Coalition to CBC: ‘No fair, we want more money.’

This has been irritating me more and more as the day goes on.

I think it is equally disturbing and awesome that one must look to the government for what is new and interesting in music in Canada. It’s disturbing if you look at it in an Orwellian sense of the government dictating what citizens should listen to (but how bad would it really be if they said ‘you must listen to the Handsome Furs’?) But it’s awesome that CBCmusic will play a spectrum of music regardless of commercial viability to promote independent artists and music in Canada. Apparently this is a problem for big businesses like Rogers, Cogeco and Chorus Entertainment and a coalition of these companies who are trying to stop CBCmusic’s streaming music website.

When I was a kid (here we go) living in suburban Toronto, CFNY (aka, 102.1, the Edge, owned by Chorus Entertainment) was where you’d go for new music. In the pre-internet days, CFNY was the only place to discover new music and the only station playing the likes of the Smiths, New Order, the Cure, etc. Saturday nights had a harder edge to it and featured bands like Ministry, KMFDM and Skinny Puppy. Canadian rock was still in its infancy, but CFNY was a good place to hear bands like The Tragically Hip, Chalk Circle, 54-40 or the Grapes Wrath hitting their stride.

Canadian music has come a long way since and commercial radio has become much more irrelevant. Where 102.1 was once the tastemaker, it now needs a band to reach a certain critical mass before it’s worth noting.

A look at the respective charts is telling. The top 3 from Edge 102’s Thursday 30 are:

1) the fun – We are Young (30 million YouTube views),
2) Grouplove –Tonguetied (2.05 million YouTube views)
3) the Black Keys – Gold on the Ceiling (2.14 million YouTube views).

All three are American acts. The Thursday 30 does have some CanCon on it:

Big Wreck (who knew they were back?)- Albatross has 206,475 views,
Our Lady Peace (also back)- Heavyweight (126,950 views).

There are also a few bands on the list familiar to a CBC listener – the Arkells, the Pack A.D., Yukon Blonde, but the majority are bigger acts from outside of Canada. 102.1′s daily song playlist is very limited and repetitive (I don’t need to hear Gotye’s Somebody I Used to Know ever again), interspersed with commercials and inane DJ banter. They’re a business and they need to make a profit off their listeners, so they have to play music that will draw listeners. Fine, I get it.

The top 3 from CBC’s R3-30 Countdown:

3) Zeus – Anything You Want Dear, which has no official video and a whopping 969 views for their CBC live recording.
2) Islands – Hallways – 69,229 Views
1) Trust – Sulk has no video but 27,056 people streamed the audio on YouTube (which, of course, the coalition isn’t interested in tackling).

CBCmusic is promoting the little guys, they’re helping make careers for Canadian artists. I actually liked the Edge’s top 3 songs, I hadn’t heard them before, but I didn’t think they were any better than the R3-30’s top 3. And I haven’t heard a finer song than this in a long time (thanks CBC):

Galaxie Music, owned by Stingray Digital is part of the coalition. Galaxie has a great Canadian Indie stream and plays many of the artists CBCmusic does. There is also some overlap between some of Galaxie’s 50+ channels and the feeds provided by CBC music and I think that’s where the problem arises. What about the areas where there are no overlap. I’m sure CBC has no interest in entering the Bollywood/Latin Beats/Headbanger arenas. And where will the Aboriginal voice go? I’m sure Chorus Entertainment can throw this fine Aboriginal rock song right into Q107’s regular rotation.

Perhaps I’m missing the point, these corporations don’t want CBCmusic to go away. They still need CBCmusic to be the tastemaker in Canada, to give a voice to these artists and to make them popular for them to profit off of. They just don’t want CBC to stream music, which they’ve always done. It’s clear that the people who will be affected most by the coalition’s actions are the independent artists. If you read between the lines of Stingray CEO, Eric Boyko’s absurd comment, “the only music that you can hear for free is when birds sing,” the petulant message is pretty clear – “No fair, we want more money.”

Support the arts in Canada. Listen to Canadian music. Read Canadian books. Watch Canadian films. Fuck the corporate coalition.

