Calgary Herald from Calgary, Alberta, Canada • 43

ENTERTAINMENT CALGARY HERALD Thursday, August 23, 2007 D3 Calgary's Top 10 Music Country Hard Rock tus week National Last week Artist 1 1 Carrie Underwood 1 Some Hearts 2 4 Taylor Swift 2 Taylor Swift 3 3 Brad Paisley 3 5th Gear 4 2 Various Artists 4 Country Hits 2007 V.2 5 5 Dixie Chicks 5 Taking The Long Way 6 6 Rascal Flatts 6 Me My Gang 7 8 Keith Urban 9 Love Pain The Whole Crazy Thing 8 7 Various Artists 7 Best Of Country Hits 2007 9 12 Johnny Reid Kicking Stones 10 10 Toby Keith 8 Big Dog Daddy MUSIC New keys to the blues Source: SoundScan This week National Last week Artist 1 2 Timbaland 1 Timbaland Presents Shock Value 2 1 Rihanna 2 Good Girl Gone Bad 3 3 Amy Winehouse 3 Back To Black 4 6 T.I. 5 T. I. Vs. Tip 5 7 Common 4 Finding Forever 6 4 Justin Timberlake 6 FuturesexLove Sounds 7 5 Sean Kingston 7 Sean Kingston 8 8 Akon 8 Konvicted 9 10 Tupac Vol.

2-Nu-Mixx Klazzics 10 11 T-Pain 10 Epiphany soul not for Idol Courtesy, CTV Soulful Matt Rapley was once called 'the best singer' on Idol. said. "As much as I'm sad to be gone, I'm proud of what I've accomplished My goal was to make Top 5." The 18 year-old singer from Regina, said he's missed his family over the past few weeks, and he's looking forward to spending time with them. He wants to take what he's learned from the Idol competition and put it towards a music career. "I like making people happy," he said.

"I like singing songs that can change someone's mood." He said although he wants to sing for a living, if it doesn't work out, he would like to become a psychologist. "I want to help people carry on with life." For now, he's going to focus on writing music in hopes of producing an album featuring a mix of gospel, and souL Canadian Idol airs Monday, Aug. 27 on CTV. The final four will be coached by Canada's first teen idol, Paul Anka. This week National Last week 1 2 3 4 6 5 7 8 9 10 Artist Linkin Park Minutes To Midnight Daughtry Daughtry Smashing Pumpkins Zeitgeist Finger Eleven Them Vs.

You Vs. Me Ozzy Osboume Black Rain Nickelback All The Right Reasons Korn Untitled Velvet Revolver Libertad Three Days Grace One-X Rise Against Sufferer The Witness 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 3 9 4 8 6 5 7 12 14 Rapley's enough Judge's favourite gets the boot from reality show MARTHA WORBOY CanWest News Service Once hailed by an Idol judge as being possibly the best singer to ever appear on the show, soulful singer Matt Rapley was voted off Canadian Idol Tuesday night, leaving four contestants to belt it out for the title. Rapley said he thinks voters will favour B.C.'s Carly Rae Jepsen or Ontario's Brian Melo. "Carly Rae is a good singer and she's small, cute and loveable, which could very much work to her advantage," Rapley said in an interview with Can-West News Service. "Brian (Melo) connects with the audience.

The music comes from his heart and he connects with the music and the audience." Also remaining is Nova Scotia rocker Dwight d'Eon, who survived bottom-two status this week after a strong performance of Bon Jovi's Bed of Roses. And Alberta's 17-year old Jaydee Bixby continues to evade the bottom two despite being criticized for resembling an Elvis impersonator by Idol judges this week proving himself to be a fan favourite. Gospel-inspired Rapley, who graduated from high school this summer, said he has mixed feelings about leaving the show. "I'm happy I made it this far," Rapley trico homes A PLACE AI.TK RN ATI Vi This week National Last week Artist 1 4 Matthew Good 1 Hospital Music 2 10 2 The Con 3 1 Amy Winehouse 3 Back To Black 4 3 LinkinPark 4 Minutes To Midnight 5 5 Maroon 5 It Won't Be Soon Before Long 6 2 AvrilLavigne 6 Best Damn Thing 7 8 Daughtry 5 Daughtry 8 9 Plain White T's 10 Every Second Counts 9 18 Smashing Pumpkins 8 Zeitgeist 10 Sum 41 Underclass Hero r-j Edgar Winter, iconic blues keyboardist, "I started playing gospel and blues piano very young," she recalls. "I loved hearing Ray Charles and Johnnie Johnson play.

Johnnie's still my friend, and whenever I hear him play piano it's still such a thick, heavy dose of blues. Even when the music's as simple as someone pounding out (W.C. Handy's) Saint Louis Blues, it just feels great "I love guitar-based blues and keyboard blues," continues Hunt. "They're different kinds of the same style, the same way apples and oranges are both fruit." All three of these keyboardists freely admit the guitar is the primary blues instrument, but they don't seem to feel overshadowed in the slightest "Keyboards will never be the guitar's equal in the world of blues because guitar was essential to the creation of the blues," says Winter. "With guitars you can bend notes, which was part of the blues' feel.

