When we talk about the music of the 1990s, we tend to focus on pioneering alt-rock acts or hyper lyrical late golden age rappers. We never talk about Eurodance.
Eurodance was a mixture of house, techno and bubblegum pop, which resulted in high-energy blasts of synthesizer arpeggios, banging four-four, 140 beat-per-minute kick drums and heavily emotional lyrics. The imported product was so popular in Canada that we started making our own. (Because Canadian Eurodance sounded like an oxymoron, it was dubbed with the awkward portmanteau of Candance, which only kind of half stuck. People usually stayed with Eurodance, or just "dance music.")
And yet for all its popularity, we pretend Eurodance didn't exist. There's a reason for this. It didn't seem cool or subversive. It didn't have angst, or a social message, or even lyrics that totally made sense. (Candance had an oddly high number of songs sung in English by French Canadians.) It was, at best, rave culture's goofy younger sibling, but with all the breaking into warehouses, mind-expanding drugs and PLUR utopianism replaced with modified Honda Civics, Kappa tearaways and lip liner that was intentionally darker than your lipstick.
All that said, if you grew up as a distinctly uncool suburb of a major Central Canadian city in the '90s , or in a mid-sized industrial town in the same region, Candance was probably as much the sound of your youth as Pixies or Wu-Tang Clan. Even if you didn't listen to it, even if you hated it, it was around and hard to ignore.
So this goes out to everyone who spent a summer night in the parking lot of a strip mall in Scarborough or St. Catharines or Rivière-des-Prairies, leaning against your buddy Paul's mint new CR-X, watching Maria and George break up for the seventh time in front of the Country Style, and hoping that Emjay would come on the radio soon.
Click on the playlist below to spark your Candance/Eurodance nostalgia, and open the gallery above for details.
For more '90s coverage, check out all our '90s Week content, including the 50 best Canadian songs of the decade, which songs you cry-drove to and an ode to girl groups.
I'm a sucker for sweet harmonies. And, really, what's not to love? Luxurious layers, velvety tones, the sensory simulation of total immersion as two or three or more voices blend into a new whole without sacrificing the integrity of the individual.
There's also something lovely and familial about harmonizing, as if by sharing space in a song, we approximate real, emotional closeness. If the singers are related, the voices blend that much more supply, smoothly, a reminder that we're never far from home.
When the harmonies are sung by women and tricked out with great melodies, beats and decent lyrics, it's an extra special treat. Toss in any combination of the following — dance moves, rap breaks, empowerment themes — and I'm giddy.
This is all to say: I love '90s girl groups.
I don't much care for "girl group" as a designation, but fine, whatever. It loosely captures the spirit of its definition, which is an all-female group specializing in harmonizing vocals. But the '90s were so rich with women heroes everywhere — riot grrrls, pop powerhouses, R&B divas, alt-rock rebels, rap royalty, avant-garde and underground fire starters and songwriting dynamos — that girl groups just don't get the love they deserve.
Until now.
In the spirit of '90s week, let's hear it for the girl groups! Check out the gallery above and press play on the YouTube playlist below to keep the music flowing as you flash back in time.
Each week at CBC Music, our staff pick a list of songs you need to hear, writing passionate words with the hopes that you’ll add said artist to your playlist. This week, we’re starting something different.
NPR Music, BBC 1 and CBC Music have partnered to give an international voice to Songs You Need to Hear. The last week of each month, a host from each public broadcaster will choose a song from an artist that you need to hear.
In this inaugural edition, NPR Music’s Ann Powers, BBC 1’s Huw Stephens and our own Grant Lawrence make a case for three artists who should be on your radar. To hear their voices make the case, tune in to Radio 2 Drive at 6:45 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 24.
Host:Ann Powers, music critic at NPR Music Song you need to hear: "Nothing to Lose," Andrew Combs
When 28-year-old Texas native Combs first surfaced in Nashville a few years ago, his highly melodic, moody songs earned him some lofty comparisons: people talked about Townes Van Zandt and Mickey Newbury. On his second album, Combs honours those heroes and the moment of their flowering, when country craftsmanship met folk storytelling and the sweet flash of post-Gram Parsons pastoral rock. Combs's voice is so evocative on his new album, All These Dreams, and the settings he creates with his collaborators (led by the outstanding guitar duo Steelism) are so rich, it's a damn good thing his lyrics live up to the presentation. This might be the Americana album of 2015.
