A federal radio quota, a small Toronto label, a Montreal recording studio in a former garment loft, and a juried prize designed to ignore sales numbers, four pieces of infrastructure that turned a mid-sized country into the gravitational center of English-language indie. The pieces still exist. The result no longer does.
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.
