January 22, 2010
Fiction: “Toupée” by Michelle Winters
I saw him on the subway for the first time the day I brought the meat bomb to work. He wore the most glorious toupée. It was the colour of a fox with the front curled under in a Prince Valiant thing that continued on around the sides and back of his head. It didn’t blend in whatsoever with the rest of his real hair, which was a wispy greyish brown. The toupée had a side part that didn’t so much... [More >>]
November 10, 2009
Pay indie artists and break the music monopoly — Legalize Music Piracy
Music is a dead industry walking. A radical all-you-can-eat plan promises unlimited tunes and puts artists — not record companies — first Politically speaking, it was a pretty good haul of booty. On June 7, an organization of self-described “pirates” took what was a fairly small step toward gaining real political clout, but a gigantic leap for everyone in the world who has ever downloaded... [More >>]
October 21, 2009
Ottawa’s Gay Guerilla Takeover turns any club into a D.I.Y. gay bar
Guests at Ottawa’s Heaven dance club expect to have a good time and dance the night away. What the mostly heterosexual crowd was not expecting this spring Saturday night was for the club to be overrun by the Gay Guerrilla Takeover. The Gay Guerrilla Takeover is an organization that does what its name says: once a month, a group of gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, queer, and queer-friendly people venture... [More >>]
September 29, 2009
Remembering Len Dobbin, Montreal’s most important jazz listener
Len Dobbin, the most important audience member in Montreal's jazz scene. Illustration by Aislin. In early fall of 1950, Len Dobbin stepped out of a listening booth on Rue Ste-Catherine in Montreal to find himself confronted by five New York jazz enthusiasts seeking potential founders for a satellite jazz appreciation society. Only 15 years old at the time, Dobbin had never met enough fans to think... [More >>]
September 4, 2009
High and low culture collide in a glorious mess on Tumblr.com
Tumblr reflects contemporary pop culture: not so much like blogging, more like collage. Illustration by Dave Donald. [Editor's note: If you're curious, This Magazine has its own Tumblr blog. Visit quote.this.org] I have never left a cinema with as big a grin on my face as when I watched the spectacularly awful Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Every complaint I had heard was spot-on—that the acting... [More >>]
August 27, 2009
“Conceptual comedy” duo turn jokes into art as “Life of a Craphead”
"Sitting Bed" (2006) by Life of a Craphead. Photo courtesy the artists. Amy Lam, left, and Jon McCurley, the "conceptual comedy" duo known as Life of a Craphead. For Toronto’s “Making Room” art show in 2006, Amy Lam and Jon McCurley—the duo who call themselves Life of a Craphead— erected a bed sitting on a couch. The couch was large and blue and the bed sat as a human... [More >>]
August 19, 2009
Quebec’s “hip hop historian” raps about Québécois black heritage
Quebec City "hip hop historian" Webster. Photo courtesy Webster/Abuzive Muzik. Quebec city’s recent 400th anniversary celebration was quite a spectacle — Paul McCartney, Celine Dion, treasures from the Louvre, and even the occasional nod to diversity like the multicultural rap show, Hip hop tout en couleurs (Hip hop in all Colours). For the most part, though, the Quebec black experience... [More >>]
July 13, 2009
Listen: Tim Hecker’s sonic geography
Quebec artist’s electronic soundscapes are rooted in our home and native land LISTEN: “200 Years Ago” from Tim Hecker’s An Imaginary Country Cover of Tim Hecker's latest album, Imaginary Country. Released by Cranky, 2009. On September 30, 2006, as part of Toronto’s interactive art celebration Nuit Blanche, Montreal musician Tim Hecker hid 10 speakers in the branches of... [More >>]
May 1, 2009
Found in translation
The web allows immigrants to straddle two worlds like never before As in so many immigrant families, weekend mornings in my house always meant one thing: “our shows” on TV. We are of Indian descent, and the sounds of the latest Bollywood hits were a staple of our Saturdays and Sundays, as much a part of our weekends as omelettes and the newspaper. But for all the nostalgia, we had little... [More >>]
May 1, 2009
Woodpigeon: Please Feed the Birds
Calgary band is big in Europe, but home is where their hearts are Woodpigeon may very well be the biggest Canadian band you’ve never heard of — literally and figuratively. The eight-member Calgary collective’s wistful, lyrical alt-folk has been drawing capacity crowds and garnering deafening buzz in the U.K. and Europe over the past year, though homegrown listeners have been slower to... [More >>]
