The iconic image of the tribal chieftain is the overriding political reality - Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan was interviewed by Playboy in 1969.

"The electric media open up totally new means of registering popular opinion. The old concept of the plebiscite, for example, may take on new relevance; TV could conduct daily plebiscites by presenting facts to 200,000,000 people and providing a computerized feedback of the popular will. But voting, in the traditional sense, is through as we leave the age of political parties, political issues and political goals, and enter an age where the collective tribal image and the iconic image of the tribal chieftain is the overriding political reality. But that’s only one of countless new realities we’ll be confronted with in the tribal village. We must understand that a totally new society is coming into being, one that rejects all our old values, conditioned responses, attitudes and institutions. If you have difficulty envisioning something as trivial as the imminent end of elections, you’ll be totally unprepared to cope with the prospect of the forthcoming demise of spoken language and its replacement by a global consciousness."
- Marshall McLuhan

FROM THIS THEN -> 

TO THIS NOW -> 

Is it Science or is it Art? Noah Derksen's Search for a Way takes him across Canada

Contemplative folkie Noah Derksen will be touring across Canada with a stop at the Free Time Cafe in Toronto Oct 27 2016 and at the Brownstone in Orillia, Ont., Oct 28.

Derksen, originally from Winnipeg, is now based in Vancouver having attended U.B.C. where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in science. He is touring his second album, 'In Search of the Way', which will get an official launch at the Park Theatre Oct 19 in his hometown, (Elessar Thiessen will open that show). His debut album 'Man That I Am' was released in January 2015.

Derksen says his folk songs come from a place of contemplation, triggered in part by real life experiences.

“However, there tends to be a component of imagination with each song — an embellishment, if you will. Thus, each song may begin with a concrete thought or experience, which will connect to one that is abstract or theoretical, and by the end of the process I can't quite remember which part was real and which wasn’t,” he says to SlowCity.ca by email.

Derksen says “creativity tends to stem from the abstract, rooted in less of the ‘objective’, adding his background in science gives him an alternative perspective to draw from when songwriting.

“My experiences within both the realms of science and art have led me to believe that the two are in fact extensively connected. However, they just take different approaches,” he says.

What would a murmuration of self-driving cars look like?

One time at Viktor Tinkl's home in Uxbridge Ont. I saw a wall hanging he made from metal cutouts in the shape of birds flying, a metal flock, each bird shape was the same. It struck me as memorable so I tucked it away but now as we search for new patterns in the bits and pieces left from the media-induced fragmentation of well, everything we know, I recall Tinkl's flock. Perhaps we have much to learn from how flocks behave, the murmuration of starlings is a survival technique, perhaps we will survive in our new flocks, tribes, gatherings via the incorporation of murmuration into our lives, if nothing else we will collectively create something uncanny and beautiful.

Starlings it seems do not collide because they aware of the behaviours of their seven closest feathered friends, each of them aware of their immediate seven and so on.

Do self-driving cars operate under the same principle? Do they observe and follow their seven nearest neighbours? What would a murmuration of self-driving cars look like? Artists - do your thing.

The Tragically Hip, my two cents on recent events

“Isn’t it amazing what you can accomplish, when you don’t let the nation get in your way”

I’ve seen the Tragically Hip live a lot - at Oshawa’s General Motors Centre twice, the infamous Markham Ontario edition of Another Roadside Attraction, Glastonbury in 1993 when they played late on Friday before not so much a sea of Canadian flags as a puddle but still the Maple Leaf was on display. Bare Naked Ladies played the same year but I don’t recall the same degree of national pride from the fans. I was at Edenfest in 96, saw them there and I have seen Downie solo as well as with The Sadies at Boots ’n Hearts,with Fucked Up at Field Trip and with the Country Miracles at Hillside. I have interviewed him twice and met him once. It was at Hillside, I asked him to sign my copy of Have Not Been The Same. He had written a poem for the intro. He stopped, took time to reread the poem and told me he still thought it had relevance. He then signed it. I have his own book of poems, Coke Machine Glow; I have the album but I  like “Vancouver Divorce’.

Albumwise I’d put the debut EP and 98’s Phantom Power on the best of list. I would add Man Machine Poem too. Songwise I would put “In View”, “Fiddler’s Green”, “Fireworks”, “Thompson Girl”, “Coconut Cream” and “Great Soul” on my Top Five.

“Bobcaygeon” transcends The Hip. Its bigger than the band, thats why it can’t be contained on a Hip Top Five. Transcendence is a thing with the Hip. They manage to move beyond the bedrock bar blues they play, the oblique lyrics they sing, the stage oddities of their front man and the plodding routine of the musicians onstage. But perhaps its their very oddness, their strangeness that makes them so popular, their outsiderness makes them insiders. Everyone in Canada sees themselves in some Hip song somehow. They take this enormous vast country and with time and space and grace too build the mosaic piece by piece, diverse but inclusive; poets and thugs, coffee girls, wheat kings and those who don’t give a fuck about hockey.

I didn’t see myself in them but I don’t have to to understand them. I understand them as an outsider and I understood them most when I stepped outside of them.