We’ve had all sorts of great artists break through from BBC Introducing over the years, with some of the bigger names you might know including Jake Bugg and Florence & the Machine. I’m going to give you a new hot tip from one of the BBC Introducing artists that we’re digging at the moment. Bearcubs is 23-year-old Jack Ritchie, who brings an eclectic blend of electronic genres to the table. His latest single was written, performed and produced single-handedly, and sees this young artist putting his time studying digital music and sound arts at university to superb use.
My song choice comes from a brand new artist out of Edmonton called Faith Healer. It’s the bedroom musical project of young Jessica Jalbert, and when I say bedroom, I’m not kidding. The album was made in the producer’s parents’ basement over a series of Tuesdays because that’s the only day that both producer and musician had off from their day jobs at the same record store.
And this song kind of feels like a timeless indie-pop gem that you would unearth from a used record store. Is it 1965, ’95 or 2015? It’s a brand new song that builds beautifully and melodically into something special.
Listen to Ann Powers, Huw Stephens and Grant Lawrence on Radio 2 Drive for the radio version of Songs You Need to Hear at 6:45 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 24. Tune in online here.
Click on the image below to listen to the weekly Songs You Need to Hear feature, which has CBC staff across the country picking the must-hear tracks for your playlists.
Angèle Dubeau & La Pietà Ludovico Einaudi: Portrait Stream until March 2
Violinist Angèle Dubeau and her chamber orchestra La Pietà are back with a new release in their Portrait series on the Analekta label. Having already recorded albums devoted to the music of Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt and John Adams, they now turn their attention to Italian pianist/composer Ludovico Einaudi.
After graduating from the Milan Conservatory, Einaudi studied composition with Luciano Berio and seemed destined for success with traditional chamber and orchestral forms. But his interest in dance and multimedia projects pushed his career in a different direction. Today, Einaudi is recognized as one of his generation's leading composers of film and TV scores and his music incorporates classical, pop, ambient and world music styles.
Einaudi also performs and records his own piano music to great popular acclaim.
"This grand and prolific Italian composer creates works that dwell within us for a long time," writes Dubeau in the album's liner notes. "A music that captivates the listener; a sonic landscape to discover."
Download or pre-order Ludovico Einaudi: Portraithere.
Tracklist
All tracks arranged by Dubeau and François Vallières except "Passaggio" and "Sarabande."
Patrick Watson has announced Love Songs for Robots, the acclaimed Montreal band's fifth album, which follows up 2012's Polaris-Prize nominated Adventures in Your Own Backyard. CBC Music is premiering the title track in the player above.
A meditation on the human connection in our mechanical impulses, “Love Songs for Robots” envelopes you within its dreamscape of swirling synths and ethereal vocals, the pulsing heartbeat at its core the only thing keeping you grounded.
“I started thinking about things in a very mechanical way,” says Watson of the album’s soulful electronic direction. “I found it interesting how we would use our senses to come up with an emotional reaction. As I get older you get to know yourself better and I realized that a lot of my emotional reactions were mechanical responses and that was hugely influential. I didn’t want to be a robot. But the reason why we are superior to computers is that we have emotions and I realized that emotions are mechanical so the only thing left between us and robots is curiosity and inspiration — and I don’t think you can program that into a computer. That’s definitely where I was at when I started writing the record.”
Patrick Watson is also playing the CBC Music Fest in Toronto on May 23 (Check out the full lineup and pre-order tickets here).
You can check out the trailer for the album below.
Love Songs for Robots is available May 12. Pre-order it on iTunes here.
Each day, Rich Terfry and Radio 2 Drive wraps up your day with music and stories about the interesting things going on in the world.
RICH'S PICK: "Just a Friend" by Rowlf the Dog
JUNK IN THE TRUNK:
Worst party ever:
Puppy solves a geometry problem:
Common misconceptions debunked:
REAR VIEW MIRROR:
Every week, Rich Terfry looks back in our Rear-view Mirror at a great song from the good ol’ days. This week, Captain Beefheart with "Yellow Brick Road."
Was one of the most influential album of the 60s written by a man who never existed? How could that be?
Listen to Rich tell you the incredible story of Captain Beefheart and the elusive Herb Bermann.
