Tag Archives: Montréal Culture

Arts & the City, History and Culture, Montréal Stories

The other Montr̩al music scene Рa retrospective:

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The Arcade Fire - photo not the work of the author

Montréal seems to be doing fairly well as far as our international appeal as a major creative centre is concerned. Aside from Arcade Fire’s big Grammy win and some solid buzz for Barney’s Version, we all know the music scene is well developed and growing. I can think of many people I know who are in bands, or who spin, or who have hosted radio shows, or otherwise perform. We have great music festivals and, in some cases, half-decent buskers too. It is a city which lives and breathes music – but in order to achieve and attract greatness, you have to pump out a lot of experiments and blind-stabs-in-the-dark; here’s a retrospective:

The Montréal Playlist:

1. Corey Hart – Sunglasses at Night
2. Men Without Hats – The Safety Dance
3. Offenbach feat. Vic Vogel – Les Blues me Guettent
4. Priestess – Run Home
5. The Planet Smashers – Life of the Party
6. Frank Marino & Mahogany Rush – Dragonfly
7. Jerry Doucette – Mama Let him Play
8. Harmonium – Depuis l’Automne
9. Aldo Nova – Fantasy
10. April Wine – Fast Train
11. Chromeo – Tenderoni
12. Kid Koala – pretty much all of Your Mom’s Favourite DJ
13. Leonard Cohen – First We Take Manhattan (every Montréaler’s dream)
14. William Shatner – Common People
15. Beau Dommage – Tous les Palmiers
16. Walter Rossi – Sniffin’ the Breeze
17. Pink Floyd’s The Wall – inspired by an unfortunate event at the Big O

This is by no means an exhaustive list, nor is it even that great of a playlist, and there are many artists I purposely excluded – just trying to demonstrate that there’s a lot of trends and currents at play, and a rather immense pool of culture to draw from.

A modest proposal, Arts & the City, History and Culture, Montréal Architecture, Montréal Landmarks

Perspective on the City {No. 10} – Expo 67

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Venice on the Saint Lawrence - not the work of the author; presumably, 1967

Check out Expo Lounge to get your daily fix of all things Expo related. The photo above is fairly well-known and well-distributed – just found a large print in my uncle’s basement, and he in turn said it’s mine. Couldn’t believe it!

Look at this beautiful marvel we built on man-made islands. What a playground, what a testament to the imagination and creativity of a people. This is how dreams manifest. Why don’t we dream like this anymore?

A modest proposal, Montréal Landmarks, Montréal Stories, Political commentary, What were they thinking?, Worth reconsidering

A critique of the hyperbolic newspaper *updated*

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Another example of this terrible paper: is the actual situation this cut and dry?

This is the letter I just fired off to David Johnston of the Gazette for the rather poor working of this particular article: Westmount Mini-war

Sir –

“Mini-war”? Really?

A bit hyperbolic don’t you think? I think what’s going on in Bahrain, Libya or Yemen right now qualifies as a ‘mini-war’. Ask an Iraqi or an Afghani what war is like and you’ll be surprised to learn there’s usually very little talk of burying hockey rinks or ameliorating community services.

From my experience, debates of this nature during war time are typically interrupted by massive explosions, choking via chemical gas and the constant, droning rhythms of machine gun fire.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, if you want to be taken seriously – and trust me when I say this applies to the Gazette as a whole – you can’t keep submitting ridiculous headlines and bylines like this. It’s not the first time I’ve written to complain about your paper’s poor (or exploitative) command of the English language, but I’ve typically been given the run-around. A lot of ‘it’s not my decision, pass the buck, I’m not responsible etc etc’.

The Gazette likes to think it is a Montréal institution, and it should be. But as long as it feeds the innate human desire for scandal and uses the worst kind of Fox News rhetoric to convey information, it will remain a joke. A bad joke, one which brings shame and humiliation to the entirety of the local Anglophone population.

We need a newspaper of record, one which is taken seriously. But more and more I see a scandal rag with an editorial board taking cues from Hearst’s portrayal of the Spanish-American War.

