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FYI

Bruce Allen Backs Rocket Norton’s Latest F-*-*-K Cancer Benefit

Bruce Allen Backs Rocket Norton’s Latest F-*-*-K Cancer All-Star Benefit

Bruce Allen Backs Rocket Norton’s Latest F-*-*-K Cancer  Benefit

By FYI Staff

Bruce Allen Backs Rocket Norton’s Latest F-*-*-K Cancer All-Star Benefit


Bruce Allen has stepped in as co-producer of the Rocket Norton-driven Vancouver all-star Wheaton Fuck Cancer concert that takes place on Oct. 21 at the city’s Centre for the Performing Arts.

In 2021, Norton, the former drummer in the multi-platinum band Prism, was diagnosed with rectal cancer, and during his treatments, a package arrived from friend and former manager Bruce Allen. It was a black tee shirt with bold white letters that screamed out F-*-*-K C-A-N-C-E-R. Norton took it as a battle cry and went on to organize a benefit concert for the BC Cancer Foundation that raised $344K with an all-star cast of friends and peers.

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Norton decided to do something for the cause and called up a who’s who in Vancouver’s rock elite to perform gratis at a concert last October. In an interview earlier this year, he told journalist Alex Browne that “When somebody tells you you’ve got six months to live…I thought about it and decided I’m going to keep on doing all the things that are important to me.”

The six months have come and gone and he has no idea what his timespan is now, but he’s pressed on and enlisted a long list of acts that will support him in this year’s charitable endeavour that include members of Chilliwack, Doug & the Slugs, Headpins, H.U.N.N., Jeff Neill, Jim Byrnes, Lee Aaron, Loverboy, Powder Blues, Trooper (now called Hot Shots), and, of course, Prism.

The event is co-produced with Vancouver entertainment czar Bill Allman with Beedie Capital and Wheaton Precious Metals and two unnamed people underwriting all of the production costs for the concert extravaganza.

More details, including ticket information, can be found here.

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Don Pyle
Andrew Blair

Don Pyle

FYI

Music News Digest: Don Pyle's New Memoir, Changes To Canadian Folk Music Awards

Also this week: The Dream Serenade returns, Dwayne Gretzky and the James Barker Band play the Canadian Open and more.

Veteran Toronto musician, author and photographer Don Pyle (Shadowy Men From A Shadowy Planet, PhonoComb) has just published a new memoir, Rough Description: Love Letters and Ghost Stories From a Life in Music. The book covers his hilarious tour stories, his experiences growing up in punk, his experiences attending hair school, working with the Kids in the Hall and more from his influential life in music and culture.

He launches the book via a reading tour that starts at Standard Time in Toronto on May 28 (with Yo La Tengo's Georgia Hubley & Ira Kaplan spinning records) with stops in Guelph, Hamilton, Picton, Kitchener and London. The latter event also features Faith No More's Roddy Bottum reading from his memoir The Royal We. More info here.

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