They were outside at Edenfest, the headliner closing out the Saturday night. I was front of stage but it got pushy and tight very quick. I squeezed out and walked away, far as I could to the edge of the Mosport racing bowl, to the long white wall running along the rim. And there under a darkened Northern sky, complete with yes constellations, looking into the bowl of thousands lapping the stage, lit up, tiny figures under the lights, minuscule, minor players in the vast narrative enveloping, unimportant in the great scheme of things, the songs washed up over the crowd, over me and on up into the great ocean of the sky and I understood the Hip. 

Understood their songs pull us together. Its nothing to do with like or dislike, popularity, genre, styles. They create seas of songs and the waters keep us together. “got to make it, that’ll make it by swimming”. 

No matter how far away from this country you are, whenever, where ever you hear a Hip song you know you belong and I understood the flags at Glastonbury and I understood it wasn’t as trite as nationalism, it was as treasured as belonging. 

That longing to belong is rarely satisfied. its a tough country, its offers “a good life if you don’t weaken”.There are few coast to coast to coast commonalities in Canada, too many pieces to Canada, it contains worlds but somehow the Tragically Hip were able to, without trying, without contrivance, to contain each of our worlds inside; from Churchill to Sarnia, Attawapiskat to Athabasca, Mistaken Point to the Paris of the Prairies,  The band didn’t. doesn’t, need Canada but Canada most definitely needs the Hip.

Carve carefully: Why the future of journalists is as architects and newsprint is the new stone

Thoughts on newspaper layoffs and resignations, art, John Oliver, the Tragically Hip, the poet Shelley, craft beer and Marshall McLuhan, as if you would expect anything less

NOW Magazine co-founder Michael Hollett has resigned to focus on building up the annual music event North by North East and to write. In a statement on NOW's website he says he is looking forward to working with Austin’s SouthXSouthWest organizers to create a greater impact in Toronto for North by, showcasing the city as a centre for live music.

NXNE has grown from a club crawl to a larger street presence with free concerts outdoors and last year it localised itself in the TO Portlands for two days, creating its own environment. Building one's own house is important for control of delivery  of one’s messaging but I think Hollett is going one step beyond. My understanding of it is he wants to recreate or at least have a hand in creating the kind of city he wants to live in by way of North by.

Hollett is moving from author to architect. Its not just authors, many contemporary artists no matter their discipline, are creating environments, expanding their canvas and studio outwards into the physical realm. The result is a reimagining of what the world can be. Arts organizations are also expanding beyond their walls. Nuit Blanche makes galleries of alleyways and Luminato made over the Hearn Building as art installation. The Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa presented Liminal, a show about curation of space and its possibilities. The artists are building, watch them carefully. Where they go we will follow.

Canadian Art recently ran a feature, “9 group exhibitions that defined Contemporary Indigenous Art” . By far the most pertinent of the collection is Rebecca Belmore's 1992 “Mawu-che-hitoowin: A Gathering of People for Any Purpose”. It is a circle of different chairs on a large floor rug. It is a closed circle but it is open for discussion. It is the beginning of a city. Belmore made it in 1992 a decade before best selling author and marketing guru Seth Godin delivered his book and TED talk, “Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us”.

photo by Louis Joncas

That is what Hollett is doing I think with NXNE, he is gathering people for the purpose of city building, but within the acoustic space of music. The space will dictate the conversation. And the conversation will direct future growth in Toronto. He has been doing it for decades. While NOW didn't have an agenda it did have a distinct voice, one of a left-leaning socially conscious bent but one heard loud and year after year. The Toronto we have now is NOW's doing. NOW will continue doing what it does in print but there was always an element of what in contemporary art is called Social Practise, a marriage between product and purpose, a marriage for the greater good.

But NOW was not the first media in Toronto to marry commerce with information for the greater good. The Toronto Star has operated for over a century within its founder's Joseph E. Atkinson's guidelines. The Atkinson Principles have framed the editorial decisions of the Star and whether one agrees or disagrees with how the paper has implemented the principles they do give the Star a personality, a particular voice, a uniqueness and an authenticity; a virtual checklist of modern media necessities. The Principles  provide ground for the figure, context for the message, a raft in the stream for people to gather on, a raft with chairs in a circle on a rug.

One can not be bland in the overflowing flood of information streaming by. One needs to have a distinct voice to stand-out and one needs to be anchored. Newspapers or News Gathering Organisations which are anchored in geography are as granite in the stream. The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Toronto Star; one sees them instantly in the mass of media swimming by but it’s not their brand it is their city which is the rock island in the stream. The newspaper builds on the foundation. The Star can moor it’s raft to it. A newspaper’s job is to reflect the stories of its anchoring rock but it has also a role in shaping the rock, shaping its city.

NOW’s Hollett knows this but other newspapers not so much. They have lost their voice by immersing too deeply in the digital stream forgetting its very deep relationship with the city. The folks at the top could also brush up their Marshall McLuhan.

The communications guru, part of the Toronto School of Communications along with Harold Innis and Northrop Frye, says new media makes old media obsolete. However the new media will reverse into old media at some point further along. The 19th century French writer Victor Hugo provides an illustration. In his 1831 novel “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” the Parisian Archdeacon says This will kill that, the Book will destroy the Edifice.