Excerpt of The Devil’s Gold in the new issue of Burner Magazine

The new issue of Burner Magazine is available online and features my story Sonora Desert Blues, which is excerpted from my forthcoming novel. It’s a lovely looking webzine and I’m thrilled they accepted my piece. My story begins on page 64:

http://www.burnermag.com/

The Day I Spent Making Coffee in Peru

Peru is a land of contrasts, it hosts snow capped mountains and lush valleys, dry desert plains that haven’t seen rain in thousands of years and a beautiful ocean coastline. It is the country where I was born and a country that I left with my family when I was a small boy. The north end of the country is a wild frontier where expansive jungle terrain gives way to vast, mountainous forests. It is an area where cocaine grows wildly and the Peruvian army constantly wages battle against armed drug cartels.

My cousin’s husband is a soldier in the Peruvian army and he was stationed in the north to fight the cartels. In one altercation, the helicopter he was in came under fire when they were about 15 feet off the ground. One soldier was hit in the arm. The sound of bullets piercing the hull added to the sense of urgency. Unable to properly repel from the helicopter, the soldiers jumped, my cousin’s husband managed to roll but broke his shoulder. The drug runners fled into the jungle and that was the end of it.

My cousin’s husband stayed in the northern base camp for a few days before being shipped back to Lima for injury leave. In that time he went around the camp and picked several sacks full of wild coffee beans. He dried them in the sun and brought them back to Lima. When I went down to Peru for work, I had a few days free in Lima. We spent one of those days making coffee. If my mining career doesn’t pan out, I may have an alternative career in the making.

Step 1: Coarse grinding – This was done to remove the husks from the beans and both were collected in a pan (note how it’s daylight when we start the process).

Step 2: Gravity Separation – We dropped everything in front of a fan. The light husks were blown away and the heavier beans fell into the pan. This process was repeated several times to get rid of all the husks.

Step 3: Roasting – we cooked the beans in a big pot. The whole house smelled of coffee.

Step 4: Fine grinding (the sun has gone down) –making the actual coffee grounds.

Step 5: Enjoying a fresh cup of coffee at around 9 pm. No sleep tonight!

I made an awful lot of coffee. If you’re interested in some (it’s a very, very dark roast) and live in the Toronto area (I’m in the west end) feel free to send me a message at davidburga@me.com.

2011 Book List

This year I decided to actually write down all the books I read in a calendar year. I read 20, some for book clubs, some for pleasure and some because they were given to me. That number seems pretty low (My New Year’s resolution is to read at least double that for this year). I only read two books that were actually released in 2011 – Matt Johnson’s Pym, an intertext with Edgar Allan Poe’s only Novel and Dani Couture’s Algoma, a novel about a family unravelling after the death of a child. Oddly enough, I discovered both Johnson (@mat_johnson) and Couture (@danicouture) via twitter. It feels a little ridiculous to name those books as my ‘books of the year’ because they are by default, but both are fine novels nonetheless. The list:

Ed Royal – Chris Connelly – Industrial music legend (Ministry, RevCo., KMFDM) turned crooner, turned novelist. A decent effort about growing up in Glasgow in the 70s, but doesn’t come close to his amazing bio – Concrete, Bulletproof, Invisible and Fried – My Life as a Revolting Cock.

The Metamorphasis – Franz Kafka – This seemed, to me, to be about a man who woke up one morning and couldn´t face the world. Yeah, he´s a bug. I could be wrong, though, I don´t have one of those fancy lit degrees.

I am a Japanese Writer – Dany Laferriere – I wish more people read this, I want to talk about it with someone.

Call of C’thulu – H.P. Lovecraft – I think I read this about 20 years too late. Wordy and boring but kinda cool.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian – Sherman Alexie – Amazing, amazing, amazing, everyone should read this. A young american Indian boy goes to high school off the reserve and becomes the only Indian in the school besides the team mascot. YA book that made me laugh & cry.

The Best Laid Plans – Terry Fallis – hmmm, I agree with what this blogger said.

The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald – I haven’t read this since high school. I hated it then, but I think it’s hard to appreciate this before legitimately working a day in your life. So sad, so amazing.

Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson – It has pirates, what’s not to like?

Thunder God’s Gold – Barry Storm – I read this for research. It’s about prospectors looking for the Lost Dutchman mine. A bit of a mess. They made it into a movie called Lust for Gold in 1949.

The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz – My favourite book, ever. I thought I’d re-read it to see if I still loved it. I did.

