The Talented Mr. Rennie

By Melissa Bratcher

At a certain point in my life, I made anyone who spent any amount of time at my house watch the movie Hard Core Logo. This continued for a couple of years. I couldn’t articulate what I liked best about it, but it seemed important that every one of my friends be exposed to it. I love the relationship of Joe and Billy, unhinged John and the ridiculous Pipefitter, as well as the Joey Ramone cameo. The music was good, the story was engrossing, and I loved it.

Hard Core Logo, 1996

I think, though, the thing I liked best was Callum Keith Rennie. He was completely mesmerizing. Handsome, rangy, and angular, but he was more than that. He had intensity, a barely subdued violence just bubbling under the surface. Every time he showed up, he was the most interesting person on the screen.

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Waiting For Sloan Songs: Top Ten

By Melissa Bratcher

Photo © Marshall Angus

Sloan was the most recent band for whom I’ve had an all encompassing mania. I had been obsessed with bands before (Blur, The Dandy Warhols, The Monkees, Bay City Rollers), and the gripping excitement and absolute fervor that I felt about those bands washed over me when I found Sloan. I miss feeling that way about them. Passion fades, mania recedes like a tide, and I settled into simple, less enthusiastic fandom.

That said, when asked to come up with a top Sloan songs list, I had to. Then I realized, all of my favorite Sloan songs are Jay Ferguson songs and that’s not terribly interesting to anyone but me and possibly Jay Ferguson. So there’s a bit of a problem. It’s not that I don’t appreciate Chris Murphy’s clever, wordplay-riddled tunes, or Patrick Pentland’s balls-out rockers, or Andrew Scott’s more esoteric leanings, but hey, I’m a Jay girl. I love that his songs sound like proper timeless pop songs. And his voice is perfect for them.

In the interest of fairness, however, I have risen above. In no particular order, my Top Ten Sloan songs:

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The Barenaked Ladies Made Me Do It

By Charlie M.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the phrase “we broke up over irreconcilable musical differences” is a euphemism for “I was close to stabbing them to death with a pencil.” But can it ever be literally true? Is it possible to fall swiftly and irreversibly out of sync with a person simply because of a discord in melodic taste?
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Behold Their Majesties, The Wainwright-McGarrigles

By Alex Arnott

When the theme of this issue—Canadiana—was decided upon, I knew that I had to write about the Wainwrights and McGarrigles. Oh, who am I kidding? There’s another word for the Wainwright-McGarrigle clan, and I’m sure it’s already floating around inside the heads of those readers who know them. It starts with a D and ends with a Y.

Rufus Wainwright, Kate McGarrigle, and Martha Wainwright

It should be admitted upfront that the questionable patriarch in this family, Loudon Wainwright III, is not in fact a Canadian. Patriarchs aren’t everything, and I am certain that the surviving family members of this clan would agree. Anyway, there are countless articles detailing the history of those Wainwright-McGarrigles (I liked this one), but this is not one of them.
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Oh! Canada (You Pretty Things)

By Christian Lipski

Nick Gilder and Tal Bachman: Great White Northerners and purveyors of melodic sound since 1975; both are identified by one song, but have equally engaging back catalogs. More popular in Canada than further south, they both suffered from a severe lack of regard by listeners everywhere. Much more than their singles, and at the same time those singles’ very equal.
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When NoMeansNo Means No

By J Howell

What follows is a true story.
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A Crash Course in Maddinalia

By Chelsea Spear

Guy Maddin carries on the tradition of deeply idiosyncratic experimental Canadian film from such forebears as David Cronenberg, Ryan Larkin, and Patricia Rozema. His work blends a voluptuous silent film aesthetic with fractured memories, mild body horror, and autobiographical details. His films contain gorgeous images, and the deliberate pacing draws in and engages viewers.

Maddin’s prolific filmmaking schedule serves as both a sop to his diehard fans, and an intimidation to those potentially interested in his work. When contemplating an IMDB profile that features over forty films, where do you start? A crash course in Maddin’s bizarre and wonderful oeuvre is in order.
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Daddy Drank For The Government: A Look At The Kids In The Hall

By Mackenzi Johnson

The Kids in the Hall were going to be huge. They never got there. Oh, they got close. But much like the gun fighter played by Dave Foley who once shot a man just to watch him die, something happened and they missed the big moment.
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Those Crazy (?) Canadian Kids: A Grudging Appreciation Of Degrassi

By Maureen

I can’t believe I even suggested I write this. I don’t watch Degrassi. I don’t care about Degrassi. I am too old and too not-Canadian to have grown up with it and find it endearing. I openly mock it and still remind everyone Drake was once Aubrey Graham.

Manny Santos hugs her mom

That said, my friends did go through a post-college, pre-full time employment period of watching the shit out of Degrassi. During the marathons I unwittingly experienced, there was one thing I noticed that I did find impressive.
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RetrOntario.com: “Yours to Rediscover”

By Emily Carney

Image from RetrOntario.com

Certain commercials, jingles, TV show themes, and public television identifications from the 1980s and 1990s are etched into my mind like a road map of the past. These are the kinds of things that I’m humming after I wake up from a deep sleep . . . obviously, watching public television in those days made for some strong formative impressions. One new website, RetrOntario.com, takes this spirit further by preserving Ontario-based programming from that era.
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