Music Year in Review

2022 was an interesting year that took me through a couple different jobs and music got me through all of it. Being a fan of rock-and-roll, I stayed true to those roots and began to (re-)discover the 80’s hair-bands. Some of the bands I’ve run through a good selection of their catalog are Tesla, Skid Row, Dokken, Great White, Cinderella and Guns’N’Roses. What’s interesting, like a lot of folks, I listened to GNR’s Appetite for Destruction so much I wore out the tape. Listening to this again reminded me how epic that album was.

With the release of the documentary on Creedence Clearwater Revival’s spectacular Royal Albert Hall show on Netflix, I was enthralled once again with the machine that is CCR and the songs that have become a part of the fabric of our culture even today. If you haven’t seen this, I highly recommend it.

Going back even further, I decided to delve into the Soul station on somafm.com. Seven Inch Soul is the rather incredible personal 45-RPM-record-collection of Dion Watts Garcia. Many bands I’ve heard on here I’ve added into my collection on Tidal including Sly and the Family Stone, Percy Sledge, The Q, and Clydie King. I usually throw this station on at night while cooking dinner and just love the vibe it brings.

Turning a corner musicially, I’ve decided to start learning to play guitar and as a result have added quite a few incredible acoustic-guitar solo artists to the playlist. One of them is Corey Heuvel who performs a rather incredible version of Over the Hills and Far Away by Led Zeppelin. His personal albums are stellar and he’s got great beginner guitar content on his Youtube channel if you’re learning like me. Another great channel I’ve discovered is Mr. Rick Beato who not only has a stellar beginner guitar series but is an incredible musician and producer himself.

2022 was also a year to check off a couple bucket-list bands from my live list. I managed to catch The Black Crowes live at Oxford Stomp (Calgary Stampede) and the band was absolutely incredible. The other bucket-list band was Styx who were mind-blowing themselves, but it helped that Nancy Wilson’s Heart opened for them which really was icing on the cake. Both were epic shows that I’m so blessed to have been able to see live.

To cap off the year, I’ve got tickets to see Big Sugar playing 2 sets as part of the 25th Anniversary of the Heated album. Really looking forward to this as they will be playing by far my favourite Big Sugar Album (Heated) cover-to-cover for the first set and some “mix” of tunes for the second set. It should be an awesome show to cap off an awesome year of music.