Archive for March, 2011
March 30th, 2011 | 
Author: TORONTO (AP) — Canadian indie band Arcade Fire followed their huge victories at the Grammys and Brit awards by capturing four Juno awards including album of the year for “The Suburbs” and group of the year at the Canadian music awards ceremony Sunday night.
After the rockers’ surprise Grammy for best album of the year and Brit award win for best international album, it would have been shocking if the critic darlings didn’t snag a Juno for the success of their album in the country they call home and where they initially built their fan base.
“We’re truly overwhelmed,” said the band’s gangly multi-instrumentalist, Richard Reed Parry in Toronto’s Air Canada Center where the Junos were held. “Thank you everybody. Thank you to Montreal, our home where we all live, and thanks to Toronto.”
“Toronto is one of the first places we had, like, really exciting shows and felt like something crazy might be about to happen. And something did. So thanks for being there with us.”
The rock outfit also won best alternative album of the year and songwriter of the year, leaving them short of just one win out of their five nominations.
“The Suburbs” beat out pint-sized pop star Justin Bieber’s “My World 2.0,” Drake’s “Thank Me Later,” Hedley’s “The Show Must Go On,” and “A Place Called Love.”
But the side-swept coifed Bieber did not go home empty-handed. The 17-year-old teen-pop titan won the first two Juno awards of his career for pop album of the year and the Juno fan choice award.
Unfortunately for millions of his tween devotees watching the televised show, the platinum-selling, pop crooner from Ontario couldn’t appear in person to collect his trophies due to a scheduling demand overseas.
“I want to thank everybody so much for believing in me,” said Bieber, via a video message. “Most of all, I want to thank my mom for raising me in Canada.”
But the news wasn’t as good for 24-year-old rapper and Juno host Drake, who entered the weekend with a leading six nominations, but wound up heading home empty-handed. In a surprise win, Canadian hip-hop artist Shad took the prize for best rap recording of the year for his album “TSOL,” beating out internationally renowned Drake.
“Wow. I’m very surprised. This is like the Emmy going to Theo’s friend Cockroach or something,” said Shad, making a funny “Cosby Show” reference.
The Junos, which celebrated its 40th anniversary, gave a significant shout out to veteran artist Neil Young, 65, who claimed the prize for artist of the year, adult alternative album of the year for “Le Noise” and a humanitarian award. Young won his first Grammy this year for his music for best rock song for “An Angry World.”
“It’s just totally incomprehensible that I’m here. But it’s a great honor. Thank you very much everybody. I really appreciate it. O Canada!” said the rock legend in reference the country’s national anthem.
Beloved country-pop singer Shania Twain, 45, also received a significant pat on the back as she was ushered into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame with an introduction speech from Bryan Adams, who called Twain a “Canadian treasure,” and video testimonials from Taylor Swift and Anne Murray.
“Thank you so much,” said the singer, clad in a sparkling sleeveless gown. “I really am turning into such a sap. But this is just a very beautiful moment for me. I’m really so proud of Canada’s talent.”
Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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Arcade Fire singer Win Butler performs in front of fans at Madison Square Garden in New York City on Aug. 4, 2010. (LUCAS JACKSON/Reuters)
Arcade Fire, this year’s surprise Grammy Award winner for best album, picked up the Juno for alternative album of the year at Saturday night’s non-televised gala dinner in Toronto.
But it was Neil Young — who won the best adult-alternative album Juno, for Le Noise — who stole the show.
Thirty-two of the 40 Junos were awarded at the Saturday event, held at the Allstream Centre. The final eight awards honouring the best in Canadian music will be handed out Sunday night, during the nationally televised show from the Air Canada Centre (airing at 8 p.m. in each time zone, on CTV).
“So this means we’re not adults yet, yeah!” said Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler, a native of Texas, who has lived in Montreal for most of the past decade.
“We’re so thankful to Owen Pallett, who made such an amazing record and does all our string arrangements. I’m just proud to just be pretending to be Canadian for 10 years now.”
Despite the early win, the Montreal indie-rockers, who lost the Jack Richardson producer of the year award to Daniel Lanois on Saturday night. Lanois was recognized for his work on Neil Young’s Le Noise and with his current band Black Dub.
