Soundscapes RIP

I’ve been inside dozens, possibly hundreds, of record stores in my life. Soundscapes is the only one where I’ve wanted to own every single thing on their shelves. 


The staple of College Street in Toronto for the last 22 years announced this Easter weekend that they’re closing their doors. Greg Davis opened Soundscapes in 1999—the dawn of file-sharing. Music soon became irreparably devalued, a process that only continued to accelerate. But Soundscapes was where the true believers rallied. It was a destination. When I didn’t live in Toronto, every visit to town had to include a trip to Soundscapes. Every gig I saw at Ted’s Wrecking Yard was usually preceded by a trip across the street to Soundscapes. I still remember the first CD I bought there: the Weakerthans’ Left and Leaving, right before my own band’s gig at Ted’s. Soundscapes was open late, a late-night record shop, to which one might drive downtown in the rain. Am I right, Steven Page?


The curation at Soundscapes was impeccable. Unusually, it was all-new: this record store did not have a used section. You can find a lot of what you’re looking for and more at Sonic Boom, but that store’s Amoeba-style warehouse approach can be overwhelming. Not that I’m complaining, it’s just not always what I want. Rotate This was and still is a vital hub, but that store’s reputation always depended on being the hippest place in town—invaluable, but a vibe of its own. You want International Anthem vinyl or the new Kikagaku Moyo on import? Go to Rotate. You want Exclaim’s and Mojo’s current picks on CD? Go to Soundscapes.


Soundscapes was small, brightly lit, welcoming. Attention to detail marked not just the new releases but the reissues and classic records that should always be in stock. If you were a 60-year-old who’s heard it all, there was always some new collection of R&B Beatles covers, and clipped-out record reviews next to the listening stations to help you with new artists. If you were an 18-year-old who just discovered Irma Thomas and Aphex Twin, those records were always there, too, and easy to find. If you were a local musician, you’d find all your peers in the stacks at the back—and often at the front. Soundscapes was a place where music felt alive, where every shelf felt like a history lesson—about either the last seven months or the last 70 years. The store played an invaluable role in Toronto's exploding music scene at the time: Three Gut Records, Broken Social Scene, Feist (who lived upstairs when she was writing "Let It Die"), Great Lake Swimmers, Fembots, Blocks Recording Club, and others.


The staff were super helpful, especially last man standing "Flipped Out" Phil Liberbaum. Some of them were sorta famous. Steve Lambke of the Constantines was a frequent sight behind the counter, even at the height of his band’s success. John Crossingham of Broken Social Scene was guaranteed to talk your ear off on a slow afternoon (he's probably writing a 10,000-word store obit right now UPDATE: here it is, it's beautiful, please read it). Colin Medley, who’s now one of this country’s finest video directors for the likes of U.S. Girls, worked there for years. Folk singer Isla Craig, of Bruce Peninsula and other projects, worked there. Ubiquitous drummer Jay Anderson, ubiquitous jazzbo Mike Smith. I'm told Derrick Vella of local death metal heroes Tomb Mold was there also. Julie Fowler, Craig Dunsmuir, Iris Fraser, so many others. My friend Sylvie Smith of the Magic (no, not that one) not only worked the counter but designed many of the gorgeous window displays promoting local artists’ new records. At one point I knew enough people who worked there that I was invited to the store’s Christmas party (the playlist was amazing, of course). Although, you know what? I'm now old enough that I'm not entirely sure that even happened. But dreaming of a Soundscapes Christmas party is not out of character for anyone who spent a lot of time (and money) there.


I’m also not sure I ever went to an in-store, but looking at the list of people who played, I have no idea why not. I did, however, host my own in-store: Greg graciously allowed me to host an event for the revised edition of Have Not Been the Same, where Shadowy Men’s Don Pyle, Julie Doiron, and Alison Outhit had a lovely panel discussion. If the store were still to be open when I finish my current book, about the early 2000s, Greg himself would be on a panel, because he’s almost as essential to the story as the musicians I’m talking to.


We’ve all heard about how bookstores and record stores are cultural hubs, where clerks can help change lives, yadda yadda. That was all true of Soundscapes as well, but it really did feel like a community where you ran into friends in the aisles, or you randomly found yourself chatting to someone in one of Canada’s biggest bands. When writing The Never-Ending Present a few years ago (its third anniversary is this week), I learned that when Gord Downie played his first-ever solo gig, months before the release of Coke Machine Glow (20 years ago this spring), he insisted the tickets be available exclusively at Soundscapes. Diehard Hip fans from across the GTA had to high-tail it to the tiny Little Italy shop to see what weird adventure their hero was up to next.


Soundscapes wasn’t just a place to find music, it was a place to read about music. The magazines were the best (Wax Poetics, The Wire) and cheapest in town. I was told that Greg barely marked them up because he considered them a loss leader: the more people read about music, he figured, the more they were likely to come back and buy it from him. Soundscapes was the first record store I’d ever been to that had an extensive book selection (this was before Sonic Boom’s Spadina location). Looking for that exhaustive new Can bio? It’s at Soundscapes. My recent trips were usually to buy books and magazines—and still the occasional CD, as recently as a few months ago. When Have Not Been the Same first came out in 2001, our publisher had never heard of Soundscapes; I insisted that they reach out to Greg to stock it, which of course he did. I didn't really care where else the book was stocked: Indigo? Of course, whatever. As long as it was at Soundscapes.

I'd guess that most of the store's visitors in the last 10 years were there primarily to buy tickets without exorbitant Ticketmaster fees—the loss of live music last year likely hurt the store almost as much as plummeting CD sales. I’m pretty sure that one day the taxman is going to ask this freelance writer why, for years, the majority of my business expenses consisted of Soundscapes receipts.

This closure hurts—a lot. (As much as all the other horrible shit happening right now? Suicides, evictions, loss of livelihoods, mass malfeasance? No, of course not. But grant me a minute of myopia here before we return to our general grief.) It’s not that I should be surprised that a store selling physical copies of music is endangered, Covid or no Covid. I’m also not surprised that an inept provincial government—one that claims to be business-friendly—managed to blunder its pandemic response in ways that irreparably harm every business but the box stores. This closure hurts even more because it’s likely a domino, the first before a cascade of closures render my corner of the world unrecognizable. One down, two to go: Soundscapes is one of three downtown record stores that, until now, have been essential components of music fandom in Toronto. I hope that will continue to be true for future generations. I’m not counting on it.


Thank you, Greg Davis, for creating a space that felt like home to many. Thank you, Soundscapes staff through the years, for your warmth and gab and helpful pointers. And thank you, Rotate This (my local) and Sonic Boom and all the smaller shops—hang in there. We love you all. 

 

Raise a glass for the late-night record shop.

And be sure to read John Crossingham's thoroughly excellent appreciation of Greg Davis as a person, and how and why his curiosity set his shop apart. It's here.

Let's Talk About Owen Pallett: Carl Wilson

When writing about Owen Pallett, as I do in this week’s issue of Maclean’s (on newsstands now), there’s only one other writer I would ever cite as a secondary source: Carl Wilson.

As a member of the Hidden Cameras in the early 2000s, Pallett played “Ban Marriage” at Wilson’s wedding; Wilson provided Pallett with his first major American press with a New York Times profile. Wilson invited Pallett to contribute an essay to the recent reprint of Wilson’s treatise about Céline Dion and subjectivity in music, Let’s Talk About Love; Pallett performed “The Power of Love” at the book’s original launch party back in 2007. These are two of the only men I know who might discuss semiotic theory while scratching each other’s back.

