As much as we love sitting in our living rooms, throwing on a good record and kicking back, sometimes it’s nice to go outside and get in touch with nature again.
With Canada’s 150th birthday happening this year, we’re taking a break from the electronics and trekking between the trees, looking at five of our country’s most beautiful national parks.
Have you visited any of these landmarks? Will you be heading to these parks for the big 1-5-0? Let us know in the comments below!
1. Nahanni National Park Reserve, Northwest Territories
Gene Simmons will no longer be pursuing an effort to trademark the ‘devil horns’ symbol.
Simmons recently tried to register the gesture widely used at rock concerts, claiming he was the first to make the symbol in 1974.
But the public backlash soon followed, with many crediting Ronnie James Dio as the artist with the closest ties to the gesture, not to mention the difficulty of trademarking something so widely used.
Even Dio’s widow, Wendy, arguing it belonged to everyone and was “public domain.” She called the trademarking move “disgusting.”
The curtain has closed for Kiss co-founder Peter Criss.
The co-founder of the iconic band announced earlier this year that he would be retiring from live performances. June 17 marked the last time he would hit the stage in the United States.
Criss hit the Cutting Room in New York City, playing Kiss songs, solo material and covers.
“I didn’t get to end my career the way I wanted to end it,” he told Billboard before the show. “So now I’m doing it my way, kind of like Sinatra.”
With the announcement that a sizable chunk of Bob Seger‘s is now available on streaming services, we’ve been digging into his vaults and extensively listening to many of his classics.
The video for one of his most revered songs, “Night Moves”, tells quite the story.
Seger wrote the song in 1976, but he wrote it about his teenage years, specifically 1962. He looked back on easier times, hooking up with a “black-haired beauty with big dark eyes” in the back of his Chevrolet.
The song didn’t get a music video until 1994, when Seger released his Greatest Hits package–so the video was 32 years in the making from the original story! If you’re a fan of Friends, you might notice a certain Joey Tribbiani in the video; Matt LeBlanc was cast as the love interest right before he received the role as one of six young Manhattans making the most of New York City.
Happy Birthday wishes to the king of The Beach Boys Brian Wilson!
He is one of popular music’s most deeply revered figures, the main creative force behind some of the most cherished recordings in rock history. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to call Brian Wilson one of the most influential composers of the last century. Wilson’s remarkable journey began in a modest Hawthorne, California home that was filled with music. His mom and dad both played piano, and as a young “boy soprano,” Brian’s vocal gift was immediately evident. He had also started singing harmonies…literally “in their room” with his two younger brothers (Dennis and Carl). As a teen in the 1950s, he became obsessed with the harmonic blend of groups like the Four Freshmen, and then, in the early 1960s, inspired to combine multi-part vocal harmony with the rock rhythms of Chuck Berry, Brian found his place in the musical sun. He was barely out of his teens when he began to create some of the most beloved records ever. Nine consecutive Gold albums that featured such classics as “Surfer Girl,” “In My Room,” “I Get Around,” “Don’t Worry Baby,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “Help Me Rhonda” and “California Girls”just to name a handful of the more than two dozen Top 40 hits Brian co-wrote, arranged, produced and performed on with his family band, the Beach Boys.
Fun fact: At only 21 years old when he received the freedom to produce his own records with total creative autonomy!
In 2008, Rolling Stone magazine published a list of the “100 Greatest Singers of All Time” that ranked Wilson number 52 and in 2012, music publication NME ranked Wilson number 8 in its “50 Greatest Producers Ever” list, elaborating “few consider quite how groundbreaking Brian Wilson’s studio techniques were in the mid-60s. He is an occasional actor and voice actor, having appeared in television shows, films, and other artists’ music videos.
Photo credit: 
