Category Archives: Arts & the City

Arts & the City, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Scenes from the City

Aziz Ansari at the Montreal Comedy Works

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Aziz Ansari - not the work of the author
Aziz Ansari – not the work of the author

So I’m on the train heading back home last night scrolling through my Twitter feed. Halfway back to the forgotten Pierrefonds section of the city I see that Aziz Ansari had added a second show for 10pm last night.

Fuck me, I thought, how did I miss that there was a first one?

As I sat there feeling like a jerk I was bothered by the fact that, as of next week, this wouldn’t have been a problem. Pierrefonds is technically but a 25 minute train ride from Gare Centrale, but for all practical purposes is far further away, especially if you depend on public transit to get around. Suffice it to say I felt there’d be no chance of seeing this show; I’d have to turn around immediately once I got to Pierrefonds and had no way of securing the tickets outside of physically going to the Montreal Comedy Works on Bishop, a place I realized I hadn’t been to in about a decade.

Next week things will be different (moving downtown), but I couldn’t just leave it alone. A determination starting brewing inside me – I had to see this show. I was still kicking my ass for missing Charles Bradley at the Virgin Corona a little while back.

A friend texts me and asks what I had planned for the evening. Perfect. We make plans to see the show; I’d get home, eat something quick and turn right back around. Timing is key and fortune favours the bold. We get there with time to spare, seats with our names on them.

Outside the club waiting to go in we come across local comedian Rodney Ramsey (who’s been involved with the hilarious Language Police series) who informed me as to the thinking behind the Ansari show being a kind of crowd-sourcing initiative – a Twitter blast that got about 100 eager fans out to see Ansari try out some new material. Brilliant idea really – friendly crowd with a room small enough you’re guaranteed an appreciative audience. Catch Rodney’s act whenever you can, man’s got some excellent material and fascinating insights. We talked a lot about the Montreal English-language comedy scene, one which is very small yet manages to quite successfully punch well above its weight. It’s an odd situation – the city with the world’s largest bilingual comedy festival has comparatively few dedicated comedy clubs (I can only think of two, the other being the Comedy Nest at the Forum, which if memory serves once was both comedy and jazz club, the latter not working out any better than any of the other cockamamy ‘entertainment services’ once provided by the Pepsi Forum Entertainment Complex™). Apparently open mic nights and travelling comedy shows playing at diverse venues is a little more common. I’m looking forward to getting back into the scene – I’m rarely disappointed by live comedy, especially when it’s godawful – those make for some good anecdotes you can later use to amuse your friends. Rodney made a good point about Sugar Sammy, the current darling of the Montreal comedy scene, in that Sammy quite literally created a market no one thought could be created. Bilingual comedy? T’es fou toé? I wish them both much success; bilingual comedy may not work in every market but may work quite well in Canada as a whole. It’s unique and takes observational, improvisational and absurdist humour to new heights – knowing many languages is a huge asset across the board, and the kind of thing a country as well-educated as ours may appreciate.

In any event, on to the show.

I started watching Ansari’s stand-up after being introduced to him in Parks and Recreation, an excellent anti-sitcom in the style of the American version of The Office which has brought the comedy talents of Amy Poehler, Audry Plaza, Ansari, Chris Pratt, Nick Offerman, Retta and Rashida Jones to a broad audience. Ansari’s character, the vain and materialistic yet smooth-despite-himself Tom Haverford, is one of my favourites because the character is executed so perfectly, with precise consistency. He’s outlandish and the interaction with Jean-Ralphio (Ben Schwartz) has made for some of the most gut-bustingly hilarious TV I’ve seen in a while. As ridiculous the character is, he’s fundamentally sweet and generally well-intentioned, and I’m sure I’ve met someone like him before.

Ansari’s set was well-balanced, ramping up and ramping back down with a middle section of sustained laughter. He also completed a number of conversational ‘loops’ throughout the set, though more predominantly towards the end, bringing his new material full circle. He began more or less the way he finished, closing a multi-faceted set on the perils and objective hilarity of dating and human relations. It was fresh enough, original enough so as not to be clichéd in and of itself, though I’ll grant that the subject is well worn in my personal opinion.

