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  Movie Soundtrack
  Happy Texas
     One of the best country albums of 1999-00. I haven’t seen the movie, but I want to based on this collection of gutsy alterna-country. Real country.
     Best song is the Randy Skruggs / Joan Osborne duet “Only Passing Through” while best line is “So if you’ve got a bucker, don’t ever buck around, that buckin’ mother bucker, will buck you on the ground...” from Robert Earl Keen tune “That Buckin’ Song.”
     There’s some honky tonk, some TexMex chili pepper country, some Texas swing, some sugar and some whiskey. Great album for country fans, great album for people who think they aren’t country fans - both groups will enjoy this.
  Noreaga
  Melvin Flynt Da Hustler
     Amateurish theatrics (example: the nonsensical intro skit) are overshadowed by deep studio skills. The guest vocals, bass foundations and vinyl sidings are well developed. They provide quality effect for one of hip-hop’s premier voices.
     Noreaga is a bit of a poser, acting bigger than you, making gratuitous potty mouth, but there is a message under the attitude and it is somewhat self-aware. This album needs to play on a good stereo, though, for correct presentation. “Wethuggedout” with Missy Elliott is a smack track, “Oh No” is oh yes, lots of other good tracks.
  Paddy Moloney
  Silent Night: A Christmas In Rome
     All year long this album stands above. Paddy (of The Chieftains) Moloney goes to the source of Christmas, using timeless music by the Glen-stall Abbey Monks, Harlem Gospel Choir, Orchestra Sinfonica della Dio-cesi di Roma, and other high powers of melody. It is a luminous album and the most original Christmas collection in recent memory. It’s an album fit for a Pope. For Moloney it is a crowning achievement in his already monarchical career.
  George Winston
  Plains: Solo Piano
     You could take this album for what it is and dismiss it as a quaint flavour of cheese, or you could take this album for what it is and embrace it as a paean to the heartland of America. It is sentimental and gushy, but it is also raw and unadorned - just like the plains of North America. The drive through is boring if you just gaze out the window, but if you pay attention to the landscape there is a brutal honesty.
                                                                            Reviews by Frank Peebles
Deborah Gregs
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  It was almost more than Deborah Gregson had imagined when her kids and their friends had a “Mrs. Gregson” party at school to honour her debut album. It was an indescribable thrill for her to see the kids at Giscome Elementary dancing away to her CD and clapping for one of their favourite moms. Other people, friends and strangers, going down to the store to pick their own copy is almost incomprehensible to the unassuming young woman who has to reconcile the fact that she is now a singer/songwriter on the cusp of acclaim.
     Of course she worked hard and persevered to reach this point. It was no accident. But that still doesn’t numb the sense of shock in her own mind that, yes, she is
 Photography John McKenzie
  now a recording artist and a respected one at that. Record producers, sound engineers, musicians and now fans are nodding their heads in agreement that Deborah is something special that seemingly fell into their laps.
     “I didn’t really write songs until about four years ago, and I didn’t plan on recording them until only two years ago,” she says, almost apologetically. "I wrote a song for a bunch of kids, just for fun, and I though oh, well, there’s a song. It seemed so easy It kind of opened a door that hasn’t really closed since.”
     The first thing out of the door is a self-financed, hand-assembled package of 13 original folk tunes. (Recorded at Tonesmith Studios in Lethbridge and Rocketfish Studios in Prince George.) The album is
  called Rootseller and no, it is not a spelling mistake. It is a play on words indicative of her thoughtful style.
          He says: Open my pack and look inside I’ve got roots of every shape and size Open your eyes and you will see When the storm winds blow the strongest tree Is the one who’s roots sink deep into eternity So come and see the rootseller
      There is some charming naivete at work in her lyrics, but also some intriguing ambiguities and lucidity. It seems so simple, but the underpinnings are much stronger than meets the first glance. She possesses, according
      Please Turn to Songwriting, Page 24