Try harder…

With utmost sincerity,

Taylor C. Noakes

_____________________________________

And here is Mr. Johnston’s response:

Hello Mr. Noakes:

Thank you for your letter. I couldn’t agree with you more. You might not know that writers don’t write their own headlines. That’s a job for copy editors and, like writers, they have good days and bad days, good habits and bad habits. I also think that war metaphors are greatly overused in our business – and as you say, they are particularly silly and inappropriate these days, given what we are seeing in the Middle East. I’m going to talk to the senior editors here and see if we can start making it a policy not to use the word war so loosely.
Thank you,

Dave Johnston

***

Frankly, I couldn’t be happier with this response. I think we have a friend on the inside!

Arts & the City, Montréal Stories

Paul Giamatti was surprised to learn Montréalers speak French…

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Clearly I didn't take this picture, but my thanks goes out to whoever did.

Paul Giamatti was on the Daily Show last night promoting his new film, the Mordecai Richler novel Barney’s Version.

*** To all of my hardcore Québec-independence readers, quick note – Richler didn’t hate French-Canadians. He is not a racist. Lionel Groulx was. Jacques Parizeau seems to be. Just sayin’

Anyways – Mr. Giamatti apparently thought Montréal was ‘French’ in the same way New Orleans is, which is to say not much. In the interview he indicated that he couldn’t understand anyone, was flabbergasted that a French city existed in North America and loved it, though he also bitched about the weather (he’s becoming one of us!)

I’m waiting for the lunatic fringe to sink their teeth into Giamatti’s comment about ‘lumberjacks and theme parks.’ May take a while, I don’t think the RRQ or the MPQ watch the Daily Show.

A modest proposal, Political commentary

A rational society; the Hitch strikes again…

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I love watching intelligent people destroy obnoxious blowhards with sound, precise, maddeningly effective logic, cutting like a hot knife through butter. The Hitch delivers in this one, calling Jerry Falwell exactly what he was: a dangerous demagogue.

How lucky to live in a society based, strongly, on Enlightenment principles. How precarious it is, as recent developments in the United States have demonstrated, to hold onto it.

A key issue to understanding Québec society and culture is the near-total control inflicted on it by the Catholic Church, roughly from the time immediately after the Patriotes Rebellion up until the late 1950s. And then, the , a period of profound social change, about as tumultuous and rapid as possible without degenerating into a prolonged riot, though the years were rough by local standards. Of considerable importance, the once dominant Church would lose its position in Québec society, and the state would go secular. This was the Quiet Revolution.

I cannot conceive of a city more Catholic and yet profoundly secular as Montréal. I have no idea how many people here identify with atheism, yet I’m acutely aware of a general consensus that religion has done considerably more harm than good throughout the last few thousand years. It seems that pretty much everyone I know, and meet, are probably thinking the same thing. Again, its part of the local cultural identity. We were oppressed for years, the abuse was rampant. Why do you think it was called ‘le grand noirceur’, the Great Darkness?

Seeing a man like Hitchens emasculate that Confederate worm and his faux-Irish Braheem mouthpiece gives me immense joy.

Anyone up to build a statue of him next to the cross on the mountain?

Arts & the City

With many thanks to a van filled with bran and a supafly soul-searcher

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One of my favourite songs, and an excellent video to go with it. Features some interesting perspectives on the city – a very Montréal video. I am not saying it captured the zeitgeist of the era, as that is exactly what you’d expect to read here (if this were a poorer quality blog). So instead I’ll just say that I find this particular video captures a quintessential element of the local culture in the late-90s. It’s dark yet lively, promising despite the gloom, sort of relishing the noire, and reminding us that below the surface, a walk on the wild side awakens spirits numbed by the demands of a trying environment. Yeah, that’ll do nicely…

One more thing, the incomparable Curtis Mayfield is indeed featured on this funkiest of Bran Van tracks, and it would be his last, as the soul-singer-supreme would succumb to illness related to his paralysis. Of note, he recorded the vocals for Astounded while suspended in a special spin-aligning bed. That’s right, Curtis was staring at the floor while his lungs belted out notes that flew towards heaven.