Who cares though; being single nearly always results in some kind of hilarity. There was more than one time during the show I felt he was talking to me, of my experiences. I’m sure there were a lot of people feeling the same way. And that points to one of Ansari’s primary strengths – he’s really personable.

This point made itself apparent when he began interacting with the audience, including one point in which, in discussing how relationships get going, he read an audience member’s text messages to his girlfriend of but a few weeks. The sophistication, humour and all-around loveliness of the man’s texts delighted Ansari who quite clearly appreciated the sincerity of the messages inasmuch as having the flow of his bit interrupted. He made reference to finding flat-out stupid texts coming from audience participants in other cities.

Maybe it’s a Montreal thing. A variation on this theme later on had Ansari asking a couple how long they had been together and how they met. A similarly unexpected lovely result ensued, but Ansari’s genuine enjoyment transformed part of the bit to having him orchestrate a kind of mass appreciation of successful dating and finding love. It was really quite sweet, and funny as all hell.

In any event, given he’s testing out new material I suppose I won’t comment any further as to the content of the set, but will close by saying this: good job, it was really great and made for an excellent evening. Thanks Aziz!

And also – hat’s off to Comedy Works for pulling this off so expertly, and keep it up. I could definitely use more of this ‘drive-by’ comedy. Short notice, crowd-sourced, small venue – good recipe for success.

A modest proposal, Arts & the City, Cultural commentary, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Montréal Architecture, Montréal Landmarks, Montréal public art, Perspectives on the City, Social commentary, Urban Redevelopment, Worth reconsidering

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts – The Basics

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MMFA - 2012

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal) is located at 1380 Sherbrooke Street West in the heart of the appropriately-named Quartier du Musée district of the city’s downtown. It can be accessed by the Guy and Peel stations of the Métro’s Green Line and is located within proximity of the Underground City tunnel network (getting off at Guy station, one can walk underground to the corner of Bishop and Boul. de Maisonneuve; the museum is up the block, no more than a two-minute walk on the coldest of days). Frankly, it’s hard to miss.

What most people first notice is the Hornstein Pavilion, in the middle of the photo above, a Beaux Arts styled building completed by the noted Maxwell Brothers architectural firm in 1912. Today, this pavilion is dedicated to world cultures and archeology. If I recall correctly, it also houses Ben Weider’s collection of Napoleon memorabilia, including one of the late emperor’s undershirts. The Hornstein Pavilion features four massive Ionic columns and intricate bas-reliefs with a variety of sculptures and installations gathered in front. It doesn’t need the stately lettering along the edge of the roof, nor the signs out front, to make it any more obvious it’s an art museum.

The museum was previously located in the former Art Association of Montreal building on the northeast corner of Phillips Square, roughly on the same location of where that godawful Burger King stands today. The association traces its roots back to 1860, seven years before Confederation, when it was established by Bishop Fulford (this building’s name suddenly came to mind, it’s an old-folks home next to the Bar-B-Barn, steps away from Concordia).

The first major expansion of the museum was, logically enough, immediately behind the Hornstein Pavilion, and is quite possibly the least severe brutalist structure in the city. The Liliane and David M. Stewart Pavilion opened in 1976 and is today dedicated to design and decorative arts. It is built into the rising side of the mountain, the low, flat boxes of the pavilion jutting out like rock formations. Ivy, earth tones and set-back, dark-tinted windows enhance its natural aesthetic by reminding one of caves and crags, in actuality open-air spaces, terraces and balconies.

