Sizing Up the CBC's Essential 50
March 18, 2006
Calgary Herald's Swerve Magazine
Conceptualize a list, assemble with authoritative flair, obsessively check it far more than twice, then invite a national radio audience to tinker and reshape. The CBC’s all-Canadian edition of 50 Tracks with Jian Ghomeshi, which concludes a week from Saturday (March 26) with a five-hour countdown, has been compiling two score and ten “essential” Canuck pop, rock and folk songs since early this year. Knowledgeable experts table songs they rate as totemic, anthemic and definitively Canadian. Ghomeshi, the Mother Corp’s poster boy for a new generation of listeners, adds a few smart picks of his own. Each week’s panel collectively approves four songs and drop-kicks the rejects in what Winnipeg-based producer Cate Friesen calls a “pop music survival game.”
The public, meanwhile, has had the opportunity to salvage the cream of the also-rans while also voting for 10 mystery selections that are being unveiled this week. (On your fair Calgarian head be it, then, if you’re bummed that The Stampeders, Jann Arden and Chixdiggit are AWOL from the tally.) A last chance for the great unwashed to participate is now underway in an email vote to determine the final order of the selected tunes.
50 Tracks has delivered some mildly controversial talking points for the chat lists and watercooler crowd. Surprises? “The Tragically Hip’s “Courage” and Sarah McLachlan’s “Possession” were axed at the debate stage and may only make it on a surge of fan votes. “Snowbird,” once as beloved as the national anthem, didn’t carry Anne Murray past the preliminaries. And Gordon Lightfoot’s deathless “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” wasn’t even nominated in a ‘60s segment that okayed the arguably much less essential Lightfoot hit “Early Morning Rain.”
To rate one Cancon classic ahead of another, of course, is an entirely subjective exercise, and 50 Tracks is nothing if not that. Each of us is capable of drawing up our own distinctive list based on our age, temperament and tastes. Mine would have room for Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Spirit of the West, Broken Social Scene and Daniel Lanois. You might think Lighthouse, Jane Siberry, SNFU, Klattu and/or the Arcade Fire were obligatory picks. Like the old refrain goes, you say potato, I say po-tat-to.
“I love it that Brian from Sudbury writes to say how pissed off he is that we ignored Triumph and Honeymoon Suite,” says Ghomeshi. “That kind of food fight is what makes this such fun. Ultimately I think we’ve come up with a unique, inclusive list. We’re not beholden to any radio format or era of music. Our panelists are diverse. We’ve received something like 20,000 emails from listeners. And yet, at the end of the day, it’s still totally subjective.”
An inveterate listmaker from the day his father gave him a book of world rankings for a 10th birthday present, Ghomeshi admits the selection process can be frustrating. “People who make lists are basically control freaks,” he says, “and I can’t control much about this thing. When ‘Tower of Song’ by Leonard Cohen is picked instead of ‘Hallelujah,’ all I can do is shrug and accept the process.”
The Moxy Früvous drummer-turned-broadcaster is right in claiming 50 Tracks offers a different spin on the Cancon pantheon. Sales and chart numbers largely dictated selections for the two bestselling Oh, What A Feeing CD box sets assembled by Canadian music industry insiders. And music critics shape Chart magazine’s periodic Top-50 Canadian album survey, the latest of which came out this month and once again finds Sloan’s Twice Removed in the top slot.
The CBC panelists, a multi-generational crew of musicians (Randy Bachman, Lee Aaron, Sloan’s Jay Ferguson) and music media types (Terry David Mulligan et al.), were asked to cite tracks that embody vague, almost ineffable Canadian qualities. The resultant nominees have ranged from undeniable to safely predictable to way out in left field in the case of such non-starters as Torontocentric hip-hop act Kardinall Offishall and electro trendsetter Plastikman.
One riotous thorn among a thicket of Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Blue Rodeo standards is the 1979 punk classic “Disco Sucks” by Vancouver’s D.O.A. “Who knew it would stand the test of time,” laughs Joe “Shithead” Keithley. It didn’t hurt his chances, he adds, that contemporary house music “sucks as badly today as disco did then.”
Ben Mink, for his part, is quietly pleased about the inclusion of “Constant Craving,” which he co-wrote and produced with k.d. lang. “I might have gone with ‘Turn Me Round’ (staged so memorably during the closing ceremonies of the 1988 Calgary Olympics), but it makes sense that they picked k.d.’s biggest hit and the one that won a Grammy.” More than most, Mink understands how tough it is to cherrypick Canadiana after working on lang’s tribute album Hymns From the 49th Parallel. “The depth of the Canadian songbook is astounding,” he says.
Full marks, then, to Ghomeshi and his guests for the entertaining debate and intelligent selections as they assemble this latest homegrown countdown. Now if they could somehow shoehorn in the Huevos Rancheros classic “Gump Worsley’s Lament,” it might just be essential.
THE ESSENTIAL LIST (SO FAR)
To see the 10 songs selected by the public and to vote on the final order of the list, visit CBC Radio's The List. Voting deadline is Tuesday, March 22. The show’s last regular episode airs this Saturday (7:30 p.m., CBC Radio Two), while the 50 Tracks countdown is set for March 26 (beginning at 1 p.m. on Radio One, repeated at 7 p.m. on Radio Two).
