Category: Uncategorized
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Blue Moon in Burritts Rapids
I am launching a monthly concert series in my new adopted hometown of Burritts Rapids starting on May 14. If you live nearby, come on down! Tickets available at the new website: www.bluemoonlive.ca
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Do It Again by my new/old band SoundBytes
New Music Alert! Just before COVID I put my heart and soul into a new band. We played one thrilling gig and then the pandemic hit. We also recorded a few tracks that I intended to release as an EP. But it has been almost 2 years since then and I honestly don’t know whether…
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My New Opera ‘Personal Pandemic’ Set to Premiere
I’m pleased to announce that a project that I conceived with composer Tim Brady over a year ago has come to fruition. Please be sure to check out Personal Pandemic – A Socially Distanced Opera which is set to premiere freely on YouTube and the official RISE website on June 28th 2021, 12 PM EST:…
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Rakestar CD Launch
New Music Alert! 10 years or so ago I was asked to come jam by a lanky fellow named Rory. I didn’t know what to expect. Would we play Stones tunes? Jazz standards? Funk? Blues? To my surprise Rory – a drummer – just wanted to play. Free jazz. A beloved idiom but not one…
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Midsommar’s Horrifying Mirror of Truth
It was, strangely enough, Greta Gerwig’s delightful Little Women, that cinematic ne plus ultra of wholesome domesticity, that tempted me to watch Midsommar, a ‘horror’ film whose breathless reviewers were united in calling ‘disturbing’ and ‘bizarre’. More accurately it was Florence Pugh that drew me to Midsommar. Her performance as Amy in Little Women was…
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Kajillionaire by Miranda July – Shimmering Brilliance, Awkward Tragedies, Everyday Deities
I first heard the name Miranda July about 20 years ago, dropped casually yet reverentially from the lips of Sarah Sharkey-Pearce, one of the smartest, coolest young artists I knew. And so, although it would be a few years before I came across any actual artworks by her, Miranda July’s name stayed with me. Brimming…
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I launch my new band: John Sobol’s Sound Bytes!
Life as a husband and dad, creative professional, entrepreneur, author and member of other people’s bands has meant that getting my own band back together has taken me longer than I ever thought it would. But at long last the train has left the station I am one happy conductor. Our first gig is Saturday…
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Are digital technologies making politics impossible?
Earlier this year I came across a bold and inspiring new challenge called the Nine Dots Prize, which invited submissions to this important question: Are digital technologies making politics impossible? There were 700 entries and I did not win, but I am publishing my essay anyway because I think (hope!) it will matter to you.…
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TV Critics Too Jaded to Embrace Sense8’s Radical Empathy
I just finished binge-watching the fantastic first season of Sense8, the Netflix series written and directed by Andy and Lana Wachowski with Michael Straczyinski. It is extraordinary and totally worth watching. I don’t usually write about TV shows on this blog but having watched the series I almost immediately went searching for intelligent critical commentary…
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Happy 2014 Update
Blogs ebb and flow like the tide, and this one is now flowing again. Here’s a quick update about some recent activities as well as some of what I will be up to in 2014. Of course The Media League has been my main focus, with season 2 in full swing and producing some very…
SOBOLTALK 