The debut album by Captain Beefheart, Safe As Milk, is hugely influential for its innovative, experimental lyrics and composition. It's said that the album was a big influence on the Beatles and that John Lennon was a big fan in particular. The album is also significant in that Ry Cooder, one of the greatest guitarists of all-time, made his debut on the album as part of Beefheart's Magic Band. But who wrote the songs on this classic album? Well that was a mystery for a very long time.
In the liner notes of the Safe As Milk album appears the name Herb Bermann, credited as a co-writer on eight of the album's songs. The inclusion of this name was a mystery to many, including Captain Beefheart himself. Asked who Bermann was, Beefheart said he had no idea! He said he never hired anyone by that name. This sparked an investigation. Not only could no one figure out exactly what Bermann did on the album, no one could determine his existence at all!
The mystery deepened four years later when the name appeared again - this time in the credits of an ill-fated screenplay for a film based on Neil Young's album, After the Gold Rush. Who was Herb Bermann?!
The answer to that question remained a mystery for 36 years when the very real, very much alive, Herb Bermann was located, interviewed and his involvement as a writer on the Safe As Milk album was confirmed. Very strange.
Maybe Herb Bermann had a hand in writing this one. From the classic album Safe As Milk, here's Captain Beefheart with "Yellow Brick Road" on Rear View Mirror.
Here are some other great editions of Rear-view Mirror:
Father John Misty recently stopped by the Strombo Show, and if you were ever a little on the fence about the eccentric singer-songwriter, this will definitely bring you onside. Even host George Stroumboulopoulos seemed surprised when the singer, born Josh Tillman, said he was going to perform Leonard Cohen's classic, "Bird on the Wire." Listen to his gorgeous take below.
Tillman also says that the first time he heard Cohen was in his 20s, chalking it up to one of his "bazillion musical blind spots" back then.
The influence definitely shows. Like Cohen, Tillman has a gift for combining the sacred and profane, his humour and hubris, as he proved on the excellent I Love You, Honeybear, which you can listen to here if you haven't already.
One of the great things about the written word is that it can leap off the page, whether it's as the reader reads, or, on special occasions that don't seem to happen nearly as often as they perhaps should, when one is read to.
Open Culture is doing their part to facilitate the latter by providing stories and poems to be read by 90 famous authors and celebrities.
Excerpted from a collection of more than 600 free audio books, you can hear the late Maya Angelou put her voice to two of her famous works, Still I Rise and the poem she read on the occasion of U.S. President Barack Obama's inauguration, On the Pulse of the Morning.
In the video below, watch, but more importantly, listen as Tom Waits wraps his raspy vocals to Charles Bukowski's The Laughing Heart while U2's Bono lends his tenor to Bukowski's Roll the Dice.
Two G's got together to perform what might be the most obvious and unnatural duet of all time.
As part of Mash Up Mondays, a month-long series that ran on the Jimmy Kimmel Show, saxophonist Kenny G teamed up with rapper Warren G to perform the latter's 1994 hip hop classic, "Regulate."
Mash Up Monday also resulted in some other inventive collaborations, including Weezer and ZZ Top (Wee-Z Top) and Morris Day and The Time and Haim (Morris Day and the Haim) performing "Jungle Love".
The last time conductor Charles Dutoit stood in front of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal was in 2002. That's when the orchestra's illustrious music director of 25 years left his job under a cloud of ill feeling, following the publication of an open letter by the Guilde des musiciens accusing Dutoit of bullying, mental cruelty, insulting behaviour and lack of respect.
The intervening years have been a sort of standoff between the orchestra and the conductor who put it on the international map. Dutoit has never deigned to return to the OSM's podium. Until now.
On Feb. 23 Montreal's Festival Montréal en Lumières held a press conference to announce that Charles Dutoit will conduct the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal for two performances at the 2016 edition of its festival. On the program: works by Ravel, Stravinsky and Berlioz — music that Dutoit and the OSM made their own.
The BBC has announced the singers selected for the 2015 Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. Canadian soprano Aviva Fortunata is one of 20 finalists chosen from nearly 350 applicants.
Fortunata, 27, is a member of the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio. The Calgary native made her mainstage COC debut as Fiordiligi in Mozart's Cosi fan tutte in 2014. Earlier in 2015, she sang Helmwige (one of the Rhinemaidens) in the COC's Die Walküre.
Her Twitter bio reads "Soprano, roller derby enthusiast, and number one fan of the Oxford comma." She also has her own nail polish blog.
