MUSI 3104 W12
Progressive Rock, New Wave
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Background: what was "progressive rock" in general?
DVD: Mashmakhan "As The Years Go By" (1970)
What connections might we make between this and prog rock?
Mashmakhan evolved in Montreal out of a range of rock, r+b and
jazz bands. They had this lineup by 1969, and that year did the first
ever rock performance at the National Arts Centre.
• This song was their one hit, but it was a pretty big one (100,000
Canada, 500,000 US), especially in Japan, where it sold a million
copies and where they toured in 1971.
• In a commercial sense they were one-hit wonders, but are an
important index of some musical experiments going on in Canada
during the early prog-rock years (and also linked to the rock-withhorns discussion from last week).
• One strategy we haven't done yet is to track the chronological
development of a major artist in some depth (although we've come
close to this with Neil Young and to a lesser degree Joni Mitchell).
So we are going to do that to a slightly greater extent with Rush.
• Opening question: why are Rush a good choice for such a
treatment?
• Rush formed in Willowdale, 1968.
• First album recorded for Moon records, 1973, released in 1974. This
was a label which they started for themselves since they couldn't
get a deal elsewhere. In 1974 it began the transformation to
Anthem Records (complete by 1977). They were distributed by
Mercury Records in the U.S.
• DVD: Rush "Working Man" live 1974
• Laura Secord Secondary School, St. Catharines.
• Discuss importance of high school and university gigs during this
era. Why have these generally stopped? Does that link up with
other de-localizations in popular music cultures?
• Rush's style at this point: lots of comparisons to Led Zeppelin,
performances with KISS, ZZ-Top, Aerosmith, etc. First broke out on
the radio in Cleveland, presumably with a working-class metal
audience.
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DVD: Rush "Anthem" live 1975
Neil Peart replaced John Rutsey in summer 1974.
Changes in musical style.
Lyrics: in general, and also Ayn Rand influence.
Geddy Lee's voice.
Production values of film.
Discuss importance of 2112 (1976) and their move to full artistic
independence.
• Overhead: 2112 promotional ad
• DVD: Rush "Xanadu" live 1977
• Seneca College Theatre.
• A Farewell to Kings (1977) and Hemispheres (1978) were the high
water mark of Rush's early progressive rock style.
• Continuing to be largely ignored or put down by radio and by
mainstream critics.
• Discuss their relationship to locality -- home boys, but also
somehow aloof or otherworldly.
• Also their approach to management decisions and their place in the
industry more generally. Only clear contact points are again, local
(Max Webster, much later Bob and Doug, Trailer Park Boys).
• Rush began to move in a slightly more pop- and new-waveinfluenced direction with Permanent Waves (1980), and Moving
Pictures (1981).
• Discuss importance of "The Spirit of Radio" and CFNY circa 1978-1988: promotion of unknown and local bands, 1981 creation of the
U-Knows (renamed the CASBYs in 1986).
• Moving Pictures, especially, pushed Rush to a new level of
commercial success domestically and internationally.
• Overhead: Moving Pictures LP cover
• YouTube: Rush "Tom Sawyer" video (1981)
• At this point Rush was of the most popular bands in Canada and
also had a significant international following, regularly selling out
major stadium shows. Went on to sell about 30 million albums by
the early 1990s, and remain as popular as ever.
• They are also increasingly cited as an influence by many progressive
rock and metal artists globally.
• Thinking in terms of roots and perhaps compensatory identities...
• In what ways does Rush stand apart from other progressive rock
and metal bands of this era? And do we see anything in those traits
which reflect their local roots and networks?
• More broadly, could similar arguments be made for the special
appropriateness of progressive rock in general to urban Canada of
the late 1970s?
• Last thing to note is the way Rush went into a much more
keyboard-dominated direction for much of the 1980s, and focused
even more on shorter song forms.
• YouTube: Rush "Subdivisions" video (1982)
• When Rush began to explore the meeting point between new wave,
progressive rock, and pop they were part of a broader trend in
Canadian bands of the time. Similar mixes could be found in
Triumph, Gowan, and Saga, among others.
• Saga (formed in Oakville, 1977) is especially noteworthy in the
degree to which they were more singles-oriented than many other
progressive bands, and also placed even more emphasis on
synthesizers.
• Along with Rush and others, they help to demonstrate the blurring
that can occur between progressive rock and new wave in the late
1970s and early 1980s. They were much more popular in Europe
than in Canada or the U.S., even though they are a Toronto band.
