Awesome week ahead
If Randy Bachman, Nazareth, Sweet or the Little River Band won’t bring you out for Rock the Lake, here’s something to consider. Men Without Hats are going to be there. That’s it, I’m in! Hit it, everyone — “SSS, AAA, FFF, EEE, TTT, YYY, Dance... Safety Dance.”
Speaking of classic rock, what a great lineup there is for this year’s Penticton Peach Festival, which begins Wednesday. This is a free five-day event and features main stage entertainment every night which this year will include April Wine, Kim Mitchell, George Canyon, Madelin Merlo and tributes to some great rock artists including Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. For a schedule of events visit: www.peachfest.com.
Mitchell is one of my all-time favourite Canadian musicians. His songs are fun (wait until you hear “All We Are” live), but what I like most about him is that he’s humble and down-to-earth. He’s also funny as hell.
I was begging Don Kendall, chairman of Peachfest, to set me up with a phone interview. Kim is a guy you want to talk to. We spoke on July 10 which was coincidentally both our birthdays.
Kim, like Bachman, is an elder statesman of rock. You can tell he truly loves classic rock and you could listen to him for hours and never get bored.
Tim Schroeder’s “Focus on Faith” column returns next Saturday.
An upcoming “In Conversation” subject is columnist David Bond, a retired bank economist. Next week’s Okanagan Top 10 will be: 10 champions for the LGBTQ community.
I saw the new “Mamma Mia” movie, called “Here We Go Again.” It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.
There are two problems. Meryl Streep, the greatest actress on the face of the planet, only makes a cameo. Also, the stage show, which the first movie is based on, likely never intended on a sequel so most of the good ABBA songs had already been taken. The second movie used a lot of ‘B’ sides to fill up two hours. They did, however, still have “Fernando” (done by Cher and Andy Garcia) and “Waterloo,” which for some reason was only used for the the curtain call in the original production.
You can skip “Here We Go Again,” and see the real thing. Kelowna Actors Studio is presenting the original. See J.P. Squire’s review on Page B8.
James Miller is valley editor for Okanagan Newspaper Group.