Hello there, blogosphere, and welcome to your Thursday morning! I'm tickled pinker than my namesake - that pink puffball thing from the Nintendo game – to be here. I feel kind of like the sperm whale – you know, the one that was improbably brought into existence by the spaceship Heart of Gold over the legendary planet of Magrathea; I have to define who I am before ceasing to be, hopefully with less messy results.
So, where to start...well, I think I owe my passion for listening to music to two things: my oldest brother and MuchMusic. Yep, that's where it began. See, all in all, I'm pretty much a walking, talking wealth of useless knowledge (also known as “trivia”) but, relative to my big brother, I'm a noob. I'm worm sweat. He had a big record collection and a super-cool stereo back when I was a quite young, and had me listening to stuff like Bowie, Mott the Hoople, The Sex Pistols and The Clash before I even had an allowance.
And MuchMusic, oh.MuchMusic. Believe it or not, there was a time when they actually played music videos. And play them they did. Thanks to the CanCon rules, I was exposed to all kinds of music that you couldn't hear on the radio where I lived. Things like Jane Siberry, Men Without Hats and Rational Youth.
Fast forward to the early 2000s, and I discovered a band called The New Pornographers, who were heralded as an “indie supergroup,” whatever that means. In my quest to find out more about them, I stumbled upon the Live Concerts site, and then New Music Canada and the Roots Music Canada site, which have since combined with the old late-night radio3 show and morphed into Radio 3. The rest, as they say, is history.
Now the tough part. What to say, what to ask when seemingly, to quote Zappacosta, “it's all been done before”? Well, I really like to find out why people like things, so I'm going ask you this...
What's your favourite musician/band of all time? And what is it about them that has drawn you to them, or keeps drawing you back to them? Let's have fun with this one, people. If you'd like to create some categories, such as international and Canadian, go ahead! If you can't narrow it to just one, then roll with it a la High Fidelity and give me a top 5 list.
To show you what I mean, I'll go first. If I had to pick my favourite band of all time, I would have to go with XTC. Andy Partridge was and still is and amazing songwriter, who can write some of the catchiest stuff this side of The Beatles. But I'm also a big supporter of Canadian music, so I think I need a Canadian category. For that, I'd have to go with Jane Siberry. If you wonder why, go listen to One More Colour, or Bound by the Beauty.
But, I can't just leave it at that because there's too much great Canadian music, so I'm going to add my current favourite, The Burning Hell. They're like if Leonard Cohen fronted They Might Be Giants.
See? It's an easy game to play, so come inside and play along!
"And now, what's this big thing rushing toward me? It's coming fast – very fast indeed! It needs a big, round word, like ..rou..grou...ground. Yes! I'll call it the ground. I wonder if it will be friends with me?"