Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame Artist Shirley Eikhard Says "Anything Is Possible" with New Release
Legendary singer/songwriter Shirley Eikhard is on her way back to the top with her latest drop, 'On My Way To You' and its new single, "Anything Is Possible".
Check out , "Anything Is Possible" on YouTube here:
The Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame alumni is sharing her talents and vivacious songwriting on a brand new album, full of 12 future classics honing and spotlighting her sensational talent as a songbird and performer.
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Are You Also Being Scammed By The Data Companies?
I was recently approached by yet another company that thought that I would become a big success in the music industry if I would just read their data. Find the next big thing and book the right bands for my festival. This is the third company so far this year 2022. I'm skeptical as there are several problems with the data analysis.
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One of the Most Famous Dance Songs "The Twist" Made the #1 Chart Position – Twice!
The unthinkable happened at this time in 1962. Imagine, a song that was #1 sixteen months earlier...returning to #1.
The Twist – Chubby Checker
"The Twist" by Chubby Checker is by far the greatest dance single ever. It was the #1 single the first 21 years of the rock era (1955-76) and the #1 single in the 55-year history of one pop chart. When it went to #1 in September of 1960 and again 16 months later in January, 1962, it became the only song (discounting holiday songs) to make #1 in two separate chart runs.
An entire book has been written on "The Twist." Ironically, the song was twice the B side. For Hank Ballard, who wrote "The Twist" and sang it originally, it was the B side of "Teardrops On Your Letter." And for Chubby, it was the B side of "Toot."
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Canadian Progressive Rockers The Garrett Band Keep Powering On Day After "One More Day"
Thriving in the music industry, especially during the past few years, are much the same virtues needed in our day-to-day lives: purpose, knowledge, drive, ingenuity, adaptability… Leave it up to accomplished Canadian progressive rock quartet The Garrett Band to both encapsulate and demonstrate all of these, and more, in their powerful and moving new single, "One More Day".
Check it out here on YouTube:
The second single release from the band's fourth studio recording, Sound Evolution, the exceptionally talented Vancouver-based artists don't shy away from shining the spotlight on some pretty tough subject matter across the five-track EP.
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Are Artists Cattle?
Artists are Cattle! I guess that is what Alfred Hitchcock would say around today's music industry. He once said that actors are cattle. Or what he really said was - Fundamentally, actors are a race apart. This group is divided into two sections: first, those who have talent and have never received any recognition for it, and, second, those who have received recognition without having any talent. Either way, they're cattle.
When asked if he ever said that actors are cattle he replied, I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.
The problem I have today is that the music industry is really treating the artist like cattle. No, I'm talking about the evil record labels, publishers, or agents whatever has been up to artists to call the players in the music industry. Whatever you have to say about the music industry in the past they still cared about artists. Not all of them and of course there were disputes. I'm talking about the new music industry that has emerged in the past ten years. The digital music industry.
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Elowynn Highlights Chants from Buffy Sainte-Marie & Tanya Tagaq in New Song, "Stop the Wheel"
In an all-embracing pleading towards peace, folk-rock singer/songwriter Elowynn gently affirms her powerfully poignant and increasingly timely new single, "Stop the Wheel" is very much a protest song.
Check out "Stop the Wheel" on YouTube here:
Drawing a colourful sign on the 'island of peace' she so loves, the track directly addresses the heartfelt need for mindfulness in a fractured world — and features moving chants from multi-award winning, Order of Canada members and multi-honourable doctorate recipients Indigenous Canadian artist and activist Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Inuit artist Tanya Tagaq.
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KC, Steve Alaimo and the start of disco with Rock Your Baby
It was a tape of an instrumental track that only cost $15 and took 45 minutes to complete.
Harry Wayne Casey and Rick Finch had been doing such demo tapes for acts like Jimmy Bo Horne and Betty Wright for TK Records in Hialiah, Florida in 1974. Casey felt he couldn't sing the vocals because it would take someone with a higher pitched voice.
Before scrapping the tape, they took it to TK Records owner Henry Stone and Steve Alaimo, the label's A&R (Artists and Repertoire) man. "Steve flipped over it," Casey told Superseventies.com, "and said not to change a thing."
Casey and Finch figured Horne or another aspiring singer could do the vocal. When the latter--George McCrae--walked into the studio the next day, the decision was easy. It took only two takes for George to complete the vocals. "Rock Your Baby" would become a #1 hit and the forerunner of disco music…
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How To Calculate Your Value
The pandemic is still continuing to affect us all. We probably must live with it for several years and have more or less adapted to new rules and regulations. This of course has affected a lot of live establishments, festivals, and other things in the live industry. I guess it's a bit early to start thinking of major tours and gigs again. That is not the phenomenon I would like to write about. I want to tell you how people value things wrong.
