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Upstairs Cabaret in Victoria was a sweaty mess recently, when the rude and reckless crowd got down to the beat of The Slackers. It was one hell of a night, to put it mildly. The ever-charming Jamaican rock ‘n’ rollers of Manhattan, New York made a stop in Victoria as part of their West Coast […]

Exit Verse Exit Verse (Ernest Jenning Record Co.) 4/5 Geoff Farina is truly one of the great musical minds of our time. He’s one of a kind: his work in indie-emo pioneers Karate flirted with jazz way before anyone else did… well, no one else ever really did. His solo material, his work with Secret […]

Opening night at the Phoenix Theatre was flooded with dapper-looking, well-mannered couples, eagerly awaiting the theatre’s adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The famous tale is an imaginative one about four siblings who discover a magical world, called Narnia, inside a wardrobe. The land of Narnia is under evil reign […]

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice brings to the table nearly 200 years of baggage and tradition, not the least of which were my feelings after reading this novel as an 18-year-old English Lit student deep into Asimov and Heinlein. I was not a fan; “scorn” is not too strong a word. I’ve grown (I’d like […]

Until I stepped into Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre on Monday night, I had no idea that Victoria had so many cowboys. They were there to see Alan Jackson’s soulful performance, and so was I. After 25 years of performing, Jackson sure knows what he’s doing. He didn’t sing a single note off key and manned the […]

Because its shows are selected by lottery, the Victoria Fringe Festival is a real hit-and-miss affair where you can come across amazing shows and, well, not-so-amazing shows on your theatre-going travels. Portland-based Wonderheads is a young theatre company with a pretty great reputation in Victoria, due to their two previous hit shows, Grim & Fischer and Loon. So […]

Sometimes it takes some time and experience to realize some of your earliest ideas. Kate Braidwood, co-head of Wonderheads Theatre, first began development of her company’s new show, The Middle of Everywhere, as a thesis project while she was studying at the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre in Northern California. The BC-born theatre writer […]

Mastodon Once More ‘Round the Sun (Reprise Records) 4/5 Atlanta technical metal juggernaut/unlikely success story Mastodon have a rich, varied discography well worth spending lots of time with. Here on album six, they hit a mean median middle ground of all the elements that makes Mastodon Mastodon: technical and expansive progressive metal, swarming and disconcerting […]