The Cardiff Singer of the World Competition will take place from June 14 to 21 at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. The winner of the main prize will receive £15,000 ($30,000) and the Cardiff Trophy, while the Song Prize, awarded to the best singer of Lieder and art song, carries a £5,000 ($10,000) prize.
"Lanois was a walking concept. He slept music. He ate it. He lived it." - Bob Dylan
The Strombo Show ran the gamut this Sunday night, keeping the spirit of radio alive by delivering the best records in the best order. It's a show for music lovers by music lovers, ranging over three hours of commercial-free music to honour both old and new.
George Stroumboulopoulos was joined by an iconic Canadian producer and musician, Daniel Lanois for an acoustic performance and intimate interview in the House of Strombo.
Like Quincy Jones or Phil Spector, Daniel Lanois is one of the few Grammy-winning producers whose name on a record means as much as the artist's: U2, Peter Gabriel, Willie Nelson, Robbie Robertson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young - Lanois has produced career-changing albums for all of them. Her's also released several himself, including his latest noisy headphone album, 'Flesh And Machine'.
We also revisit some of the most unforgettable cinematic opening sequences to honour the Academy Awards. We tripped from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn with the sounds of Chuck D to Jim Morrison's growl over Vietnam.
As always, we tipped our hats to those ground-breakers and game-changers with a Nod to the Gods, spun the best new tracks, paid tribute to Tom Waits on Ten with Tom and sent you into the horizontal with the Big Lie Down.
Lock it. Crank it. Join the collective!
MAGNIFICENT 7
7 HOT CHIP / Huarache Lights
6 BRAIDS / MiniSkirt
5 TOBIAS JESSO JR. / How Could You Babe
4 UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA / Multi-Love
3 METZ / Acetate
2 HAYDEN / Nowhere We Cannot Go
1 FATHER JOHN MISTY / Holy Shit
PLAYLIST
LESLEY GORE / You Don’t Own Me HOT CHIP / Huarache Lights MIA / Space BRAIDS / MiniSkirt FUGAZI / Suggestion PUBLIC ENEMY / Fight The Power SHIRLEY BASSEY / Goldfinger THE DOORS / The End CHASTITY BELT / Time to Go Home TOBIAS JESSO JR. / How Could You Babe LEON BRIDGES / Better Man ODETTA / Don’t Think Twice, It’s s All Right NEIL YOUNG / Walk With Me DANIEL LANOIS / Aquatic (Live Strombo Sessions) DANIEL LANOIS / Sonho Dourado (Live Strombo Sessions) RAFFI / Six Little Ducks U2 / Where The Streets Have No Name DANIEL LANOIS / Sioux Lookout SKINNY PUPPY / Dig It CHARLES WRIGHT / Express Yourself THE SHRANGRI-LAS / Walking In The Sand UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA / Multi-Love GENESIS / Silent Sun OVERNIGHT / Follow Me TOM WAITS / 9th and Hennepin SALT N PEPPA / Push It JANIS JOPLIN / Mercedes Benz PORTISHEAD / Glory Box LOVE & THE FAMILY TREE / Phoney’s and Freaks (Show Me The Truth) METZ / Acetate GOOD THROB / Acid House NIRVANA / Aneurysm HAYDEN / Nowhere We Cannot Go FATHER JOHN MISTY / Always On My Mind BAT FOR LASHES / Laura NINE INCH NAILS / Something I Can Never Have
For further musical exploration with George Stroumboulopoulos, tune in to The Strombo Show every Sunday night on CBC Radio 2 or CBC Music from 8 to 11 p.m. for three hours of uninterrupted music for music lovers.
Last week's announcement that Yannick Nézet-Séguin will conduct opening night of the Metropolitan Opera's 2015-16 season filled us with pride. Of course, we know our Canadian classical music stars are fabulous, but sometimes it's reassuring to see their artistry recognized beyond our borders.
Next month, Canadian musicians will perform on some of the world's greatest classical music stages, from New York City's Carnegie Hall to London's Wigmore Hall to Amsterdam's Concertgebouw. Audiences in Bilbao, Pittsburgh, Berlin, Munich, Toulouse and beyond will be able to hear for themselves why Canada is a hotbed of classical music talent.
Open the gallery above to see which classical music ambassadors are making Canada proud in March.
This is not an exhaustive list. If there's a performance you'd like to bring to our attention, let us know in the comments below.