The White Tiger – Aravind Adiga – A book club choice. A 300 page letter from a working class person in India to a minister in China. I found it difficult to get past the ridiculous narrative structure.

Through Black Spruce – Joseph Boyden – Another book club selection. Not as good as Three Day Road, the model/NY subplot was a bit absurd, but I loved the northern Canada portions.

Pitouie – Derek Winkler – one storyline in northern Canada in the 70′s, one in the South Pacific in present day, connected very cleverly. Plus it has mining scams. A fun read.

The Gurnsey Potato Peel Pie and Literary Society – A book club selection with an epistolary form. The 3/4 mark, when the protagonist goes to the island to meet all the people she’d been writing to, seemed like the perfect place to stop writing letters. They didn’t.

Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell- As a parent I found this fascinating. The theory behind what makes people exceptional. Every parent should read this.

Pym – Matt Johnson – An African-American lit prof. finds evidence the creatures in Edgar Allen Poe’s only novel may have actually been real. The prof. gathers an African-American crew and heads to the south pole to see what’s there.

Bossypants – Tina Fey – More a collection of anecdotes (albeit amusing ones) than a real book, but funny and easy to read.

Death in the Afternoon – Ernest Hemingway – I love Hemingway, he can do no wrong in my eyes. It’s interesting how this seemed to be a throwaway book meant to comment on bullfighting of the day is still being read. The pictures in the middle are awesome.

The Book of Negroes – Lawrence Hill – This has been on my ‘to read’ list for a long time and my local book club selected it after the book burning controversy. Excellent.

Algoma – Dani Couture – a poets touch put on the grief of a family after a child’s death. Lovely, sad, and well done. It captures the insulation of a small town and the overwhelming hugeness of the big city quite well.

The Tiger – John Valliant – Canada Reads selection about a killer tiger. A bit long on the background information but frightening, sad and cool. Could take the cake.

On Reading Minority Writers (and being one too)

Something occurred to me recently as I was perusing my bookshelf – the majority of the books I own (and the vast majority of books I’ve read) were written by white men and featured protagonists that didn’t look like me. I didn’t feel any guilt because of this, it was just an observation of my reading habits but it did make me think about how I perceived myself. I decided to actively change this situation and started culling recommendations from some of my well-read friends. With the exception of my sister, most of my friends weren’t much help. Outside of perhaps a Murikami or a Marquez, we all seemed to have reading tastes dominated by white men. Being of Peruvian descent, I’ve read my share of Latino authors, but what about the rest of the world?

My first choice was easy as my ‘label mate’ at In Our Words Inc., Peta-Gaye Nash had just released a book of short stories titled “I Too Hear the Drums.” She’s a Jamaican born Canadian author who tackles Diaspora and the immigrant experience quite well. One story, The Incident, based on the event that triggered her move to Canada (the kidnapping of her child) is particularly gripping.

Next I read American author Matt Johnson’s Pym which is an intertext with Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, where an African American lit professor goes in search of the mysterious beings in Poe’s only novel. It’s a cool and funny novel filled with equal parts adventure and an examination of racial identity.

My local book club read Lawrence Hill’s Book of Negroes around the time of the book burning controversy . It was a very visceral and powerful book that gave great insight into a shameful part of human history.

I heard an interview on CBC’s Writer’s and Company with Sherman Alexie. It was funny, gripping, heartbreaking and inspiring and I decided I would read some of his work. I asked a friend if he had read any Alexie and he, more or less, said that First Nations writers didn’t interest him (and although we both loved Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden, that didn’t seem to count for whatever reason). I decided to read “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” which is a young adult novel about a boy who chooses to go to school outside of his reserve, where the only other Indian in the school was the team mascot. I loved it – I laughed, I cried, I gave it to my friend and he loved it just as much and has recommended it many times since.

It made me think, ‘what if people dismiss my work based on my ethnicity?’ If my own reading habits did not regularly extend to other ethnicities and cultures, would it be reasonable to expect other readers to be interested in mine? My novel is set in Mexico but the only novel set in Mexico that I’ve read is Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano and Malcolm Lowry isn’t Mexican. I’ve found some Mexican and Mexican-American authors and have now added several books to my ‘to read’ pile.