Hugo is referring to the emergence of the printing press, to books, and to the mass distribution of information and he says it will destroy the church and by church he means the monopoly the church holds on knowledge but also the actual physical church, the architecture, the statutes, the stories carved in stone, the use of of edifice to inform the illiterate.

The edifice and the pulpit provided the means for the news delivered Sundays. The news was reflected in the stained glass, and also delivered via artworks, by way of  the sheer powerful statement of the building itself, dripping eternal power. The word was made not flesh but stone.

Gutenberg’s printing press changed everything. In the modern age Apple founder Steve Jobs was as impactful as the enterprising German printer. Jobs knew too that his media would shape its own environment so he shaped it first. Apple operates as a whole with everything fitting in to everything else. Before launching a product Jobs created the environment in which it would work best. He didn’t release the Ipod until he had Itunes. He understood too that media reverses and he recreated the phone as the Iphone knowing full well, I imagine, it would reverse into telegram. The phone would deliver visuals not audibles. Jobs created the environment for Instagram and Facebook to thrive. In line with Marshall’s teachings digital made print obsolete and print reversed back into stone.

So what can print do now it has become stone? A quick look at Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias” will tell you stone is not so permanent, it crumbles, it falls apart, Time erodes stone as does water, the go to metaphor for describing media. However it is the arrogance of Ozymandias which prompted Shelley to write the poem. It is warning against hubris, it is not a warning against the medium. Stone as a medium survives when it reaches the level of art and avoids being or becoming propaganda. Is that the lesson then for newspapers? Do they aspire to art and avoid propaganda and how can one avoid propaganda when one has a particular message?

Let’s take a look at the Star’s Newsroom Concert Series hosted by its resident music critic. The short interview and performance videos are sponsored by Mill Street, once an  independent craft brewery but now owned by Labatt’s. The Sheepdogs, Metric, Monster Truck, Tuns, White Lung, K-Os, Joel Plaskett, Lindi Ortega have all taken part in the session originally held in the Star’s newsroom before moving to the brewery in the Distillery District. The videos are available online and the purpose is of course to increase website hits and to sell beer.  But what about the music? What does it do for the artist? Does anyone care about the art and the art of it?

There are two elements within the session scenario that most certainly do care about the music; the act and the host. The host participates to tell more of the band’s story. The band participates because they care about their music and wish to showcase it. They do it for the exposure.  They can bump her up by using every channel available to push the Sessions out to the public. There are many channels; paper, website, website, tablet, social media and a building. Podcast the sessions too. Create a pop-up shop and sell the band’s merch. Demonstrate a greater concern for the art by further facilitating the exposure and aligning themselves with the artist.

Honour the artist’s participation but to do so it needs an understanding of the needs of art, it needs to foster and favour art. But the question is how, it’s always how? How does one make the culture change needed to favour art over everything else?

Again McLuhan is the go-to. He revered the artist. It was his conclusion all media aspires to be art and ultimately becomes art. If newspapers are already reversing into architecture how long before they cross over into art? Antonin Artaud and The Surrealists thought newspapers were ready-made collages, thought they were already art. But that was just in the juxtaposition of stories, a seemingly random creation but one of course that was curated even if its collective effect was not considered.

Some newspapers seem to be designing their pages as if they are surrealist collages. There are references to other stories on the pages, hints and a nudge nudge wink wink in the headlines. The National Post on Saturday July 30 had a page, (A2) that couldn’t possibly be have been laid-out without art direction. It is in itself a piece of art, subtly layered with stories about Swedish policewoman, Hillary Clinton and cat fights. It wraps in on itself creating its own environment, it’s own effect.

It is a step from the building of pages around artful ideas to the building of promotional events around artful ideas and a step from there to the actual building of promotional buildings around artful ideas. And yes a step from building buildings to building cities, the infrastructure and channels for the distribution of media, and in this modern world we are all our own media, our own channel. When creating cities this mobility of person and idea is the most important function of the city. A person’s idea has more mobility than the body that holds it. The body is anchored in geography. The body is as stone compared to the speed of ideas. The body is as print but also it is as architecture and it is also as art.

The content of architecture is theatre. Music creates sonic architecture and the space created works well when it contains theatre. Of course theatre can collapse into spectacle and spectacle into cartoon very quickly. The icon was once key to success in modern music, Alice Cooper, KISS, Frank Zappa’s moustache, Jim Morrison’s stage antics, Iggy Pop and the king of it all Freddie Mercury who was spectacular incarnate. Exhibit A, Live Aid. David Bowie took rock ‘n roll spectacle and made it art. He was ahead by a century or more curating even his own death as art (still can’t believe Bowie is dead).

The Tragically Hip are on tour, death is the support act. They are on their final tour after the announcement Gord Downie has terminal brain cancer. One hopes of course for a different ending that the one given. The band is playing across Canada with several dates in some cities. Downie is performing in a variety of brightly coloured metallic leather suits and a top hat. It is theatre, it is a performance, it well may be his last. He is going as loudly as he can into the night, singing on “Great Soul” from the new album Man Machine Poem, “Nothing, eternity, nothing? And then? What then, to resist?”