The book examines coming of age with Celine Dion, Shania Twain, Alanis Morissette and Sarah McLachlan, how and why they all became superstars between 1993 and 1997, and what it means that they're still Canada's best-selling artists today. Warner would like you know that this is her first book and she's desperately trying to play it cool, but it's super exciting.
We Oughta Know: How Four Women Ruled the '90s and Changed Canadian Music (Eternal Cavalier Press, April 2015)
From the essay "Adventures in Sexism"
'Victim Culture'
The mid-’90s was a particularly strange time. Alongside the increased visibility and dominance of women musicians, there was another cultural shift running parallel — one that was simultaneously celebrated as an emotional reckoning and dismissed as “victim culture,” possibly the most insensitive and disgusting term ever invented to obfuscate blame and responsibility and perpetuate victim blaming and shaming.
In 1995, Entertainment Weekly’s David Browne wrote that “Morissette’s seemingly overnight success is almost a textbook example of how to create a rock star.” Among his surefire steps to achieving a Jagged Little Pill-like blockbuster? Make a record that “feeds into today’s popular victim culture.” He cited a few examples of challenges Morissette had faced, including getting mugged in 1993 after moving to L.A. and seeking treatment for depression “brought on by loneliness.” He also hypothesized that perhaps her depression was “brought on by the realization that being big in Canada doesn’t necessarily translate south of the border,” which doesn’t even make sense since he was writing the article because of her “overnight” success and popularity, but okay. He concluded by stating “whatever the motivation, calculated or inadvertent, Jagged Little Pill is a mail-order catalog of grievances anyone, male or female, can relate to — call it talk-radio pop.”
There’s a callousness in the ease with which Browne chalks up a woman’s experience to “victim culture.” Disappointingly, that thread also formed a substantial element of Gerri Hirshey’s epic Rolling Stone feature in 1997. In it, Hirshey interviewed some of the most important women musicians of the ’90s, and presented two distinct factions: women who deal in pain and women who deal with pain.
At one point, Hirshey lauds resiliency as being critical to surviving in the music industry, advising that if “you encounter a woman possessed of unusual tensile strength, it behooves you to settle in and listen up.”
Provided, it seems, you’re listening to the right woman.
Hirshey recounts a 1993 interview with Tina Turner, prior to the release of What’s Love Got To Do With It?, the movie version of Turner’s autobiography. Hirshey recalls the many abuses Turner suffered in her relationship with her husband, Ike:
“Given that we are now living in the Age of Victimhood, a time when our commander in chief can talk about ‘feeling your pain,’ might this film cast Tina as a textbook victim of domestic violence?”
“Victim?” she bellowed. “Victim! Gimme a break!”
I’d baited her, I admitted—and was gratified by her outraged response. I’d been cranky as a wet cat about the ’90s tsunami of public confessionals and celebrity spewings — couldn’t take a second more of Sally Jesse purring, “I hear you.”
“Oh, I’m with you about that victim thing,” Tina said. “It’s everywhere. And I don’t think it does anyone any good.”
Then Tina got on one of her Acid Queen rolls: “Someone tells me I was a victim, I become angry. I was not a victim … I was in control of everything I was doing.”
She didn’t leave Ike earlier because she promised she’d stay till they made it big. She liked the man. And she had some far heavier responsibilities: “There was a mother there,” she bellowed. “To Ike, to the children. Not this sniveling … little weak woman. They had me crying in the film script, and I said, ‘I never cried that much in my life.’”
Hirshey goes on to praise Bonnie Raitt for being similarly stoic and for packing “two decades of womanly experience” — alcoholism, infidelity, record industry problems — into her Grammy Award-winning record, Nick of Time. Raitt, in Hirshey’s estimation, “knows how to make enlightened complaining an exuberant art form rather than a whine.” She continues by connecting Tori Amos and Alanis Morissette to her assessment of Raitt:
Contrast Turner’s and Raitt’s steely reserve to the outpourings of Tori Amos, a woman of the next generation. Amos is part of the singer-songwriter vanguard now turning pain into platinum. She went public with her trauma as a rape victim in “Me and a Gun,” a cut from her Little Earthquakes album. It was, she said, a true and powerful statement. But she had this to say about the Gen X compulsion for hand-wringing: “I think our generation loves our pain, and if you dare f--king take it away from us, we’ll kill you. We like our pain. And we’re packaging and selling it.”
