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 […] More »
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 […] More »
I love the idea of willing a new subculture into existence, and that’s the story of Taqwacore, a documentary that opens in Toronto and Montreal this weekend about the birth of “Punk Islam.” Kick-started by Michael Muhammad Knight’s book of the same name (actually, “The Taqwacores”), the new documentary chronicles the fledgling scene. It seems kind […] More »
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 the project would […] More »
[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 was abysmal, the plot incomprehensible, the […] More »
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 would, folded at the waist, with two wooden legs on the ground. It looked […] More »
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 went unacknowledged. For “Webster” Aly […] More »
12,000 people showed up at the Telus Convention Centre in Calgary on Sunday night to see a concert by Punjabi singer Gurdas Maan. According to the Calgary Herald, about 10 of those concertgoers were wearing Kirpans, the ceremonial dagger worn by some observant Sikhs. When security guards at the venue refused those people entry, citing […] More »
Jenn Hardy, who wrote the current This Magazine cover story on permaculture for the July-August 2009 issue, was interviewed yesterday by CFAX 1070 in Victoria, B.C., about her feature article, her world travels researching this story, and how people can live more sustainably today. She talked for almost 15 minutes with Murray Langdon, the host […] More »
Quebec artist’s electronic soundscapes are rooted in our home and native land LISTEN: “200 Years Ago” from Tim Hecker’s An Imaginary Country 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 a tree across from the Mercer Union art gallery. […] More »
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 […] More »