March 18, 2006
Calgary Herald's Swerve Magazine
Conceptualize a list, assemble with authoritative flair, obsessively check it far more than twice, then invite a national radio audience to tinker and reshape. The CBC’s all-Canadian edition of 50 Tracks with Jian Ghomeshi, which concludes a week from Saturday (March 26) with a five-hour countdown, has been compiling two score and ten “essential” Canuck pop, rock and folk songs since early this year. Knowledgeable experts table songs they rate as totemic, anthemic and definitively Canadian. Ghomeshi, the Mother Corp’s poster boy for a new generation of listeners, adds a few smart picks of his own. Each week’s panel collectively approves four songs and drop-kicks the rejects in what Winnipeg-based producer Cate Friesen calls a “pop music survival game.”
The public, meanwhile, has had the opportunity to salvage the cream of the also-rans while also voting for 10 mystery selections that are being unveiled this week. (On your fair Calgarian head be it, then, if you’re bummed that The Stampeders, Jann Arden and Chixdiggit are AWOL from the tally.) A last chance for the great unwashed to participate is now underway in an email vote to determine the final order of the selected tunes.
50 Tracks has delivered some mildly controversial talking points for the chat lists and watercooler crowd. Surprises? “The Tragically Hip’s “Courage” and Sarah McLachlan’s “Possession” were axed at the debate stage and may only make it on a surge of fan votes. “Snowbird,” once as beloved as the national anthem, didn’t carry Anne Murray past the preliminaries. And Gordon Lightfoot’s deathless “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” wasn’t even nominated in a ‘60s segment that okayed the arguably much less essential Lightfoot hit “Early Morning Rain.”
To rate one Cancon classic ahead of another, of course, is an entirely subjective exercise, and 50 Tracks is nothing if not that. Each of us is capable of drawing up our own distinctive list based on our age, temperament and tastes. Mine would have room for Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Spirit of the West, Broken Social Scene and Daniel Lanois. You might think Lighthouse, Jane Siberry, SNFU, Klattu and/or the Arcade Fire were obligatory picks. Like the old refrain goes, you say potato, I say po-tat-to.
“I love it that Brian from Sudbury writes to say how pissed off he is that we ignored Triumph and Honeymoon Suite,” says Ghomeshi. “That kind of food fight is what makes this such fun. Ultimately I think we’ve come up with a unique, inclusive list. We’re not beholden to any radio format or era of music. Our panelists are diverse. We’ve received something like 20,000 emails from listeners. And yet, at the end of the day, it’s still totally subjective.”
An inveterate listmaker from the day his father gave him a book of world rankings for a 10th birthday present, Ghomeshi admits the selection process can be frustrating. “People who make lists are basically control freaks,” he says, “and I can’t control much about this thing. When ‘Tower of Song’ by Leonard Cohen is picked instead of ‘Hallelujah,’ all I can do is shrug and accept the process.”
The Moxy Früvous drummer-turned-broadcaster is right in claiming 50 Tracks offers a different spin on the Cancon pantheon. Sales and chart numbers largely dictated selections for the two bestselling Oh, What A Feeing CD box sets assembled by Canadian music industry insiders. And music critics shape Chart magazine’s periodic Top-50 Canadian album survey, the latest of which came out this month and once again finds Sloan’s Twice Removed in the top slot.
The CBC panelists, a multi-generational crew of musicians (Randy Bachman, Lee Aaron, Sloan’s Jay Ferguson) and music media types (Terry David Mulligan et al.), were asked to cite tracks that embody vague, almost ineffable Canadian qualities. The resultant nominees have ranged from undeniable to safely predictable to way out in left field in the case of such non-starters as Torontocentric hip-hop act Kardinall Offishall and electro trendsetter Plastikman.
One riotous thorn among a thicket of Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Blue Rodeo standards is the 1979 punk classic “Disco Sucks” by Vancouver’s D.O.A. “Who knew it would stand the test of time,” laughs Joe “Shithead” Keithley. It didn’t hurt his chances, he adds, that contemporary house music “sucks as badly today as disco did then.”
Ben Mink, for his part, is quietly pleased about the inclusion of “Constant Craving,” which he co-wrote and produced with k.d. lang. “I might have gone with ‘Turn Me Round’ (staged so memorably during the closing ceremonies of the 1988 Calgary Olympics), but it makes sense that they picked k.d.’s biggest hit and the one that won a Grammy.” More than most, Mink understands how tough it is to cherrypick Canadiana after working on lang’s tribute album Hymns From the 49th Parallel. “The depth of the Canadian songbook is astounding,” he says.
Full marks, then, to Ghomeshi and his guests for the entertaining debate and intelligent selections as they assemble this latest homegrown countdown. Now if they could somehow shoehorn in the Huevos Rancheros classic “Gump Worsley’s Lament,” it might just be essential.
THE ESSENTIAL LIST (SO FAR)
To see the 10 songs selected by the public and to vote on the final order of the list, visit CBC Radio's The List. Voting deadline is Tuesday, March 22. The show’s last regular episode airs this Saturday (7:30 p.m., CBC Radio Two), while the 50 Tracks countdown is set for March 26 (beginning at 1 p.m. on Radio One, repeated at 7 p.m. on Radio Two).