The shows are sell-outs, complete sell-outs in mere moments such is the demand to share in the final times of The Hip. The band represents something about Canadians that is quite rare, they represent nationalism. They bind this country as fast as the steel ties of the railways. Canucks are not prone to rar-rar patriotism or rather they were at not at one time. But times have changed and The Hip are part of the reason. They created an artistic presentation of Canada to their fans, constellations over Bobcaygeon, Kings of Wheat, late breaking news on the CBC, girls of Thompson, hockey pucks, poets and road apples. They created new icons, icons the many nations that make up Canada could all understand and all of it washed over by references to oceans, streams, waters, seas, coasts, rivers and all thrashing madly in the fray.

The music created a space and within the space Downie created anchors for us to gather around, chairs in a circle on a rug, so we don’t drown in the media flood washing at our own shores.

Now Downie is facing a final curtain call so many millions want to reach out and touch him, to share his tragedy, his burden but also to share their own experiences in this new unnamed space the Hip created.

Those touched by the Hip are gathering. They will make the pilgrimage to touch the band and each other. The Hip, once just a handful of kids from Kingston Ontario have created all of this. Their individual voice has become the voice of many and those voices will carry Downie and his bandmates clear across this huge wide country.

The Hip’s art is the cornerstone for this new nationalism. People have moored their raft to The Hip, to the art of it and should a statue be erected by some at some point it will be guarded night and day and will never suffer the ignominy of Ozymandias. The songs will survive the singer.

If art survives and if media inevitably becomes art is it possible then to begin as art. Yes, Jobs did it. Is it not better then to incorporate art into the design of everything the media does? And if that is music sessions in a brewery is it not preferable then to begin with the art and build from that?

Instead of designing with art as an afterthought one could start with art. Ask the artist, consult with them to assess and meet their needs. Art is not a resource, it is not a means. When art is a means it becomes propaganda and no matter what stone you use propaganda will be allowed to crumble. Propaganda will be destroyed by subsequent generations, if it even gets that far in this future-is-the-past world we live in. Art is the end game but it is not a player.

Hollett it seems has always considered the artist, his publication has championed art, no matter the context or controversy, He values art and with NXNE I bet he will begin by creating a space that fits the artist first and foremost. With NXNE he will put the music first, if we are to believe he is using SXSW as the template (and there is no reason to believe otherwise).

The Toronto Star has a lot going for it. Of all the print newspapers in Canada it will most likely survive because it has a distinct voice and it is anchored in geography. However it will be left behind unless it does something with that voice. It needs to use every one of its channels to tell the story of Toronto artists, past and present but it also has to dig in and start creating Toronto with art and as art.

Hollett was never just a disseminator of news, he is a visionary, a creative and the city was the canvas for his collages. He was of the present and he helped craft a future and will continue to shape its architecture. Other newspapers could take a page from his paper and realise its ultimate destiny is not as an agent of news but as an agent of social change. Social change married with art is Social Practise. It’s what Joe Atkinson began with, the art of change.

““I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own” - Andy Warhol”

How you can help Hillside find its way home, a response to Torstar's Joel Rubinoff Music Fest Smackdown

Mo' Kalamity

Sometime ago, after a trip to the Hillside Festival, I was inspired to get involved with the creators of something similar in Oshawa, a once thriving factory city of 150,000. The organizers called the Oshawa festival The Shwaltz. As a music writer based in the city I was tasked with sourcing bands. The Shwaltz ran for three years, it was a lot of fun and it was well received by the community, as insular as that made have been. It showcased acts with connections to the area, no big names, just locals with an indie or alt-country sound, the sound of Durham, what some artists from the region call BlackGrass, a darker moodier blue grass really.

The Sadies would be considered the high kings of black grass. They did not play The Shwaltz but they are playing Hillside 2016, backing the iconic artist and activist Buffy Sainte-Marie. The Sadies also played River and Sky Festival just north of Sturgeon Falls, in a place called Field. The four-piece performed to a crowd of about 500 on a riverside beach gathered around a bonfire, underneath a clear sky and a full moon. It was beautiful, the soundtrack to a Tom Thompson painting, canoes included. The Sadies are the quintessential Canadian act but River and Sky and Hillside did not book them because of the nationality. They booked them because they are good.

Ajinai

In Sunday’s Toronto Star Joel Rubinoff wrote an article which says there are too many festivals, too many “indie rock” festivals and they are competing for the same crowd and some are losing. He says Hillside is losing. Yet neither Hillside nor River and Sky are indie festivals, (small point I agree but important). Independent yes, but “indie” no. "Indie" is a vague genre, a vague jangly melody first sound and while melody matters (its at the core of Canadiana) the bands at R&S this year were louder, noisier punkier acts; METZ, Ought, Nap Eyes, Courtney, all booked because they are good and not because they are "indie".

Beach Fossils from New York were also on the four day bill which also included many acts from Sudbury, North Bay and the surrounding areas. The festival is an opportunity to showcase the local music scene and all of the bands booked were booked because they were good, not as yet popular but good nevertheless.