My favourite quote from my recent conversation with Owen is his summation of what the Torontopia movement was all about: “Carl Wilson with his shirt off, like no fucking problem.”

I have a lot of my own theories about and passions for Pallett’s music, but Carl is clearly much smarter than I am. As is always the case with these kinds of profiles, I only used a sentence of this conversation in my Maclean’s piece. Here’s our full conversation.

Carl Wilson

April 23, 2014

Phone from his Toronto apartment

How do you know Owen?

I met Owen through the Hidden Cameras, through Maggie [MacDonald] and Joel [Gibb]. I didn’t talk to him that much. Through the first year or two we knew each other, we didn’t really have conversations. He seemed like a distant and removed kind of guy. Which I don’t think was true, but he does have that kind of guard when you first meet him. Only after I started seeing [Pallett’s first band as frontman] Les Mouches and was really enthusiastic about them, then I started talking to him directly. He briefly ran a series at the Monarch Tavern, and I wrote about that for the Globe, so that was when I first interviewed him. The way I got to know him mostly was by interviewing him.

Most Canadians, if they are aware of Owen at all, first heard of him when he won the inaugural Polaris Prize in 2006 for He Poos Clouds. For me, knowing who was on the jury—Torontonians and other jurors, like yourself, for whom Owen wasn’t a completely unknown entity—the win wasn’t that surprising, but it was treated as some kind of freak upset win by mainstream press. What do you remember about that time?

I think he was already kind of inured to that kind of exposure. We think of that Polaris moment as being pivotal, but probably what was more pivotal to his career was opening for Arcade Fire. That involvement gave him a fan base he wouldn’t have got any other way. By that point he was an old hand dealing with press and attention. I think he let that all roll out gracefully and had a good humour about the remarks about the album name. Obviously, the name is a perfect case of Owen’s balance of sarcastic whimsy and utter seriousness. His win was more interesting for what it meant for Polaris. In some ways, Polaris’s identity could have been established in any number of ways. I can’t talk about what happened in the jury room, but it wasn’t a surprising decision when we got to the end of the discussion. I think it established Polaris as a more adventurous kind of prize than it would have been if one of the other leading contenders had won.

Is an artist like Owen more easily understood today than in 2006, now that we’re 10 years into the dissolution of genre boundaries and what’s known as poptimism?

I think he’s a segment of a certain independent musician who once would have been more stubbornly avant-garde and now has a more eclectic approach. He’s a particular subset, bringing his classical training to that music. You see in indie music of the last 10 years the emergence of strings and of horns, often just for colouration, but in Owen’s case it’s really integral. That also informs his skepticism about indie orthodoxies. He’s already been through one set of ideologies that he has to resist in order to do what he does. So he’s unlikely to be swayed by a new set of ideologies. What he’s done, more than others, is to take the best of that kind of old-style indie thinking and continue to concern himself with having control over his own destiny and have some kind of loyalty to where he comes from, in terms of conducting his career. The fact that he continued working with Blocks [Recording Club record label] for so long after his initial success, I saw as a real sign of character.

Owen covered Mariah Carey and Jann Arden early in his career, as well as Joanna Newsom and John Cale. How does that play into the thesis of your book, about how we define ourselves by our taste in music?

One of the first things that made me sit up and take notice was with Les Mouches when they were covering “Close to You” by the Carpenters. Not that it was a unique indie rock move at the time, but there was an earnestness to their delivery, very tender but with an edge to it. That curatorial sense that he has was something I took notice of. His sensibility has always embraced vulnerability and truthfulness and professionalism—all of these things that were in some ways uncool. He was one of the first people I met who made me feel like the sensibility I was talking about in the book was at a twilight at the time. Young people growing up with a more eclectic listening experience and music-acquiring experience were forging new sensibilities. Seeing that made me aware of the contrasts in the way music has been talked about and the way it’s lived in their lives. He’s in sync with that. At the same time, he spends a lot of time in a reasonably snobby indie music scene. So he has a sense of those problems and struggles with himself, where one draws the lines in tastes, and plays with that in his own work.

What do you think being an Owen Pallett fan says about someone? What kind of cultural capital does that give them?

Quite a lot of cultural capital! If you think of it as adjacent to Arcade Fire, where most of his fans may come from, it’s the kind of fan who pays attention to a bands’ opening acts and liner notes. There’s an investment in being a connoisseur. I think a lot of his fans also have some involvement in classical music. I’ve never seen a fan message board more involved in talking about scores and arrangements.

How does In Conflict fit into the evolution of his work?

It’s an amazing album. It makes me look a little differently at the previous couple of records. It’s so much more emotionally direct, in the ways the first album was, but that was a very small-scale thing whereas this is grander. I had an immediate emotional connection with these songs in ways I didn’t with older songs. Heartland is transitional for me, and this record is a fulfillment of what he was going for there. I think it’s significant that he’s playing with [Les Mouches] Matt [Smith] and Rob [Gordon] again; there’s a personal touch in the lyrics and narratives that remind me of what Les Mouches were doing, and reminds me of how affecting I found that at the time: confessional in the literal sense, but with that careful line-walking he does so that it doesn’t become indulgent or mired in self-pity.

More than any other artist I know, he seems to be endless involved in detailed conversations with people online. I’m kind of fascinated with how he’s able to be so productive and yet so seemingly distracted at the same time.

He wants to be in the fray, but he also wants to be all by himself composing. He is a classic introvert/extrovert. Anybody who is productive in an information-dense form has to have some kind of compulsive tendencies. When he’s working, he gets a ton done very fast, because he’s moving very fast in his mind, and then he takes a break and has some soup and he’s bored and he’s on the Internet. It’s that crash-and-burn speed to him. He’s talked about that being one of the subjects of the new album.

Do you think his early success was only possible in a situation like Torontopia, an era of anything goes?

The milieu in which he started to make pop music was one where there was a conceptual approach to music-making in general; it was much more similar to an art-school or visual art aesthetic. I think the Hidden Cameras influenced a lot of people in that direction, in being the first breakout success. Also a band that many people passed through, so they were influenced by that working technique. The cluster of people around Blocks took that kind of conceptual framework and applied it to their own approaches. Stuff like Bad Bands was the most extreme end of that way of thinking, of saying these bands are more or less just ideas than they are music. They have to be enjoyed from that point of view. It’s hard to guess what Owen might have done if he hadn’t had that kind of apprenticeship, but it’s possible to imagine him making more conventional Sufjan-esque pop music in a way. It seemed clear that exposure through that music scene permanently sent him in that direction.

Up next: Nico Muhly

Owen Pallett vs. Toronto

The first Owen Pallett album, in 2005, was called Has a Good Home. Fact is, the man is now homeless. One of the key Torontopians of the early 2000s, he decamped to Montreal last year—but has barely been there, either, since he signed up for Arcade Fire’s Reflektor tour, which has kept him on the road for the last six months and likely will for the next six as well. Owen’s fourth album, In Conflict, comes out May 27. I think he’s topped himself yet again. It says a lot that Brian Eno’s presence is one of the least interesting things about the record. I’ll have a lot more to say about it, both in this space and for Maclean’s, in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, however, Owen Pallett is coming home to Toronto this weekend: for less than 24 hours. He plays the Danforth Music Hall on Saturday, May 10.

Owen Pallett

March 18, 2014

From a Philadelphia hotel room

You’ve been in Montreal since when?

It’s been a gradual drift. I lived there for four months in the winter, and stopped paying rent in Toronto in April 2013. But I was away since the end of 2012.

