My house is filled with superheroes. Since my husband works in the comic book industry and my six-year-old son shares his dad’s interests, I’m constantly gathering up piles of dog-eared Avengers comics and tiny plastic action figures. So a family trip to the Seattle comic convention is hardly a getaway from my daily life. Still, it’s a trip I’d been dying to take for years.

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It was a business trip for my husband and a dream-come-true for our 7-year-old son. Overall the trip was a grand success. Sure, there were temper tantrums, but there were also two consecutive date nights, a birthday pizza party and some exciting career announcements for my husband. Couldn’t have hoped for anything more. Big thanks to Granny for coming along and letting me go to panels and drink beer late into the evening. It was almost enough to restore my wandering spirit.

I wrote a couple of stories about the trip for the Vancouver online magazine The Snipe. A travel piece about taking kids to comic conventions and a preview of the upcoming female-focused comic and culture convention Geek Girl Con.

Love to rubberneck the upper crust? You’re in for a treat: Canada’s own misbehaving moneyed class is about to hit the small screen.

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Julie Penner, violinist for Do Make Say Think, grew up in Winnipeg. She thinks Winnipeg’s isolation and its status as a “have not” province left a mark on its music scene.

“There’s a slight edge and maybe that edge is good for art,” she says. “Sometimes there’s a bit of bitterness, but it can also be a bitter creativity.”

In this episode of The Birth of Canadian Indie, we’ll hear about Winnipeg’s most political – and longest-lived – indie band. And we’ll hear from some of the many musicians they inspired.

CBC Radio 3
CLICK HERE FOR AUDIO
7:21 MINUTES

The episode gives a seven-minute overview of Winnipeg’s early punk scene and how it developed into the unusually literate and politically charged music scene that exists in the city today. As always, it was rather a lot to cover in seven short minutes. But, of course, huge fun trying to squeeze as much in as possible. One of the highlights was an interview with The Weakerthans’ cerebral, articulate frontman John K. Samson. Here’s my favourite outtake from the interview:

“I’m kind of a thwarted fiction writer, that’s what I’ve always wanted to be since I was a kid, so I’ve tried to transfer those ambitions into pop songs. So that’s the starting point for my lyrics, I think, is to try and tell stories, and to tell stories about the city that I’m from. It’s kind of become the main theme of my work, and something that I’ll be writing about for the rest of my life trying to figure out.”

I also had a long chat with Do Make Say Think’s brilliant Julie Penner, who gave me a lot of background on the city as well as a list of amazing old Winnipeg bands, almost none of whom, alas, I managed to fit into the story. I did dig up this superb YouTube clip of Red Fisher, though, one of the late 80s bands that almost all of my interviewees mentioned. The fashions in the video are almost as much fun as the music. Red Fisher’s drummer, Jason Tait, now plays with The Weakerthans.

Special thanks to Blair from Endearing Records for this episode. He gave me a lesson on Winnipeg’s early music scene and told me where to start.

You can hear the episode on CBC Radio 3′s podcast #310, or you can stream it right here.

It’s just all Oz all the time around here right now.

But it’s made me realize just what a masterful piece of art that movie is. I’m astonished at the way that, more than 70 years after it was made, it still completely captivates children. How has it managed to stay so fresh and engaging all these years? After discussion with my four-year-old, I’ve decided the movie’s appeal to kids is threefold. First, Oz’s technicolour splendour is the cinematic equivalent of a visit to the candy shop.  Secondly, Judy Garland’s charismatic vulnerability is melodramatic enough to engage kids emotionally. And last but not least, there’s the music.

I remember hearing a brilliant analysis of the film’s first — and most famous — musical number on CBC a while back. It was an entertaining and insightful look at how the song’s musical structure creates a powerful emotional impact. I did a search and discovered that the piece I heard was part of a radio series called “What Makes It Great” by composer and music commentator Rob Kapilow. Here’s his analysis of “Over The Rainbow” on NPR.

It all comes down to two musical patterns: “leap” and “circle and yearn.” Come to think of it, those patterns describe the emotional and developmental cycles of childhood, too. And life beyond childhood, if you know what’s good for you.

“When you’re walking down the street and it’s covered in snow and there’s a clown juggling next to you in his crazy pants and everyone’s speaking French, you feel taken outside of your life.”

But there’s more behind Montreal’s colossal indie rep than just its European-tinged romance. And it hasn’t always been a bastion of independent music. In this episode of The Birth of Canadian Indie we’ll hear about Montreal in the 1980s, a time when underground music had few live venues and little support from the disco-loving public…

CBC Radio 3
CLICK HERE FOR AUDIO
7:27 MINUTES

Foam Lake’s music has deep family roots. The four Ross brothers from Saskatoon, SK have come together to produce an album that grew out of a diverse set of influences and a desire to be closer to family.

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Thanks for the interview, Daisy. May your music and your spirit live on.

If you’d like to hear the documentary on Fraser and DeBolt you can stream it right here:

An Overnight Sensation: The Story of Fraser and DeBolt

Thanks for listening!

And besides, when the rain does let up, the views are beyond compare.