This morning The Toronto Star published the nominees for its “Essentially Canadian” list of music.
A dangerous proposition that. Which is, of course, the whole idea: They want to make you mad so you’ll blast off an e-mail to them about how incredibly dopey some of their choices are, despite the expert panels they carefully selected to make the picks.
Well, here’s one sucker who’s falling hook, line and sinker.
First the good news. Nice to see somebody remembers music didn’t begin with rap.
The inclusion of folk singer Ruth Lowe’s I’ll Never Smile Again (1939) is a nice tip to the swing era. Same with Ed McCurdy’s, Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream (1949) with the early folk era, although the Frank Slide should also have been on the list.
While the list purports to cover all genres, it obviously can give just a tip of the hat to most of them. Shania Twain (Any Man of Mine, From This Moment On) is the token country artist, but where’s Wilf Carter when you need him?
The Capture of Albert Johnson, the Mad Trapper of Rat River tells the true story of the 48-day chase by the RCMP across the snow and ice of the north in the early '30s. If that’s not iconic Canadiana, what is?
Don’t look for any jazz, either. I had to search carefully to find one — yes one — entry for Oscar Peterson, his superb Hymn to Freedom. How about all of the Canadiana Suite, or at least a couple of the best pieces such as Wheatland or Hogtown Blues?
Oscar gets one entry, the same number as Eddie Schwartz (Hit Me With Your Best Shot) who just happens to be one of the judges.
Then there’s the right artist but the wrong song category. Entrants include Murray McLauchlan (Farmer’s Song or Hard Rock Town, not Down by The Henry Moore), Neil Young (Helpless yes, but not Old Man. Everybody Knows This is Nowhere is his best album but pick Cinammon Girl or It Won’t Be Long, not the title song), Stompin’ Tom (Sudbury Saturday Night not the overexposed The Hockey Song), Tragically Hip (Bobcaygeon, not Blow at High Dough), Jann Arden (Insensitive is still her best), and even Gordon Lightfoot (Railway Trilogy has to be there but Early Morning Rain and That’s What You Get For Lovin’ Me trump If You Could Read My Mind or the overrated Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald).
How could anything written by Paul Anka (Puppy Love) make any top 100? Thank goodness the execrable My Way and You’re Having My Baby (And I’m Milking the Bathos) were excluded.
Speaking of exclusions. Where are: Sweet City Woman by the Stampeders, Dreamboat Annie by Heart, Driftin’ Snow by Willie P. Bennett and More Often Than Not by David Wiffen?
I assume there’s only one song by Ian Tyson, Four Strong Winds, because that one is going to win when The Star reveals its top 10 Saturday.
Tyson is a superb songwriter, in my estimation, whose songs Summer Wages, Some Kind of Fool, Farewell to the North, Short Grass and Wild Geese are filled with haunting, restless images of nature in motion that define the Canadian experience.
If the intent is to define that experience, however, maybe the winner should be Glenn Gould for his Goldberg Variations.
A brilliant but erratic musician with a fetish for cleanliness and an endless depth of insecurity taking us Bach to the Future. How Canadian is that?