Do you feel at home there now or are you not even there enough?

100 per cent. I even feel like a bit of a Torontophobe (laughs). I come back to Toronto and think, “Oh, noooooooo. More Toronto!”

That didn’t take long.

It had been happening already, getting off tour and coming home to Toronto. It used to be that I would get off tour, and it was a bit of a joke because often I’d get home on a Sunday. I would immediately throw my shit in my room and go down to Wavelength. Like clockwork. I’d see all my friends, I’d wear something stupid, it was great. But it was becoming the opposite. I’d be taking the Gardiner in and have this sinking feeling. “Not Toronto again!” I don’t blame the city. I think it’s having my great 20s there; had I not enjoyed my 20s so much it might be different.

Well, you left your 20s in the most Torontocentric way possible. What was your 30^th birthday party about again? A show with 30 acts in 30 hours at Lula Lounge?

30 acts in 10 hours. Everyone had a 20-minute set.

How do you now view what happened in Toronto between roughly 2000-05 now?

I don’t know if it was special, or if it was something that happens to a lot of cities and a lot of crews. I’ve been thinking about it a little bit, because a lot of what we’re told is bad is actually good. One of those things is what people refer to as arrested development, or naivete, or wide-eyed wonder. There is something magical and amazing about being in a scene that has that excitement. The root of sexual impulse is in all these things: arrested development, naivete. I think they’re linked: this joyousness that is linked with a bit of ignorance. Part of that ignorance is saying, “It doesn’t matter if your band is not 100 per cent the best band, but is maybe a 9/10 band.” That’s pretty much every band in Toronto at that time, was a 9/10 band. And the 10/10 bands are the ones we hate now. I don’t know what it was. It was situational, but I think it could happen in any city. That’s what is so beautiful looking back on it, is that it wasn’t Toronto-specific, even though it happened to have happened in Toronto. It was more tied into this moment of non-cynicism.

It’s like falling in love and not thinking about getting old and having Alzheimer’s. It’s the immediate rush, the wide-open headfirst plunge.

Yes, and I don’t know if it’s possible now. Reading the Twitter feed after the Arcade Fire show in Philadelphia last night, one in three comments said something like, “Well, no black people at this show!” I thought, “What?” The implication is that the onus is on Arcade Fire to specifically get that 15 per cent of the American population out to their shows, whereas I believe the onus is on the American people to create a situation where these people can perhaps afford to maybe come to these shows! Oh wait, [boyfriend/manager] Patrick’s telling me not to talk about class in an interview. But what I’m trying to say is that I tend not to place the burden on artists; I place it on socio-economic structures and politics.

I feel as if the environment [now] is quite the opposite of joyous. It’s become a statement of acumen to be a cynic. So Toronto 2000-05, I’d be embarrassed to play show-and-tell with now, because people would either find it dated or problematic. I have trouble even identifying myself as a gay man at this point. A lot of what was going on in Toronto was intrinsically tied to LGBTQ emancipation. Not emancipation, but—now when I hang out with my Toronto friends, especially my straight ones, it’s like, “Oh right, you really get me.” In the rest of the world, you can’t make jokes about poo dick or whatever and have people laugh. They’re like, “That’s disgusting. I’m leaving the room.”

But there was that moment in Toronto with Will Munro and Hidden Cameras that provided a freedom for the whole music community to be themselves, to be less conservative. It was also a time when the concept of gay marriage went mainstream.

I think of gay marriage and Will Munro to be polar opposites. The attitude in Toronto was very anti-institutional. If there was one thing that straights and queers all learned was that there was this new idea of beauty, which was rooted more in positivity and participation. You can even see it in Margaux Williamson’s films, with Carl Wilson with his shirt off, like no fucking problem. I watch that movie and I think, this is it, this is the whole idea of 2000-05, trying to get everyone to take their shirts off. Gay marriage is not the opposite, but on a different track. Pretty much most queer people will agree that marriage isn’t for them, but it’s a symbolic gesture for acceptance of the lifestyle as equal. That’s different than taking your shirt off.

There are two characters on this record—in “I’m Not Afraid” and “The Riverbed”—who reach a point in their life where they realize they’ll never have any children. It shocked me to hear that—only because I can’t think of any song, ever, that deals with this topic, this transformative moment in the lives of everyone: either having a child, or deciding not to, or having that decision made for you. It’s a huge moment in someone’s 30s or 40s, yet it’s not common song fodder compared to divorce or death or other life events.

Me, I want kids. But I’ve never thought about it, because a large part of my desire for children is not wrapped up in the disgusting biological need to see one’s face on a young person. I mean, disgusting theoretically—I’m sure it’s very nice. The thing that is not available to most homosexuals is the thrilling sex story. Paraphrasing a friend of mine: “Oh, we had broken up and then she flew down to New York and came to the show and put on some makeup and we got wasted and had sloppy sex in a hotel room—and then nine months later so-and-so was born.” The romance of having it as an extension of your romantic life doesn’t exist for gay men. Usually it’s an extension of administrative activity—which is so disappointing!

Were somebody to come along and deposit a child in my lap, I’d be the best dad. But the whole administrative process makes me wonder: do I actually want this? I didn’t know that I wanted one, I thought it wasn’t for me. Then a lesbian couple, friends of mine, asked me if I would father a child for them. I was asked via text message. My heart completely exploded. I’d never felt this feeling before. I remember using one hand to respond to her text, and thinking, how can I continue to text her while phoning my mom? It turns out she was joking! [pauses] And we’re not friends anymore. [laughs] “Thank you for showing me that I am a bag of meat with procreative desires. Never speak to me again.”

I love how the line is delivered in “I’m Not Afraid”: “I’ll never have any children” is set to a lovely, major-key melody.

Yeah, well, there’s nothing weird about it. In a way there’s a delicious irony, in that some people are celebrating the Macklemores of the world for a song like “Same Love,” and I’m like, “Oooh! I can’t wait to get all y’all into the reality of queer life! Are you really going to be celebrating a song like ‘Same Love’ when you understand the full extent of what we’re talking about here?” I’ve always felt very much in the middle in regards to gay rights arguments. I don’t know if it was you who said it, that I never met a dichotomy I didn’t like—that was you, wasn’t it?

Yes, it was the lede of the first Exclaim story.

That might have been true eight years ago, but I don’t really feel that way. I’m much more in this weird grey area where I’m having trouble believing in anything. Not in a nihilist sort of way, but in this, “Wow, it’s so confusing!” I’ve been singing about this since my first record, which ends with me saying, “Confusion is why I sing.” This is really meant to be the topic that comes to the forefront on this record. Pretty much every assertion I make on this record is like I also believe the opposite. Like desire portrayed in a negative light. Or that I’d personally love to have children—except the reality is that I wouldn’t.

Torontopia, part three: Kat Collins

*whew* okay, this is the last Torontopia interview, I swear. Then we'll move on to other topics.

Kat Collins landed in the Toronto music scene as a member of the Barcelona Pavilion, a band founded by Steve Kado and at the time featuring Maggie MacDonald; both were also Hidden Cameras at the time (Maggie still is). When Maggie left, she was replaced by Vanessa of No Dynamics. The band had two bass players, two shouting vocalists, and a deadpan laptop player who--by all visible appearances--did nothing but stand there with an absurd neckstrap supporting the computer on his chest. Barcelona Pavilion made minor miracles out of two minute songs that demanded simple everyday things that sounded like they were revolutionary manifestos ("Tidy Up!"). Their greatest legacy to the Torontopian concept is undoubtedly their song "How Will You People Ever Have Fun If None of You People Ever Participate." ("Oh boo hoo/ oh cry cry/ if nothing ever happens/ I/ wonder/ why."