In the run-up to the city’s 350th anniversary in 1992 the museum expanded once more, this time across the street, reclaiming a vacant lot and repurposing the New Sherbrooke hotel-apartments, another Beaux-Arts styled building dating from 1905. The former apartment building was gutted and converted into large exhibition halls, while the vacant lot received a miniature arch in white marble, as well as an angled glass atrium, to serve as the museum’s new principal entrance. The Desmarais Pavilion was designed by noted Canadian architect Moshe Safdie. Today it houses International Art from the Old Masters to the contemporary, in addition to photography and graphic arts. A tunnel was completed under Sherbrooke Street to link the pavilions together, thus leading to the creation of another ‘autonomous’ segment of the Underground City. I’ll get back to this in a minute. The Desmarais Pavilion tends to house most of the major temporary exhibits, and has office space, a café, bookstore and boutique, and also features Safdie’s ‘ruminating’ staircase, one of the museum’s various design quirks.

The most recent development is the Bourgie Pavilion, the converted former Erskine and American Church, a Romanesque Revival building with Tiffany stained-glass windows dating from the 1890s. The Bourgie houses Canadian and Quebec art, in addition to a large performance space, and is located across Avenue de Musée on the north side of Sherbrooke Street. It too is connected to the other pavilions via an underground tunnel, though outside the avenue serves as an open air gallery of sculpture and diverse installations.

The most recent news is that the museum is set to expand again, as it has recently received a $75 million donation of Old Masters paintings from Michal and Renata Hornstein. The caveat is that a new facility must be built to house the collection, and the MMFA has indicated they’re looking to expand south along Bishop, potentially leading to the demolition of two old Victorian-era row houses. The expansion has the potential to go far enough south on Bishop the museum could conceivably be connected directly to the Guy-Concordia tunnel system. Here’s a conceptual rendering compared with how it currently looks.

I’m not crazy about this new design as I feel it’s too out of step with its surroundings. We’ll see how it works out, I have a feeling the design may change a bit between now and it’s intending opening in 2017, for the city’s 375th anniversary.

Arts & the City, Cultural commentary, History and Culture, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Montréal Landmarks, Montréal Stories, Scenes from the City, Social commentary

Montreal Goonery Inspires The Wall

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So here’s the deal.

It’s the night of July 6th 1977 – Olympic Stadium is filled to capacity with a heaving mass of 80,000 die-hard Pink Floyd fans. Two records were broken that day – one for concert attendance at the Big O and one for ticket cost, the then unheard of price of $10. A momentary lapse of jugement pre-show, backstage, resulted in a foot injury for Roger Waters, one for which he would seek treatment at a local hospital afterwards. It was during the ride from the hospital back to the hotel that Rogers would, for the first time, articulate his desire to erect a massive stage between him and the audience. That was the night The Wall was born, arguably the band’s cumulative creative magnum opus.

It was also the album that broke the band.

It was muggy. Waters graced the front page of the Gazette, though with a cautionary note that the band liked its privacy, an omen perhaps of what was to come. Talk that week had been of Bill 101 and its implications. The day before a troop of overly enthusiastic teenagers had paraded through the downtown streets at lunch hour singing ‘O Canada’ to the bewildered looks of bystanders, one of many misguided federal government efforts to promote Canadian Unity after the election of the PQ in 1976.

These were strange and eventful days, the kind I feel we’ve grown accustomed to over the years. This city is its own trip.

Copious amounts of hash smoke billowed from the open roof of the still incomplete stadium, smouldering like an ashtray under clear skies. People were excited, as this was a party no one wanted (or would) forget. Ask any old hippie in the city, chances are they were there and witnessed history, though they didn’t realize it at the time.

The crowd’s exuberance quickly earned Waters’ scorn. 1977’s In the Flesh tour had been the first in which the band played almost exclusively in stadiums, something none of the members were particularly fond of. But record sales and record-label requirements compelled to band to perform for one of the best attended tours in rock history.

Indeed, albums such as Dark Side of the Moon was specifically conceived of as to be played, ideally, in concert halls – with the associated decorum expected. Waters’ frustration with some of the more boorish elements in the crowd that night would lead to an altercation where he reportedly spat in the face of a drunken fan (the specifics of the incident may have been lost to time).

Montreal crowds – what can I say. They shot off their own pyrotechnics and screamed and hollered all throughout. You can actually hear someone yell ‘Rock n’ Roll!’ at 13:53, and hear Roger’s first verbal assault on the crowd comes in at 33:32.

