Details: Author: Nicholas Jennings; Hardcover: 168 pages; Publisher: Macmillan Canada; 2000, Language: English; ISBN 0771576641 Book Description from Amazon In fifty years, EMI Music Canada has grown from a local distributor for Capitol Records into a major player in our music industry. While ensuring that Canadian music-lovers could get the latest Frank Sinatra release (and later The Beatles), EMI staff also began to visit local music scenes across the country to find and promote homegrown talent. From The Esquires and Gisele Mackenzie to Anne Murray, Glass Tiger, Tom Cochrane and Susan Aglukark, EMI has championed Canadian musicians and singers and brought them to the attention of both nat...

Toronto’s Queen Street, the portion running west from stately University to cosmopolitan Spadina, was originally a jumble of greasy spoons, barbershops and clothing stores. Owners lived above their shops, while children played on sidewalks. There were even a couple of watering holes that supplied the mostly Irish, Jewish and Eastern European locals with cold, cheap draft beer. By the late 1970s, those bars had become part of a fertile breeding ground, a creative hothouse of forceful protest, stylish adventure and uninhibited experimentation that produced an explosion of musical talent. In many ways, it paralleled the city’s fabled Yorkville scene of the previous decade, with a tight concentration of clubs that served as a launching pad for a generation of future stars.

The catalyst for change was the nearby Ontario College of Art. Drawn by the lure of affordable housing and restaurants serving inexpensive meals, students from the college began moving into the area, rubbing shoulders with the district’s working-class denizens. Soon, artist-run galleries, theatres and other performance spaces sprang up, while music quickly took over the taverns and the illegal, after-hours clubs that surreptitiously opened

Book Description from Amazon This is an entertaining, authoritative, and highly anecdotal look at the golden era of Canadian pop music-the historically important decade that gave birth to such internationally respected recording artists as Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Ian & Sylvia Tyson, Gordon Lightfoot, Murray McLauchlan, Bruce Cockburn, Buffy Saint Marie, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Ronnie Hawkins. In the bohemian sixties, Toronto's Yorkville neighbourhood was a hippie haven-our version of Haight-Ashbury or Greenwich Village, a place where coffeehouses like the Riverboat and the Purple Onion offered a creative mecca for musicians from across Canada. They came from Saskatoon and Winnip...

Synopsis

The 1970s gave us bell bottoms, shag hair and shag carpeting a whole lotta great music…from glam and progressive rock to punk and reggae. This Beat Goes On offers a jukebox full of chart-topping songs, from “Sundown,” Gordon Lightfoot’s confessional tale of infidelity,” to Trooper’s rambunctious party anthem “Raise a Little Hell,” to showcase the rapid growth of the Canadian sound.

Mixing archival footage with candid interviews from top artists and industry heavyweights, Hour One focuses on the formative years of Canada’s music scene, a time of proven hitmakers like Anne Murray, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and The Guess Who. The decade starts out on a controversial note, as a government ruling forces radio stations to play 30 per cent Canadian content, or CanCon. “That was the biggest problem,” DJ Red Robinson believes, “that arbitrary 30 per cent. I think it should’ve started at 10 or 15 per cent and then let it grow.”

Synopsis

The 1980s was the visual era, a time of aerobics, big hair and even bigger shoulder pads. The decade sees the rise of music videos and the arrival of the digital age, which brings everything from Pac-Man games to compact discs. It’s also the time when Canadian music explodes internationally. Mixing concert clips and interview footage, Rise Up digs up a treasure trove of gold and platinum hits, from Men Without Hats’ “The Safety Dance” to Bryan Adams’ “Summer of 69,” to showcase Canadian music’s phenomenal global rise.