Bahamas Junkanoo Legends

So lets look at this competition covered by Rubinoff’s article. Hillside attendance is down almost 15%, for the past decade or so it usually sells out. The drop is due, it is suggested, by the increase in options throught the summer and Fall, most notably the mega-fest WayHome settling into Barrie north of Toronto which falls on the same weekend.

WayHome now in its second year has, as noted by Rubinoff, booked “indie” bands Arcade Fire, Metric, Bahamas, Arkells, Patrick Watson, BadBadNotGood, A Tribe Called Red, Shad, Braids, many who were first booked by Hillside as part of Hillside’s move to champion what is good, not as yet popular but good nevertheless.

Hillside is the Mom & Pop shop that hires the neighbour kids, giving them a start. WayHome takes them on when they are grown up and successful. Hillside is the corner store, WayHome is the Walmart. Rubinoff ends by saying Hillside will have to adapt, not compete, maybe even move its date so both festivals are not on the same weekend.

But that can’t be the answer can it to concede? Is there another way home for Hillside?

Possibly Hillside needs to reach out to its constituency, one built over its thirty years plus of existence. The folks of River & Sky are part of the Hillside tribe and so are the makers of The Shwaltz. There are many many more. As a music writer I have been accredited for WayHome 2016, not yet for Hillside although I have been to the island based fest for the past seven or eight years. Given the choice would I choose Hillside? 

And it is a choice and it is a choice the organizers of Hillside need to ask the people they have supported over three decades to make, and yes I am talking to you now big name Hillside alumni acts being booked by WayHome.

If possible could you haven chosen Hillside? If just to give back; to return to say thank you; to show up in the crowd if you are unable to perform. You’re in the area after all.

This year Hillside needs to know that 30 years of making matters. It does for so many reasons. For its support of indigenous communities, for its green initiatives, for its concern for the planet, for its think global act local, for its food choices, for its lack of corporate support, for its grassroots and green roofed stage, for the opportunities it provides to the outsiders and for Hillside Inside during the winter, for its year round activism, for its location and passion and voice.

And you should support Hillside why? Because Hillside fosters, it supports, it builds community year around. It is not a one off one stop shop for all your music needs, it is there all the time and it has been for generations. People who grew up at Hillside are now bringing their own kids. It has a family vibe because it is a family gathering where the self conscious bookish kid who doesn’t talk to any of his cousins but plays the xylophone can find a spot at the family table. Dude wouldn’t make WayHome, too weird and he has no friends. The Hillside family would embrace him, and he would find a home and lifelong friends.

The family extends beyond Guelph, beyond southern Ontario, beyond genre whether folk, roots or "indie".

Whatever it may be Hillside is most definitely not an “indie” festival. Perhaps it is just a Good Music festival, music that crosses genres and borders literally. This year closes with Buffy Sainte-Marie but the road to Buffy passes by Mongolian act Ajinai, the Bahamas Junkanoo Legends, the balkan-klezmer-gypsy-party-punks The Lemon Bucket Orchestra, South Asian rockers Mekaal Hasan Band, French reggae act Mo’ Kalamity & the Wizards, New York folk-psychedelia from the Slambovian Circus of Dreams and Xylouris White, a duo featuring a Cretan music legend and an Australian post-punker. An “Indie” festival, not bloody likely but a festival of Good Music yes yes and yes.

Xylouris White 

Therein lies the choice we have to make as media and as audience - do we support the adventurous booking policy of festivals such as Hillside or do we go for the tried and proven marquee names festivals such as WayHome? It should be noted that without Hillside’s risk-taking there would be no WayHome (or possibly even Field Trip, TURF, Shwaltz, RIver & Sky, RiverFest, Sandbanks, Wolfe Island and others).

As an artist do you want to support a festival that takes risks on the music of the world, that prioritizes an environment conducive to new music or are you going to give your dollars to a brand heavy mega-mart that will book you only when you go from being weird to being popular?

Your call, in the meantime, the watch is ticking on Hillside’s very survival and that is bad bad not very good at all.

From Swerve of Shore, a prose poem inspired by Hillside Festival

Duskily Bry Webb walked down towards the causeway. He held a child in his arms. He wore a frayed straw hat and navigated the crowd holding his child close to his chest.

People on bikes, on foot, pushing strollers, pulling wagons, passed by, most making their way towards the main stage area which flared out behind him or was it Jason Collett horizontal of shoulder slight crook to his frame a rust red shirt blousing around him in the slight breeze.

The stage, shielded by tall scantily leaved trees, slowly coming into view as if rising above the heads of those climbing casually the slight rise of the island that housed Hillside.

A steady hum of voices traded places in the air with the thud and bap of a drum circle already in full celebratory form. From behind the line of pine and cedar on the mainland the first thin curtains of campfire smoke swirled up dancing to the rhythmic beats echoing out over the lake filling swelling fading into the blue, beyond. 

A roadway curved down from the campgrounds between open grassy meadows spotted sporadically with pin cushion thistle heads to meet the causeway at a grey gravel parking lot. 

A broken yellow line of school buses eased down the roadway, stopped on the grey gravel and spilled more people dustily into the purposeful steady stream of people winding their way across the causeway, down almost level with the lake waters and then up the slight rise to the island that housed Hillside passing Bry Webb holding a child close to his chest, shading the boy with the tilted frayed brim of his straw hat. 