“We collaborated our asses off,” said Young after he was called up to stage by Lanois, because Lanois said Young hadn’t spoken enough when he won the best adult-alternative album Juno.
“It was a very Canadian experience,” Young continued. “A Canadian engineer, a Canadian cinematographer, Canadian Margerat who was there cooking Canadian food in Silver Lake, Calif., but it’s like Canada right there. I named the record after (Lanois) because I’d get these texts from Le Noise and I go, ‘That is very cool,’ and I kept trying to think, ‘What are we going to call this thing? Then I thought of Le Noise — that’s perfect! It’s like the Le Noise monster in this old house in Silver Lake.”
Backstage, Young told reporters what he said upon winning his Juno, as there were sound problems in the media room.
“I’m an adult and I’m alternative, that’s me,” he said. “It’s great to get one. It’s a great honour and I appreciate it. The older I get, the more I appreciative (become.)”
He was more cryptic when asked if he might be part of the Juno 40th anniversary celebration during Sunday night’s broadcast, which honours the music of Young, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot and The Band.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m glad they’re performing my song (Old Man), that’s wonderful. So I’ll be the writer.”
Arcade Fire had the second most nominations of any act heading into Junos weekend, with five. But they lost a second Juno on Saturday when the best recording package went to Broken Social Scene’s Forgiveness Rock Record Vinyl Box Set.
Sunday’s host, Drake, leads the way with six. Speaking of the man of the hour, in a genuine surprise his Thank Me Later album lost the best rap recording Juno to Shad’s TSOL on Saturday, but Drake is still vying for five awards on Sunday — including best album, artist, songwriter and single of the year (Find Your Love), and the JUNO Fan Choice Award.
Both Drake and quadruple Juno nominee Justin Bieber of Stratford, Ont., went 0-for-2 at the Grammys last month.
Shad said he “wasn’t very prepared” and “didn’t have a speech ready” for winning best rap recording. “So it’s definitely an honour that whoever it is, the judges, thought I deserved to win.”
There were no multiple winners on Saturday night, although Young will also pick up the previously announced Allan Waters Humanitarian Award on Sunday night. (Another previously announced award — the Walt Grealis Award Special Achievement Award — went to EMI Music Canada president Deane Cameron.)
Other noteworthy winners Saturday were quadruple nominee Johnny Reid, whose A Place Called Love won country album of the year; Stars’ Quanteisha, which picked up RB/soul recording of the year; Matthew Good’s Vancouver, which won rock album of the year; Vancouver’s Said The Whale, who picked up new group of the year; and Hedley’s Perfect, which won video of the year for director Kyle Davison.
In the new category of electronic album of the year, Caribou’s Swim was recognized; Deadmau5’s Sofi Needs A Ladder picked up dance recording of the year; Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage won music DVD of the year; Kevin Churko was named recording engineer of the year for his work with Ozzy Osbourne; and Karkwa’s Les Chemins de verre won Francophone album of the album.
Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream won international album of the year.
Saturday’s gala dinner was attended by close to 2,000 members of the music industry, who dined on a main course of medallions of Beef Tenderloin with Cabernet/Merlot Jus, Gorgonzola Mashed Potatoes, truffle scented asparagus and red pepper, among other offerings.
On Sunday night, teen sensation Bieber, who is currently touring Europe, is up for the JUNO Fan Choice Award, as well as best album, artist and pop album (My World 2.0).
jane.stevenson@sunmedia.ca
Twitter: JaneCStevenson
The last time the Juno Awards were held in Toronto, they were hosted by the Moffatts, that BC-based boy band made up of scraggly teen triplets Clint, Bob and Dave, and their (slightly) older brother, Scott. This was back in 2000, soon enough after the overblown turn-of-the-millennium crisis that those cheap plush Y2K Bugs were still being sold off the pushcarts on Front Street near the Rogers Centre, which was still called the SkyDome. The gaping maw of its hinged roof got ample airtime during the televised ceremony, which was broadcast on CBC TV for the 26th year in a row.
