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Posts Tagged ‘Radio3’

Tonight in Vancouver at the fabulous Commodore Ballroom, the 3 finalists in The Peak Performance Project put on an stellar final showcase before the prizes were handed out. Many thanks are due to the Peak radio station for sponsoring and Music BC for facilitating this most welcome new, yearly addition to the Vancouver music scene. The bill featured We Are The City, The Left and Bend Sinister, with each band taking home a share of $275,000 at the end of the evening.

The final placement of each the bands went in the reverse order of the performances with Bend Sinister placing third and receiving $50,000, The Left finishing second, netting them $75,000 and We Are The City ending up the big winners, snagging $150,000. Were I to have my druthers, Bend Sinister would have come out on top, with We Are The City and The Left rounding out second and third place, but now is not a time for bitterness. It is one for celebration of the amazing talent that this region has musically and for the strong commercial viability it has as well.

A healthy round of applause to those who made this event happen and congratulations to all the bands.

Post Good Will Post Editorializing: I wrote earlier that now is a time for celebration and not bitterness, so I hope this does not come across as mean spirited; if you are like me and strongly believe that Bend Sinister should have placed, if not first in this competition, then most certainly came in second ahead of the Left, make sure to visit CBC Radio3, Canada’s Independent Music Superstation. The Peak is an amazing radio station that deserves nothing but plaudits for all the heavy lifting they have done in their first year of existence. They are however, still a very young entity. Radio3 is there pointing the way. They have been playing Bend Sinister for a few years now, and addition to each of the other finalists also having music available for the Radio3 webstream (which means you can listen to it on demand and add it to any number of your own personal playlists) many other Peak Performance Project participants like Adaline and Ben Sigston also have freed their music to R3. With Radio3 ‘Breaking New Sound’ and The Peak featuring our great Canadian talent in playlists that feature the biggest bands in the world, nothing but good things are possible. That is a public-private partnership that is very easy to get behind.

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The turning of the calendar from December to January will always bring out any number of lists that vary in their usefulness. One that I will happily pass along is a retrospectus of the decade that was 2000 through 2009 in

Grantius Augustus Lawrencius - Ensuring that Canada sparkles with amazing homegrown music

Canadian Independent music from CBC Radio3‘s Grant Lawrence. And what a seminal decade it was! This week and the next’s episodes of Grant’s extremely successful podcast feature his picks for the best Canadian Indie songs from 2000-2009. One of the first things Grant notes is how the great success of Canadian musicians both at home and abroad this past decade has allowed for vehicles like Radio3 to not only be formed, but thrive. Without further ado, here is the first half of the list, starting at number 20 (and get the podcast!):

#20 – The Wet Secrets – Secret March from 2007. You can purchase their album from Six Shooter records here.

The rest of the list is after the jump to avoid spoilers for any who might be interested and would like to simply listen to the whole podcast.

A short while back on the CBC Radio3 blog, host Tariq Hussein linked to a blog post by Carey Mercer, the lead singer of the band Frog Eyes. In this post he was lamenting the fact that artists performing at events organized by VANOC during the Olympics have been required to sign a contract with the following clause contained within:

The artist shall at all times refrain from making any negative or derogatory remarks respecting VANOC (the organizing committee), the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Olympic movement generally, Bell and/or other sponsors associated with VANOC.”

Putting on my contrarian hat, (not for arguments sake, but because I truly had a differing opinion) I commented that I did not see anything controversial with this contract, as it seems like a very standard business transaction to require that someone you are hiring in a promotional context actually does promotional work. If keeping an anti-Olympic platform is more important to any artist then they do not have to sign the contract. If you’ve read any of my other posts you might already know that I am not oblivious to problems and issues that the Olympics bring/heighten/highlight (extra emphasis on highlight…our cities problems would be extant even if we were not hosting the Olympics.) My reading of the clause in question still leaves plenty of room open for artists to advocate for whatever cause they would like. One can refrain from making “negative or derogatory” comments about the games and their organizers and still promote organizations that work on a given cause ie. homelessness. Something I have argued for previously is for concerned citizens to co-opt the platform the games provide, rather than just maligning them. This is a perfect example of this. If any one has any ideas on how to get in touch with any of the artists slated to perform during Olympic events I would be very interested in seeing if any would want to champion one cause or another that is pertinent to Vancouver/BC (Canadian Indie artists seem to be a pretty caring and compassionate group on the whole.)

