The only time I listen to pop music on the radio these days is when I’m driving. I don’t expect much, just something pleasant enough to keep me going with the traffic over the Burrard Street Bridge—something with a good beat, lyrics that are not too idiotic, and a catchy melody. Usually that’s what I get, but a few weeks ago I realized that radio music had gone dead for me. The only thing that kept me from switching over to a CD was one song. They didn’t play it often enough, and I kept waiting for it—the only good song on the radio.
Since I emigrated to Canada in 1970, I have been listening to CBC Radio. I listen to it in much of my down-time—while I’m cooking, doing the dishes, putting away my socks, or driving my car. I regard CBC Radio as an old reliable friend, and I am writing to you in the spirit of friendship. In recent years Q was one of my favourite shows. The host is gone, but the show continues, and that’s what I want to talk about.
The Knife’s music video for “A Tooth For An Eye” has some interesting similarities to Grimes’ “Oblivion.” I don’t mean to imply any direct influence. The same social conditions often produce similar lines of thought, and it doesn’t really matter whether Olof Dreijer and Karin Dreijer Andersson, the Swedish siblings who make up The Knife, have seen Grimes’ work or not.
As the video opens, we are in a locker room. The men walking in know each other and exchange greetings as they strip down to their workout gear. This is an athletic group of guys with well-toned bodies; they range in age from their twenties up to one venerable gent who’s fairly long in the tooth. They enter the gym through a door clearly labeled “Herrar”—Men—and we find, to our surprise if not to theirs, that a young girl is in charge of their class. Her striped sweatsuit makes it impossible to pinpoint her age, but she could be as young as twelve. She immediately begins directing them in a series of supple movements that would be more appropriate for girls her age than for this collection of mature males. They do their best. Karin Dreijer Andersson’s voice, grotesquely distorted, comes blasting out of the girl’s mouth: “I’m telling you stories. Trust me.” What stories is the girl telling us?
When my younger daughter moved out on her own, she left a copy of her music library on our kitchen computer. For years I hadn’t listened seriously to anything recorded later than the 80s, but I wanted to know what mattered to her and to other kids her age—especially to girls—so I started listening to her music. I found some great artists who were brand new to me—Cat Power, Postal Service, Iron and Wine, Metric, Sufjan Stevens, Tegan and Sara, Portishead. I also found hours of electronica, much of it unlabeled. I dimly sensed a change blowing in the cultural wind, so I wandered onto the net in search of something I knew I wouldn’t be able to identify until I’d found it. I wanted to experience a connection with what was going on right now as intensely as I’d felt when I first heard Bob Dylan in 1963.