The show opened with a painfully elaborate pre-taped tribute to A Hard Day’s Night (with a few trippy Yellow Submarine interludes thrown in for good measure). Clint, Bob, Scott and Dave scrambled up rope ladders, scaled buildings and bolted down city streets with a grainy black-and-white mob of screaming tweens in hot pursuit, while Choclair and the Barenaked Ladies looked on and Amanda Marshall drove the getaway car. And lest the Beatles homage wasn’t enough to help Boomers swallow the bitter Moffatts-shaped pills of “youth culture,” the fab four peppered their stage banter with forced allusions to their parents’ sex life. Shuddering yet?
That cringe-inducing scene took place just a decade ago. This year, the Juno Awards turn 40. Though they bill themselves as “Canada’s Music Awards,” the Junos have maintained a solid reputation for failing to adequately reflect what’s really reverberating through the speakers and earphones of Canadian music aficionados. In the early 1980s, CFNY launched the U-Knows, an irreverent alternative to the Junos, which the radio station insisted were not representative of what was actually happening in the industry. Determined by fans, the U-Knows stood as a democratic counterpoint to the banal, sales-focused bent of the Junos. Over time, as CFNY morphed into the Edge, the U-Knows became the CASBYS (Canadian Artists Selected By You) and started celebrating the achievements of dirgey alt-rock bands bands like I Mother Earth. But new alternatives surfaced to fill the populist awards show chasm, from the youthful cacophony of the MuchMusic Video Awards to the earnest critical rigour of the Polaris Music Prize.
As the Junos approach middle age, a surprising shift seems to be happening. Now broadcast on CTV, which delivers a far glossier experience than the stiff CBC broadcasts of yore, the awards ceremony will celebrate its ruby anniversary by returning to Toronto, the place of its inception. The show will be broadcast live from the Air Canada Centre on March 27 at 8pm.
Unlike the old warhorses and major-label figureheads of Junos past, this year’s top nominees (Drake, Arcade Fire, Justin Bieber, Broken Social Scene) actually reflect what people under the age of 30—heck, even 20—listen to by choice. Peppered throughout the roster of nominees are names (Caribou! Hollerado! Basia Bulat!) that wouldn’t look out of place on the critic-determined Polaris Music Prize. “Electronic Music” finally has its own category. And Aubrey Drake Graham—Lil Wayne’s favourite Degrassi graduate and the most famous rapper Canada’s ever produced—is on hand to host. Is it possible that the Junos have actually become cool?
As masters of ceremony go, the Junos have come a long way since the days of Howie Mandel (1986/87). Scoring Drake as host is a major coup. His 2010 album Thank Me Later was an unequivocal smash, certified platinum in both Canada and the US. “Drake’s your ideal torchbearer for the Junos,” says Evan Newman, director and management guru for Outside Records. “He has a foot in the hip-hop world, a foot in the celebrity world. A biracial Jewish former child star from Canadian television who’s a multimillion-dollar selling artist? You couldn’t create a better Canadian in a science lab.”
Much like the producers behind the Oscars, the folks who put together the Juno Awards broadcast have had a hard time trying to pinpoint the precise tone they want to achieve during the ceremony. Does the hosting gig call for homegrown jokers (the This Hour Has 22 Minutes cast, SCTV alums) or over-the-top divas (Céline Dion)? Do viewers want lacerating urban comedy (2008/09 host Russell Peters), wobbly cheesecake (2006 host Pamela Anderson) or cringe-inducing dad jokes (2005 host Brent Butt)?
“There was certainly a time when [the Junos] wouldn’t have been viewed as cool,” says Ed Robinson, the current chairman of the board of the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS), the group responsible for all things Juno. “It’s so great now that artists want to be a part of the awards. There was a time when they weren’t so sure, a time when people had to give it a second thought before they’d agree to participate.”
According to the group’s official website, the “primary reason to join CARAS is to receive Juno Awards voting privileges.” There seem to be only three criteria for membership: 1) be Canadian, or at least a landed immigrant with residency in Canada; 2) be employed in the Canadian music industry in some way (the rules are notably vague); and 3) pay a fee of $50 plus HST each year. For a major label, that’s a small price to ensure your artists have advocates on the inside.