After that band fizzled out, Kat started a new project called Pyramid Culture with three other ladies, singing about scientific concepts over computer beats, outfitted like 20-minute-workout rejects and borrowing choruses from 80s-period Billy Joel. Earlier this year, she wrote something called a Bad Bands Manifesto... which is a whole other kettle of fish we'll get to soon enough (and which will include the second part of this interview). She's married to Matt Collins of Ninja High School, aka The Second Most Opinionated Toronto Musician after Steve Kado, and together they run a CDR label called Jennifer Lopez Knife... in theory, anyway--good luck finding anything on the web about it (coz you know, if it isn't on the internet, it isn't real).

Somewhere along the line, she made a short film about the Torontopia concept (which I haven't seen), and is also one of the few to make the leap from talk to action by participating in the City Idol contest that tried to find fresh new voices to run in the upcoming municipal election. She currently works on the Murmur project, which I'm sure their website can explain better than I can.

As always, if you haven't read this, you should do that first before wading through here.

---

Kat Collins

July 21, 2006

Setting: Back patio of a bar on Bloor St. across from Long and McQuade, west of Ossington

When did you first hear the term Torontopia and what did it mean to you?

I first heard the term Torontopia in 2003. Steve Kado was putting it on a flyer or a poster. He had heard it from some other guy he met playing Fototag, and decided it was a good way to succinctly express how we were feeling about Toronto at the time, which was extremely optimistic and extremely positive.

Why did you feel that way? Did you grow up here?

I’ve been living here since the late 80s. I was 11 years old when we moved to Toronto—all my formative years. I wasn’t really involved in any kind of music scene or independent or underground art scene at all. Halfway through university I was talked into joining the Barcelona Pavilion. The first few shows we played were probably the first few local shows I attended.

I wasn’t a part of the scene, so I had no context to understand how things were different from the way they had been previously, or how they had been changing. All I knew was that in the first year or so of us being a band, I saw so many different shows and met so many interesting people doing really creative, neat things that I’d never even thought about before, let alone experienced.

To me, it seemed that Toronto was this wonderland of fantastic creativity. Everyone was so open to new ideas and so positive and so interested in collaborating and making things happen and starting projects and being productive and active. To me, it didn’t even occur to me that it hadn’t always been that way. Toronto wasn’t always this fantastic utopia of creative expression. For a lot of people, it was a welcome change from what they had seen as a more stagnant or at least not as open to new ideas atmosphere.

By the time 2003 rolled around—which now gets bandied about as this nostalgic period that we all look back to as a peak of the Toronto scene—to me, the term seemed like a fantastic shorthand for all the things I had been experiencing. I didn’t think of this as being new. To me it was an awakening to the potential that Toronto held.

I had always enjoyed living here, but I wasn’t in love with the city. I figured that I could do just as well anywhere else. By the time I started hearing the term Torontopia and thinking about what it meant to me, it really signified this new attitude I had about the city, which was not in fact a utopia, but it had the potential to be whatever any of us wanted to mold it into. That was really terrific. Every city has that potential… potentially!

I’m curious how that artistic explosion bled into how people thought politically and socially about the municipal entity itself, learning to love Toronto in ways they hadn’t thought about before and becoming civically engaged. I’m not sure how much I’ll touch on this in the article, because it’s more of a Toronto Star angle, but what are your thoughts? Having moved back here recently myself, there’s unquestionably a different attitude here than there was when I left Ontario three and a half years ago.

That feeling has continued to grow. People are still learning to love the city in new ways. Things like City Idol are good examples of taking that initial enthusiasm about the boring municipal politics side of Toronto, which seemed like it was looking up when we got a new mayor and it seemed like amalgamation wasn’t going to completely ruin us, and so taking that initial enthusisasm and building on it and turning it into something that involves even more people engaged in the process of civic politics is really great. It’s still on the rise. I don’t think that’s peaked yet. That’s going to continue growing, and more people will get involved in things. It was definitely something that I started to see about three years ago, when this Torontopian stuff was a new buzzword on posters.

It’s interesting to me because I moved away when people first started using it, and I’ve been watching the germination of it from a distance. It was even more curious when I started reading stories about Montreal’s music scene—which, with the exception of the Arcade Fire, was not focused on bands that I was seeing all the time there—and I was thinking of how much I would rather be living in Toronto at the time. But I’m wondering now if, because there’s so much art here produced on an indigenous level and so many success stories, Toronto becomes a place that they want to be for a long time, as opposed to a temporary stop where they make some money and then return to their hometown or move on to somewhere else. The other day, Kado compared the Toronto of old to a bus terminal.

It’s becoming one of those vibrant cities that people talk about existing elsewhere. Over the span of the 15 years or so I’ve lived here, or since I was old enough to go downtown by myself, I’ve noticed not just the obvious things people complain about—gentrification in Parkdale or whatever, Liberty Village is being ruined by development—but just the number of people who are out on the street, who enjoy being in the city doing things. When I was in high school and went to see shows at the Music Hall on the Danforth to see shows, it was this horrible dead zone that was creepy and scary to walk around in, because it was empty. The streets would be dead by 10pm. It wasn’t a sketchy neighbourhood by any means, but it was depressing and creepy. It felt weird walking around, so desolate. It felt like a suburban residential neighbourhood where everyone goes to bed—but it was pretty much in the middle of downtown. Now, you go there and it’s clogged with people. Parents are out at 11pm with strollers, and I’m thinking, those kids should be in bed!

Musically, what do you think helped turn the tide? Or were you aware of it at the time?

I remember reading articles when I first started playing music, that talked about bands like the Hidden Cameras—who I was friends with, so I saw their very early shows, even though I wasn’t so much a part of the music scene. Articles talked about the Barcelona Pavilion as helping to turn the tide of people dancing at shows, like it was a new approach to more participatory music. To me, it seemed like all the shows we played at were like that. It didn’t occur to me that it was a new thing. Certainly, when people talk about the heyday of 2003, I remember bands that I thought were amazing that seemed so new and different to me, because I didn’t have a context to know whether they were new and different. I wasn’t aware that it was a tide that was turning until much later, when I got the context from other people who had been at it for much longer than me.

Could you describe the Toronto is the Best release party, on February 29, 2004?

That was one of my favourite days ever. We booked ourselves to play second, after the Singing Saws, so we had to be there at 9 in the morning. By the time we went on, there were already 20 or 30 people there—enough that I was surprised that there was a crowd at 9.30 in the morning. I stayed for the entire show. I danced more than I think I have ever or will between the hours of 9 and 5. I had been on the catering team—our friend Todd made all these amazing vegan snacks for everyone, so he went all out and we prepared days in advance. The atmosphere at that show was so positive. People were excited to have a daytime show, which is happening a bit more now. People were excited to see that many bands at one show, over a dozen. It was such a celebratory mood. Everyone was so pumped about what was going on. I met a lot of new people who were almost overwhelming with their enthusiasm, and would talk to me for 45 minutes about how inspired they were and how happy they were to have found this thing. I was surprised at how much of an impact it seemed to be having on people who were newer to the scene than I had been.

That fascinating to me, too, because people from the outside like to accuse it of being an insider clique, a group of friends.

Of course a large number of people there were friends or at least people you recognize from other shows, but there were a lot of new people who heard about it and thought it sounded like a neat idea and were blown away by how awesome that day was and how positive the feelings in the room were. To me it was an inspiring day. It validated a lot of my feelings about Toronto, that it could come off so great without any cynicism.