The curve of his hat. The curve of the causeway. The curve of this circus, calling to mind a parade a cavalcade medieval of banners and ribbons great crowds cheering the triumphant tramp, clamouring at the large bucket feet of seven elephants painted in the colours of the rainbow reeling ungainly their riders straddling their broad backs. Pachyderms and backpackers cyclists one wheel two wheel three wheelers the tring a ling warnings the wave as stout footed walkers step aside to allow fez wearing clowns in wind powered golf carts to skirt by skirts blousing around them. 

Best get the tent up. This scene I see a glass covered demi-globe, if I could scoop it up and shake it the sky would snow crepe paper stars like confetti.

Each star a someone. 

Each someone somebody's everyone.

by Will McGuirk 

SlowPop; SlowCity and the Lonely Vagabond's #NoPop

Toronto based indie rockers WIldlife are a band to watch and listen too.

There is a divide between musicians and music writers that is quickly becoming an insurmountable chasm. Music writers seek the new, musicians seek the old; musicians will dig deep into the crates, into the archives, into the vaults to find the origins of songs. Musicians look to the past for inspiration, to build the future. Music writers look to the present to predict the future. They’re usually wrong. Pop never lasts. Its own death is carried in its DNA. It is programmed to self-destruct and to be replaced by the ever newer new.

Music writers chase after the new as musicians go further into the old, the gap is widening, to the point where music writers have lost touch with musicians and the music they make. The underground of basement scenes is thriving on Spotify and Bandcamp while mainstream music writers fall over themselves reporting on Bouncy’s last lemonade stand.

Toronto two-piece CATL punk up the Blues with grizzled garage rock.

Music writers have to ask themselves what value does their voice add? Why write?

Writing about (and by writing we mean communicating, whether podcast, broadcast, online or inpaper) something newly discovered is not the same as reporting the news. The pursuit of news is open to manipulation by publicists who feed their clients to the media. Media feed off those clients’ fans who hopefully become readers and consumers of the products advertised in the margins. In return publicists give access to stars. Its a payola, its an addiction and an aphrodisiac. It feeds the ego of the music writer, it feeds the music writers’ brand, its feeds the industry but it does nothing to feed the music.

The @LonelyVagabond, the flaneur of the Six, has wandered Toronto streets seeking the new for many years. He is often disappointed, more often than not. The new no longer inspires.

He is urging writers to reconsider their subjects. He has coined the phrase NoPop, a catchall that includes local, fringe and classic and his aim is to focus on NoPop.  NoPop ->    NoPop -> 

We at SlowCity agree for many reasons but mostly because his idea re-introduces the idea of time back into the equation.

Scotty Moore was one of Rock 'n Roll's originators. He was Elvis Presley's guitarist. He died June 28 2016.

Is what we write worth the death of a tree? That is the question. 

It used to be the story would have to matter because of the effort that went into its delivery. But now, as I am now doing I can type and publish at the same time. There is no filter between my fingers and your eyes, your ears. I have access to stars and I have access to ears. It costs me nothing to publish. Not money, not effort, not time. Music is emailed to me. I listen. I write and publish. But I serve no one except publicists with that approach, I certainly bring nothing new to the conversation around popular music, the Kanyes and Taylor Swifts and Rhiannas and reformed 90s eras one hit wonders.

Lonely is asking that we bring time to the publishing equation; that we dig deeper for context, that we do indeed addsomething new to the conversation around music, our voice by way of our own ears; that we need to avoid churnalism, the easy reposting of press releases; that we don’t publish on a schedule but when something matters.

“when I have nothing to say my lips are sealed”

There needs to more consideration for the music and less for the music industry. I too am worried that my worth is measured in retweets as once I worried that music’s worth was measured in bottles of beer. I too question my value and where I fit in my scene.

HEADSWIRL are a young band from Oshawa.

I began writing about the Durham Music Scene thirty years ago. I still write about it. There’s not much going on, its in a slump, but Durham Region music and musicians are my subjects, beyond that I am free to write about anything I wish and you are free to read or leave.

More music writers need to write about what they care about and more importantly more music media need to get off the gravy train of pop and write about music that matters. We know it when we hear it even if we can’t predict where its coming from. All of us who write about music have to become better champions of music and wean ourselves of the publicist’s access offers. 

Work your street beat even if you are Pitchfork or the Rolling Stone. Go to live shows in clubs near you even if you don’t live in Portland or Brooklyn or Toronto. Hit the streets, become a voice and a champion for new music yes but also for old music, old musicians, dead musicians, small town local heroes. . . everybody’s got one. Raise their profile and put music first.

Polaris long listed BA Johnston from Hamilton is a touring trooper, a road warrior who has played all across Canada and still remains unknown. He may prefer it that way.