The Junos have historically carried the faint (or not so faint) whiff of a music-biz circle jerk—especially for those of us who are observing the proceedings from a critical distance. That quality is fused into the DNA of the awards, which began as a 1964 readers’ poll in the pages of industry bible RPM and included categories like “Music Industry Man of the Year.” By 1970, the RPM poll, branded as The Gold Leaf Awards, had morphed into a proper awards ceremony at St. Lawrence Hall. A year later, the Junos—named in honour of CRTC head Pierre Juneau, 1971’s industry man of the year—were born.
But even after CARAS took over admin duties from RPM (in 1977), the awards felt less like a celebration of our country’s talent than a punchline to a joke about the insularity and predictability of musical CanCon. Consider this: 24 Junos have been awarded to Anne Murray over the last four decades.
Before he joined CARAS, Robinson worked at CTV; before that, he was a television exec at CBC. He was involved in the production of the Juno Awards broadcast for both networks. According to Robinson, the real turning point for the ceremony happened way back in 1995, the year CARAS moved the Junos to Hamilton’s Copps Coliseum and opened up the arena to fans. “When we moved to Copps Coliseum, you could feel the energy in the air,” he says. “Ten thousand real, applauding, cheering fans!”
For years, a typical lineup of nominees in the top Juno categories was eye-rollingly predictable. If Céline Dion released an album, she’d be up for multiple honours. Ditto Bryan Adams, Anne Murray and, usually, whatever flavour of the year had consumed a substantial percentage of a major label’s marketing resources. The last time T.O. hosted the Junos, for example, Alanis Morissette’s Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie took best album honours, beating out releases by Céline Dion, Amanda Marshall, Bryan Adams and that oh-so-PoMo cartoon duo Prozzäk, who were also nominated in the best new group category. Best selling album—a slightly less euphemistic name for what’s now known as the international album category—went to Millennium, by the Backstreet Boys. It was a dark time.
Until very recently, the centrality of sales—and, by extension, the primacy of major labels—meant that acts that appeal to fan bases beyond the lowest common denominator were only recognized (if at all) within the somewhat ghettoized spaces of genre-specific categories, which are voted on by a rather enigmatic jury of “experts” in the field and are awarded outside the main ceremony.
Being shunted off to the kids’ table hasn’t always sat well with the honourees. In 1998, the Rascalz won the best rap recording award for their album Cash Crop. They refused to accept the prize, claiming that racism factored into the producers’ failure to include the rap and RB presentations during the televised broadcast. The next year, the best rap recording Juno was presented on air—to the Rascalz, for the era-defining crew anthem “Northern Touch.”
In early 2005, sometime between Groundhog Day and Valentine’s Day, approximately five months after the release of their lauded debut album, Funeral, the Arcade Fire conquered America. More specifically, in a series of performances in New York City, the band drove a red-hot Cupid’s arrow through the hearts of that city’s creative movers and shakers and clinched its status as one of the most exciting musical phenomena to emerge from Canada in years. Around the same time, CARAS revealed the nominees for the 2005 Juno Awards. Funeral was markedly absent from the major categories. (Though it did receive a nomination for alternative album of the year.)
“The Junos try to cover all genres of music that are happening,” says Robinson. “The groundswell happens before you know what the groundswell is doing—sometimes change is ahead of you, and it’s hard to incorporate everybody.” He sighs. “At least I feel we’ve tried to cover those genres as best we can.”
That oversight inspired Toronto-based critic Carl Wilson to publish a piece in The Globe and Mail in which he lambasted the Canadian music industry, not CARAS, for not adequately supporting the exciting talent burbling in the barely-underground channels of this country’s scenes. Between then and now, the infrastructure that held up the old-model industry has crumbled; the DIY networks of the digital age have more clout than all the major labels combined. Even Universal Music crown prince Justin Bieber owes his fame to YouTube.
