I’ve been busy this summer, moving to Toronto, starting a new job, hanging out with friends, doing some freelance writing, running on the beach, roller skating on the boardwalk, going to ToRD bouts, running around Kitchener/Waterloo in my draws and listening to new music at local shows.
But really, I live right by the beach and most of my summer has been spent there, getting sand in uncomfortable places. So far, there are no computers there. Yay! It has been one, long, beach party! Surf surf surf!!!
I’m sure you can understand why I haven’t found time to write about any of this. I’ve just been letting emails from promoters pile up in my inbox and having intense twitter arguments with Pat about the musical worth/artistic merit of Lady Gaga. Stay tuned for an epic post of epicness resulting from said twitter fight. That fight also sort of jump started me into remembering that I have two blogs that I am ignoring and that I need to pay attention to them.
I also tend to wait too long and write too much. Well no more! I am turning over a new leaf!
Please enjoy these songs from five artists I have been digging this summer:
The Canned Goods, my favourite little Guelph group that is growing up splendidly, played the main stage at Hillside Festival this year, and will be performing at Pop Montreal in September!
Toro Y Moi, whose beats are not necessarily phat, but blissfully curvy in all the right places. Check him out. You’ll like it. I promise.
M.I.A., who seems to hate the Internet that loves her so, but who makes up for it with interesting music.
Rah Rah, who can apparently be compared to Christian rock group Hillsong United and also “learned to write songs” according to two music reviewers in their home city of Regina. To this I can only shake my head and say: Nope. No. They are miles above Jesus rock, and they’ve ALWAYS demonstrated an ability to write songs. So yeah. Take that, dudes who get paid to do what I am giving away for free! Forget killing the music industry. I hope the blogosphere kills the shitty excuse for “arts journalism” that is currently on offer.
And San Francisco beach pop enthusiasts Sonny and the Sunsets, a project from musician/artist/novelist Sonny Smith, whose 100 Records project (where he wrote and recorded 200 different songs by 100 different fictional bands with 100 different album covers, all loaded into one jukebox and available for visitors to listen to) is currently available for you to see at Cinders Gallery in Brooklyn.
I’ve been packing my life up for the last two days in anticipation of moving to Toronto for good. I’ve been in the city off and on for the last two weeks, working at a new job and trying to find an apartment.
I spent one week on the couch of a friend whose phone signal and Internet connection were being blocked or scrambled because she lived so near the site of the G20 summit fence. Early one morning last week, there were shots fired in her normally touristy neighbourhood in the theatre district. When I walked home from my office on King Street, I encountered police patrolling in pairs on every block. They were friendly and calm, but their presence was still unnerving. In the end, her apartment on Wellington and John became completely inaccessible and she escaped back to Saskatchewan for a week, desperate to avoid whatever was about to happen.
The weekend before that, it felt like the city was primed and humming. AT NXNE concerts, people talked about the fences, the barricade, the police and what exactly was going to happen. There was a free Iggy Pop concert at Yonge and Dundas Square that Saturday. Punks, cops, large crowds and free entrance to see righteous music. A surefire recipe for chaos. But everything went off without a hitch. Then there were the Much Music Video Awards. I doubt two more different worlds exist than a street walkin’ cheetah preaching raw power with a heart full of napalm and loyal Justin Bieber fans sleeping on the sidewalk to get tickets to see their fave-o-rite teen heartthrob. But those worlds did co-exist and the fans who spilled out into the street at the corner of Queen and John for the MMVAs had no idea that in a few days, the Starbucks across from Much Music headquarters would be boarding up smashed windows.
For the next week, I surfed the couch of a friend living near Bathurst and Bloor. Sitting at my firend’s kitchen table, combing craigslist for an apartment, I felt the ground shake, looked out the window and saw the building next door swaying. Within minutes, facebook and twitter were buzzing with information about the earthquake that had gently rumbled southern Ontario and Quebec. Relief flooded through me. Because for one brief second I thought “Oh hell. Somebody blew something up.”
I spent the last week in Toronto criss-crossing the city on public transit looking for an apartment. It was hot and I’d been living out of a backpack working a new shift for two weeks, so barricades and transit delays because of security checks (or something equally vague) made me extra irritable. I had no luck and Thursday, I headed back to Guelph.
The last few days have been a blur of packing tape, newspaper and boxes. But in between, I’ve taken periodic breaks to find that the Black Bloc was in town Saturday, flipping and burning police cars, smashing the windows of businesses and generally being a-holes. And the police stood there in their riot gear and let it happen. Cameras rolled to catch the action and it was all over the news: ‘Thugs’ justify the $1-billion price tag for G20 security.