• Overhead: Saga Silent Knight LP cover (1980)
• YouTube. Saga: "Don't Be Late" (live 1981)
• Overhead: Saga Worlds Apart LP cover (1981)
• YouTube. Saga: "On The Loose" video (1981)
• Another significant Canadian contribution to later progressive rock
came from Voivod (who also managed to pioneer a sci-fi-oriented
substream of thrash metal in the process).
• Quick background: thrash metal.
• Voivod were founded in Jonquière, and released their first album in
1984. The first of their albums to fully fuse thrash metal style with
science-fiction graphics and themes was Dimension Hatröss (1988).
• Overhead: Voivod Dimension Hatröss LP cover
• DVD. Voivod: "Psychic Vacuum" video (1988)
• DVD. Voivod: "Nothingface" live on Musique Plus (1989)
• Unfortunately, after their commercial peak with Nothingface (1989)
various personal problems and personnel changes held the band
back from fully capitalizing on their influence and innovations.
• But considering the way that thrash metal and progressive rock
continue to intermingle, Voivod are increasingly seen as an
historically significant and forward-looking band.
• Background, what was new wave?
• There were several substyles and scenes that defined different
branches of new wave in the late 1970s and into the 1980s. Some
of the most important were: British pub rock and post-punk, New
York punk and post-punk, Sheffield electronic pop, and the ska
revival.
• Within all of that, there were also Canadian bands and scenes,
many of which grew out of earlier thriving punk scenes, which
became widely influential. Major examples include...
• Vancouver (The Pointed Sticks, The Payola$, Images in Vogue)
• Toronto (The Spoons, Rough Trade, Martha and the Muffins, The
Parachute Club, Jane Siberry)
• Montreal (Men Without Hats, Rational Youth, The Box, Luba).
• The Queen Street West scene began to coalesce around 1975,
originally quite bohemian and underground. Important for early
Toronto punk, but evolved in a more new wave direction by the
early 1980s.
• Elements of the scene: proximity to the Ontario College of Art,
independent galleries, live music venues, affordable rents and
housing. The scene was noteworthy for not just musical production
but also visual arts, film, etc., and was often compared to famous
art neighbourhoods like SoHo.
• Rough Trade was formed in 1974. Leaders Carol Pope and Kevan
Staples had been collaborating since 1968 and were already
plugged into the art scene, so the roots of the band go much earlier
than the Queen Street new wave scene.
• Early on they were noteworthy for dealing with then-taboo themes,
especially gay/lesbian and BDSM cultures.
• The version of Rough Trade which became famous was signed by
True North in 1980.
• General Idea was a three-member art collective founded in 1968 in
Toronto, and highly active in both Toronto and New York.
• GI didn't just incorporate mass culture elements into its work, but
aimed to be a part of mass culture. This included projects like a
magazine (File, which looked so much like Life that Life threated to
sue), the Miss General Idea beauty pageants, and work with local
musicians.
• Carol Pope became aware of them around 1975, and GI did the art
direction for several Rough Trade albums starting with Avoid Freud
(1980).
• Overhead: General Idea "Nazi Milk" (1979)
• Overhead: General Idea "Liquid Assets" (1980)
• YouTube. General Idea: "Shut The Fuck Up Parts I + II" (1984),
excerpts (0--2:00, 3:00--5:00)
• GI is significant not only because of their direct connection with
Rough Trade, but also because they illustrate the multi-leveled
nature of the Queen Street scene (consider not just multimedia, but
nuances of attitude and status as a node in global networks).
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YouTube. Rough Trade "High School Confidential" video (1980)
YouTube. Rough Trade "All Touch" video (1982)
Overhead: Avoid Freud LP cover
In what ways does the visual style here reflect General Idea?
Relative to the local situation, there are at least two things to
note...
• First, Rough Trade were a product of the specific mix of forces in the
early Queen Street scene.
• Second, relative to the conservative nature of the rest of Toronto at
the time, they had a bit of a situationist effect. For example, Carol
Pope claims that the general public didn't really understand that
she was gay, although that may have more to do with people being
unsure how to process the information.
• In terms of ongoing influence, one of the most significant Canadian
new wave groups was Men Without Hats, formed in 1980 in
Montreal.
• They had their biggest success early with Rhythm of Youth (1982):
"The Safety Dance" was the hit single here and remains a definitive
early synth pop tracks.
• Like many Canadian artists, they had trouble maintaining career
momentum after their initial success. For example, their overall
career profile resembles that of Mashmakhan, except in retrospect
they continue to be cited as formative influences on electro-pop
and new wave whereas Mashmakhan doesn't generally come up in
overall histories of prog rock.