On a purely mercenary level, the artists who used to represent the sound of the underground have evolved into heavyweights on the sales charts. This isn’t a new development per se: that scrappy little songbird Feist cleaned up at the 2008 Junos. And as indie rock has saturated mainstream culture in the post-iPod-ad era, CARAS has quietly been expanding its roster of “alternative” categories. But it’s notable that, six years after CARAS’s original oversight, Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs is also up for album of the year and the band is in the running for group of the year.
“[The Junos’] hand was forced, in a way,” says Outside Records’ Newman. “Arcade Fire may not have already won the [2011 Album of the Year] Grammy when the Juno nominations were announced, but it was already out there that they had three Grammy nominations—two of particular substance. And I think it’s a good thing. When I saw this year’s Juno nominations, I had a much more…positive response than I’ve had in previous years, even though none of my artists were nominated.”
Certainly, the lack of major industry support in Canada didn’t slow down Arcade Fire’s career. And given how increasingly arcane traditional industry models have become, you have to wonder whether the Junos have any relevance to Canadian artists anymore. Don’t the Junos need Arcade Fire’s credibility more than, say, Arcade Fire needs a Juno?
While Newman concedes that may be true for the Junos’ most high-profile honourees, he insists “they both benefit from each other. Maybe for Bieber or Drake, a Juno is a small honour, but for someone like Hannah Georgas, it can be a big deal.”
Rich Terfry (a.k.a. hip-hop artist Buck 65), who unofficially co-hosted the Junos with Pamela Anderson in 2006, is more skeptical. “In general, I’ve always had weird feelings about trophies being given out for art. It’s just not what it’s supposed to be about. Most of my favorite musicians have never won any big awards and that (obviously) doesn’t change my views on their music. I don’t feel the need to have my tastes validated.”
Ultimately, Terfry says, the real power of the Juno Awards lies in the ceremony itself. “It’s exciting to see great performances on live television,” he says. “If anything, these shows are—or should be—for the people sitting at home watching in their pyjamas. And therefore, they should pick their winners…. If the people in the industry want to congratulate each other, they probably shouldn’t inflict it on the public.”
Power to the people, right? Curiously, that notion might help explain how and why the Junos are slowly, cautiously inching toward hipness. It’s multifaceted: first off, as the traditional model of the music business has collapsed, the former industry kingpins no longer have a stranglehold on consumer tastes—and, by extension, on sales. And as the country’s top chart positions are occupied by the likes of Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene (or Drake and Bieber), the Junos mirror that trend.
But there’s also a deeper sense of democratic forces at work. As music has become more of an isolated experience, as concert-ticket sales decline and listeners absorb tunes in a state of dissociated disengagement, through shuffled playlists or spotty video clips, as consumers grow increasingly fickle and fragmented in their music tastes, maybe the amped-up ceremony of awards shows serves as a moment to restore that sense of collective engagement to music. Thousands tuned in to watch Arcade Fire perform live at Madison Square Garden over YouTube; throngs of indignant tweens tweeted exclamations of RED-HOT ALL-CAPS RAGE when Justin Bieber was “robbed” of the best new artist award at the 2011 Grammys.
Why should the Juno Awards be any different? And maybe the members of CARAS have finally realized that if they’re claiming to be “Canada’s Music Awards,” they have to work harder to back up that claim. At least this year, they’ve come closer to doing so than ever before.
SILLY MOMENTS IN JUNOS HISTORY
1975: Host Paul Anka mispronounces Bruce Cockburn’s name.
1982: Despite being asked to change her lyrics, Carole Pope sings the line, “It made me cream my jeans.”
1990: Milli Vanilli wins international album of the year after
being caught lip-synching on MTV. It was later revealed they weren’t
singing on their recordings either, and their Juno was disqualified.
1992: Bryan Adams is nominated for eight awards. Controversy
erupts after media argue that because Adams worked with foreign
collaborators, the album does not meet CanCon requirements.
1993: After winning best male vocalist, Leonard Cohen says, “Only in a country like this can I get male vocalist of the year.”
1998: The Rascalz decline their award for best rap recording,
calling the Junos racist for not televising the presentation of rap,
reggae or dance awards.
2003: Host Shania Twain wears six different custom-made,
NHL-themed outfits. When she steps on stage at the Senators’ home arena
in a sequined Leafs jersey, some audience members boo.
