Brianland

. Sphere & Laughing in Las Vegas   photo by Jay Blakesberg for Dead & Company . This is the Acid Tests … in a two-billion-dollar spaceship! I’d been reading about The Sphere for years before it was ever built.  It sounded too wild to be true!  And of course I immediately thought how perfect […]

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“The Greatest Night in Pop” is The Greatest Documentary About Collective Creation . The Greatest Night in Pop (Netflix, 2024) directed by Bao Nguyen, is a spectacular riveting colorful fun documentary about the behind-the-scenes making of We Are The World in 1985 with footage of everybody who was involved.  This is not only one of […]

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. Why this Deadhead Beatnik Beatlemaniac loves Pop’s Princess   I’ve been into Taylor Swift since a New York Times profile in 2008 talked about her confessional songwriting and use of social media — at the time, MySpace.  (!)  Her second album Fearless was set to come out (and would go on to win Album […]

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Imaginestock . photo by Christy Worsoe . Imagine, if you will, a place where music and love fill the air, and every person works for free to build a utopian kingdom. Imagine a secret island hideaway whose location is only shared to people who’ve earned an invitation by a lifetime of good deeds. Imagine a […]

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Poster by Frank McTruck  —  who did ‘Pokes posters in the ’70s .   The Central Continental Cowpokes — Winnipeg Folk Festival, 1977 Laney Hunt, Rick McGhee, Sue Hodgson, Bill Hodgson, Andy Roblin . Sadly, regular Cowpoke drummer, mandolin player and singer Brian Ridd was in Europe this month, but he was ably filled in […]

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The Setting: The new Bob Center is in Tulsa Oklahoma because the Woody Guthrie Center is there, and because both were paid for by the OK billionaire philanthropist George Kaiser. Tulsa is remarkably like the midwestern town of Winnipeg I grew up in — flat farmland, low-rise, about a half-million people — and both with […]

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Revival Revived   Klaus Voormann’s drawing of the 1969 plane trip   The most important musical event that ever occurred in Canada — and one of the most important concerts in history — took place at a university football stadium in downtown Toronto in 1969.  It’s true! London had The Beatles’ farewell on the rooftop, […]

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The Chad Allan Story . With Chad Allan’s passing at age 80 on Nov 21st, 2023, the CBC called and we did this rockin fun playful jamming live radio interview that you wanna hear  — https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-367-the-weekend-morning-show-manitoba/clip/16027369-chad-allen-drops-writes-song-winnipeg-teen…in-1977. Or they also wrote it up as a story you can read here — although my full account follows […]

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Some reflections on The Beatles post Peter Jackson’s masterpiece, and some fun facts picked up along the way . . . It was so much the blending of the four compatible yet different personalities that was key to their creativity and longevity. And that there were four different individuals for people to identify with and […]

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The Beatles: Get Back Time-Coded and Annotated . Some of the characters beyond the Fab Five: (And yes, it’s five — because in this doc The Beatles become a quintet.  😉) Peter Jackson — the cinematic master behind this entire production Jabez Olssen — Peter Jackson’s super-skilled right-hand-man editor – never seen on screen, but […]

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