• CD. Men Without Hats: "I Got The Message" (1982)
• Montreal bands in general were often closely associated with the
more synth-pop branch of New Wave, and this is a prime example.
• Jane Siberry started out as a folk artist. It was around 1984 that she
went public with her new wave synth/theatrical persona.
• YouTube: Jane Siberry "Mimi On The Beach" (1984) (shorter
version of song -- there was also a full-length video which seems
to be unavailable)
• YouTube: Jane Siberry "The Empty City" (live 1987)
• Siberry's work catches the spirit of the later (i.e. mid-80s) Queen
Street scene -- what are the similarities and differences relative to
an earlier group like Rough Trade?
• Concluding discussion: what elements are held in common between
Canadian progressive rock and the various kinds of New Wave from
this era?
• 1984: MuchMusic launch. MusiquePlus was 1986.
• 1986: Last CHUM chart.
• There is a general consensus that Much Music was very important
in the 1980s and early 1990s for pushing Canadian acts.
• The station was also effective in building a sense of Canadian
community. This was in part because compared to MTV it was quite
talk-oriented, and much of that talk emphasized Canadian themes.
• One theory about talkiness was low video supply, although that
probably doesn't explain all of it.
• Because of the willingness of Much Music to promote Canadian
artists, and the support of various government agencies, many
Canadian bands of the 1980s used videos as effective promotional
tools. And since videos were at the time a novel thing, and also
given the new wave and/or progressive orientation of many of the
artists, this all helped to give much Canadian popular music of the
era a notably futurist flavour.
• One interesting side-effect of the importance of video to Canadian
artists of the 1980s, combined with their relatively limited
production budgets, was that many of these videos featured local
neighbourhoods, especially Toronto. Some examples...
• YouTube: Parachute Club "Rise Up" video (1983)
• YouTube: The Shuffle Demons "Spadina Bus" video (1986)
• YouTube: The Rheostatics "The Ballad of Wendel Clark" video
(1987)
• Can also mention The Barenaked Ladies "Lovers In A Dangerous
Time" (1991), and the Rush "Subdivisions" video we saw earlier.
• Presumably this wasn't happening only for reasons of budget, but
also out of a sense of civic/local pride.
• And now we can catch up with a bit more about institutions: record
labels, recording studios, and some aspects of concerts/touring.
• Will Straw argues that the relative lack of research into Canadian
recording is explained partly by the fact that historically there has been
little institutional continuity to frame it around, and explains this in
turn by the fact that most Canadian recording companies were small
and/or short-lived and/or branches of companies based elsewhere.
• 1950s through 1960s: the recording industry in Canada was
fragmentary. Most Canadian-owned companies did only pressing and
distribution, not signing artists etc. Sometimes did duplication of
Canadian masters.
• This was only possible because the major foreign labels who owned
the material did not yet have Canadian distribution networks, and so
preferred to license the recordings. This had largely changed by early
1970s, and most of these kinds of Canadian businesses disappeared.
• Some of the companies in this category did do a little original
recording/releasing of Canadian artists as well, perhaps the best
known being Arc in connection with Maritime and Country music in
the 1960s.
• Because of geography and linguistic differences, many small
Canadian labels and distributors preferred to service niche markets
and localities. Almost none aimed at pan-Canadian markets or
distribution (so this was done for the most part only by foreign
multinational companies).
• Canadian record labels formed in the 1970s tended to not have any
involvement in manufacture or distribution, but to be more A&R or
community based (especially concert bookers), often centered
around one core artist and a small roster of similar artists.
• Maybe the earliest example of this sort of venture was Aquarius,
formed in Montreal in 1968, who had April Wine. Anthem (already
discussed) is another major example.
• Two other very important labels which partly followed this model,
but were also broader in orientation, were...
• In 1969 Bernie Finkelstein founded True North in Toronto, centered
on Bruce Cockburn and Murray McLaughlin and with distribution by
Columbia.
• Stoney Plain was founded in Edmonton 1976. They were dedicated
to their own country and folk artist signings, but also distributed
100s of other roots music albums.
• Sometimes, labels of this sort were as much community support
networks as businesses in the usual sense.
• For example, Boot Records. It was formed in 1971 to support
Stompin' Tom, then added a wide range of country artists and for a
time had a subsidiary that did classical music as well. Boot was
always conceived as much as a Canadian talent support institution
as it was a label.
• In the later 1980s and into the 1990s perhaps the highest-profile
Canadian label, and the one most like a conventional record label in
its operation, was Nettwerk.
• Founded in 1984, Nettwerk has fostered a number of
internationally-known artists (most notably Sarah McLachlan and
Skinny Puppy, who we'll hear later).