I’m fascinated by how contagious the Torontopian concept is, when I think about the Track and Field or Living Room Festivals, or parallels like the Ford Plant in Brantford. And I was reading an article in the Discorder from Vancouver drawing parallels between Torontopia and stuff that’s happening in Victoria right now. But do you think there’s a dangerous geocentrism to the term Torontopia that makes it easy for outsiders to dismiss?

I think that’s been the only real problem in people misunderstanding what we mean by it. It’s nice to hear that there are places that hear the term and apply it to where they are. It’s a perfect combination of words. It fits nicely with Toronto, but a criticism we’ve heard repeatedly is the assumption that Toronto is some kind of utopia that is better than any other place on earth. That’s kind of ridiculous. But it’s this sense that wherever you are, you can make it awesome and better than it is and start the projects that are going to make your town worth staying in. It’s great that people are adopting that idea. That was the whole point in the first place.

Do you think that such a productive scene eventually creates a counter-intuitive complacency among audience members and potential participants? That’s always a paradox of living in a large urban centre: ‘there’s so much going on, I will just consume instead of create.’

True. That’s where Torontopia meets bad bands, in a way. The initial feeling behind this whole Torontopian thing, when the word was first being used, was that there was a great sense of the music scene being very united, and everyone being of the same mind about what we were doing and how we wanted to accomplish it. Everyone was friends and everyone was always at everyone else’s shows. It was extremely community-oriented and a single unit, which is ridiculous to say because there are tons of other little music scenes in the city that never overlapped with ours. It’s incredibly self-centered to say that the whole independent music scene in Toronto was united. There was a sense that that was what was happening, what we were moving towards.

Now there are all these little factions again. Bad Bands divides the people who are into that from people who are into another thing. Then there’s a third faction of people who are into something else entirely. There is more animosity and more debate about what things mean and what we want to accomplish. That in a way is healthier and will ultimately breed a more sustainable community. It also fights that tendency to become complacent.

There is stuff to argue about. Most people feel strongly about one thing or another, and if there is always that debate going on then it’s just a matter of redefining what Torontopia will mean in the future. Currently, we’re embroiled in too much semantics about what it means, and it’s not the point at all. If it starts becoming a thing again that symbolizes our sense that we’re improving our surroundings and being creative in new ways, it will morph into a new thing.

A lot of talk lately has accused the Torontopian concept as not being very inclusive at all, and how could it ever be in such a large, diverse city, etc. There will always be critics who will suggest that a utopian model could never live up to all of its potential—and of course it can’t. There will always be different factions, and not as much cross-pollination as you think.

Yeah, but any term with a utopian deal always gets that kind of criticism.

-end-

Torontopia, part two: Steve Kado

More notes from the Torontopia files today.

Steve Kado is the main man behind the Blocks Recording Club, a bonafide collective run by members of the Creeping Nobodies, the Phonemes and Final Fantasy and others. A couple of years ago Kado was in nearly a dozen bands, including the Barcelona Pavilion and his solo project The Blanket. Blocks also had an insane release schedule in 2004, numbering nearly 15 releases. After realising that didn't have any time left over to have a life, Kado scaled back to being a hype man in Ninja High School and the drummer for Jon Rae and the River (he plays on the new album, but left just before its release), while trying to get a grip on the runaway success of Final Fantasy.

Personal history: I first met Kado on the street outside the Family Thrift Store in Guelph while he was getting his hair cut by Jenny Mitchell of the Barmitzvah Brothers. I had just seen the Barcelona Pavilion play (my first time) and was trying to get him to give me copies of their EPs to bring back to Brave New Waves. (promo has never been his strong point.) Later that year, the entire band (plus the Barmitzvah Brothers) would crash in my kitchen in Montreal when they played the BNW 20th anniversary party. Kado stayed at my place a couple of times after that when he had a gig in town; sometimes when I wasn't even there. Long discussions and debates often ensued into the night, even though I barely knew the guy. Blocks cohort James Anderson, who also stayed one night when Lenin I Shumov was in town, asked us, "How do you guys know each other?" We both responded, "We don't, really."

He's an extremely intelligent, magnetic, confident and passionate chap, and even when I vehemently disagree with him he remains intensely likeable. As his statements below and the mere existence of Blocks illustrate, he's an idealist. Lately this has made him feel like he has to draw lines in the sand, a move I find unfortunate but somewhat understandable.

But in a town where people have always talked more about ideas than actually implementing them, Kado is the embodiment of Torontopian ideals in terms of his slogan: "don't try, do!"

Kado's quotes in my Torontopia article--again, if you haven't read it already, I recommend you do so before diving in here--were the most controversial parts of the article... at least in the insular world of Stillepost, the equivalent of the high school cafeteria in the Toronto music scene.

Many wondered why Kado seemed so negative about the present day and already nostalgic for 2004. To me, this seems obvious: 2004, for him, was full of ideas and action and optimism. In 2006, he's had to face up to the realities of doing something he never wanted to do: running a real record label. Which, despite its co-op structure, Blocks has been forced to become on some level, only to deal with the demand for Final Fantasy. (Spotted in a Leaside HMV last night: He Poos Clouds priced as part of a 2 for $25 promotion.)

On top of that, his retreat from the stage (in order to have a life) has coincided with more mainstream discussion of the Torontopian ideals he championed (including in the New York Times), and it sounds like he's upset that Arts and Crafts is (likely unwillingly) dominating that discussion, and not more grassroots, DIY folks... like himself. Needless to say, this is all conjecture on my part.

Many people wanted to know: what's his beef with Broken Social Scene? You'd have to ask him. The band never came up in our discussion directly, on or off the record, though it's obvious from some of his references that he's referring to them (the Olympic Island show). I'll take full blame for baiting him on Metric (a band whose music I've despised since day one), but I didn't include that part in the article. I was as surprised by the tone as anyone else.

I honestly don't know who he was referring to when he said he was "being ripped off while having the same group of MuchMusic video bands rebrand themselves as a Toronto community of artists." You'd have to ask him. I didn't, because I didn't want the article to be a bitchfest and I had a lot of other things I wanted to talk about.

As it is, the discussion and all its tangents ran an hour an a half. I foolishly parked on Bloor (I was on my way out of town, otherwise I would have biked) and got my car towed because we finished after 4PM. The bill was $160. Can I write that off as a business expense come tax time?

Here we go:

---

Steve Kado

July 18, 2006

Setting: The Blocks office, inside the Tranzac Club

You’re credited with coining the term. Is this true?
I didn't invent the term. I forget his name. I played a game of fototag at St. Lawrence Market with this guy, who was a friend of Rob Judge's. He had this idea for a hilarious magazine called Torontopia. I thought it was a funny word. It would be about how awesome Toronto was, but it would be about really boring stuff. It would be based on Japanese magazines that freak out about 'stuff,' about the corner of Grace of Dundas or something, which has a church and a convenience store and nothing else. That was his deal.
I definitely brought it from there to, like, Jonny Dovercourt and Carl and whomever.

Jonny says he heard it from you in 02.

I would be the source for that, but I didn't invent it.

