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Great Songs You May Never have Heard (2)
The rock and roll landscape is littered with the ruins of super groups that didn't live up to expectations, or did but only for a very short time, or turned out the good music but still burned out as...
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Great Songs You May Never Have Heard (3)
I'm sure that after only two entries, some people are already starting to worry that I'm a) only going to be posting links to country(ish) rock and b) I won't be talking about anything too recent. I...
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Great Songs You May Never Have Heard (4)
The danger of course with a series of posts like this is that there are inevitably people who point to a song I name and say, "What the hell? Of course I know it!" Or, casting a slightly wider net, if...
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Great Songs You May Never Have Heard (5) Special Christmas Edition
You can't miss hearing "seasonal" music this time of year, especially on any contemporary music station (and I'm including CBC Radio 2 in this category). It used to be, I think, that Christmas music...
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Fine and Funny Words About Napier's Bones
A short, one paragraph review of Napier's Bones was published on the web early in November, but I only just found it tonight. She misspells my name, but that's fine. You can read it all here, but I...
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My Favorite Christmas
In the summer of 2000 Aidan was 4 and Brennan was about 1-and-a-half. With no idea of what we were really getting ourselves into, Jo and I stepped off a cliff and moved the whole family from Edmonton...
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Great Songs You May Never Have Heard (6)
Let's lean towards a more pop-oriented sound this time, shall we? I first discovered Nada Surf via one of the music blogs that I frequent. While I was aware of them in some distant, peripheral fashion,...
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The Movies of 2011
I only managed to see 47 (No! 48!) movies in 2011, a drop from last year when I saw 53. There are several reasons for this: I think 2010 saw the overall quality of what was offered up to the...
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Another Review of Napier's Bones Sneaks In
I missed this one when it came out. Among other things he says the book is "kind of like Highlander except with numbers instead of swords" and "(m)inds may have been blown." Nice to still see good...
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Great Songs You May Never Have Heard (7)
Since my friend Randy brought them up last week (on Facebook), I figure now is as good a time as ever to talk about Buffalo Tom, one of his (and my) favorite bands, and one that he introduced me to....
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Two Tickets to Paradise
Back in 1979, rock radio in Edmonton was dominated by 630 CHED, an AM station that introduced me to the vast majority of the music I listened to from the moment I became aware there was such a thing as...
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Great Songs You May Never Have Heard (8)
I'm going to write about a voice that many of you will recognize, especially fans of Christmas music, although the type of Christmas music you would probably never hear in a church. In 1987, the Pogues...
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My Letter to the School Board
My son attends the AcTal program at Greystone (grade 7), and they are off on a curling field trip next week. We have been informed that the kids are going to be required to wear helmets for this, and...
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New Book Sale
I'm very pleased to announce that Patrick Swenson of Fairwood Press will be publishing my next short story collection, to be titled Over the Darkened Landscape. This will be my fourth book and my...
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Some Soccer Talk
So here's the set-up. 4 weeks ago we (Aidan's team, which I coach) lost a game. That meant that with 3 weeks to go in Provincials qualifying, we were 9 points out of the 2nd (and last) spot for the...
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Apple: Making things both easy and difficult
So I got a new Macbook Air a few days ago, and the setup was remarkably easy. But then today I tried to migrate files over from my old Macbook, and boy howdy, did things ever go South. I now for some...
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Napier's Bones and the Aurora Award
I'm pleased to finally be able to announce that my novel Napier's Bones is a finalist for the 2012 Prix Aurora Award in the Best Novel category. I've known for well over a week now, but have had to...
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On Being a Canadian
Starting a few years ago, my father, George Murphy, began to be inundated with garbage emails from friends and family about Muslims, about the changes we were bound to see in our (Western, Christian)...
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Yet Another Napier's Bones Review
More than a year after the release of my first novel, this fabulous review has popped up. I am thrilled to bits that it is still being noticed, that someone has had such nice words about it, and that...
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Well no, not really
"It's that sort of swaggering response to adversity that has endeared this gutsy iteration of the USWNT to fans the world over."The American coach drove me crazy with her over-the-top celebrations...
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