Regardless, the crowd was insatiable (and at least well-behaved enough for the band to play for over two and a half hours in total), as you can hear in the recording posted above. But it was all getting to be to much. At around 2:08:00 in the recording Rogers excoriates a small group that had begun to riot near the front of the stage. The band launches into the first encore – Us and Them (which Waters points out is a soft, tranquil song) – and you can hear some people in the crowd echoing Gilmour’s request that people sit down and relax.

Unfortunately that’s where this recording ends – the band would perform Us and Them and then a prolonged twelve-bar ‘bluesy’ outro number, albeit to Gilmour’s protestations, while their crew disassembled and packed away the more valuable pieces of the tour kit. At some point later on in the night some fans actually tried to prevent the band from leaving by blocking an exit.

Suffice it to say Pink Floyd escaped unharmed and, rather amazingly by local standards, the crowd didn’t riot, as it did under arguably different circumstances in 1992 when Axl Rose decided to axe an equally hyped Guns n’ Roses/Metallica double-bill.

The next day the Gazette reported it as a massive achievement, setting the highest possible bar for all rock concerts to come, and one more reason the Big O was going to be a big success and a boon for the city.

What they couldn’t report on was that Roger Waters and David Gilmour walked away from the concert feeling more detached from their fans than ever before. In the drive back from the hospital Waters got into a conversation with a psychiatrist (a friend of the tour manager driving the car) and formulated the root of The Wall’s over whelming theme of post-modern isolation. Though by Waters’ own admission he had been struggling to articulate his sentiments (a point likely further exhausted by the ambitious performances and tour schedule) the tour’s grand finale in Montreal and the events that had transpired between the band and arguably their most ardent fans that night resulted in the band’s single greatest, perhaps broadest artistic achievement (personally I think Dark Side of the Moon, Animals and Obscured by Clouds to be better albums, albeit somewhat less accessible, but I digress).

So there you have it, Montreal Goonery inspired the wall.

-Coda-

If things go south at the Stones show, does it mean they’ll crank out something that tops Exile on Main Street?

-Coda II-

The audio isn’t great on this recording but is about as good as you might expect, I’m going to see if I can try and clean it up. If so I’ll re-post. Enjoy it.

Arts & the City, Cultural commentary, History and Culture, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Montréal Landmarks, Montréal public art, Perspectives on the City, Public art proposal, Scenes from the City, Social commentary, Video

Corridart; Charney’s Oeuvre Going Up & Coming Down

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Found this video on the CCA’s YouTube Channel, a film n’ funk track I feel is somewhat representative of experimental documentary film from mid-1970s Canada. It shows the construction and demolition of Melvin Charney’s primary installation for Corridart, the cultural component of the 1976 Montréal Olympics deemed unfit by Mayor Drapeau but a few days after completion (and prior to the opening ceremonies).

As deemed unfit, grotesque, inappropriate by Drapeau the Autocrat, it was completely and utterly destroyed, largely in one overnight sweep when city workers, escorted by police and firefighters destroyed everything with blowtorches and various others pieces of heavy equipment.

For the uninitiated Corridart was quite literally a corridor of art and culture that stretched along Sherbrooke Street from Atwater to Pie-IX, with diverse installations positioned along its length, in addition to indicators of major cultural institutions and temporary performance venues and other facilities and exhibits located on the thoroughfare. It was the cumulative effort of sixty or so well-known local artists and was designed to feature nearly 700 performers of all manner, to entertain the masses moving from the city to the olympic park and back again along a principle ‘showcase street’ (and rightfully so; we’re a city of great and grand streets, avenues, boulevards and thoroughfares, and Sherbrooke is truly of the greatest, most diverse and multi-faceted streets we have). There was a psychogeographic component as well, in that a bridge of culture and ‘linear, public art-happening’ connected disparate parts of the city for the sake of the many tourists moving from the Games to their hotels. The Olympic Stadium was, in a sense, further away from the city than as it is today, as you can see in the video the city itself and its concentration of services was much smaller and further west in 1976.