Amos’ wry assessment might help explain the roaring success of Morissette’s collection of danceable diatribes — most notably “You Oughta Know,” the poison valentine to an ex-lover that was a huge hit in 1995. Given Morissette’s first rock outing in 1990 as mall-rat-with-mike and a serious hair-volumizer habit, it’s understandable that many critics viewed her brand-new angsty-me with a certain amount of cynicism. But her mass appeal seemed undeniable. Jagged Little Pill sold more than 11 million copies and won two Grammys — ample testament to the current lively market for the well-amped kvetch.
In addition to the remarkable insensitivity of comparing Amos’s song about her rape to whining rather than “exuberant art,” there’s something incredibly ugly at work in this piece. There’s a harshness that breaks my heart a little bit, since it feels so much like it’s written from the perspective of a person who has been told her own traumas don’t deserve or merit consideration.
I respect that survival comes in many forms for everybody, but it needn’t come at the expense of compassion. And yet so much music journalism, at least from certain publications, is written with a barbed-wire approach, as if cruelty and cool detachment are the same as critical engagement.
In an article titled “Quiet Grrrls,” Newsweek’s Karen Schoemer writes, “Call us insensitive, but when we first heard about Lilith Fair we had one reaction: run.” She goes through a laundry list of rote descriptors — “touchy-feely,” “girl-friendly,” “artsy-craftsy” — before breaking out the really loaded adjectives for the performers: “pious heavyweights,” “fragile young flowers,” etc. At one point Schoemer surmises, “This isn’t entertainment — it’s therapy.”
Coming of age in the post-post feminist landscape of the mid-’90s, my friends and I were all Angela Chases in a world full of Murphy Browns. We hadn’t yet chosen or prioritized ourselves; and though we didn’t know how at the time, it felt like we could learn, and women like Morissette and McLachlan could help. They, too, had been caught up in the twisty wreckages of love and sex and crushing pressures, and they had survived to sing about it and write about it. They just had to dwell in the pain for a little while in order to release it.
But “victim culture” was just one form of attack. Women were also pitted against each other, praised in one sentence and undermined in the next.
Rolling Stone’s Lorraine Ali joined the Lilith Fair tour for five days in the summer of 1997. Her account of that time likens the atmosphere to a high school society:
A pecking order quickly forms: Suzanne Vega is the cool and distant art chick, Paula Cole the down-to-earth best friend, Jewel the stuck-up one, Tracy Chapman the respected activist and McLachlan the peppy student-body president who wears weird-colored eye shadow. The second-stagers — Mudgirl, Leah Andreone and Cassandra Wilson — are like the stoners in the smoking area, possessing the coolest clothes, attitudes and tattooed backup dudes. The Borders Stage’s solo artists — Kinnie Starr and Lauren Hoffman — are the tag-along little sisters, still gawky, unpolished and apart from the social hierarchy.
Ali’s observations are good, if pointed, and infer a Heathers-like fracas bubbling under the surface of all the sisterly solidarity. At one point, Jewel tells Ali, “What’s cool is, no one here acts like a star. It doesn’t matter how many records you sell, even though I’ve sold the most.” At a pre-show press conference, Sarah McLachlan recounts the industry-related sexism she faced when her record was pitted against Tori Amos’. Ali muses that “maybe the fact that there’s little air time allotted to women explains the underlying sense of competitiveness at these press events, which resemble the uncomfortable alliance of a NATO meeting. Answers are filled with feminist-sounding words like empowerment, community and even germination, and the participants look as detached from one another as a seated row of subway riders.”
Ali wraps up the piece in L.A. where “the veneer begins cracking.” Cassandra Wilson is upset about not being asked to play the main stage, and another artist has accused McLachlan of “stealing her quotes to use in press conferences.” It’s a damning bit of tour reportage, and it’s well-crafted, but it certainly paints a very specific picture that feeds into the stereotype that women simply can’t get along.
The flipside is that while Morissette and McLachlan were somewhat embraced and/or scorned by mainstream music magazines for their post-feminist, modern attitudes, Céline Dion and Shania Twain were rejected because they weren’t seen as cool enough. Karen Schoemer, who wrote about Twain’s Mall of America appearance, comes out swinging at Rolling Stone and Spin for excluding Dion and Twain, asking, “What does it take to be a ‘Woman in Rock?’”
