The Wavelength zine has done at least one good thing for the Toronto independent music scene: it’s got us talking! Why exactly are we here, making, listening and obsessing over music? Just why exactly do we do this, and how does it relate (if at all) to the world around us ? Here’s what we said:
WAVELENGTH AND THE TORONTO SCENE
Introduction to Wavelength, February 2000: It will be a place to chill
out every week, talk with friends new and old, hear some great music — and
rock out like there’s no tomorrow. Wavelength is a loose collective
of friends and fellow musicians who got together last fall to figure
out how to boost our own scene. This is what we came up with — we
hope you dig it. We all feel that Toronto is on the cusp of something,
something exciting and potentially big. The music being made here — in
all genres — is unparalleled on an international scale. We want
to let people here, and in the rest of the world, know about it.
Picastro
Picastro interview, April 2000: Complete the following sentence: “If
I wasn’t at Wavelength Sunday, I would be?”
Watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and getting drunk at home.
Peaches interview, July 2000: What’s your take on the music “community” in
Toronto anyway? And if you could give anything to the Toronto music “community” what
would it be?
I am one of those rare people who actually loves the T.O. scene. T.O. is not
lacking in innovation or creativity. If I could I would bring more money and
people to this scene so that it could survive.
John Tesh & The Broken Social Scene, December 2000:
You guys are the only people who are presenting an evening of “music-for-whatever”.
And I represent “whatever”.
The Way I See It, March 2001: I guess my point is that we all (myself included) bemoan our relative impotence being stuck in Toronto, without realizing how much work needs to be done to get where we wanna get. We still lack a lot of the basic infrastructure: we’ve never really had effective indie labels here, or indie-sympathetic booking agents. Things are changing, though, and I feel a lot more positive about the prospects for Toronto music as compared to, say, the Toronto waterfront.
Randwiches Interview, June 2001: It’s up to us, Wavelength people, to keep rock from becoming boring and gentrified. To keep it out of the condos and on the street.
The Great Forgetting Interview, July 2001: Everyday I come home and vow that I’m going to move away. Toronto can be a cool place to live but I think it has definitely lost its allure to me over the last couple of years. Generally speaking there is this mean, greedy, ultra-competitive arrogant attitude, that has become common throughout many communities. It’s becoming a tough place to live in, at least compared to how it seemed before. Perhaps that is why we are seeing some great music and art coming from this city recently; it’s because it’s out of necessity.
The Size Sevens Interview, November 2002: The Toronto scene is really vibrant right now. We are fans of many bands and feel we don’t have to go to another big city to be rocked. We just hope that we can rock people as much as our favourite bands rock us. (Rock!)
The Mountainside Band
MUSIC
Arc interview, May 2000: Music (all art) is all in the intention; both of the
performer/artist and the audience/consumer; a sort of symbiotic agreement
to consider something that could be construed as noise in some situations
as music because the performer presents it as such and the consumer agrees
to listen to it as such.
Mountainside Band interview, May 2000: When it comes to jamming I look for
people who give me a good feeling in me belly. I’m confident that anyone
who has the guts to be honest and play from their hearts is a person who can
positively contribute to the betterment of this old world. As a result, I’m
able to be in many different bathtubs with lots of different toys, soaps and
scrub brushes with exciting people who don’t mind my grey water.
Nilan interview, August 2000: Improvisation can be defined as spontaneous composition. Everybody has done this, from Bach to Thurston Moore, from ancient Afro/Asian cultures to Ellington/Parker/Ornette/AACM and beyond. You can do it too. Listen to cool/clever/consistent/solid music, get an instrument, learn how to play it, be humble/rigorous, associate with like-minded individuals and play with no fear. Joy will occur.
Knurl interview, August 2000: So noise is something to listen to, not
just a performance...?
Well, it just happens that way. I was putting bits of steel on my bass guitar,
and then I discovered contact mics, using speakers from Sony Walkman headphones.
I put them on a fan and scraped the edges and got the sound I wanted from punk.
I put it directly to tape and boosted the input levels so that was distorted
as well. I used to love it, walking around in a drugstore listening to those
sounds in your headphones, it puts you in a weird state.
Corpusse
The Way I See It, October 2000: Let’s face it: Indie-rock or punk-rock or post-fucking-rock is primarily an upper-middle-class luxury pastime. Maybe it’s just a fear of brutally honest self-reflection, but this is something that just isn’t talked about, not in the lyrics, rarely in the literature surrounding the scene, and definitely not in the audience as they wait for the latest NME-approved out-of-town sensation to hit the stage.
Aaron Booth interview, February 2001: How easy is it to tell if someone
is performing for the love of it or for the ego of it?
People who perform music for the love of it will not make demands of their
audience.
Exhaust, May 2001: Music Hurts.
Da Bloody Gashes interview, September 2001: We push ourselves constantly to come up with real off-the-wall shit that makes you go “Damn, is this rock’n’roll? Why do I have that funny feeling in my crotch?”
Mecca Normal interview, September 2001: Indifference is a doomed state that disappears as soon as you put your work out there for others to hear, read, see, and taste. Why wait for the media to declare culture on sale now, better than ever? Be bold, follow your passion — take a chance, choose a course of action, make it up as you go along, and see where it takes you.
Home Invasion with Alex Lukashevsky, April 2002: I’ve been really thinking a lot about how recorded music, y’know, as a simulacrum, affects listening to live music, the weight that it’s gained in the last half-century. I mean, more than ever, it’s really informing live music much more than the other way around, which is why audiences can be pretty unfair when they listen, and also why bands censor themselves before they even start. People learn from records rather than people...
Corpusse interview, October 2002: The Corpusse Philosophy: Stay true to yourself. / Do whatever you want. / Don’t let anyone tell you what to do. / Where there’s a will, there’s a way. / Fuck the banking job. / This is what I’m going to do. / This is what has to support me. / It has to be done. / There is no alternative. / This is it. This is my life. / I’ll die doing this. — compiled by V-Tree