The Ballbreaker Column
BallBuster MusicBallBuster MusicJoin the Newsletter and stay up to date on all things BallBuster Music!
Subscribe >In the utterly go-go, trans-media flurry which was mid-Sixties pop(ular culture), every television star worth their Nielsens was expected to not only chase spies and rope steers, but compete with those rock ‘n’ rollers of the moment upon the Top Forty to boot. To cite but two examples, Lorne Bonanza Greene and his 1964 […]
On the very last night of my very first trip to London Town precisely 48 years ago this month, my youth hostel roomie – a young Australian who’d nicknamed himself in honor of the Dave Clark Five as it turned out! – gifted me with, wait for it, a ticket to join him at that night’s Paul […]
Y’know, the more I think all the way ago about it, the more I realize I must have had the absolute coolest parents on the entire block. Every May for my birthday, then every single Christmas, I’d joyously receive the latest Beatles (and/or from 1966 onwards Monkees) hot-off-the-presses album …without even asking! In fact, dear Dad […]
9:30 AM – Awaken after three-and-a-half hours “sleep” to shower, pack, breakfast (M&M’s Peanuts), and bus to meet band van by 11 AM at pre-arranged rendezvous spot. 1:30 PM – Band van arrives at pre-arranged rendezvous spot. […]
or HOW CAN YOU DRIVE TO TWO PLACES AT ONCE Gary Pig Gold and the Firesign Theatre Change the Course of Canadian Educational Field Trips Once and For All. I can now hereby unequivocally state I was actually one of the proud, the brave, and yes, the subsequently unemployable by-products of the […]
From amongst the many many projects, digital and otherwise, my To M’Lou Music label was involved with at the turn of the last centuries, the one I look back on most fondly – especially this month of all months, as The Man Himself would have, should have turned 83 (!) on the 17th – […]
No, EP would not have turned 100 this January 8th …though had he made it this long, he very well could have looked that old. Nevertheless, here’s a century-count of Elvis numbers absolutely, truly, and without a single doubt Fit for The King… 100. “Old MacDonald” (whilst getting into Double Trouble on the silver […]
Let’s see… John Entwistle. George Harrison… So how come it’s the utterly coolest-by-far members of some of our all-time favorite bands who seem to depart far, far too soon? Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees truly went horizontal on us as well, almost twenty years ago already. And, like Messrs. Entwistle and Harrison, Maurice […]
Although it’s spent over a decade already here in the ol’ sty, I’m hardly surprised to find I’m still discovering, hearing, and even seeing fresh goodies galore buried within that great big Neil Young Archives box of mine. Yet it is something else entirely which has me ballbusting today about The Greatest Living Canucklehead […]
Just like most near-lifelong Beatlemaniacs stuck in the summer of 1980, news that no less than John Lennon was about to re-enter the recording studio after an unprecedented five year AWOL filled me and my ears with eager, excited anticipation. I mean, there could be no doubt the Chief Beatle would have identified with, […]
What with that undisputed Grandpappy of All Things Canuckrock turning 79 (!) on September 27, I thought it more than high time indeed to take a good hard look back at Ten Reasons to Immediately WatchBACHMAN & TURNER LIVE AT THE ROSELAND BALLROOM, NYC 1. Randy Bachman remains the greatest-living Canadian singer/songwriter/guitarist …who still […]
Allow me to quote, word-for-most-accurate-indeed-word the shrink-wrapped stickerhype affixed to Mono-Tone Records’ The Cosmic Genius of Big Boy Pete 1965-1977, the very first of two (so far!) volumes of audio esoterica culled from the great man’s already voluminous discography: Like an English Kim Fowley produced by Joe Meek or a one man Barrett era […]
You know, it’s becoming increasingly obvious, with every passing Summer and with every passing trend, that The Byrds were just about the greatest rock ’n’ roll band America ever produced. Now sure, I bet lots of other musicians in 1964 were inspired enough after first viewing A Hard Day’s Night to want to throw […]
It’s hard to fathom a world where any imaginable sight, sound, or moving image of your fave rave pop star isn’t a mere click/Tok away. But back in that Golden Age when the roll was still an essential part of rock, families instead gathered ’round their communal TV set every Sunday evening at eight to turn […]
“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight.”(Martin Luther King, Jr., Washington D.C., August 28, 1963) “From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official: President Kennedy died at […]
