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Canadian content or ‘Cancon’ rules place a quota on radio programming in Canada requiring that a certain percentage of the music played must be from Canadian artists. While decried by market libertarians, there’s a reason the Canadian music scene exploded in the 1970s – the rule worked. Before its introduction, worthy Canadian acts could not get onto playlists, crowded out by high profile American and British artists. For Canadians, success in Canada would only follow making it in the United States, a path successfully taken by group like the Guess Who but few others. But from the 1970s on, thanks to Cancon, a host of homegrown acts could make a living just being stars in Canada. This Canada Day (yes, international audience, today is Canada’s national holiday), let’s focus on just two great Canadian acts made possible (at least in part) by the legacy of Cancon.
Welland, Ontario’s Daniel Romano is an irrepressible musical force, unrestrained by genre boundaries or conventional marketing strategies. Country, metal, new wave, prog rock – different musical styles are just a blank canvas for Romano to work out his songwriting and performance magic. Seriously, is there anything this guy can’t do? I got turned on to his talent with his killer swinging single, “When I Learned Your Name” from 2017’s Modern Pressure. I had just had to keep hitting replay. Then his 2018 double album drop of Nerveless and Human Touch turned my head. Man, I thought, can he crank out the songs. Well 2020 has seen Romano surpass even his previous over-achieving bar, releasing seven albums so far! And with no compromise on quality. I’m going to highlight tracks from just a few of them but, really, you won’t go wrong with anything stamped Daniel Romano.
From Visions of the Higher Dream I’m digging “Where I Take My Rest” which has a nice, almost brittle 1979 sort of sound, with a great punchy change-up in the chorus. Super Pollen has a winning title track, a great barreling-forward poprock song, carried on a bed of blistering but still melodic electric guitars. But perhaps the most adventurous mix comes on Dandelion, a more mellow rock and roll rumination with touches of country and super smooth background vocals. There something so Canadian about this recording, with hints of the more radio-friendly Bruce Cockburn here and there guitar-wise. Check out the distinctive horn shots on the hit single hooky “If You Don’t or If You Do,” or the catchy rhythm acoustic guitar guiding “Silent Spring,” or the new wave keyboard on “Ain’t That Enough for You.”
Toronto’s Girlongirl describe themselves as “jangle pop smothered in grunge” and that is confirmed with “Take,” the opening track of their most recent album. I like it, but the band really get down to business in my view with track 2, the obvious single “Girls,” throwing out an irresistible guitar hook to anchor the song. This is a band with a tight, distinctive sound, typified by the dreamy rumble guitar behind “Nen” and “Burn Me” and strong vocals. Another should-be hit single is “Marathon” which alternates between ethereal jangle and grunge guitar, making the shift on the transition from verses and chorus. You can tell from the performances here that Girlongirl would be a kick ass live band. Someday we’ll get to find out …
We’re not the flag-waving, love-it-or-leave-it types up here in the great white north. Canada Day often passes with little more than a BBQ and some cranking of the backyard tunes. This time, add Daniel Romano and Girlongirl to your Cancon-inspired holiday playlist. Cancon or no, they’re most deserving.
I seem to recall Canadian poprock iconoclast Gregory Pepper saying something about two minute songs. For him, anything more was surplus to requirements. But stitching together a meaningful short song is harder than it looks. Fools tend to rush in to verses and a chorus and run out of song before they know it. Today we feature two masters of the exquisitely short song, Stephen Merritt’s Magnetic Fields and Philadelphia indie pop combo 2nd Grade.
In the 1970s and most of the 1980s, I grew up in Vancouver, Canada’s largest city on the country’s west coast. I still love the town’s abundance of Edwardian architecture, kooky downtown neighbourhoods, and even its long stretches of gray, rainy weather. But it wasn’t until I moved away that I realized just how isolated it was from the rest of urban North America. Many was the time that major music acts would skip Vancouver on their tours – it just wasn’t economical for a lot of bands to make the trek so far from touring circuits based out of Los Angeles or Chicago or New York City. Yet this geographic reality, combined with Canadian content laws introduced in the 1970s to help Canadian music get on the radio, contributed to a pretty cool music scene.
When I say I get mail, I mean messages, email, notifications, etc. And that’s a good thing given what I’m hearing about the challenges moving music through the conventional mail services right now. Rain, sleet, snow, hail? Clearly they’re easy-peasy compared to Covid 19. Well the pandemic will not get in the way of today’s delivery of loud guitars, bedroom pop, finely crafted songscapes, and much more.
We tend to be inspired by the world we live in so it’s not surprising that some artists are ruminating musically about our present pandemic. While the artists featured below are all over the map in terms of their responses to the situation, the results are all music to my ears!
Thirteen original artists! Twenty featured songs! Springtime 2020 is witnessing an explosion of sounds, curated here specifically to ease your pandemic-induced isolation. It’s not K-Tel, but it’s the next best thing. And the best part? No groove-cramming or adverts for a bogus, non-working record selector. So get ready to add some hooks to your springtime playlists.
With sunshine and a hint of spring heat in the air, people are starting to think about summer. And just what is summer going to be like with face masks and gloves and social distancing? It’s going to look like a very polite zombie apocalypse, that’s what. Acerbic Toronto-based pop artist Rob Elliott colourfully captures our likely regimented future in the above graphic (check out his hilarious, biting 
Digging through my vinyl collection I came upon a 1974 Deram/London (Decca in the UK) Records release entitled Hard Up Heroes, a compilation focused mostly on lesser known tracks from British artists from the ‘beat’ era (roughly 1963 to 1967). It’s got some cool stuff on it but the real find was a track called “So Much in Love” recorded by The Mighty Avengers. What a tune! So subtle in its earwormy effects. Now imagine my surprise to discover it was a Jagger/Richards cast off from a period when they were trying to mimic the Beatles’ songwriting largesse by giving away their excess material to other artists. And what makes the story even more intriguing is just how many acts tried to make this a hit – unsuccessfully! Most of the versions came out in the mid-1960s period, with a few in the 1970s, one in the 1990s, and then one last version in 2018. And, of course, there may be other versions I’ve yet to find. I won’t feature them all here, just the ones that take the song in slightly different directions.
What’s not to like about compilation albums? They’re like a load of presents crammed onto one or two pieces of vinyl, or they’re akin to a kind of melody buffet tempting to you to gorge on each one. This post runs the gamut of definitive compendiums on a theme (XTC) to compilations based on style (sunshine psychpop) to diverse collections serving other purposes altogether (the Wild Honey and Lame-O collections). Let’s dig in!
Today’s single file is bulging with digital 45s just itching for an e-spin. There’s a bit blues and rock and roll and, of course, strummy poprock in the rotation.