Harper sings a few songs for his party faithful

Canadian PM Harper covers Mick Jagger
Published: Dec. 9, 2010 at 11:23 AM Cellist Yo-Yo Ma gives a thumbs-up to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper (C) as they rehearsed for their performance at the 2009 National Arts Centre Gala in Ottawa on Oct. 10, 2009. In the show, Harper played and sang The Beatles' hit "With a Little Help From My Friends." Photo supplied by prime minister's office. OTTAWA, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, backed by an Ottawa band, brought the house down with a five-song party set en...

Stephen Harper shows Tory faithful his rock star side
Stevie Harper and the Herringbones rocked the Conservative Party Christmas Party Wednesday night, to raucous applause from what was, admittedly, a friendly house. Sweet Caroline started the show, with the Prime Minister in a grey shirt and playing an electric piano, assisted by local musicians Richard Linke on guitar and bass, Phil Nolan on drums and Andre Van Schyndel playing bass and accordion. The show continued with I’m On My Way by The Proclaimers, The Who’s The Seekers and a f...

Stephen Harper performs rock show at party event
Stevie Harper and the Herringbones rocked the Conservative Party Christmas Party Wednesday night, to raucous applause from what was, admittedly, a friendly house. Sweet Caroline started the show, with the Prime Minister in a grey shirt and playing an electric piano, assisted by local musicians Richard Linke on guitar and bass, Phil Nolan on drums and Andre Van Schyndel playing bass and accordion. The show continued with I’m On My Way by The Proclaimers, The Who’s The Seekers and a f...

Canadian Pro-Lifers: Prime Minister Should OK Free Vote on Abortion Bill
In advance of a debate in parliament over a bill that would stop coerced and forced Abortions on women, a pro-life group says Prime Minister Stephen Harper should reconsider his position. Harper has said he will never reopen the abortion debate nor will he support this bill, but Peter Ryan, Executive Director of New Brunswick Right to Life, hope he will change his mind as he did before. “Right now the Prime Minister is saying his government - all the cabinet members, around 40 MPs I ...

Will Michael Ignatieff play Mitsou for me?
Is the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada so disconnected from reality and innocent fun that a “senior Ignatieff official” felt it necessary to criticize Stephen Harper's music festival last night by bemoaning the fact the PM didn't sing a French song? Wow. Pathetic. When Michael Ignatieff made a crack about airport pat downs he rightly got some credit for showing his human side. Apparently though he and some of his team have morphed backed into alien forms unable to appreciat...

John Lennon vs. Bono: The death of the celebrity activist
The recent release of The Beatles' music on iTunes, coupled with the anniversary of John Lennon's Tragic Death in New York City 30 years ago this past Wednesday, has brought on a wave of Beatles nostalgia. For so many of my generation, growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, Lennon was a hero, not just for his music but for his fearless Activism against the Vietnam War. Is there a celebrity Activist today who matches Lennon's impact and appeal? The closest counterpart to Lennon now is U2's Bono - ...

John Lennon, R.I.P.
From American Spectator Imagine a Less Political Lennon Thirty years ago today, Mark David Chapman murdered John Lennon outside of the Dakota apartment house near Central Park… “John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City, the most famous, perhaps, of all The Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead…on…arrival.” In six wild months during 1980 and 1981, assassins took aim at the pop star, the president, an...

If You Were Here Today...
And If I Say I Really Loved You And Was Glad You Came Along. If You Were Here Today. Ooh- Ooh- Ooh- For You Were In My Song. Ooh- Ooh- Ooh- Here To - Day. - Paul McCartney "Here Today" By Carl It was a snowy Saturday morning in January, late 70s. I can't remember the exact year, and I suppose I could b...

Remembering Lennon Today
The music of Lennon and The Beatles has withstood the passing of 30 years and will long after another 30 years because it is timeless.  John Lennon’s musical genius and creation has never been matched and his longevity as one of the world’s musical genius’s can never be replaced. In the world’s tributes to John Lennon today, 30 years has not tarnished his words, his causes for peace, his causes to end wars and end hatred along with his call for peace with his wife Yo...

Sick of Hearing About John Lennon: His Devastating War on America
Is it just me . . . or are you sick of hearing about John Lennon and his death 30 years ago, this week?  Please, Make It Stop. I wish Mark David Chapman hadn’t shot him-not because I care a whit about Lennon, but because instead of being beatified and sainted, John Lennon, today, would be just another wealthy, aging, crotchety anti-war has-been denouncing conservative values and whining about “oppressed” Islamic Terrorists.  The only thing I think of when I hear...

"Family Values" City Benefits To Stay ... For Now
EL PASO, Texas -- El Paso City Council voted Tuesday not Repeal the outcome of a November Referendum that denies health benefits to unmarried partners of city employees. Council voted 4-3 in the Controversial issue. Representatives Carl Robinson, Rachel Quintana, Eddie Holguin and Beto O'Rourke voted against rescinding the public referendum. Representatives Ann Morgan Lilly, Susie Byrd and Steve Ortega voted to vacate the ordinance that the public approved on November 2 in what some community me...

John Marshall: Whatever Got Me Thru That Night
December. Monday night. University of Pennsylvania. Van Pelt Library, Rosengarten Reserve Room. Ground floor study center. Students everywhere. We live here now. At desks, at tables, on the floor. Textbooks, notebooks, soda cans, gum wrappers. If we talk, it's in hushed whispers. There is no noise during Finals Week. The stakes are too high. We are all different, but we all agree: don't disturb my Future and I won't interrupt yours. Suddenly there is a sound. Everyone turns. A big, bearded st...