As an artist, you have a value, of course, but the value is also very subjective. You think you can get well paid for a show because you know how much time you have spent writing and rehearsing the show. The problem is that a person that runs a gig place or festival is mainly calculating your value by how many people that will buy a ticket or get into the place and consume food and drinks. It doesn't matter if you have a great fan base in your home city and actually get some payment for a show. As soon as that fans base is not showing up your value is back again to zero. I meet too many people thinking that your value follows along with your name. It's not, not even with big stars.
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Jennifer Buchanan Shares 'The Power of a Playlist' for Health & Well-Being in New Book
Can music and a mindfully-made playlist soothe and improve health and well-being? Multi-award winning Canadian music therapist Jennifer Buchanan knows it to be so, and shares both how (and why) in her new book, Wellness, Wellplayed: The Power of a Playlist.
"Just like our physical health, our mental health requires attention — perhaps now more than ever," Buchanan says. "When you are in transition or feeling lost, music can be the lifeline you need to get you through to the next step. Even during the most challenging of times, it can reassure us that everything is going to be okay."
Diving deep to transform absent-minded playlist-making into an artful form of self-care, Buchanan is a lighthouse in the endless sea of songs across Spotify, SoundCloud, and the like. Cover to cover, the Calgary-based author, entrepreneur, and keynote speaker wastes no time harnessing her leading expertise as a Certified Music Therapist (MTA) to guide readers through building their own thoughtfully compiled playlists — and why they should.
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Cashbox Canada Top 50 Picks for 2021
It was not an easy task to list the Top 50 songs that came into the Cashbox office in 2021, and I am sure we missed some of the ones that deserve to be on this list.
Our list is compiled by content; songs that were relevant and moving about our current times with the pandemic, racism, the sad discovery of unmarked graves of Residential School Indigenous children, love and hope and great songs both lyrically and musically.
It was also based on statistic numbers of requests on Cashbox Radio and social media posts about these songs and artists.
The Top 50 Pick Hits is not a chart and the positions are based on alphabetical listings.
Please visit online at https://www.cashboxradio.ca/request-a-song-on-cashbox-radio/ to request your favourite songs.
Tune in Friday January 7 @ 9PM EST to hear all these artists on a special feature show.
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The End Of The Year!
This is my last column for 2021. Another year that was mostly spent on COVID, but also there was a light at the end of the tunnel. We got back a bit to live shows in the Autumn and it's getting better. We still have to cope with COVID and that will keep on going, so we just have to deal with the uncertainty.
This year doesn't really have that much happening. It blurs together with 2020 like just another year. Now though at the end of the year, it seems like things are starting to get ready. People start to get ready for the new world. The changes we have talked about are now occuring and I just feel strongly that in January everything will kick into gear.
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JUNO-Nominated Toronto Tabla Ensemble Revs Up for 2022 with New Song, "Encore 21"
Can the burst of fresh energy and the promise of possibility a new year brings be embodied in a song? Canada's JUNO-nominated Toronto Tabla Ensemble have their fingers on the right rhythm to get you up on your feet and dancing into 2022 with their new single and video, "Encore 21" – watch and listen here:
Featuring high velocity tabla and other percussion, along with rapid fire recitation of tabla bols (language) by TTE founder and composer Ritesh Das, "Encore 21" has the power to propel anyone into a joyous state of reverie. However, playing this composition requires a sobering amount of skill and practice.
"I originally wrote this piece for the Youth Ensemble," explains Das. "A fast-paced and high energy composition to keep their chops up as we slowly emerge from the pandemic and prepare for in person shows again."
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Light Organ Records Whisks Canadian Audiences on a Nostalgic-Yet-Modern Trip Back in Time
Music's finest moments are often in those unassuming blips of life where you're in unassuming places, taking care of the mundane, and a song sends your heart soaring to the depths of nostalgia, forcing you to rewind to a memory… Light Organ Records has captured that very sentiment in a 14-song strong compilation album that seeks to recreate what you used to know and bring it back to the forefront of your consciousness.
The release is the reimagining of CanCon radio hits of the 70s — each delicately restructured and performed by new-age Light Organ recording artists, and their varieties of styles and ecclesticisms. The first five tracks of Light Organ Records Presents Push Button Radio: CanCon AM Radio Hits From the 70's as Covered by Light Organ Artists, featuring Hotel Mira, The Shilohs, Mounties, Tara Holloway, and The Fugitives are available now.