Charney’s installation went up at the corner of St-Urbain and Sherbrooke in part of a parking lot than it now the UQAM Western Residence. The buildings on the east side of the street are still there, and from what you can see in the video, the area has ‘fattened up’ quite significantly in the last thirty-seven years. From what I’ve read and seen a considerable portion of the more central and eastern parts of today’s ‘downtown’ business district was little more than massive parking lots back in the day, all of which have since been converted into more useful things, like hotels, condos, institutional buildings, government offices and class-A office space.

The installation was a representation of the facade of the buildings directly across the street, though reversed as though to produce a mirror image. It was, in part, a statement concerning the drive to tear down old buildings in the city centre seemingly to do nothing more than create parking lots, a statement that irked Mayor Drapeau. Other installations included a replica of the cross atop Mount Royal laid on its side on McGill Campus, over-sized Mickey Mouse hands pointing, almost accusingly, at municipal offices, an audio recording played over loud speakers detailing the cost of the Games to local taxpayers, an apocalyptic bomb shelter entrance. All that said, no one expected Drapeau to destroy so much art. That was the sting – Drapeau felt that since the works had been commissioned by the city it was his right to destroy them, and thus few outside the artistic community directly implicated in Corridart’s creation ever got to see what it looked and felt like.

Drapeau was an ass.

It’s too bad, because had it not been destroyed I think we’d have different memories of the Games – after all, its the festival atmosphere and public art that many remember most fondly when discussing Expo 67.

Corridart wouldn’t make too much sense today, as it was very much intended to be a criticism of its time and place, but the concept of creating cultural bridges through the use of installation art and/or linear concentration of venues (or any combination thereof) is nonetheless one I still find very fascinating and think is very much applicable, novel and rather distinguishing.

After all, we spend a lot of time walking around in climate controlled corridors and our museums keep nearly their entire collections in storage as they lack the physical space to exhibit them; let’s extend the galleries underground.

Corridart’s enduring legacy, that art can be used to direct people’s physical movements, is one I’d like to see far better implemented into our overall city design. A more direct reconstruction of Corridart, based on similar themes and seeking to establish a cultural corridor along Sherbrooke for the benefit of tourists and the artistic community alike could be rewarding endeavour, especially if part of the street were converted for pedestrian only-access over a long weekend. People just love walking down streets normally clogged with cars – there’s a very liberating feeling in it, as though the city suddenly had a new common ground.

But of course, such things require a mayor who isn’t afraid of public art. For all he managed to accomplish, I think Drapeau flinched and showed his true colours when he ordered Corridart’s demolition. It’s an insecure man who finds himself threatened by artistic commentary, even if it is scathing.

Let’s be sure, when we head top the polls in November, we choose a mayor who isn’t afraid of a little art.

Arts & the City, Cultural commentary, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Perspectives on the City, Scenes from the City, West Island

Review: C’est Moi, C’est Chocolat!

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Andrew Searles

Passed by Theatre Sainte Catherine to catch the opening night of Andrew Searles‘ headline show C’est moi! C’est Chocolat! after a long and trying week at work; I was in need of some comic relief and Andrew certainly did not disappoint.

I’ve known Andrew at least since 2000 as we went to the same high school in Pierrefonds; if I recall correctly we became friends during the production of Riverdale High School’s rendition of West Side Story – I was a Jet and he was a Shark and I think we shared all of a dozen words of dialogue in the entire show.

Andrew was a naturally-gifted comic all those years ago, keeping us in stitches behind the scenes as we dealt with the overbearing drama queen extraordinaire who directed the show.

A few years later I found myself regularly attending open mic nights at diverse local comedy clubs as he was just breaking out onto the local scene. Andrew was also a regular at the insular country club in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue where we found ourselves attending CEGEP, opening for the many local comedians who would come perform at the Agora for all those students so eagerly skipping class.

It’s curious now looking back, John Abbott has always been a preferred local filming location as either a typical American high school or rural college setting – I wonder if the sight of all those trailers didn’t subconsciously encourage students there to perform – as a school it’s turned out a lot of local artistic talent. In any event, hard to believe that was all ten years ago.

