Author name: Michael Baginski

“Jagged Little Pill” catapulted Alanis Morisette into music superstardom in 1995, with the album going on to become one of the highest selling albums of all time (more than 33 million and No. 7 on the all-time Billboard 200 chart) and forever ensuring that the Ottawa-born singer would be one of Canada’s most famous.

You might have heard this week that Oasis is getting back together – 15 years after the battling brothers Gallagher busted up, seemingly for good after years of sometimes amusing/ sometimes just-plain-nuts escapades by and between Liam and Noel that continually suggested that real life was quite the opposite of the band’s name.

War in middle east and eastern Europe, US politics, cats and dogs living together! (to quote Bill Murray in Ghostbusters) … It seems we should all just get together and feel all right, which I tend to do when listening to Playing for Change, the amazing collective of world music practitioners who creatively re-interpret favourite songs in the name of peace, love, unity – and charity – through song.

The late ‘70s and ‘80s was a golden age for Canadian bands, even if the success of many didn’t make it beyond our borders. But who can forget bands like Trooper, Prism, Streetheart, Chilliwack, Honeymoon Suite, and… the legendary Doug and the Slugs?

One of rock’s greatest singers, Steven Tyler, has called it quits, succumbing to permanently damaged vocal cords, of which Aerosmith says, “it is clear that a full recovery is not possible.” The band’s legendary frontman injured his vocal cords while on tour in September and said at the time that the injury caused bleeding, but that he hoped the band would be back after postponing a few shows.

Regular readers will know there’s nothing Listening In likes better than a good choir. And suggestions from the flock. This week the two come together with Elvi Cal’s (TravelBrands) introduction to us of Choir! Choir! Choir! (C!C!C!), a unique Toronto-based initiative that started in 2011 as a singing event that interprets popular songs like David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” performed here at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Big Bon Jovi hits can fill up most of your fingers, but we’re going to stretch that onto the toes this week with “Keep the Faith,” a lesser hit spawned from the 1992 album of the same name, an effort that was notable as the last recording by the original lineup of the New Jersey band, but also a turning point when the Jon Bon Jovi pop-rockers are deemed to become a little more serious.

Great concerts can become the stuff of legend, but those performances rarely make great records – usually unable to truly capture an electric live atmosphere, convey sound quality comparable to a studio setting, or, of course, present the artists’ visual hijinks. As such, it’s even rarer then when a band makes its breakthrough because of a live album.

With Caribbean destinations in Grenada, the Grenadines, Barbados and Jamaica picking up the pieces after devastating Hurricane Beryl, and several aid initiatives under to help those affected, one song, “We Got This,” performed by a collective of local artists, has emerged as a rallying cry for unity under duress.

Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup helped invent rock ‘n’ roll. His 1946 song “That’s All Right,” would become the first single Elvis Presley ever released. Rod Stewart would sing it on a chart-topping album and Led Zeppelin would play it live. But despite being dubbed “the father of rock ‘n’ roll,” Crudup received scant songwriting royalties in his lifetime because of a recording contract that funneled the money to his original manager.

Bonnie Raitt has been turning out tunes for over 50 years and earned enough plaudits to warrant a long Wikipedia page. There’s been 13 Grammys – most recently in 2022 – induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and chart-topping success, which didn’t materialize until well into her career.

Even the biggest rock bands in the world had to start somewhere and, in this case, the year was 1978 and a first-ever appearance on Irish TV captured a teenage Paul David Hewson and David Howell Evans in their formative years, showing their chops, if not the style, that soon took them to the top of the pops.

Sometimes all there is to say is “wow.” It’s hard to match powerhouse vocalist Roger Daltrey, but Debo Ray makes it a conversation on this rendition of The Who classic “Love Reign O’er Me” in a performance from just last September.

In his gargantuan task of attempting to consume and playlist the classic rock cannon in its entirely – from AC/DC to ZZ Top – my 20-something son has created a discerning category for some of his discoveries: albums where, in his estimation, every single song is great. A small list, his special first entry was Boston (by Boston). I agreed and offered another: The Cars (by The Cars).