Dizzy are busy recording debut album, they play Hillside in Guelph

Good Ghost don't exist. The four piece indie-tronica band from Oshawa Ont., have changed their name to Dizzy. All to better reflect the new direction they are taking their music says lead vox Katie Munshaw

“Our former name, Good Ghost, was chosen a couple years ago when we were making really different music than we are now. A lot more folky. We’ve now morphed into a more poppy/electronic sounding animal. Finding our sound was a huge step forward for us so we agreed that a new identifier was vital to our new headspace. Dizzy is something we pulled out of thin air.  I wish we had a cool meaning to share with you but alas, the phonetics of it just sounded so dang neat. And it was the first thing all of us could agree on. Its like naming a really loud, four headed child,” says Munshaw.

The band have some gigs coming up including a date at Hillside in Guelph July 22 sharing the stage with Ought and PUP. They are also playing the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto July 29 with Fether.

Dizzy are currently working on their debut album, hoping to finish off by the Fall and set up for an early spring 2017 release.

NXNE, Luminato and the Liminal exhibit at RMG showcase the art of the frame, the art of city building.

It will always be about The Art of. . . . and we are getting closer and closer to the art of the environment. We are getting closer to reimagining, rebuilding the physical world but as an art piece. It will be all that lasts. Marshall McLuhan asked us to imagine media as water, a maelstrom he called it in reference to Edgar Allen Poe’s short story. A great tide washing over everything, dissolving any markers, borders, lighthouses, bouys, we are its mercy, there are no signposts. We shall be lost but the hope lies in seeing the patterns of the stream’s behaviour.

In author Matthew Jobin’s "The Skeleth" the character Tom is asked is time a road or a river? A road we make, a river we float on or paddle he replies. Time is a river but we use its currents to propel ourselves forward.

Time as a river is an eroding force. Media as a river is an eroding force. But art, the story, the art of the story can withstand the erosion, for ever.

When borders are eroded peoples are exposed. They can hasten to rebuild the wall or they can step over the dusted fragments and visit with their neighbours. Out of those visits commonalities are discovered and upon those common traits new communities are born.

The artist has been building new communities. The story of modern art is the story of location. Artists are mobile and moving, creating, recreating, making new places, reimagining the physical world. They start inside a frame, the frame becomes the studio, the studio becomes the neighbourhood. The bigger the frame the bigger the neighbourhood.

Rendering of the front lobby of the Hearn at Luminato Festival. Courtesy of PARTISANS and Norm Li.

Luminato is a big frame. Luminato 2016 has created a new neighbourhood inside the Hearn Generating Station. It is what a city would be if artists built it. What would Berlin look like if Larissa Fassler's works were the blueprints. She walks the city and relocates it in her art.

NXNE the music and entertainment festival is also relocating from studios (clubs in other words) to a central hub, a neighbourhood. The organisers intend to keep the club tour and to set up hubs across Toronto but they are focusing on creating a new world within the Portlands.

The artists are building. They are gathering and they are creating a new vision of their city. They are stepping into the inbetween places , the neither here nor there. At the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa Lucie Chan and Jerome Havre are being presented in an exhibit titled Liminal. The show is part of a larger exploration of Placelessness and includes jerm ix photographic essay Knob Hill Farms and LIndsay Lauckner Gundlock Familiarity of the Foreign.

The key word for art is Immersive, not coincidently a word associated in much part with water. The artist is already swimming in the maelstrom, they are exploring the media we are awash in, they are discovering new forms, they are giving themselves up to the eddies and swirls and the joy of discovery, the danger of the unfamiliar. But they leaving a lifeline behind them, pulling us along the river as they paddle ever onwards along the seams between the the streams.

The Good Family headline Mariposa on Saturday July 9 around Sundown

The Good Family Bruce, (Larry and Margaret plus D’Arcy and The Sadies) headline Saturday at this year’s Mariposa Festival. The Grand Old Dame takes place in Orillia at Tudhope Park July 8, 9 and 10. Rita Coolidge and the Milk Carton Kids are the Friday and Sunday headliners respectively. Among the other performers are Catherine MacLellan, Colin Linden, Shred Kelly, Lori Yates, Fortunate Ones and Ken Whitely and the Beulah Bands. There are scores of artists playing spread over several stages with workshops throughout the day. It is located in one of the prettiest sites for a festival, on a peninsula jutting into Lake Couchiching. There is a camping and it is a very very family friendly festival. I’m sure the Goods would testify to that. Gordon Lightfoot was one of the founders of Mariposa over fifty years ago and the grand old man of folk occasionally shows up.

Beetown's best at Moustache Club May 20

Tijuana Jesus, Micronite Filters, Brother Bear
Moustache Club, Oshawa
Friday, May 20

Looks like Bowmanville, ON., will be empty this May 24 Friday as the best of the B'ville play the Stache. Beardo skatepunk, swamp country blues and orchestra-folk all on the one bill. And it will be one party on top of a party on top of a party.

DC arts exhibit at Station Gallery closes Sunday May 22

Durham College Exhibition
Station Gallery Whitby
Sunday, May 22 2016

The 9th Annual Durham College Exhibition closes May 22. Drop by and see what the grads of DC Fine Arts program are creating and ponder the future.