Ten years of dedicated work has its payoffs – the show was sold out and packed with fans, not bad for a guy from Pierrefonds. Here’s a bit of Andrew performing in Ottawa a couple years back.

Opening acts included Guido Cocomello and Rodney Ramsay, with host Franco Taddeo. I had a bit of fun with the host when he asked if there were any Francophones in the room, to which I responded with a bien niaiseux Ouay! As he had immediately prior been ribbing some guy in the front row whose name was Martin (who I suppose had strong enough French Canadian features so as to compel the host to label him token Francophone in an otherwise culturally diverse though predominantly Anglophone audience), when he asked my name I responded with a properly regional pronunciation of Martin. Got a good laugh, but as always, you had to be there.

Politics, society, culture, race, religion – everything pertinent was discussed. It’s good fodder for comedians, as there’s just so much absurdity, contradiction and idiocy to report on. Sometimes I feel the service best rendered by comedians is to simply report all the crazy, ridiculous shit we deal with on a daily basis. All four comedians did just that, rather expertly too, last night.

Theatre Sainte Catherine is located just west of Saint-Denis along one of several stretches of Sainte Catherine’s Street where the various linear poles of attraction and gentrification have yet to meet and interface, and as such retains some of the character we once associated with The Main. Close as it is to Berri-UQAM, speaking openly in English, to my surprise, elicited the attention of those walking past – no words exchanged but glances nonetheless. That said, during intermission as I was enjoying a puff outside, the biggest, scariest looking bouncer I’ve ever seen walked right up to me and politely asked my for directions (in English) to a club just down the block. He was a close-talker with a Christian Bale-era Batman voice. He nodded casually at two prostitutes who walked by.

Earlier, as I exited the public-transit Ellis Island Métro hub up the block I remarked on the fascinating juxtaposition unfolding before me, of well-dressed red-squared UQAM students passing down the corridors lined with well-appointed shop windows, buskers tuning acoustic guitars and a pants-less, underwear-less homeless man pulling his knees under an extra-wide shirt, babbling incoherently to himself.

It occurred to me – we haven’t lost our red light district at all – it just moved East. Our city’s two-fisted-rialto survives unscathed.

What can I say – it’s a good spot for a comedy show. I saw Sugar Sammy at Olympia a little while back in the same neck-of-the-woods (and on that note, Olympia is an excellent venue – highly recommended). An exciting part of town, but one where you keep your guard up. Not a place to stop and gawk.

The small venue was filled with transplanted suburbanites, friends and acquaintances from high school, now grown-up, modern Montrealers, mixed, mulatto, Métis – a racial, linguistic and cultural gray-scale of integration that permitted comedians who, despite vastly different backgrounds, could entertain an equally diverse audience with satire and parody that easily, deftly, transcended the barriers largely being erased within our own community. The Montreal brand of racial humour seems to have more to do with pointing out (even if obliquely) our similarities rather than differences, or at least reminding us of how differences are truly no more than skin deep, and that making a big deal about how different you are, why you and your people might deserve special treatment, simply isn’t cool.

As you might imagine, Pauline Marois was the public enemy number one of the night.

It quickly became apparent this theatre was filled with ardent federalists and committed Anglo-Québécois, a new generation that learned French and knows where their home is.

As host Franco Taddeo put it, “this show features two Blacks and two Italians, throw in a Jew and the OQLF would shut this down in a heartbeat.”

Though contemporary Québec politics and society were the favoured topics of the night, the show was ultimately wide-ranging, with reflections on the oddball demands of significant others, snotty children and their oblivious parents and why the Pope has the most boss funeral.

One of Andrew’s fortes as a comedian is spot-on impressions of the various peoples of the Caribbean (he himself is of joint Barbadian-Jamaican ancestry); his Caribbean Space Agency skit made my facial muscles hurt, his bit about how unintended sexual innuendo as a result of his mother’s broken English was one of the highlights of the night; quite nearly brought the house down.