2004: After her lyrics were censored in the United States, Alanis
Morissette celebrates Canada’s relaxed censorship laws by appearing in a
skin-tight “naked” suit, complete with fake pubic hair and nipples.
2007: Midway through a performance, Toronto hip-hop artist k-os
says, “This is not me. This show is propaganda,” and smashes his guitar.
He later attributes the outburst to “an existential crisis about me in
the music industry.”
2009: Nickelback makes at least 10 thinly veiled references to oral sex during their performance of “Something in Your Mouth.”
MORE JUNOS:
Forty years of Juno hosts: the musicians, CBC satirists and Playboy covergirls who’ve done the honours
Interview: Melanie Berry—meet the woman who makes the Junos happen
Whatever happened to The Moffats?: charting the post-Junos fortunes of the show’s year-2000 hosts
“I haven’t fully formed an opinion yet if the music XX and the XXs make is just for a small niche of people . or if it’s for a huge mainstream audience . of the future. Heck, I can’t even agree with myself what genre this would be called.”
The quotation above is from an online review of an independently released fringe album you will never, ever hear. Probably.
But who can tell? Not that blogger, who was reviewing what we used to comfortably call indie music. And not the mandarins of the mainstream, who administered shock treatment to their own preconceptions at the 53rd Grammy Awards last month, when we witnessed the intersection of fame and fringe, of mainstream and indie.
There was Babs Streisand, awarding the biggest prize in the music industry, peering at the envelope and stumbling over the name of the Album of the Year.
And the gags kept coming. Rosie O’Donnell led the counter-attack on Twitter: “album of the year? Ummm never heard of them ever.” Next, this Hoda person, who shares hostess duties with Kathie Lee Gifford on NBC morning show Two Drunken Ol’ Dames. “Who was it?” Hoda asked the crew. “Acadeeyer?” Meanwhile, someone threw up a webpage decorated with multicoloured “???????????” superimposed on the innocently beaming band hoisting their Grammy trophies onstage.
It’s not often that the middle-of-theroadsters are so eager to mock a winner, but here, they revelled in their ignorance. Hahaha, whothehellknows? I’m clueless! And that’s because to them, this Acadeeyer Fire band belonged . somewhere else, on some scruffy Gong Show held in a basement toilet in Brooklyn.
Interestingly, that means Babs and Hoda knew what indie means, or used to mean: Not One Of Us. But how can that describe the Album of the Year?
It can’t, so we’re going to have to redefine our terms. Clearly, the former meaning of indie – weird, imploded, misfit, obscurantist, minor-league – won’t entirely fit. And yet, some of that angry mainstream response (for it was at least in part angry) was directed at weirdos crashing Tiara Night. For most of the gown-wearing singers and the casual music-consuming public, Grammys should be awarded in relation to album sales, which makes sense – they’re the casual music consumers doing the consuming. If they have not had it marketed to them and bought it, it does not exist. And now, the worlds collide.
Perhaps it would help to know where the indie label came from. In brutal short form: in Ye Badde Days, rock was owned by the major labels and bands either passed or were squeezed through the eye of a needle called “stardom.” We’ll call this the Studio System of rock.
But following the ’60s and ’70s, rock-literate kids on college campuses who were disillusioned by arena bloat and the perceived failure of punk – kids who never would have had bands before – now had bands, and a new business side, independent labels, to go with them. We’ll call this the Auteur Era. Indie had meanings in two camps – commerce and art/stance, with commerce a function of the artistic side: weird, akimbo, misfit. Commercially, that meant indie bands didn’t have the mainstream distribution that racks you in Walmarts all over the flyover provinces and states, and therefore limited market reach and sales potential.
Jane McGonigal, author of Reality is Broken, delivered the opening keynote of PAX, which I missed, sadly, because of class. Convention panels highlighted numerous aspects of gaming, from the music (folks from Ocremix.org gave a talk about remixing game music) to parenting (guests from Geekdad.com) to making your own game, breaking into the industry, illustrating a comic, and, of course, the gamers’ charity, Child’s Play.