The single that made R.E.M. globally famous is also the gravity well that kept them from escaping mainstream expectations. A diagnosis, not a takedown.
From a 150-cap punk room on Sainte-Catherine to a sweltering hockey arena in Verdun, this is the live-music memory of a city that has always punched above its weight.
From Hanna, Alberta to Burlington, Ontario, the bands that turned Canadian radio into a flannel-and-distortion factory between 1994 and 2007, and what the critics did to them on the way out. By the mid-1990s Canada had a Bryan Adams problem and a Tragically Hip problem, too much success funneled into two national lanes, with little [&he
Two venues, two provinces, four decades of Canadian rock, Les Foufounes Électriques against The Horseshoe Tavern. Who carries more weight, who bled more, and why El Mocambo plays a different game.
The city has the venues, the schools, the rent and the reputation. What it does not have is geography, a single arts ministry, or a stable bylaw. A diagnosis of why the most-mythologized indie scene in North America still spits out a handful of breakouts per decade.
