About BabeClick one: | origins | education | professional experience and services | music | writing | radio | voicing | Origins Babe was raised by a single mom in an affluent suburb. His upringing was not affluent, but it was more than comfortable. His mom's quiet, steadfast feminism showed through life choices and attitude, not through words. This affected Babe deeply. In 2000, Babe travelled to Ottawa, Montreal, NYC, Bulgaria, and Turkey. On this voyage, he found his masculinity. However, he still sometimes wears nail polish and skirts. In 2001, he grew a beard, which he still has (on his face, not in a jar). Education Babe achieved a Master of Arts in Comparative Literature at the University of Alberta. For this he wrote a Master's thesis on new heavy metal. He wrote about five bands: Korn, Limp Bizkit, Deftones, Marilyn Manson, and Rob Zombie. [top] Professional experience and services Babe has spent five years contracting to Wordsmith Associates. For Wordsmith, he has taught writing workshops, done plain-language rewriting, and performed plain-language audits for many substantial clients, such as the Investment Industry Regulatory organization of Canada, the British Columbia Securities Commission, and L'Autorité des marchés financiers. To teach wiritng workshops, clients have paid for Babe to travel to Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Iqaluit, Inuvik, Yellowknife, Whitehorse, Rankin Inlet, Vancouver, Langley, Calgary, Red Deer, and Estevan. [top] Since about 1999, Babe has been helping university students write better papers. For more information on that, visit writinghelp.ca Music When he was 18 years old, Babe began playing guitar and wrting songs. While he has written songs that throw his hreart open, his most popular material has been his satirical and humorous songs. Many people have tried to describe Babe's music in many ways. It's been called, among other things, literary punk, the punk Stomping Tom Connors, Elvis Costello meets Rage Against The Machine, "Weird Al" Yankovic meets Jello Biafra, and accelerated folk. He's been compared to They Might Be Giants, Henry Rollins, Sonic Youth, Ween, Johnny Sizzle, Pearl Jam, Our Lady Peace, Devo, Tom Waits, and Beck. In 2003, a video production company that makes documentary and educational videos bought a licence to use Babe's song "Identity Crisis" in a video. He also was a finalist in the 2002 "Get Heard" Singer/Songwriter contest at the Sidetrack Cafe. Babe has performed at several festivals, clubs, and activist events. Babe has garnered a small but enthusiastic and growing following in his hometown of Edmonton. His first release was called it's so true because the most common reaction to his songs was just that phrase. As his gaze fell on a wider range of targets, his songs began to simultaneously celebrate and ridicule the sheer strangeness of the culture he saw around him. Thus his second record was titled Survival of the Prettiest. Babe caused a buzz around Edmonton by providing a simple, unpretentious, fun, and powerful performance that focuses on one thing: good songs. (Click here to download a PDF version of Babe's press kit, which includes the bio, the profile, and photos.) [top] Writing As mentioned above, Babe wrote a Master's thesis on new heavy metal. He wrote about five bands: Korn, Limp Bizkit, Deftones, Marilyn Manson, and Rob Zombie. From about 1995 to 2000, Babe wrote music journalism for a weekly Edmonton arts ad culture magazine called SEE Magazine. In 1998, he wrote a letter to the St. Albert Gazette pointing out the poor quality of a piece that had recently appeared in that paper about a police raid on a local heavy metal concert at a community hall. As a result, an assistant editor from the that paper called him and offered him a regular opinion column. He called it "Like it is" and has been writing that column since. In his first years, he got a lot of angry mail at the Gazette for suggesting that prejudice againstg homosexuals is immoral and that religion has no place in Canadian law. For a few years, Babe indulged in creative writing. You can find some of that on the writing page on this site. [top] Radio In about 2004, Babe began hosting and producing a radio show at CJSR FM 88.5 in Edmonton. He called it "The Late Babe Lloyd Show" to reflect the early-morning hour fo the show (1:30 a.m. to 3 a.m.), to be clever, and to indulge his nascent goth tendencies. After that, Babe did a three-part radio miniseries called "Denial of Morning", Mondays from noon to 1 p.m. (he thinks). That show focused on music that had least pwoerful beats Babe could find. Very droney. He loves drone music. Props to his buddy Steve for helping with that. Babe then settled into his long-lived slot on Tuesdays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. for his now famous and still-running (at a different time) show "Get Some West". This show plays only music from western Canada, focusing on Edmonton, on Alberta, and on indpendent and do-it-yourself music. Get Some West occasionally features live on-air performances by western Canadian musicians. Those episodes are particularly good fun, for him at least. If you want to play live on Get Some West or if you want Babe to play your music on air, contact him at getsomewest |at| cjsr.com. Sadly, Babe's professional services proved to be too excellent, and he was hired in a full-time 9-to-5 job. He thus had to give up his time slot. He took a new time slot--Mondays from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m.--and then got laid off from the job that made him give up his slot. Life sucks. But he's happy to spin before and after his new radio neighbours. At CJSR, Babe has also voiced many radio commercials. [top] Voicing Babe has a pretty nice speaking voice. This caused him to enrol in an "Introduction to Voiceovers" course. For the final voicing projects, Babe was the only one in the class to voice a script perfectly in one take. Babe now offers his voice to professional projects. He voiced two characters for the computer game, 3D simualtion and history lesson called "City at War". [top] |