So the originator thought it was entirely a joke.
He thought it was a joke, and it's funny to me, too. Both of us felt the same way about Toronto, that what's so good about it is what's so bad about it. I don't want a more beautiful city. I don't want waterfront redevelopment. I don't want anything to work any better than it does. In some respects I feel really conservative about it, but Toronto was the capital of gross alternative rock and MuchMusic video bands, so you had that gross sheen.
Sure, I Mother Earth was based out of Toronto, but it was a part of this hilarious other world that had nothing to do with anything. In and of itself it was so douche-y and lame that it didn't draw any attention from the States or anything. Nobody said, 'Woah, this is where I Mother Earth is from?! Wicked' It was our lousy generic commerical music. Otherwise it was a town that was mostly full of immigrants but still had this dose of Protestant restraint from being the northern capital of the British Empire for a while. It had a good blend of stuff.
I torrented all five seasons of Kids in the Hall recently. What blows my mind is that it was funny to anyone outside of Toronto. It's the most Toronto-y show I've ever seen. The sad part is that it was shot between 1989-1994, I think. The bumpers of that show are these Super-8 shots of stuff, and you can recognize all this stuff from a Toronto before there were Starbucks, before downtown chain stuff got big, before whole neighbourhoods changed drastically.
Toronto was a way less douche-y place, as an urban area. The process of it getting douched up has a lot to do with very Torontonian insecurity. I don't feel alarmed by it. I don't feel this change is irreversible. It's part of the same process that has always led to Toronto building a CN Tower or City Hall. If we weren't screwing things up all the time, it wouldn't be Toronto, it would be a much more successful, smooth-running city and we wouldn't have these problems.
Right now we're decimating all our major public art institutions by putting unnecessary extensions on them. This is disastrous from a personnel standpoint. This will ruin both collections, the ability to display them, and the people running things will be sacrificed hugely in order to facilitate the construction of wings provided by wealthy donors to house collections that aren't necessarily of any exterior importance.
Ken Thomson's Cornelius Krieghoff collection is the impetus for the AGO needing all this extra space. Otherwise, I would feel it was fine for size. It's small enough to do in a day, which for a displayed collection I think is delightful. Cornelius Krieghoff might be important in the history of Canada, and his work belongs in the National Gallery in Ottawa, but as art, in the history of art, it's not a major chapter in Canadian art by any means. Really, Canadian art gains international significance with people like Jeff Wall, 1989. Other people before that, sure. Really, we haven't been producing. That's what the AGO should be focusing on, other than the requisite amount of Group of Seven stuff for tourists.
(more talk like this for another five minutes)
It's good that Toronto is doing what it does best: self-sabotage and screwing things up. I can't wait until the condos down by the lake are crime hives full of guns, like the Don Valley condos all turned out to be.

Is there a similar self-sabotage at work artistically at all?

My proximity to it makes me feel more defensive, and less likely to have that same 'it will all wash out in 20 years' attitude. I feel like me and my friends have been stolen from by a group of largely older… basically being ripped off while having the same group of MuchMusic video bands rebrand themselves as a Toronto community of artists. I feel a bit dinked around by that on a personal level. But I felt way more down about that in 2005. Now I feel like lines have been drawn again and everyone knows what's what, who's on what side of what line. Nothing's so weird anymore. We have our new Watchmen now.

Which are who, Metric?

I’d say maybe Stars.

Ouch.

Metric are another kettle of fish entirely. The Watchmen never got to open for the Rolling Stones. So the scale and level of the lameness is what's so astonishing, and what is maybe a bit shocking. It's not something I'd wish for myself, it's not like I feel they're stealing my opening spot for the Rolling Stones, but that it's something no one should want. It's something that no one from Toronto should need.

On a smaller level, I was reading the Wavelength program for February 06, which was some anniversary—perhaps their 300^th show. There was a description for a panel called Torontopia vs. Dystopia that read: “Are instances of violence and hard drugs ruining the scene?” And I wasn’t sure what that was about.

I would say your shock and surprise at that is: is undeserved multimarket commercial success bad for the Toronto music scene, for artists who aren't even a part of the Toronto music scene. The attention comes from without, based on people who have nothing to do with Toronto.

Who has nothing to do with Toronto?
I would say Metric definitely has nothing to do with Toronto. They were easily trying to make it elsewhere, and moving back to Toronto seems to have been largely a failure, to pull in the success they wanted in L.A. When things started turning around here, it seems like they said, 'Well, instead of going to L.A. to make it, we'll go to Toronto to make it.' That kind of thing. It seemed like a more savvy decision. It's a place they occasionally live in between touring. I can't sense any affection or sense of place or anything Toronto-y about what they do. Not that they have to sing about Toronto, but you can just tell sometimes. You can often tell when bands are from New York or Montreal and Toronto. With Montreal it's often disguised by the fact that they're really from Victoria or Ottawa. Then, they sound like an Ottawa band who burned all their bridges and moved to Montreal.

I don’t hear anything particular Montreal or Toronto in a lot of these bands, because they’re often made up of immigrants to the city.
There's something in the desires of the people who move to the place, regardless of where they're from.

Like people who move to Olympia wanting to sound like everything on K Records?

People who want to make certain things or certain ways of living will move to Montreal to live the Montreal way. It shows. Another wicked thing about watching five seasons of Kids in the Hall is hearing the same Shadowy Men song over and over. They are the most Toronto band ever.

They’ve all lived here for many years [ed note: bassist Reid Diamond passed away in 2001, R.I.P.], but they’re actually from Calgary.
Not all of them, though.

Uh, at least two of them definitely are.
Well, they sound the most Toronto-y. Possibly because I was between the ages of nine and 14 and forming all my impressions of music around me in those years, but the association with landscape is huge. Brian was playing guitar at Graffiti's one day when I was shopping in Kensington Market, and they had the front door open so you could hear it for at least a quarter of a block, doing exactly what he does. The sun was setting, and it was the Al Waxman neighbourhood, and I got all teared up thinking how Toronto-y it was.

Shadowy Men strikes me as a great band who did unique, special things...

They were a different kind of instrumental rock band, definitely.

I meant more the creative packaging and overall approach to marketing themselves.

Oh, definitely.

But that didn’t seem to be contagious in the rest of the Toronto scene at the time. I’ve heard you talk before about the all-ages scene in the mid-90s and how you grew up with Grasshopper, and then later on finding out about Fifth Column. There always seem to be…

Flare-ups. I got really distressed in 2005. 2003 and early 2004 was really awesome, and I felt like a lot of energy and ideas sprung up. By the end of 2004, things definitely mellowed down and got a bit worse. I thought it was a little dip, but all of 2005 was hideous.

Where there signposts or events you're thinking of?
No, it's the lack of signposts and events that's the problem to my mind. Not to say that nothing good happened or no one did good work, but what was special about one time was definitely not special about the other time. Possibly that's just for me. Blocks output definitely slowed, but that was more 'Steve becomes reasonable as a human being.' It was more the hideous awareness of what I was actually doing and what the real ramifications of lots of decisions I was making actually were. Once that knowledge really hit home, we had to make a sudden shift to a more sustainable output from where we were. Also because frankly I didn't have the energy to keep doing things the way I was. Blocks output slowed, and people keep asking me when I'll do another Toronto is Great compilation, and I say, 'Well, I'll do it when Toronto is great.' I can wait. I'm patient. I'm not going to blow my load on 'Toronto is okay' or 'Toronto is fine.'

And you probably don’t want to repeat yourself with the exact same bands.

Well, a lot of them aren’t around anyway. But some of them are. The other thing about that compilation is that it was bands who weren’t already recording things. It was bands before they got a record together. It was much more responsive. There are all kinds of bands I don’t see these days because I work too much. At the same time, I think fewer people are playing shows without having any kind of recordings to represent themselves. Which is unfortunate, because it means that ideas don’t get worked out and that laboratory time seems to be missing.