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"I love this man!" ~Damian Abrahams. We all do Pink Eyes..

Who are these two beautiful men celebrating with a kiss and just what are they celebrating? On the right is CBC Radio3 host and Canadian music maven Grant Lawrence. On the left, Damian ‘Pink Eyes’ Abraham, lead singer of the Toronto based punk band Fucked Up. Damian (with Grant along for the ride whether he likes it or not) is reacting to the just announced news moments before that his band’s album The Chemistry of Common Life had won the 2009 Polaris Music Prize. The Polaris Prize is an annual prize awarded to an album of Canadian content based solely on the artistic merit of the work; sales figures or mass appeal do not hold sway over the prize. Aside from being one of the most prestigious musical prizes in Canada, the Polaris Prize also comes with $20,000.

Those with an eye and ear on the Canadian music scene may be questioning why I am writing about Fucked Up’s win now; they won the award back on September 21st. If you had the pleasure of watching the Polaris Prize Awards Gala (still available for viewing here) you know that after Fucked Up was named as the winner, Damian (post smooch with Mr. Lawrence) announced that his band would be using the prize money to produce a single in time for Christmas with all proceeds going to some very deserving charities. Just over two months later and Fucked Up have shown to be true to their word; the band, along with some friends have released their version of “Do They Know It’s Chirstmas?” which is available through iTunes here. Proceeds from the sales will be spread across three charities. From Fucked Up’s blog:

Justice for Missing and Murdered Ingigenous Women
Missing Justice is a grassroots solidarity collective based in Montreal that works to eliminate violence and discrimination against Indigenous women living in Quebec. The collective seeks to consult and collaborate with Indigenous communities and organizations to foster understanding and dispel harmful stereotypes commonly held in regards to Indigenous women who are targets of violence. As a collective, our overall strategy for achieving these goals includes popular education initiatives, media outreach, coalition-building, case work, poster awareness campaigns, research projects, information sharing, publishing and broadcasting, political demonstrations, and direct action.

DTES Power of Women Group
A grassroots group of DTES women who work to empower, educate and
mobilize around issues affecting their neighbourhood such as poverty,
housing, and violence against women.

Sisters in Spirit
The main objective of the Native Women’s Association of Canada – Sisters In Spirit initiative is to address violence against Aboriginal (First Nations, Inuit and Métis) women, particularly racialized and/or sexualized violence, that is, violence perpetrated against Aboriginal women because of their gender and Aboriginal identity. Specifically, to increase public understanding and knowledge at a national level of the impact of racialized, sexualized violence against Aboriginal women often leading to their disappearance and death.

In February the band will release their latest 7″ single with this Christmas track serving as the B-Side. All proceeds from the sale of this record will also go to the above charities.

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This is the third in a series of posts highlighting the merits of governement supporting artistic endeavours.  I talked about Canada’s government funded public broadcaster, and more specifically CBC Radio 3 here and about Canadian Content, or CanCon broadcasting rules here.  This post will look at direct subsidies for Canadian art, music in particular.

There are many aspects of the social sphere where it has been decided that to allow ‘pure’ market forces to exert complete control over these areas would lead to undesired consequences. Policing, firefighting, emergency paramedics, K-12 education and health care (as long as you are not in the US) all fall into this category.  Arts and culture do as well.  Canada’s close proximity and interconnectedness to the US, the worlds largest cultural exporter, make this a necessity; if our artists were unsupported by the government, the dynamics of the 300 million strong marketplace to the south would trump our 30 million every time.  Thankfully our government still supports our artists and musicians.  The primary mechanism for directing public funding towards Canadian musicians is the Canadian Music Fund.

The Canadian music industry includes a wide range of creators and entrepreneurs who create, produce and market original and diverse Canadian music. To help the industry meet new challenges, the Government created the Canada Music Fund. The Canada Music Fund (CMF) is the primary tool implementing the three major objectives of the Canadian Sound Recording Policy, which are:

• to enhance Canadians access to a diverse range of Canadian music choices through existing and emerging media;
• to increase the opportunities available for Canadian music artists and entrepreneurs to make a significant and lasting contribution to Canadian cultural expression; and,
• to ensure that Canadian music artists and entrepreneurs have the skills, know-how and tools to succeed in a global and digital environment.

