Chantal Kreviazuk was in Regina on Sunday night. Wow, was she ever good. Quite engaging, too. She really talked to the audience a lot.
My wife bothers me that I like women artists too much but I like Chantal's style. She plays piano on most of her songs, writes most of her own material and has a really distinctive voice.
In any event... two thumbs up. Two good concerts in only 6 days. Next concert: Jann Arden in May.
The Barenaked Ladies were in Regina last night.
Wow. What a good concert. And I've been to a few good concerts in my day. I might even say this was the best concert I've ever attended, in terms of fun value. (Sting and Annie Lennox in Saskatoon a few years ago was more of a spectacle, but less entertaining.)
If you missed it, you can download the actual concert for a small fee. I am going to download the Regina concert when it's available in a few days. I'd enjoy listening to it again.
Don't worry, I don't make a commission. :) (The Ladies don't even know I linked. At least, they didn't as of the time I wrote this. Hi Ed! Hi Kev! Hi Steve! Hi Tyler! Hi Jim! Happy birthday (yesterday)!)
I will certainly go to see them again when they come back to Regina.
I was in Toronto last week for a conference. (Got to see Kitchener, too. Fun. I'll post more later.)
An awesome song to have on very loudly as you're driving down the 427 or the 401 or the Gardiner or whatever Toronto highway you like... No Heaven by Champion. I like it so much I bought the CD today.
Techno-ish music is perfect for frantic freeways. What can I say? :)
By the way... I love the Toyota Prius. $19 for 500+ km of driving, including a couple of rush hours. Awesome.
I got satellite radio about a year ago. If you've had your head buried in the sand for the past decade, it's a subscription service where you get several dozen channels of music and talk content. Because the content is broadcast from satellites, you can receive the service even in very rural areas. (In fact, reception in downtown areas of cities can sometimes be a problem, although larger cities have terrestrial retransmitters to solve the problem. Alas, Regina is not one of these larger cities.
Despite this, I'm really enjoying the experience. I'm using XM Satellite Radio. It has a huge variety of music. I'm told that the audio quality is slightly better than the competitor's, especially on audio channels (I have to test this myself). XM has all NHL and major league baseball games, which I like a lot since I follow the Blue Jays. It's been handy during the playoffs because no local channel has the playoff games.
The competitor is Sirius. In some ways it's better: its satellites are higher in the sky, which permits reception in areas of taller buildings or mountains. However, the satellites move in the sky (XM's are geostationary, and are in the same place all the time), so if you're using a home receiver, you can't just put your antenna at a south window and expect reception to stay good like you can with XM. Sirius carries the NFL, NBA and CFL. Sirius will have NHL games for this season but after this season, XM has the exclusive rights. I don't know if Sirius has all the NHL games this year the way XM does. Sirius also has CBC, although most of the CBC channels can be received over the air as well.
So should you get it? If you're in your car a lot and like music but don't always want to listen to CD, it's great. If you hate commercial radio as I am coming to do, it's great. If you like a huge variety of music or want to try some new genres, it's great. Unfortunately, with the exception of the Sirius CBC channels, Canadian content is rather horrible (the Canadian news channel on XM is of horrible quality, both technically and content-wise). Then again, that's what the CBC news website is for, right?
I'm really happy with satellite radio and I plan to keep it. (My receiver is integrated with my car receiver, so even though there is a box in the car to get satellite radio, you don't really know that - it's like using broadcast radio.) My favourite XM channels so far: 26 (Flight 26), a current music adult contemporary channel, and 175 (MLB 24/7), a talk channel exclusively about major league baseball. This latter channel alone makes me wish I had a receiver I could use in the house.
I tend to get a little obsessive about new music. When I get a new CD that I really like, I listen to it a lot, and then after awhile I bore of it a bit and I put it away for awhile.
I had gotten that way with the new Sheryl Crow CD Wildflower. I hadn't listened to it for a few months after listening to it to excess.
I still really like this CD. It's a well-engineered recording, with well-written songs, catchy melodies, lovely harmonies and at times an infectious rhythm. Go buy it, if you don't already own it. (You do buy music don't you? :) )