They have to have something to put up on MySpace right away.

Exactly. [sarcastically] There’s no point in being a band unless you have a MySpace page.

Does the existence of Torontopia create a counter-intuitive complacency, where people see things happening and figure they don’t have to do anything?

That might have happened. Possibly that was the case. What was exciting about what some people were calling Torontopia at the time was that it had to do with doing things for yourself. The only way to participate in that experience was to do something for yourself. You really couldn’t relax about it and think, ‘Don’t worry, they have it taken care of.’ Because then you weren’t having any of the fun. Then you weren’t invited to the party. Maybe in some people’s minds that wasn’t the case, but in the one that was the most meaningful to me, and in the part of that world where my hopes rise and fall for Toronto, that’s more the case. There aren’t that many non-participants and spectators. If anything, that’s what my problem with a lot of the commercial-type stuff is, is that it doesn’t encourage any behaviour at all. It encourages you to buy your ticket to the giant show on the Island, it encourages you to get sunstroke with a bazillion other people…

Sure, but people got sunstroke at Track and Field [a two-day festival/camp-out held on a farm outside of Guelph in 2004 and 2005, hosted by the Social Arts Club and featuring many Blocks/Torontopia bands.]

But Track and Field, at least 50 per cent of the people were playing there, which is significant. As well, Track and Field is definitely not for the money. Not that it makes it better or worse, it’s not a terrible idea to make money, but Track and Field is a very honest and sometimes gruelling celebration of doing things yourself and making your own stuff. That’s not what a giant concert event is. That’s about purchasing an entertainment product and having minimal expectations of it: ‘I expect at least this level of quality.’ And those things are met or not met. It’s not the same thing at all. I don’t think it’s the kind of engagement that I think is important, socially.

I want to talk about February 29, 2004.

When we put out the Blocks compilation?

How did that day go? What was the feeling in the room?
It was my birthday, I turned six. I freaked out about it pretty hard, because I had done lots of the recording for the compilation in addition to assembling and manufacturing it. The month leading up to it was insane and the show was very ambitious and involved waking up really early. It was 10 until 5.

Did everyone play?

Everyone who was supposed to played. But not everyone on the compilation, no. It was wild. There was terrible coffee. We had excellent food. Two days before that I helped assemble food with Todd Lawrence-Parsons, who’s an excellent vegan cook. We had millions of bands. We had piles of junk to sell. It was an overwhelming experience for me. I don’t know what other people felt about it. I remember feeling mostly annoyed by the things that I had to fix the whole time. I remember the night before I went to bed really early because I need a good night’s sleep. Then in the middle of the night, [roommate] Owen [Pallett, Final Fantasy] broke into my room, ‘Steve, they need to hear the Hank record!’ I’m like, ‘What are you talking about? Who does?’ There was an Expensive Shit [DJ night] the night before, and [DJ] Luca, who was our other roommate, didn’t bring the first Hank CD, Ackril Venning. So Owen decided he would go home and scream at me about it. I said, ‘You dumb shit. Get the fuck out of my room! You stupid, stupid shit!’ I was so angry. Basically I stayed up all night stewing at how pissed I was at Owen. Then I got up at 6 and started dragging stuff to Cinecycle. Martin [of Cinecycle] was very patient, he was great. No complaints about Cinecycle. But I’m not the right person to ask about that. To me, it was chaotic and overwhelming all the time. I remember that I didn’t work out the stage plot stuff very well, so there was too much gear swapping and moving around, which was really dumb on my part.

When it came out, the title alone, did it appear inevitably self-congratulatory to people outside of Toronto? Could they not help but act a bit defensive?

It definitely didn’t sell too well outside of Toronto, in Canada. In the States, no one gives a shit either way. In Canada, everyone hates Toronto, right? I don’t know if it seemed self-congratulatory, or whether it was more of the awesome fact that they hate to know about all the time.

I remember when Barcelona Pavilion played Montreal for the first time, you were all wearing tacky Toronto tourist t-shirts. This was at the Brave New Waves show.

I forget that show entirely. We were all sick and in lousy shape. I remember that being the worst show ever. At our Pop Montreal show there, most of the people there who weren’t French speaking were from Toronto, expats who now live in Montreal. I remember doing a shout-out to the various surburbs of Toronto during the show, which really angered Efrim Menuck [of Godspeed, Silver Mt. Zion].

Who's from Toronto!

Yeah, he went to Rosedale High School. Sorry, Forest Hill Collegiate. He went to school with Matias. He said, ‘You’re not in Toronto anymore!’ I forgot how the heckle went down. But the Brave New Waves show sucked, and we knew it, and it was recorded for posterity and broadcast and it made my flesh crawl.

Recently, googling the word and researching this article, I came across references to several external movements that transcended the geographic origin of the term.

I don’t think there’s anything definitive about the idea of Torontopia or Victopia or whatever. In a way, what’s hurt indie rock so much is that it’s not related to punk rock anymore at all. Most of the American Analog Set or Death Cab for Cutie school of indie rock is so divorced, not only in its sound but in its production and goals, from punk rock that it’s really just regular pop music. Whereas something like Yo La Tengo, at least there is that connection to punk rock even if the music doesn’t happen to sound like punk rock anymore.
There’s a long tradition of that anyway. How many Crass albums actually sound like punk records? Two. Then they have this totally weird art rock phase that ends up with a ten minute instrumental on the last record about quitting your band and giving up. How wild is that? But they’re a punk band for sure.
It’s the separation from punk rock goals. One of the things about punk rock that’s pretty rad is when Maximum Rock’n’Roll does scene reports, and everyone’s scene is the best scene. It’s not about DC or Olympia, it’s about Columbus, Ohio or whatever and that’s all there and the understanding that there’s a network of these things existing. That’s what lacking from contemporary indie rock. There was a time when there wasn’t much of a difference economically.

When you talk about ‘every local scene is great’ there’s something refreshingly mundane about that. People’s answers are always the same throughout the years, no matter whether you’re talking about Halifax or Winnipeg or Guelph or Victoria. They say, “We’re so isolated here and there’s nothing else here to do, so because I live in Winnipeg I’m going to make the most fucked-up electronic music I can.”

In Canada it’s different than the States, in that the claim of geographic isolation has a lot more play. It’s much more true. In Winnipeg, there really isn’t anything going on for eight hours around them.

I’ve heard people make the same argument about Toronto being isolated too, which I don’t really buy, myself. Toronto isn’t isolated. Toronto just has this huge self-negation because they know everyone in Canada hates them. Most people who move here do so somewhat reluctantly. Combine that with the ridiculous boosterism of the world-class crowd…

You’re on to something there. A weird negation plays a large part in the Toronto psyche, exhibited by its insecurity and financial power that allows it to put douche extensions on the ROM. ‘We have this great institution—let’s destroy it by putting a large crystal on top of it.’ Why are you doing that? ‘Because we feel unsure of ourselves.’ That’s so Toronto.
The thing with Toronto is that especially if you’re from here or doing music here, it’s a really small town. There are two giant high schools, Central and Northern, with a population of several thousand each. Between those two, if you grew up here, you have a one-person connection to just about everyone else your age in the city. Invariably, people who go to those shows come from all over the city for specific programs … I’d go to band camp every summer, and I was really interested in art schools on the periphery of Toronto. From any of these hub high schools, there would be a group of kids who would splinter off and go to alternative schools. It’s a small town. If you grow up here, you can know a significant connection to everyone your own age. This happens to me all the time now. I run into people from high school a lot, and people who recognize me from there. People I didn’t know then.
In that respect, Toronto is a really small town if you’ve only ever lived here. And everything coming through here when I was a kid was disgusting, like I Mother Earth…

Coming through here or coming from here?