One of the central vehicles for delivering funding is the group FACTOR, a not for profit organization that has “been managing federal funds since the inception of the Sound Recording Development Program in 1986 (now known as the Canada Music Fund Council).”  FACTOR has grown considerably since it’s inception and aides musicians in many facets:

Whether an artist is looking to record a demo, full length sound recording, market and promote an already existing album or showcase and tour domestically and internationally, funding is available. FACTOR supports many facets of the infrastructure which must be in place in order for artists and Canadian labels to progress into the international arena.

FACTOR started out with an annual budget of $200,000 and is currently providing in excess of $14 million annually to support the Canadian music industry.

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To follow up on an earlier posting that contended that government sponsored initiatives are capable of producing innovation in broadcasting I thought it was also worth highlighting our CanCon radio requirements and the Canadian Music Fund.  I’ll touch on CanCon in this posting and have something regarding the Canadian Music Fund in a piece to come later.

CanCon is shorthand for ‘Canadian Content’ and the label mostly explains itself; by law a certain amount of radio airplay must be Canadian Content.  The ratio of necessary ‘Canadianess’ varies depending on what genre(s) of music the station broadcasts, as well as the particular market they are in but a good shorthand is to figure that 25% of the broadcast content must be Canadian.  While not a perfect mechanism (it’s easy to find people arguing that CanCon should be entirely scrapped) it does serve to keep Canadian content on the airwaves.  While reading through Wikipedia’s article on this I saw the Arcade Fire mentioned as an example demonstrating CanCon’s failure.  It was only after the band started getting played in heavy rotation in the States that heavy Canadian airplay followed.  A counter example though would be the massive explosion of Feist; vehicles for promoting Canada’s independent artists were more refined in 2007 than they were in 2005 (ie CBC Radio3) and her airplay was building in Canada before the iPod commercial featuring “1-2-3-4″ sent her into the stratosphere.  As I see it, the problem with CanCon as it stands is that there is not enough emphasis on new artists and recordings.  Instead of scrapping the whole system it should be tweaked, so that if a broadcaster features new recordings, a certain percentage of their Canadian content has to be new as well.  Vancouver has a relatively new commercial radio station, The Peak FM that seems to be having some success playing lots of new, independent Canadian artists.  Hopefully they are starting to turn a profit so my referencing them is relevent.

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In passing along some thoughts on the now in theatres film Pirate Radio, Matt Yglesias makes the following observation:

It also comes [...] with a strong libertarian, anti-statist message. And of course it’s quite true that a public agency getting involved in the arts is likely to tend toward propagation of the status quo rather than toward innovation. The German government does a lot of subsidizing of opera, and by most accounts [...] they do a very good job of mounting good performances of the classic works. But boosting innovation, the way an illegal offshore radio broadcaster like the one depicted in the movie could, is not the forte of a state broadcaster.

If you’ve ever spent anytime on Matt’s blog then you probably already know that he’s a self-admitted Canadaphile. Part of his love for Canada extends from our waves of beautiful, bold, lush (insert positive adjectives here ad infinitum) Indie music. At the end of the day he posts a tab dump along with a link to some music; I’ve seen more than a fair share of Canadian Indie darlings linked to from there. Heck, yesterday’s post linked to the song “Black Rice” by Calgary, Alberta’s own WOMEN along with a favourable comparison to the Beatles. Other bands getting big name blogger love in the past include The Most Serene Republic, Metric, Tegan & Sara and The Arcade Fire.

Those bands bring me to my point: all of them have been huge beneficiaries of Canada’s socialist broadcaster, the venerable Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, or the Ceeb to those who love it.  Everyone of these groups has received exposure on CBC’s terrestrial broadcasts but owe a much larger debt to Radio3.  If you find yourself asking “What’s Radio3?” you should get thyself to a nunnery their homepage.  In short they are ‘a Canadian Independent Music Superstation’ that is available through their webpage and on Sirius Satellite Radio channel 86.  Aside from the hosted radio stream that is available you can listen to a genre stream such as Rock, Hip Hop or Electronica.  Additionally, you can listen to any of the 80000+ tracks in their library by over 19000 bands on demand.  Throw in some great podcasts (this one is a tribute to synthesizers, linked to  by Matt in the past as well) along with a nationwide, searchable and filterable concert calendar and you have one of the most inclusive, innovative music communities going.  All of it funded by the innovation suffocating guvmint.

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