Thirty Years After Lennon's Death, 'RS' Let's Us Hear Voice Again
What is this? For many who loved The Beatles music, today is a heart-breaking anniversary — John Lennon was shot to death on Dec. 8, 1980. Nov. 12, 1980: John Lennon (R) and his wife Yoko Ono outside the Dakota Apartments in Manhattan, where he was killed on Dec. 8, 1980. Rolling Stone is marking the day by publishing the complete Q&A; of the interview Journalist Jonathan Cott had with Lennon three days before the murder. Much of what RS has is available to subscribers only. But not all. It...

John Lennon's Greatest Hits
John Lennon was killed today in 1980. Just an abominable and pointless crime for any number of reasons.  Like each of The Beatles, Lennon helped to create a cultural archetype, in his case the semi-thinking man's rock star who rarely shied away from weighing in on the issues of the day. Though he's widely (and legitimately) characterized as being a commie-symp peacenik drug addict less-and-less-talented bum who might have been the original tea-bagger (tea-baggist?), he was a lot more complicat...

Mark Joseph: John Lennon? Meh... Keith Green's Revolution Was Far More Interesting
I know. I know. Baby-boomers are still in power so the rest of us have to endure an entire week of blathering about how great John Lennon was. Fortunately there's TiVo. Certainly he deserves credit for, if nothing else, writing an amazing song like Woman, but every time I hear an aging Boomer reminisce about world peace and anti-materialism I remember Paul's words: "Somebody said to me, 'But The Beatles were anti-materialistic.' That's a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say...

On a Milestone Day, Business Lessons From the Beatles
Getty ImagesPaul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and John Lennon of The Beatles at London Airport in 1964. Fans of The Beatles gathered at global Vigils on Wednesday to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the death of John Lennon. What many fans may not know is that Lennon and his bandmates were not just talented musicians. They were also canny businessmen. The Beatles’ moneymaking power continues even now, well over three decades after they broke up, with four full albums still ra...

John Lennon remembered in Wichita KS
Ken and Julie played some Beatle favorites at the Naked City Gallery Wednesday night. It has been 30 years since John Lennon died, gunned down in front of his home in New York City. He is most famous for being a member of The Beatles, maybe the most influential rock band of the 20th century. He was an Icon on his own, with several solo albums and some done with his wife, Yoko Ono. In Wichita, a memorial celebration took place at the Naked City Gallery in Old Town, Wednesday night. Musician play...

Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans
My thoughts on the 30th anniversary of John Lennon’s death. You don’t need me to tell you he was a genius; he was. (So was Paul, but John was better). You don’t need a music degree (I have one) to learn that this genius is something you (probably) can’t teach. You can teach folks to sing/play well. And to write tunes that “work.” Work in the sense of hitting the right notes with the right chords at the right time that make sense to the ear, played in the backg...

Three decades on
The Murder of the former Beatle 30 years ago - outside his Manhattan apartment building - shocked the world. In the days following the fatal shooting tens of thousands of his fans took to the streets of New York, Liverpool and other cities, to show their grief publicly. To mark the passing of three decades since John Lennon's death on 8 December 1980 - take a look back at his life with The Beatles, his solo career and his campaign for world peace. To see the enhanced content on this page, ...

Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans
My thoughts on the 30th anniversary of John Lennon’s death. You don’t need me to tell you he was a genius; he was. (So was Paul, but John was better). You don’t need a music degree (I have one) to learn that this genius is something you (probably) can’t teach. You can teach folks to sing/play well. And to write tunes that “work.” Work in the sense of hitting the right notes with the right chords at the right time that make sense to the ear, played in the backg...

John Lennon: It Makes Rock Concerts Look Like Tea Parties
It may not be Walter Cronkite breaking the news about Kennedy*, but Howard Cosell telling the nation about John Lennon’s death in the middle of Monday Night Football, thirty years ago tonight, was quite a moment, too. ESPN has been looking back at it on “Outside the Lines.” Here’s a clip of the discussion Howard Cosell had off the air: Remember, this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses…. An unspeakable tragedy, confirmed to us by ABC News in New Yo...

John Lennon Remembered
On Dec. 8, 1980 - 30 years ago today - former Beatle John Lennon was murdered outside the Dakota, his upper-Westside apartment building in New York City. Rolling Stone magazine found lost tapes of an interviewed conducted three days earlier, which they are running as the cover story distributed on Friday. Just as the Beatle’s appearance in 1964 pulled us out of the depression over the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November of the preceding year, so too, in some ...

Happy John Lennon Day! (The FBI Is Probably Still Investigating Him)
This is the anniversary of John Lennon being murdered by some creep, and it follows not so far behind what would’ve been Lennon’s 70th birthday- ha ha, and 70 doesn’t feel that old anymore, to us! (Nor does 40, which was Lennon’s age when he was gunned down outside his apartment, while signing stuff for his fans.) Think of all the people who made it all this time since: Keith Richards, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Fidel Castro, even half The Beatles. And think of how m...

Los Van Van suck it up in New York City
It seems that Castro's version of the "Rolling Stones," Los Van Van, left a New York Times critic less than wowed. Every band has off nights, but Los Van Van’s show at S.O.B.’s on Monday made you wonder whether the dynastic, once-brilliant Cuban band’s aura and reputation — at least here, where we rarely get to see it — hasn’t moved ahead of its ability. Monday’s show often felt like a reasonable facsimile of a good gig: It was two hours-plus, with the f...

Tories to announce deal forming 'perimeter' around N. America
John Ivison, National Post · Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2010 The Conservative government is set to announce a landmark security and trade deal with the United States, designed to create a perimeter around North America and allow people and goods to flow more freely across the border. Sources suggested that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Barack Obama will sign the broad-ranging agreement in Washington as early as next month. “It’s big on ideals but maybe not so great on de...