No, from here. All the bands would come through here, sure, but they’d only come to a Lee’s Palace type venue. They wouldn’t email you and say, ‘You like music, do you want to put on my show?’ Not that there’s anything wrong with being a commercial show promoter, but it’s removed from the immediacy of a scene that handles these things, professionals that handles these things.

So when someone says ‘we’re all alone here’ or some variation of that: we are all alone here, in the center of evil in Canada, in the heart of darkness. We’re regular guys who feel a part of an extended neighbourhood, you’re connected to this place and these people, and then there’s this other stuff that has nothing to do with you that runs the whole thing and represents you to the outside world. So that people say, ‘Oh Toronto, that’s where Our Lady Peace is from, or the Barenaked Ladies are from.’ Actually the Barenaked Ladies are kind of a touchy subject, because they actually were a grassroots thing. I mean, they’re terrible, but it is what it is. You can’t say, ‘those jerks!’ But Our Lady Peace is a good example. So yeah, and Toronto is where the MuchMusic building is. And we say, ‘Yes, this is where the bank is who made the decision to close all of your farms. We’re from the place where some guy in a blue suit fucked up your fishery and then closed it. It’s got nothing to do with us.’ So here we are in this small town knowing each other, but at the same time it is the biggest city in Canada but all that stuff is fighting us.

I wanted to ask you about Berlin. I know that at one point you wanted to move to Berlin, but after going there you found all these amazing venues but it didn’t have the bands to support it. Then you came back to Toronto…

And found it was actually so much better. In Berlin, everything was really easy to do. They had surplus infrastructure. It was cool, too, it wasn’t a bunch of empty strip malls. It was crazy communist junk that you could inhabit; they were begging for economic redevelopment in 90 per cent of those areas.

They’d say, ‘If you open a shop on this street, the Chamber of Commerce of Berlin would pay all of your bills for six months.’ So guys had all these dumb businesses that were cool, but there was nothing riding on it. If their sweatbands-only store failed, they’d start a headbands-only store and see how that went. Or they’d start a record label.

I went to a lot of small shows. My goal wasn’t to see Peaches in Berlin. I got enough of Peaches when she was in Toronto. I was there for six weeks, and for the first two weeks I picked up every flyer and checked everything out. And I met people who brought me to other things. There was a really healthy older, improvised, avant-garde music scene, which was to be expected and what I was interested in.

In terms of bands, I went to a festival similar to the Toronto is Great festival, which is held in an old washing machine factory just outside of Berlin. Lots of those bands weren’t from Berlin. Or those that were were things like the Puppetmastaz, which was pretty good. There was this band Puma, and I would be proud to see a band like Puma anytime. Puma was amazing. It was these two sisters who always broke up the band, always fighting. The thinner, prettier one, and the frumpier, dark-haired one, and this guy Jan who played drums. The sisters were always saying it was their last show ever. They were the best, but they were the only band that was actually like anything from Toronto. They were the only band that anyone was really excited about, because they were head and shoulders above the other bands.

When you went to Berlin did you have fantasies about what it would be like? Were you down on Toronto at the time?

I was getting more mature about Toronto. I used to think that I would get the fuck out of here as soon as I found a university program that would get me out of here, or as soon as university was done.

What turned it around, the Hidden Cameras?

To an extent, sure. But my going to Berlin I think was before I was in the Hidden Cameras, or just at the same time. Was I in the Hidden Cameras in 2001?

You were. I saw you with them in the fall of 01.

Yes, I was. That’s right. I was in Berlin and missed them playing their first Pride show. So to an extent it was the Hidden Cameras, and it was also realising who was around and what all these people were like and how awesome it was that we all lived in a village together, and that village was full of wicked, awesome people.

Also realising what proximity to all these institutions means. The isolation argument is not true. You can read any book here, look at whatever art you want, if you wait long enough, any painting you want to see will drop by. Any foreign movie you want to see, you eventually will. Now that I spend a lot of time in New York, I appreciate the convenience of Toronto because sure, New York has everything you want, but it’s so much more work to get it. It’s somewhere in this gigantic metropolis. In Toronto, it’s all about a twenty-minute bike ride away no matter where you are. It’s convenient.

I was coming to appreciate the world I had here. It was too easy for people to do stuff in Berlin, so nothing was riding on any of it. Stuff could collapse if it needed to.

Is that not true of half the bands on Toronto is the Best?

Hmmm. Yes and no. I wouldn’t say the motivation for starting a band here is because you couldn’t open a sweatband store. A band is easy to do, and if you’re going to start and stop one, then fine. But more ideas and less opportunity means you get better stuff; you get the best ideas. Whereas lots of opportunity and few ideas doesn’t help you out at all. The best DIY stuff I saw in Berlin was all outside of music, like squats that have been running for 20 years.

I wanted to ask about infrastructure. You were talking before about flare-ups in Toronto, and how things start and then stop for whatever reason, people get burnt out or whatever. Whereas Blocks is trying to not only tap the energy that’s going on now, but set itself up as something sustainable and not linked to one or two people.

That’s a conscious choice. The idea to make a thing that will be a long-term thing to counteract the fact that historically that’s not how things happen here. Maybe in doing so, strike the first blow against evil that will sustain itself. That’s the reason to do anything, to do better rather than worse. I like to frame it in really simplistic terms like battling evil.

Thanks, George.

Yeah, it’s obviously more complicated than that. Having a reductive and simplistic way of thinking about things clarifies how you feel about stuff. I think acknowledging too many layers of complexity leads to you making excuses to yourself to do stuff that you would never have approved of doing a month before. Keeping a solid idea of what’s right and wrong, although limiting in many respects, is really key to actually making this work and not fuck up. The goal is a long-term goal. I’d like there to be a Blocks for decades. If I give up, or if I don’t get things set up properly and then I move on—which should happen eventually—and then the next person gives up, it would be a bigger failure because it would be a failure of a projected long-term project.

Are there parallels to small presses and other artist institutions?

We manage to sustain that kind of stuff in Toronto, with stuff like YYZ which has been around forever, and Coach House Press, and things that gain the status of institutions.

Do you think it’s the trivialization of music that has prevented this from happening before? Literature is a recognized art form, whereas indie rock is a bunch of slackers with Casios.

Part of it is that music isn’t real. Music is automatically time-based and over once it’s done. In that respect, the idea of a recording industry is not the same thing as a book publishing industry. The shape and structure of text as a form has been longer, and up until very recently, books are books. It’s a totally different deal. Art is art, and it’s equipped with presence and this thing is often bound up in a specific object.

Music is something people do, it’s a social activity. Recordings are this novel invention of the 20^th century to present or promote this social interaction. Therefore they don’t have object status of themselves. They had more object status when they weren’t immediately reproduceable, as analog media. But now with digital media they’re right where they belong as being ephemeral.

There shouldn’t be a recording industry, and it’s not in anyone’s interest that there be a professional recording industry. Not in any musician’s interest, anyway. It’s in the interest of entertainment lawyers. Music is a social behaviour, it’s hive stuff. The kind of stuff that aliens are watching us for as an interesting behaviour: ‘What are they doing this for?’

[We then spoke for about another 20 minutes on the social nature of music and its relation to the so-called music industry. I didn’t transcribe this because I knew it had nothing to do with the Torontopia article I was writing. Perhaps one day I’ll revisit this conversation for the purposes of this blog.]