What books have you read outside of your reading comfort zone? If you have any recommendations (Mexican or otherwise), please share.

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

The best and worst parts of being a part of a book club is being introduced to works outside of your normal reading spectrum. Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now (along with Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper) made me quit my local book club. While this seems like an easy target to criticize, there was something I found very troubling about this book. It’s more than the fact that it’s poorly written, or filled with pseudo-spiritual nonsense.

I found the bio of the author, Eckhart Tolle, to be the most troubling aspect of this book. It claims that he was depressed for much of his life and then underwent an ‘inner transformation,’ a two year period when he was a bum (but in a state of ‘deep bliss’), and then came out the other side a spiritual leader. It reminded me of this post, for some reason.

It seemed his cure for depression was to just snap out of it. (Or perhaps the cure for the depression is to write a best-seller and become a millionaire). This suggestion is troubling at best, dangerous at worst if he is recommending this type of introspection as a treatment for depression. I would implore everyone to go to the Amazon website, click on ‘Look Inside’ and read the introduction where one minute he hates the world and is contemplating suicide and the next everything is awesome because of his new life perspective. It is convoluted, ridiculous, a little unbelievable and involves being sucked into a void.

The spiritual advice is conveniently non-denominational (presumably to appeal to as many religions as possible). The gist is live for today (oh, and don’t sweat the small stuff (and it’s all small stuff)). The interesting part of this book is that while it tries to provide a path to spiritual enlightenment, there is no empirical way to test if someone is spiritually enlightened. You would have to take someone at their word that Tolle’s teachings have enlightened them or gave them peace or happiness in their life. And you could probably assume that such enlightened people would have no need for any other self-help book, ever, and certainly not another from Mr. Tolle. And then you could look at the sale numbers of Tolle’s follow-up book, A New Earth, and it’d be pretty easy to determine how many people he led to enlightenment…

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My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Jodi Picoult is a best-selling author of 18 novels. My Sister’s Keeper was my first introduction to her writing and is responsible (along with Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth) for me skipping most meetings of my local library book club. The plot revolves around a family whose eldest daughter has leukaemia, they have another daughter who was genetically selected to be a bone marrow donor. The younger daughter gets tired of being a guinea pig and gets a lawyer to speak up for her and threatens to tear her family apart. An interesting premise, apparently Picoult tackles these odd but interesting ethical quandaries.

My Sister’s Keeper is a book bloated with Halmark card sentimentality and fortune cookie wisdom. The story jumped between SIX different narrators, which is supposedly another trademark of Picoult’s. What surprised me about this was that all the characters had, more or less, the same voice and the way she distinguished between narrators was to SWITCH FONTS, which is nothing but a cheap, lazy parlour trick. Several characters could have been cut and many of the story lines were uninteresting and extraneous (my personal favourite superfluous moment of sentimentality was during the lawyer’s flashback to childhood where his rich daddy was yelling at him on the yacht? Who didn’t shed a tear during that scene?)

Stories like these are the reason I turn off the television and this is a movie of the week, at best (although I heard Cameron Diaz starred in the big screen adaptation. Who knew?). Several people I spoke with noted how well researched this book was, but the writing is lazy and many of the little details are very sloppy (ie: Brian mentions if one travels in space for three years, 400 years will pass on earth – not true, Christopher Columbus didn’t launch the satellites in space, nor is one of the cheif concerns of the Mars mission the ‘fact’ that 800 years will pass by the time they get back. One has to travel close to the speed of light for that. In another scene, a woman shows up at a hospital in an octopus costume, raises ‘one arm and eight others move along with it,’ meaning that the costume had ten arms, or eighteen arms (2 real and 8 tied to strings on either side). In another scene Julie says she got her Guatemalan bag (Central America), that she witnessed the weaving of, on her trip to South America. I could go on all day, really). There were so many little details wrong that it led me to question the plausibility of the bigger points of the story (ie: could an embryo be genetically designed or even selected to be a genetic match as a bone marrow donor?).

By the end I didn’t care what happened and the actual ending is ridiculous and unsatisfying, albeit very ‘real’. Everything wrapped up in such a way I could imagine myself in front of the television watching the characters go about their business and then become frozen, mid action, while a little blurb tells us their fate. So, if greeting cards make you cry and if the things you read on fortune cookies resonate deep within you, then you may just love this book.

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