The Sadies, METZ, Hey Rosetta, Bry Webb, Steve Lambke at River and Sky 2016

River & Sky Festival have announced their 2016 lineup. The festival which takes place over four days (July 14 - 17) this year is located at Fisher’s Paradise in Field, a small small town just east of North Bay on the Sturgeon River. Having attended last year and in previous years I will vouch for the Fest’s community vibe, one that is open and welcoming, one that marries music and sustainability. It has grown over its eight years but it has stayed accessible, intimate and friendly. R&S is the art of the festival and the R&S crew are skilled crafters. 

Hey Rosetta headline Thursday, METZ headline Friday, The Sadies headline Saturday and Basia Bulat headline Sunday. Spread across the four day bill are Bry Webb & The Providers, Steve Lambke, Nap Eyes, TOPS, Language Arts, Beach Fossils, OUGHT, Hidden Roots, Amie Sumi, and as they say many many more. There will also be DJs playing at night in the forest around the campsites and stages.

River & Sky Music & Camping 101:

You can bike, paddle or drive to River & Sky, located at Fishers’ Paradise in the community of Field (West Nipissing), between Sudbury and North Bay.
4-Day Advance Passes: Arrive July 14, at noon and stay until July 17. $180.
3-Day Advance Passes: Arrive July 15 and stay until the evening, July 17. $135.
Full Day Passes (advance): Thursday $45, Friday $65, Saturday $65, Sunday $35.
Night Passes (advance): Friday $45 and Saturday $45.
Children 16 years and younger with their families get in for free.
Dogs welcome on leashes.
Sauna and Swimming – yes, but always at your own risk. 
No Beer tent: BYOB at your campsite. 
Camping available in field and forest area on the property. Tenting included in the price. This year trailers/RV’s will pay a fee of $25 or $50, depending on the size. 

Wild Rivers flow into Moustache Club May 13

Wild Rivers, Cairo, Dan Brooks
Moustache Club, Oshawa
Friday May 13, 9 p.m.

Cairo make a return visit to Oshawa. Last time they were in, back in early March, we had a chat with them. Wild Rivers have a smooth mellowed country vibe, its one that reminds me of Leonard Cohen's "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye", as covered by Kent McAlister and his Iron Choir.

Dub be good to me, MOLAS at Manantler, May 14

Masters of Love and Sound
Manantler Brewery, Bowmanville
Saturday May 14, 8 p.m.

For those who can't make the Lee Scratch Perry gig at the Danforth Hall in Toronto and for those who wish to celebrate Bob Marley's May 11 anniversary, these afro-latin dub reggae crew Masters of Love and Sound will be the perfect ticket. Even better would be to partner them up with a few bottles of the Manantler's Boots Electric, created in partnership with the Eagles of Death Metal.

RMG hosts artist talk May 15 with Ruth Read and Jessica Field

Artist Talk: Jessica Field and Ruth Read
Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa
Sunday May 15, 1 p.m.

Artist Ruth Read will speak to her "Nine Empty Rooms" exhibit currently on at the Gallery A. Read has created an multi-media environment that breaks down the idea of a room, creating a series of spaces that can be seen more as passages rather than self contained areas. Jessica Field's exhibit in the Art Lab questions the social aspects of science and technology. Both exhibits deal effectively with the pressing questions of our present and together I'm sure Read and Field will provide some answers and as is the way, many more questions.

See what the youth are creating, Young Minds on display May 6 at RMG Fridays.

RMG Fridays: Young Minds
Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa
Friday May 6 at 7 p.m.

The RMG Friday monthly arts and culture gathering open up the floor to the young 'uns. A couple of kickers 2Cute4Country and Darling & The Fox will perform. There will be a sneak peek at Dancyn's production of RENT and slam poet Jaylen Stark will slam poems. Lindsay Lauckner Gundlock, exhibition, Familiarity in the Foreign, opens, she is The winner of the CIBC Wood Gundy Emerging Artist winner at RMG Exposed 2015, and yes AND. . . Karen Burwell's art project Drawing Stories to Music will be in the studio. There's a cash bar too. The official after-party happens at the Moustache Club with the Professors of Funk on stage.

Darling & The Fox

Photographer Baron Wolman brings his Groupies to Charlotte Hale Gallery May 7

Groupies & Other Electric Ladies exhibit and Book Signing
Charlotte Hale & Associates Gallery and the Drake Hotel, Toronto
Saturday, May 7, 3 to 5 p.m., 7 to 11 p.m.

Baron Wolman was the first official photographer for Rolling Stone magazine. He was world known for his photos of rock stars of the 60s' and early 70s. In this exhibit he took his camera went behind the scenes, behind the stars, to the female fans and lovers, the muses in many cases. This is Wolman's first exhibition and visit to Toronto and he will be at the Drake for book signings and at the Hale Gallery for an afterparty. Be there or really in this case be square man.

Celebrate Mothers' Day with a walk with Mother Nature May 8

Spring Plant Walk
Greenwood Conservation Walk, Ajax
9:30 am

Get an early start on Mothers' Day with a hike in the woods. The educational walk is hosted by Inner*vore and will focus on what is an edible and as importantly what isn't, as well as the medicinal and utilitarian aspects of wild plants. With the tree canopy still resting from the winter, sunlight can fall on the forest floor and the carpet will be in full bloom. Should be a beauty walk,  rain or shine.