I prefer to compose with just my imagination because you can recognize compositional patterns that go along with a certain instrument. I can hear it even in the songs by great keyboard composers like Elton Calgary's Fam i ly rie ly Radio Station 1 i ,17 inn til il mill -BBWteurfX. Current This week National Last week Artist 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Soundtrack High School Musical 2 Timbaland 1 Timbaland Presents Shock Value Soundtrack 4 Hairspray The Motion Picture Matthew Good Hospital Music Rihanna Good Girl Gone Bad Bon Jovi Lost Highway Tegan Sara The Con Amy Winehouse Back To Black Linkin Park Minutes To Midnight Michael Buble Call Me Irresponsible '4. Getty Images has little time for blues purists. John and Billy JoeL" Winter's casual inclusion of John and Joel in a blues discussion is interesting; if you were to take the blues out of their songs, then they wouldn't exist.

Yet of course pop isn't blues, any more than Canada is England. It's easy to understand what he means, but if a blues purist heard a mere civilian make the same observation, the ensuing semantic argument would be unbearable. In whatever style it's manifesting, blues teaches us to deal with pain. Take a random clutch of pop songs: the Eagles' Lying Eyes, the Smiths' How Soon is Now, or Nirvana's Lithium. Whether the topic is infidelity, loneliness, or mental illness, the subtext blues fuses to all western music is the insistence that we recognize that all us humans have hurtful challenges to overcome.

There's no cure for pain. "Blues still exerts a profound influence on the other styles," says Winter, "and that will always be true." CAMERON KERR NEW WORKS AND PROPOSALS mm '1SE35V Udell Contemporary 725-11thAvenue S.W. (403)264-4414 1 Keyboard players take the spotlight at blues festival JOHN KEILLOR For the Calgary Herald Keyboards aren't immediately associated with the blues not to the extent that guitars are. But keyboardists bring history and depth to a blues ensemble. These players tend to refresh a band's sound by introducing elements of other styles that are the blues' own progeny.

This year's Calgary International Blues Festival is bringing some of the best working blues keyboard players to town players who understand that blues is a musical foundation, as well as a genre. SPOTLIGHT According to key-Edgar Winter board icon Edgar plays the Winter, blues purists Calgary misunderstand this International style equation. Blues Festival "Blues isn't just a tonight. common thread in Doug Riley plays all my music," he Sunday night, says, "blues is the ba-Visit calgary- sic platform for all bluesfest.com popular music: jazz, soul, rock, gospel, funk, country, everything. "I respect and love pure styles," concludes Winter, "but imposing purity on one's own music is a sort of self-segregation.

It's self-limiting." Purity enthusiasts wreck fun. In the blues world, they ruin jam sessions by complaining that the music isn't authentic enough, that it's insufficiently Robert Johnson-like or Leadbelly-es-que. Guitarists are the priority here; only they supposedly represent the unsullied icons of blues. Keyboard greats like Ray Charles or Little Richard are considered heretics for mixing gospel and rock into their blues, as if some musical eugenics plan were desirable. "Blues is the Big Bang of music," explains keyboardist Doug Riley, who worked with Ray Charles in the 1960s.

"(Blues is) the egg from which all the styles came. Go back to early stuff, James P. Johnson and before. Go back as far as you like and listen closely. It's all there, gospel and soul, other styles.

The embryos of these kinds of music are already audible." Indeed, this argument flies in the face of how some people regard "authentic" blues. The blues is more than a style. It's a cultural fountainhead, the same way political cartoons gave birth to comic books and animatioa The aural DNA of blues is still prevalent in the sound of today's biggest acts, as any White Stripes fan will attest. Ii one looks back to the original Robert Johnson recordings, his influence can be traced soon afterward in the sound of boogie-woogie pianists like Pinetop Perkins or Fats Waller. That lively dance energy of boogie woogie was further concentrated in the music of Chuck Berry and Little Richard, who captured the attention of Jerry Lee Lewis and the nascent rockers leading up to Elvis.

Then the British Invasion appeared. Psychedelic rock was quickly followed by heavy metaL then punk, and with the new DJ technologies came an explosion of digital dance music that owes its roots to a music industry and tradition that harkens back to Mississippi-born Robert Johnson, King of the Delta Blues. Keyboardist Kelly Hunt hails from New Orleans, across the state line from Mississippi She grew up knowing the blues through a gospel filter. I 1 Glenbow Museum WHERE THE WORLD MEETS THE WEST FOR Ak 1 CALGAKVHaUD TLT iii '4 U-Jwui-A EVERYNE Visit Glenbow Museum today as we reveal Canada's cultural diversity with five exhibits including ImaginASIAN. This photo exhibit profiles people in the Asian-Canadian community who have shaped our city, province, and country.

On now until September 30, 2007 Supported by Alvin and Mona Libin Foundation uik of Belonging IXll'iT iii- 5.