Also of note Rodney Ramsay, another Riverdale alum, closed his opening set with a ditty where he read Craigslist casual encounters personals. Gut bustingly funny, though I really hope he was embellishing. Rodney also got on the anti-OQLF bandwagon with a series on ‘language cops’, which you can see here:

He’s also collaborated with local comic Mike Paterson on the Anglo video, which you can watch here:

All told – highly recommended, a lot of talent in a fascinating, exciting part of town. Shows tonight and tomorrow, see it if you can and buy tickets online as these shows are anticipated to sell out very quickly.

Arts & the City, Montréal public art, Perspectives on the City, Video

Raine Maida’s Cold Winds of Montréal

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I’m not 100% sold on it, but heard it the other day and thought, what the hell, let’s post it.

I discovered it was featured in what I can only describe as an overly dramatic Hockey Night in Canada intro from a few weeks back. For your consideration:

Though I enjoy the aerial shots of the city, Sweet Christ, this was laying it on a bit thick.

But the fans got a kick out of it I suppose. I think it was a step in the wrong direction to Americanize our game by developing story-lines for pro sports. This notion that multi-million dollar professional athletes are engaged in near-Herculean struggles to provide you with a vague sense of home-town pride is a tad laughable. The overt commercialization of professional sports doesn’t really allow for a tangible link between team and town as players and management personnel are bought and traded in proportion to the success of the club’s marketing department, and the relative success of their efforts to sell you on someone to root for. It’s always been like this in one way or another, but there was a point in time in which hockey, in this case, didn’t really need to be sold to anyone at all. Build an arena, form a team, people will come and watch. Back then the people out on the ice could very well have been your neighbour. Hell, even the rink typically involved public investment – those bonds don’t quite exist today.

It’s all a crafty pastiche of old-school sports journalism, re-packaged as a soaring montage that will very quickly cut to the show’s principle beer sponsor.

Doesn’t it feel great to drink this smooth Canadian lager? Mmmmmm. Patriotastic.

In any event, back to the HNIC video – yes, we have snowstorms here in Montréal. Frankly, it is our indelible bond with the rest of Canada – we suffer the snow like anyone else – I’m glad the fine folks at the CBC pointed it out. I’m not sure how many Canadians pushed a bus this winter, or risked eating fifty pounds of snow dropping off the roof of a skyscraper, or swam down MacTavish, but I’m sure what they call winter is trying on them as well, in their way. I heard people had to ware scarves one day in Toronto…

As to Maida’s song, well, it’s clear he likes Arcade Fire, but I would argue he probably likes a couple other local bands too, both past and present, who crafted similar sounds with backing brass. Harmonium comes to mind. Ron MacLean referred to Maida as a Montrealer, which I was not aware of but welcome nonetheless. I wonder if he was inspired to move here by another well-known 90s Canadian alt-rocker, David Usher of Moist, who made a bit of a fuss back in the 1996 when Moist ‘officially’ relocated to our city (I’m not sure how long it lasted either, but I digress).

So –

Is this a song about Montréal?

No.

Not in my opinion. The lyrics are very open, lovely in their way, but in my opinion not overly profound (though I’m no lyricist, not by any stretch of the imagination).

But it’s simplicity and straightforwardness gives it its universal charm, as Montreal is largely irrelevant, or at least there’s no link (in my eyes) between the city and what the characters are going through – as I said, it could be anyone, under any circumstances – it could be the cold winds of Timbuktu, or Chicago. Sufjan Stevens might consider giving this the Hootie and the Blowfish treatment, if you catch my drift.

Assuming that it is about Montréal, well, all I’m going to say is I hope we’re not type-casting ourselves as the perennial land of ennui. Ennui doesn’t pay the bills, and malaise never inspired anyone. I’m glad we got hit hard by a bitch of a winter – more snow means a higher water table, a wetter spring, makes for slightly cooler summers but brings the possibility of an Indian Summer, something we haven’t had in a while.

…

In other news the Hip will play a park in Verdun sometime this summer. I’ll see you there.