Music journalism, books and more

Truths & Rights was arguably the best reggae band ever to come out of Canada. Formed in the late 1970s in Toronto's Regent Park district, the band, made of of singer-guitarist Mojah, singer Ovid Reid, lead guitarist Vance Tynes, keyboardist Iauwata, bassist Xola, percussionist Ahmid, conga player Quammie Williams and trap drummer Abnadengel, brought reggae music to the downtown scene. Also part of the band was graphic artist Ato Seitu and sound engineer Jeffrey Holdip. "We got tired of playing uptown to just community groups and in community centres," recalls Mojah. "I, for one, always wanted to move out into the mainstream. So I set out on a path of coming down to Queen Street in Toront...

Peter Goddard, who passed away in 2022, left a vast archive of writing about music. As Canada's first on-staff popular music newspaper critic, he charted the way for others to follow, writing intelligent reviews, profiles and feature articles about artists and trends. He wrote constantly, yet always with great care and thoughtfulness, about his subjects, returning to the newsroom after an interview or concert and working into the wee hours to turn around a review or feature for the next day's paper.  Goddard wasn't just tireless and prolific in his work. He was writing from a deeply informed place: he studied music history and was a musician himself. A graduate of the Royal Conservatory...

He’s one of the most famous musicians of the 20th century and a rock guitarist of unparalleled talent. Although his mainstream career lasted only four years before his death on Sept. 18, 1970 of an apparent drug overdose, Jimi Hendrix shone so brightly that today his albums and concert appearances are the stuff of legend. The official Hendrix website, run by his estate, painstakingly catalogues every recording and performance he ever made under his own name. And many devoted fan sites do the same. As most fans know, the Jimi Hendrix Experience performed twice in Toronto: once at the Canadian National Exhibition on Feb. 24, 1968, on a bill with England’s Soft Machine and Toronto’s own Pa...

Silky vocals and soaring falsetto are his trademarks. So, too, are soul-baring lyrics and slowed-down, smoothed-out r&b. All of which has made Caesar, who won a Grammy for his debut, a modern quiet-storm sensation. With his excellent third album, the Toronto artist cranks up the emotion—but not the tempo. Songs like the hook-laden “Always” and the dream-like “Pain is Inevitable” deal with vulnerability and heartbreak, while the sultry “Let Me Go” is like a candle-lit bath. Brimming with confidence even as he expresses doubts about fame, Caesar’s latest finds the talented singer at the top of his game. 

When Jack Long opened his first musical instrument store in Toronto in 1956, he was a skilled jazz trumpeter without a clue about business. “I didn’t even know what an invoice was,” he often said. Mr. Long learned the hard way. When sales were slow, he and a drummer friend, Jack McQuade, started giving lessons in the store’s back rooms. When they discovered colleagues often wanted to borrow instruments, Mr. Long invented modest rental fees: “three dollars if it was small, four dollars if it was bigger.” Together as partners, the two Jacks grew the company until 1965, when Mr. McQuade decided to pursue drumming full-time and sold his portion of the firm to Mr. Long. Today, the family-owned Lo...