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Musical Friends

I’ve got a lot of talented friends I’d like to introduce you to; just my way of thanking many of them who have helped me on my musical journey.

Radio

Listening to the radio has been an essential part of my musical upbringing. Starting with AM Top 40 as a youth, being absorbed in college radio in my 20s (including having my own shows), scouring FM for interesting programming as an adult, and jumping into the expansive world(s) of satellite radio in recent years, I’ve always had my ears open for great programming. And now that terrestrial stations are now almost all available on the internet, there is too much to listen to!

Here are a few stations I support and can recommend:

• CFRC – where I got my start in college radio, at Queen’s University in Kingston, ON: https://www.cfrc.ca/
• CKCU – one of Canada’s leading community stations, the Sixties show I began there in 1984 ran for over three decades!  https://www.ckcufm.com/
• Sirius XM – an amazing number of great specialty channels, with no commercials. My car radio is locked on XM 21, Little Steven’s Underground Garage (and they’ve even played several of my songs!):  https://www.siriusxm.ca/

Blogs

There are a zillion web sites, facebook pages, band sites, record labels, and spotify lists that attempt to publicize worthy music and to critically review / categorize new work. I won’t burden you with a shopping list of such sites; a search engine can send you on your own journey. I am, however, happy to point you towards a few blogs that do commendable work in that field. Many of them themselves feature links with other great blogs, so you can really go down the rabbit hole.The best ones actually pay for the music they review, and provide bandcamp links to each song so that listeners can both hear and buy the songs they like.

Note that in both my YouTube channel and my Spotify page I create some lists of my own that highlight things that I’ve been listening to. I may work to formalize that a bit more as time goes on.

Here’s a great music review site that focuses on “songs with a hook”: poprockrecord.com Canadian proprietor Dennis Pilon listens to tons of catchy new (and previously overlooked) music and, like a good editor, comments on the best work that listeners are likely to be interested in. I’ll admit a bias – Dennis has reviewed some of my tunes already!

As some of my songs (attempt to) demonstrate, I’m a big power pop fan. There are tons of related facebook groups and blogs on the web. One good one is powerpopaholic.com with its loads of reviews and links to other similar-minded sites and blogs.

I Don’t Hear A Single is a UK-based blog that focuses on “underappreciated” pop/rock music, so it’s always a great jumping-off point for exploration of new music: I Don’t Hear A Single