Schoemer’s analysis is astute at times, but she, too, veers into women-bashing to convey her points. She argues that “Women in Rock” is no longer gender-specific but political, and that one must be “correctly” female. She tosses out phrases like “Fiona Apple-style fetishistic victimhood,” and then opines that Twain and Dion do “womanhood the old-fashioned, unironic, hyperfeminine way.” This is, she qualifies, because they “comb their hair and flaunt their bellybuttons, and it’s not a statement. Their music is unabashedly domestic, without complicated subtexts.” Schoemer asserts that it’s “W.I.R. [Women in Rock] suicide to say so, but in 1997 there’s something weirdly refreshing about Dion and Twain’s implacable refusal to ride the Girl Power bandwagon, and their unexpected outsider status. It actually takes some guts to be so unapologetically uncool.”
Schoemer ends her essay on a sort-of progressive note, advocating for “Just Plain People in Rock,” rather than continued gender segregation. If only she’d proven capable of writing an essay celebrating two women without insulting and ripping apart a million others, that would have strengthened her credibility substantially.
Last year when we did our first '90s week, our Then and Now photo gallery was one of our most popular features, so you know we just had to revisit it with even more photos added!
In the 1990's, everything seemed possible. Indie bands were getting signed to major labels for massive amounts of money. Records sold in the hundreds of thousands. It was a glorious time.
Some of those indie rockers who reaped '90s gold are still kicking, and still making music. Other musicians who are doing so well now were just kids then, watching The Wedge on MuchMusic every day after school.
Hover and click through the photos above and let us know who you think has aged the best, the worst, or not at all. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below or tweet us using #90week.
And be sure to change your profile pic to a hot shot of you in the '90s! Where were YOU in 1995?
If you were worried that our '90s Week coverage was going to be all flannel and Converse and no Cross Colours and Timberlands, you can stop now. Our friend DJ Spin Supreme will be taking over our hip-hop stream at various intervals throughout the rest of the week to drop a 60-minute mix of the best hip-hop from back in the day, including songs from Main Source, Kardinal Offishall, Mobb Deep and more.
Here's when you can tune in:
Wednesday, Feb. 25 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. ET
Thursday, Feb. 26 Noon and 3 p.m. ET
Friday, Feb. 27 2 p.m., 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. ET
For the curious amongst you, here's the full tracklist
1. "Spintro," Spin Supreme 2. "They Reminisce Over You," Pete Rock and CL Smooth 3. "Who Got da Props?," Black Moon 4. "'93 Til Infinity," Souls of Mischief 5. "D. Original," Jeru the Damaja 6. "On Wid da Show," Kardinal Offishall 7. "Looking at the Front Door," Main Source 8. "Shimmy Shimmy Ya," Ol' Dirty Bastard 9. "The Choice is Yours," Black Sheep 10. "Dwyck," Gang Starr feat. Nice and Smooth 11. "Ya Playing Ya Self," Jeru the Damaja 12. "Lost Ones," Lauryn Hill 13. "Doo Wop (That Thing,)" Lauryn Hill 14. "Shook Ones Pt. II," Mobb Deep 15. "Boiling Point," Concrete Mob 16. "Cherchez La Ghost," Ghostface Killah and U-God 17. "Let's Ride," Choclair feat. Saukrates 18. "Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See," Busta Rhymes 19. "Warning," The Notorious B.I.G. 20. "Juicy," The Notorious B.I.G. 21. "Unbelievable," The Notorious B.I.G. 22. "Big Poppa," The Notorious B.I.G. 23. "Ring the Alarm," Fu Schnickens 24. "The Pressure," A Tribe Called Quest 25. "Check the Rhyme," A Tribe Called Quest 26. "We Got the Jazz," A Tribe Called Quest 27. "What it Takes," Choclair and Jully Black 28. "Incarcerated Scarfaces," Raekwon 29. "You Gots to Chill," EPMD
Before Maestro Fresh Wes was known as the "godfather of Canadian rap," he was a young kid from Toronto trying to be the country’s first certified rap star. Or as CBC Midday anchor Bill Cameron called the then 22-year-old in a 1990 feature: "Canada’s champ of rap."
When he appeared on the show, Maestro was riding the crest of success from his debut single, "Let Your Backbone Slide," the first Canadian rap song to hit the Top 40 chart in the U.S. Along with fellow Toronto rapper Michie Mee, Maestro has come to represent the first wave of Canadian rap, but at the time, the scene was still too young to know what it would become. If anything, outsiders still saw it as novelty.