I must confess that prior to the red-hot July of 1964, I’d never ever heard anything quite like Tommy Morgan’s harmonica solo on “The Little Old Lady (From Pasadena)” …Dylan vinyl having not yet infiltrated my household, you understand. Two summers later, the 66-cent “Popsicle” 45 quickly became a most refreshing schoolyard treat while, […]
Ever since excitedly cycling a mile or three to the nearest record store the very day “Hey Jude” was released, I had been loyally buying up each and every new Apple 45-RPM disc my weekly childhood allowance allowed. But checking the ol’ singles clock, as pictured, reminds me that Early 1970, as Ringo would […]
It’s no longer much of a secret whatsoever Yours Quite Truly passed the vast majority of those dreaded Late 80s criss-crossing O Canada as part of the Great White Northland’s – ah-hemm, authorized however, I’ll have you know! – Beach Boys tribute combo known as Endless Summer. And as our reputation, not to mention skill at reproducing Big Brother Brian‘s […]
In honor of The King and what could have been – what should have been – his 87th (!!) Birthday this month, may I suggest one and all hook to your platform of choice to immediately watch Any or All of… Gary Pig Gold’s Top Ten Elvis Movies 1. THAT’S THE WAY IT IS (dir. […]
I think we’re more than all in agreement here that something very, very special took place during the middle 1960’s; a magical, monumental something in the air(waves) which gave rise to an undeniably positive socio-artistic upheaval courtesy of bards like Dylan, bands like the Beatles, filmmakers like Kubrick and, if I may push the […]
“It’s about us, me and Jerry Garcia and David Crosby, stealing a starship. Hijacking a spaceship. It’s my answer to the ecology problem. We’ll land wherever we want and then take off again. There’s millions of other whole planetary systems. What old Owsley could do is to make a machine that would go that […]
For those still salient enough to peg the launch of British Rock to the evening of February 9, 1964, when four young Liverpudlians appeared as if from nowhere onto the stage of The Ed Sullivan Show, think of this: A dozen years ago, a different U.K. band celebrated its fiftieth anniversary with a series […]
Saturday, September the 13th of 1969 broke particularly warm, bright and sunny over the suburbs of Toronto. Yes, this was to be the day the drummer in my very first (bedroom-over-the-) garage combo agreed to accompany me all the way into the Big City in order that I could buy my very first teen-aged guitar. But! […]
While the Clash were hardly the only band that ever mattered to me, I personally sure owe a tip-o-the ol’ snout to the one, the only Joe Strummer for most vividly helping me see The Light back in that dark, dank cultural wasteland known as the mid-Seventies. It was my first-ever night in London, […]
The single greatest living Canadian since Stompin’ Tom Connors, who loudly and proudly celebrates his latest Date of Birth on July Five, tell us all: 1. “Munsters” or “Addams Family”: Which one’s for you, and Why? Well, Munsters of course, since Lily Munster aka Yvonne De Carlo (R.I.P.) was born in my hometown […]
Very late one evening in the very late 1980s, my oldest pal Doug and I were dejectedly roaming the Canadian television airwaves when we suddenly chanced upon footage of these two guys playing music out on someone’s porch. Our collective jaws – to say nothing of the remote – immediately dropped. It seems we’d […]
80 GOOD REASONS To Celebrate BOB DYLAN’S 80th BIRTHDAY THIS MONTH 1. His previous 79 years. 2. Most notably, between the hours of 8 and 9pm on the evening of May 17, 1966 in the Manchester, England Free Trade Hall. 3. Chronicles: Volume One. 4. Blonde on Blonde …in MONO, […]
IMANTS KRUMINS Above-ardent Fan, Collector and Champion of Good Music (and Credit Risk Analyst for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce by day) born April 6, 1952, Leamington Spa, England died June 9, 2011, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada age 59 Like so many others around the world, my first-ever words with Imants Krumins […]
Throughout that wild and wacky A.D. 2020, one disc seemed to somehow find itself repeatedly, and most happily so, upon the ol’ Pig Player. A disc which via a mere 21 tracks in under 69 minutes presents an ideal, not to mention idyllic picture of two musical careers which, cannily overlapping more often than […]
Quote: “The best goll-darn singer you’ve never heard came from the same country as Celine Dion and Drake.” “Yeah, right,” I can somehow see you all sneering right about now: “What the hell good has ever come out of Canada?!!” Well, besides the (very early) Guess Who, SCTV, and of course Young Neil, there […]