BACK PAGES, ARTICLES, PHOTOS 1992-2012
\ TO EAST \ Sadly, there will be a plethora of rich melodies and poignant lyrics among the cover songs being performed by over a dozen acts at today’s “Songs From Heaven” seventh installment of the B’Arlopalooza songwriters’ showcase series. The talented acts on stage at Black Swan Tavern (154 Danforth Ave.) from 4-8 will…
\ ETOBICOKE \ People pass away but life moves on and it’s now just a week short of two years since the unexpected and untimely death of Colin McAllister, a local Rock ‘n’ Roll bands’ superfan. But while there’s lots of other things to occupy our minds, the many groups he supported by attending shows…
\ TO CENTRAL \ An eclectic panoply of stars from diverse genres including Jazz, Blues, Roots and Country will be gathering this evening to remember the late Mose Scarlett with a tribute concert at Tranzac Club. As we reported at the time, the reclusive and laconic raconteur and practitioner of old time music with a…
\ HAMILTON \ Just over three years ago we wrote about a benefit concert happening in TO to raise funds for ailing and somewhat troubled Canadian music icon Kelly Jay (Blake Fordham) of Crowbar fame. The event helped buoy his spirits and quite possibly to help prolong his life, but sadly on June 21, at…
-By Gary 17- Songwriter, promoter and impresario Pete Otis touched the hearts and fired the imaginations of many people across Toronto and in the East York area where he lived and grew up after immigrating to Canada as a child in the 1950s as Panagiotis Panayotou. As I lamented in my eulogy shortly after his…
The world of authentic ol’ time Roots music is doubly poorer today after the passing of two iconic masters of the genres and songwriters who were also longtime pals and collaborators. Leon Redbone, (born Dickran Gobalian), an American who made his stage debut in Toronto in the early 1970s and Mose Scarlett of Peterborough and…
\ TO CENTRAL \ A regular attraction with his Continental Drift band at TO’s Tranzac Club for many years, the late Joe Hall, a TO and Canadian music icon whose passing we lamented in March, was content, it appears, to drive down from his home in Peterborough to do the shows in the venue’s smaller…
![Justin Haynes [website] & Robbie Rox [Gary 17]](../../wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Justin-Haynes-Robbie-Rox-150x150.jpg)
\ TO CENTRAL/TO EAST \ Given the murderous nature underlying the religious observances happening today in both the Christian and Jewish religions, it’s irony bordering on sarcasm that it’s known popularly as “Good Friday.” After all, in Christian theology this day marks the brutal crucifiction of the prophet Jesus by the Romans after his betrayal…
\ PETERBOROUGH \ There aren’t many of his kind left —but then, they never made many of his kind to begin with. Joe Hall, who passed away on Friday at 71 years of age after battling liver cancer for some time, was an highly original titan of a songwriter and performer whose cheeky, bizarre and…
\ PETERBOROUGH \ There aren’t many of his kind left —but then, they never made many of his kind to begin with. Joe Hall, who passed away on Friday March 22 at 71 years of age after battling liver cancer for some time, was an highly original titan of a songwriter and performer whose cheeky,…
\ TO EAST \ “Bittersweet” is an inadequate description of the nostalgic cascade of jumbled emotions evoked by looking back seven years from the occasion of today’s tribute to Pete Otis being staged by Mike McKenna and his Slidewinder band at Black Swan. It was in mid April of 2012 that Pete, then still a…
By Carmen Toth Special to TorontoMoon.ca \ TO CENTRAL \ On February 24, I got the call nobody wants to get. My friend and fellow artist Derek Mok had been found dead in his condo. As the shock set in, I tried to calm down my friend on the phone —who had just discovered his…
-By Gary 17, TorontoMoon.ca The first person I ever saw play a guitar live, in 1964 or early ‘65 in a church basement in the upper-middle-class suburb of Aldershot in Burlington, was a scruffy, “greaser” (as we called them in those days) bad boy who lived with his family in the motel they owned and…
I’m so very sad to learn of the passing on Sunday Feb. 10 of one of our longtime subscribers, an icon of a host on the open stage scene and very talented Country songwriter Herb Dale. According to life partner and musical accompanist Fran McCann, Herb passed “peacefully and at home with me, my daughter…
I cannot recall ever having had such a shitty start to a year as was the case with 2019. While things settled down a little as the month progressed, I ended up writing two obituaries on January 1 and five days later had to start on a third —all of people whose company I much…
The family of Pete Otis, who passed away on Saturday January 5 after being hospitalized following his collapse at his New Year’s Eve show at Black Swan Tavern, decided against having public visitations and held a private funeral for the 69-year-old songwriter and impresario on Thursday, January 10. A death notice (under his legal name…
\ MISSISSAUGA/ETOBICOKE \ No doubt the two visitation sessions for the late Joe Reynolds happening 2-4 and 6-9 pm today at Turner Porter Funeral Home’s Peel Chapel at 2180 Hurontario St. in Mississauga will be crammed with musical talents. Some will have to hurry off right after attending the gathering, particularly from the evening one,…
\ ETOBICOKE/PORT CREDIT \ Just ten days shy of the 15th anniversary of The Meteors band he founded becoming the Saturday jam hosts at Timothy’s Pub in Etobicoke, singer and trumpet/flugelhorn/coronet player Joe Reynolds passed away suddenly overnight the morning of Monday January 1, 2019, bandmates and family report. No details of the cause of…
Friends and family of singer Cliff Allen Liberty, known simply as Cliff Allen to habitués of jams and karaoke shows across the GTA, are still coming to grips with his sudden death on the morning of December 11 in Niagara Falls, where he had been living. For reasons either not yet determined or not made…
\ TO EAST \ It is generally speaking a pretty quiet night across the south-central Ontario live music scene, which shouldn’t be a big surprise given that blowout night, aka New Year’s Eve, is happening on Monday, so a lot of places appear to be keeping their powder dry till then. One room where It’d…