"It’s unbelievable, yeah?" clearly impressed journalist Tina Srebotnjak muses on the act of speaking words over beats into a microphone. Later on in the interview, she even asks, "How do you do it? That sounds so corny for me to say, but I listen to rap music and I just go, 'How did you come up with that? How did you make the rhyme? How does the process work?'"
With 25 years of hindsight, it’s fun to look back on the naiveté surrounding a genre of music that, little did anyone know, would grow to become one of the most popular in the world. Even Maestro seemed uncertain about its longevity. When asked if rap has hit its peak, he predicted that "by end of '91, it will be at its peak," which clearly wasn’t the case. For example, "Northern Touch" by the Rascalz, which came out in 1998, was the most successful song in Canadian rap history until Classified’s "Inner Ninja" supplanted it in 2012.
While Maestro may have been wrong about peak rap, looking back now, it's clear he definitely had his share of prophetic wisdom, such as the need for Canadian labels to release Canadian rappers and why it’s important to treat your music career as a business.
"That's a lot to memorize, it's like Hamlet," Srebotnjak says at one point.
"Hey, you have a lot to memorize to do your job, I have a lot to memorize to do mine," Maestro replies. "Right now my business is Maestro Fresh Wes."
Each day, Rich Terfry and Radio 2 Drive wraps up your day with music and stories about the interesting things going on in the world.
RICH'S PICK: "One Silver Dollar" by Marilyn Monroe
JUNK IN THE TRUNK:
Nutella, the dancing dog:
Moritz, the piano-playing pig:
Kali, Lord of the Dance:
REAR VIEW MIRROR:
Every week, Rich Terfry looks back in our Rear-view Mirror at a great song from the good ol’ days. This week, Marvin Gaye and "Sexual Healing".
In 1981, Marvin Gaye was in a dark place and was nearing the end of his life. But with sheer determination and a stack of dirty magazines, he found himself back in the bright lights once again.
Listen to Rich tell you the story of "Sexual Healing"
Marvin Gaye fled the U.S. in 1981. After a long run of bad luck, he felt as though he had been chased out. He was in trouble with the IRS; he said he felt unloved and not respected as an artist; his relationship with Motown Records was over and ended bitterly; his marriage had fallen apart; he was depressed and was struggling with drug addiction.
He ended up in Belgium and determined to put his life back together. He got clean and began exercising. He booked a few shows to get his legs back under him. He also felt it was time to tell his life story. He enlisted the help of Rolling Stone writer David Ritz to pen his autobiography. When Ritz first arrived in Belgium to meet with Gaye at his home, he was struck by the sight of a stack of porno magazines. According to legend, Ritz reacted by saying to Gaye, "man, it looks like you need some sexual healing!" That was the spark Gaye needed to make his comeback complete.
That comment inspired him to jump into action and write his last big hit single. With the exception of the guitar part played by his touring guitarist, Gaye played every instrument on the song.
When it was finished, he knew that the song, entitled "Sexual Healing," was going to be a big hit. The head of his new record company, Columbia knew it too.
The record was released and sure enough, it shot to the number one position on the charts here in Canada, knocking off "Africa" by Toto. It was his last hit. A year later, Marvin Gaye was gone.
Here's Marvin Gaye's last hit and the song People magazine called "America's hottest pop-culture turn-on since Olivia Newton-John's "Physical."
This is "Sexual Healing" by Marvin Gaye.
Here are some other great editions of Rear-view Mirror:
It's no surprise they hail from Switzerland, because these drummers have the precision of a finely crafted watch.
Top Secret is one of the world's leading drum corps, and one of the most innovative, drawing from centuries of Swiss military drumming that dates back to the Middle Ages.
They are not part of a military organization; rather, the Basel-based group is made up of a diverse array of drummers who, by day, are bankers, civil servants, factory workers, students and more. But when they get together to perform, they are all business.
This display, from 2012, plays on the idea of the digital age, and it's amazing. Watch:
As part of the Louisville Leopard Percussionists, these talented Kentucky schoolkids performed a medley of three of Led Zeppelin's greatest hits: "Kashmir," "The Ocean," and "Immigrant Song" on xylophone.
The video had wowed thousands of viewers, but then the kids got the highest praise they could imagine: a Facebook post by Jimmy Page that said the video was "too good not to share." Now the video has received over two million views.
