’naan, who performed with just one backup vocalist and a tape playback. Recalls McNulty: “It was drizzling and here was this young guy just kicking it in front of this sea of umbrellas. It’s amazing to see how he’s now taken the world by storm.”K’naan, this year’s Juno Award winner for Songwriter and Artist of the Year, is a major Canadian star and international crossover act...

Sarah Harmer’s new album—her first in five years—kicks off with the unsettling sound of crackling distortion followed by some driving electric guitar. “A new wind will blow through everything,” Harmer sings, somewhat ominously, “through everything I know.” It’s the dramatic opening of a recording that represents a stark shift away from the celebrated singer-songwriter’s last studio release, I’m a Mountain. Where that Polaris Prize-nominated album was steeped in bittersweet bluegrass, Harmer’s new oh little fire is a defiantly rockier and, mostly, happier affair. “I’ve always loved rock music and repetitive guitars and I do think this album sounds like some of my work with Weeping Tile,” says...

They sat in a box for 30 years, intimate photographs of the Beatles taken during the group's retreat in India in early 1968. Toronto filmmaker Paul Saltzman, then a backpacking 24-year-old on a spiritual quest himself, had snapped the pictures at a transcendental meditation workshop in the Indian village of Rishikesh led by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. After returning to Canada later that year, Saltzman sold some of the shots, along with an account of his "life-changing" experience, to Maclean's. But after that, he rarely thought about the photos, although he did return to the subcontinent many times.Then, two years ago, Devyani, Saltzman's teenage daughter from his marriage to film director D...

Sarah McLachlan was lounging in her air-conditioned trailer, exhausted but exhilarated after a day spent fielding media questions and a night spent singing, strumming and strutting on stage. Mountain View, Calif., an hour's drive south of San Francisco, was the third stop on the Lilith Fair tour, the all-women's rock festival she conceived that features top female musicians and a travelling New Age caravan of booths and boutiques (see below). McLachlan was settling into the rhythm of a schedule that has her both headlining the 35-stop tour and acting as its chief spokeswoman. Kicking off her sandals and curling up on a couch, the 29-year-old Canadian performer reflected on the high profile t...

For Joni Mitchell, fame has been a fickle lover. In the 1970s, it lavished her with sold-out tours and numerous magazine covers. She was the poetic, soul-baring artist from Canada who had taken up residence in the hills of California, becoming rock's lady of the canyon. But before the decade was over, Mitchell also felt the sting of rejection. Her jazzier, more abstract albums left many critics mystified. With little or no radio airplay, they sold poorly. Mitchell responded by abandoning the tour circuit. And, despite her three strong albums in the 1980s, her work was still being unfavorably compared with her early successes. "The pop arena is a harsh world, really," says Mitchell. "It moves...

Geddy Lee visibly tenses up when he talks about the period when fans drove him and his family out of their east-end Toronto home. It was the late 1970s, and Lee’s band, Rush, was the undisputed champion of arena rock in Canada. He and his wife, Nancy Young, and their small son were leading a quiet life in the Beaches, a middle-class neighborhood, until Rush fans discovered where the band’s bassist-singer lived. From then on, recalls Lee, the family felt besieged as strangers peered through windows and demanded autographs, guitars and even, on occasion, money. Faced with constant intrusions, the Lees fled, settling in an affluent downtown Toronto area. And for more than a decade, the reluctan...

Vancouver crooner Michael Bublé is leading a charmed life. Since launching his singing career, raised on his grandfather's love of the sounds of the Mills Brothers, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and others, he’s been swinging on a star. Discovered by Brian Mulroney, who introduced him to producer David Foster, Bublé has been hailed almost universally as the “new Sinatra.” With his relaxed, crowd-pleasing style, he has wooed audiences across North America and caused women to swoon at sold-out engagements throughout Europe and Asia. His taste for pop standards runs from Sinatra to more recent numbers by the Bee Gees. With just one studio album under his belt, his record sales have already top...