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.
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.
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
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.
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.