Now, I am not pro-smashing and burning things, however, it should be noted that police cars and storefronts are things. They are not human beings.
And I hate to say it, but it’s hard to not want to smash something when you see a video like this:
Meghann Millard is a friend. She works at Unspace, a programming company with offices on Queen Street West. She took this video earlier today and posted a shorter version of it on youtube. Within minutes, I saw it on twitter and facebook feeds of several friends of mine who don’t know Meghann.
A few hours later, no less an Internet celebrity and arbiter of that which is worthy to tweet about than Roger Ebert retweeted Meghann’s video to the world. His tweet was short and to the point: “Sometimes one video can summarize the whole story.”
The official response to this video and other reports at the scene on Queen and Spadina from the police was that they charged the crowd because they suspected members of the Black Bloc were in it. I know I’m supposed to be impartial and everything, but what a load of shit.
It strikes me as overwhelmingly sad that people can’t even get together and sing the stupid national anthem. We’re so lame that we don’t even rally around a protest song. We just sing the anthem because come on! We’re in Canada! We don’t have riot police who will charge you when you finish singing a song about how strong and free your country is!
But apparently we do. Apparently, we’re not as free as we think we are.
Reports from the Toronto Star’s G20 Blog indicate that most protesters who were arrested had no idea what they were being charged with, weren’t allowed to use the bathroom, couldn’t make phone calls and weren’t given access to a lawyer. Some claimed they weren’t even part of the protest and got caught up in the crowd while walking down the street. Then, as quickly as they had been arrested, they were let go and told all charges had been dropped. Your rights mean nothing. NOTHING.
Somewhere in all this, the word anarchist somehow came to mean criminal. The vandalism and violence were ascribed to all protesters. And people I formerly respected wondered aloud why protesters who got on the news didn’t spend their precious few seconds of airtime condemning violence and vandalism. Is it their job to condemn that? Some of them did anyway and good for them. But the security fence was up long before protesters took to the streets, so that’s just chicken and egg semantics and I have to ask: If the government knew this was going to happen, (To the tune of putting up a fence and hiring a billion dollars worth of extra police and actually changing my rights) why would they host this summit in Toronto at all? Especially if, as Rick Salutin put it, they had already decided to do nothing. Can’t you do nothing somewhere else? No? Really? You have to have dinner and glad-hand world leaders on top of the CN Tower? There’s a penis joke in there somewhere.
The Globe recently published another Salutin column entitled “The Man Who Came To Dinner” in which he writes:
“What is the sign of the breakdown in the relationship? Police everywhere, to protect the governors from the people. That’s how it looks. I’m not saying that’s what it is, yet. But it’s amazing that they don’t even react to the optics of the situation: i.e. a temporary police state. To us onlookers, it’s the experience of being disenfranchised. You don’t count, you suddenly have no rights. You can’t park in your spot or take your kids to school. No one asked us, at most they gathered us and told us. It’s what you feel when you’re arrested: that it’s a free country until they decide it’s not.”
I guess what frustrates me the most about this is how are you supposed to obey the law and have a peaceful protest when SURPRISE! We gave the police extra powers we didn’t tell anybody about and you’re breaking the new law we made up for the occasion, so you’re arrested! Oh yeah. That’s the Public Works Protection Act. I ask you, how can protesters be expected to follow a law that they don’t know exists? There is a real feeling of “If only everyone who do what they’re told! Act the right way and don’t make a scene and maybe then we can have our rights back!” Except that’s not how rights work.
All this coupled with the astounding revelations by some friends and colleagues that they think protesters should just get jobs and take showers (or worse, be shot on site by police) has left me extremely angry.
Without protesters, I would not be able to vote. Without protesters, Barack Obama would have spent his life in segregation, not on the road to the White House. There are countless other examples, but who cares? Sorry Martin Luther King. I know you had a dream and everything, but too bad. GET A JOB, DOUCHEBAG!
You can disagree with their methods and you can dislike their politics, but nobody can ever say that protest isn’t a valid for of expression that occasionally serves an incredibly important role in society. If you don’t believe that, then I guess I feel sorry for you. You must lead a very ignorant life.
I’m heading back to Toronto in a few short hours to find a place to live once and for all.
I have a feeling that the city will look like nothing much happened over the weekend. A few broken windows. Some scorch marks here and there. But it’s not like something more important was damaged. It’s not like the best part of the city was held hostage for almost a week with barricades and fences. It’s not like I won’t be able to look at a cop without wondering “Were you one of the ones who raised a baton to a protester?” It’s not like I’m moving to a city where people can’t gather on a public street and sing about true patriot love without being charged by riot police.
But you can’t spell patriot without riot, so I guess we’re out of luck.
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Julia - The Canned Goods : Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