• Besides musical success, the label became known for the
innovation and excellence of its design and packaging (details will
be covered when we talk about McLachlan and Skinny Puppy).
• The significant thing to note at this point is that while Nettwerk had
some features in common with the other companies being
discussed --- indie, originally local in focus, a production house as
much as a label in the narrower sense, interested in fostering
relative unknown artists and building their reps --- it achieved a
degree of international recognition that other Canadian labels
didn't. Also, being based in Vancouver Nettwerk helped to form a
counterweight to the idea that the really important music
companies were all based in Toronto.
• Canadian recording studios were quite rare and mediocre up
through the early 1970s.
• That changed considerably by the mid-to-late 1970s, with several
studios in all major cities and some of international importance.
Three whose names come up especially often in popular music
histories...
• Nimbus 9 was launched as a production company in Toronto in
1968 by Jack Richardson (produced the Guess Who among others).
• Eventually narrowed down to mostly a recording studio, Nimbus 9
studios (at 39 Hazleton Ave. as of 1974). Bob Ezrin became involved
in 1970. This studio was associated with many important
international projects, e.g. Peter Gabriel and Alice Cooper as well as
lots of punk and New Wave Toronto bands.
• Le Studio near Morin Heights was active from 1974 to 1988. It had a
revolutionary approach to design, for example featuring very large
windows that gave a view of the surrounding woods from the
recording floor (made it feel as if you were in the woods while
recording).
• Le Studio was very important for Rush, and also hosted major
international acts like The Police, Keith Richards, Cat Stevens, and
others.
• Grant Avenue Studios, founded 1974 and closely affiliated with the
Lanois brothers until 1985. It was important for local bands (M+M
and Parachute Club for example) and also became internationally
known for Lanois' ambient work with Brian Eno.
• We've already mentioned the challenges of touring in Canada, and
in building local audiences.
• These are partly geographical, and partly to do with the politics and
economics of Canadian cities.
• Since the challenge of touring is one of the major factors which
historically put a limit on the careers of many Canadian artists, and
discouraged Canadian tours by foreign artists, it's worth talking a bit
more about the details.
• Note: what follows applies mostly to the economics of concerts and
touring up to the 1990s. In recent decades, concert attendance has
generally dropped off sharply and so some of these details are now
different, although the broad outline remains applicable.
• The topic can be initially divided up by distinguishing between local,
relational, and national scales. For each of these we can discuss
factors related to...
• Typical venues.
• Typical audience makeup (size, relationship to artist, expectations).
• Promotional strategies.
• Technical needs and how they can be met (service providers and
economics).
• Logistics: how shows are booked and how bands get from one to
the other.
• These three scales of reference also tend to be useful in
distinguishing three kinds of artist...
• Small independent Canadian and Small independent international.
• The local-to-regional leap is much harder for Canadian artists,
because regions are often entirely defined by one city anyway.
• Artists in this category almost never do "tours of Canada."
• US artists in this category might appear in several Canadian cities,
but almost always through the jump-in-and-out approach.
• An interesting exception is the festival circuit, which was of major
importance for many small and mid-sized Canadian artists. Also,
while festivals used to be quite genre-specific this has been
increasingly less true since the 1990s.
• One frequent problem for these artists is audience saturation. For
an artist trying to play frequently but unable to get outside the
regional or local circuit, it's a problem to find different people to
play for.
• Medium-sized Canadian and Medium-sized international.
• First thing to note is that most Canadian artists get stuck at this
level. It is the embodiment of "just enough" population.
• One benefit is a fairly large number of venues. Given the large
number of mid-size Canadian cities, there are many mid-size venues
to book into, although many of these are sports-oriented and so
not ideal for music.
• But note, this only applies to acts that need a small stadium. Acts
that fall a little below this, needing a larger club, have a venue
supply problem again.
• The economics of this level of activity are also not so bad if you just
want to make a living or to supplement another income. But that
can easily become a trap as well.
• Major artists
• The first thing to note is that these performances are confined to a
very small number of cities, therefore a small number of regions
(given the huge distance between major Canadian cities).
• The small number of truly major Canadian artists will often do more
Canadian dates than makes strict economic sense, though. Which is
nice.
• Notice here the gap between audience types, the problem of
accessible population. It's not too uncommon to see very large
crowds at Scotiabank Place, or at even larger venues in Toronto etc.
Yet even very good local bands usually find it difficult to build and
keep a following. Why is this? Why do the thousands of people who
go to the major shows generally show no interest in supporting
local activity?