Check out the Spotify link here: open.spotify.com/album/37z3Lwar8RUoVKoS2x4ADi?si=6m-_WoF3Soqy67w4-qmYbA&nd=1
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Cellist Margaret Maria Releases Where Words Fail - Music Through Healing
Ebbing and flowing like an ocean's waves, healing is a notoriously nonlinear process that is as unpredictable as an insect's flight from one blossom to the next. Within such, Canadian composer Margaret Maria is guiding audiences on a journey through aspects of the arc with the release of her new album and single, Where Words Fail - Music Through Healing and "Blessing of Awakening".
Experience "Blessing of Awakening" here: open.spotify.com/track/7rEYQ2WPh1ThJwAGjkInJO?si=d6fa82903a894f58&nd=1
As the release's opening song, "Blessing of Awakening" gives sound to a languid awakening, followed by the mounting busyness of getting to whatever it is that calls for attention; slow and meandering at the start, like rolling over with the first light shining through the window, the pace picks up, driving and percussive — rounding up the kids, spilling your coffee, looking for your keys.
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Skip The X-Mas Song
Let's go down to if it's really worth it to make a Xmas song. If you make a mega-hit like Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" and then the world plays the shit out of the song every December each year, yes you probably will laugh when you go to the bank. The problem I see is how many songs that never get any recognition.
I was driving in my car today. Last year one of my favorite stations decided to just play X-mas music the whole of December. It was awful so I turned that station off and forgot about the station until March when I released that they had stopped the X-mas music. Maybe they understood the problem with their decision because this year, they are just playing X-Mas songs here and there. There are people that just love X-mas and want to have X-mas music, and the glitter and the decorations and just love it so much that they can have it all year round, but I am guessing they are pretty few and far between. It's probably the same people that eat hard bread with ketchup, there are people doing that, but luckily, they are few and far between as well.
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Electronic Artist & Producer Ensures It'll Be A Very Vibin' Christmas with Release of New Album
If there's one thing award-winning Canadian electronic artist, producer and events/label Vibe Raiders co-founder Jay Slay is certain of this holiday season (and beyond), it's that it's going to be A Very Vibin' Christmas all-around.
Landing as the first in an inventive annual series reimagining holiday classics by way of electro, dance, and EDM flavours, so goes the title of the multi-talented DJ and classically trained pianist's newly minted seasonal offering.
The six-track A Very Vibin' Christmas includes modern takes on the likes of "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," "The First Noel," "Silent Night," and more, and welcomes guests such as Los Angeles-based Nevve, one of the world's top electronic vocal crews with over 1+ Billion streams, and NYC-based American Idol finalist Robbie Rosen to the featured roster alongside Victoria, BC-based Scarlett Darling and Edmonton, AB-based Kelly Alaina.
Check out this cool Christmas offering on Spotify here: open.spotify.com/album/20BbNJCmSojKljlrtyFQU7?si=T8jIrGQ5TpiTSlCbFuVC1g&nd=1
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Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame Artist Shirley Eikhard Says "Anything Is… Jan 21
Are You Also Being Scammed By The Data Companies? Jan 21
Swedish Pop Outfit The Magnettes Have Created a "Monster" in… Jan 21
Canadian Progressive Rockers The Garrett Band Keep Powering On… Jan 14
Are Artists Cattle? Jan 14
The Crickets and Their Buddies Celebrate the 65th Anniversary of That'… Jan 14
Elyse Saunders - "Free" Jan 07
Elowynn Highlights Chants from Buffy Sainte-Marie & Tanya Tagaq… Jan 07
KC, Steve Alaimo and the start of disco with Rock Your Baby Jan 07
How To Calculate Your Value Jan 07
Jennifer Buchanan Shares 'The Power of a Playlist' for Health & Well-… Jan 07
Cashbox Canada Top 50 Picks for 2021 Jan 07
The End Of The Year! Dec 24
We'll Be Right Back After This Short Break! Dec 24
JUNO-Nominated Toronto Tabla Ensemble Revs Up for 2022 with New Song, "Encore… Dec 17
Light Organ Records Whisks Canadian Audiences on a Nostalgic-Yet-… Dec 17
Cellist Margaret Maria Releases Where Words Fail - Music Through Healing… Dec 17
Skip The X-Mas Song Dec 17
Electronic Artist & Producer Ensures It'll Be A Very Vibin'… Dec 17
The Band's Classic Fourth Album, Cahoots 50th Anniversary Edition… Dec 17