No, you’re right. For the average listener, music scenes = bad bands. That’s not to say artists like ninja high school (or aids wolf, for that matter) don’t have a right to exist, it just means their appeal is part, or mostly, "scene".

Bang on.

Since reading Stillepost (every so often), I’ve learned that if a band is ridiculously hyped up on the board, it’ll be something I hate. And if the hipsters complain that a band sucks (e.g., oooh, RADIOHEAD), I’ll probably like it.

As I mentioned to people earlier this week, I’d rather pour bleach in my eyes and stab myself in the head repeatedly than listen to any of the "bad bands" for a split second. I learned my lesson during CMW.

I agree wholeheartedly with your comments. There aren’t very many bands in Toronto that do it for me either. The Torontopia/Wavelength bands take the "art is whatever you can get away with" too far.
Many seem to think that drawing influence(ripping off) from obscure or abrasive music is automatically more credible than makeing use of pop or more traditional conventions. Too much worshipping at the altar of self-conscious bands like Sonic Youth perhaps? The DIY/punk aesthetic only works if you actually have something to say artistically. Most of these bands only crave the criticle reverence enjoyed by their cult heroes. This bothers me even more than bands hell-bent on "making it big".
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all in favor of experimentation. Just not in favor of "experimental" or "noise" as a cheap, easy genre. Waste of time…
Good local bands in Toronto:

The Easy Targets
The Assistants
Action Makes
Fjord Rowboat
Hoa Hoa’s

woo hoo, mediocrity rules!
the whole "taking it too far" comment makes me giggle. Do you try to shut down CMW shows too, le Mignon?

anyway, Frank, yr criticisms seem to fall shy of their mark. Are you guilty because you’re disinterested in canadian bands until someone (american) else sez they’re grreat, or because you don’t listen to campus radio and therefore wouldn’t know of said bands until someone (somewhere) affirms their greatness?? sorry if that seems harsh, but tis the direction in which yr guilt points. see yr darling chad vanG, who canada mostly ignored until american bloggers started wetting themselves.

I listen to a lot of canadian music that doesn’t make the usual blog/elbo.ws/&tc roundup — and I also go out to local shows (Guelph in my case, not Waterloo) where more inventive bands from all over Canada, including Toronto, get love. Even if Pitchfork’s never heard of ’em! Fantastic! Incroyable! This whole discussion just increases my respect for my local non-blog-reading but live-music-going peers, actually.

frankly, it’s kinda weird that you have been completely oblivious to the "bustling, creative" scene that is (alongside/around/beside) torontopia. where’ve you been?

As for chadVG., the new record’s pretty lukewarm, as CVG himself has admitted. time to start forming yr own opinions.

p.s. the ‘special needs’ comment = bizarre, offensive on several fronts, yo.

I know that when I think of Chromewaves, I think of a blog that *always* waits for American approval — especially Pitchfork — before raving about a band. And pointing out that CVG scores low on Metacritic is clearly a sign that Frank is bowing to what other people have to say…it’s not like he regularly provides links to music news or anything…

(By the way, thanks for the mention, Frank!)

Helen, I think you confuse my providing links to reviews and whatnot with my endorsing what they say. Also, I haven’t heard the new CVG record so I have no opinion of it as of yet. Rest assured when I do, it will be my own opinion. Or maybe BrooklynVegan’s.

I hardly seek the validation of Americans – bloggers or otherwise – before supporting the home team. I just prefer to get some considered opinions from people who aren’t also drinking buddies with the artists.

your other points… whatever. you presume an awful lot about me.

with simultaneous conversations going on here and at zoilus, I forget what I wrote where.

The "drinking buddies" comment was more a general reference to the stille post dynamic, where so much of the boosterism of various bands comes from friends of the people within the bands. I’ve learned to take such recommendations with a salt lick. Is there some baggage? sure, but find me someone with an opinion or attitude that isn’t informed by personal experiences.

And I do talk to a fair number of local musicians, as you point out it’s kind of unavoidable. But sometimes that line of critical detachment and being polite/friendly is tough to walk. Which sort of comes back to the initial point that life would be so much easier if I actually liked most of what was being produced in the 416/905/647, but sadly the batting average is not terribly impressive.

my obliviousness to Torontopia was in respect to the official name/movement for it. Obviously I knew the players were up to stuff but the rise and fall arc that the Exclaim piece documented was news to me. As for Carl having written about it at length, well mea culpa – I guess I didn’t read those entries or notice the big picture.

regarding the boosterism – I’m not saying it’s inherently a bad thing, not at all. You’re quite correct in saying that without the mutual support of other artists, fans, etc. My only point is that I don’t necessarily find it a credible indicator of whether I’ll think a band is any good. I can’t count the number of acts that I’ve checked out based on positive local hype and simply been left cold by. But c’est la vie – they don’t need me, I don’t need them, the world doesn’t end.

And to be clear – I don’t have a formal ethos for how I choose what to write about. Talk about the blog echo chamber all you like, but the truth is I don’t really read many blogs and I’m just as likely to react against the hype or more probably, ignore it completely. Believe what you wish about the hive mind. It’s just as much of a straw man as your cliques.

And I probably shouldn’t read stille post at all – it’d surely do wonders for my attitude.

I should’ve posted this earlier, but:

Le Mignon: “The DIY/punk aesthetic only works if you actually have something to say artistically.”

What makes you think these bands have nothing to say artistically? The lyrics of a Ninja High School track are infinitely more relevant artistically than Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. And the live NHS experience says a lot more about what that band is about, and what their artistic intent is, than Destroyer. Or Feist, or The Dears, or countless other examples.

Frank: “It’s like people don’t start bands, they start cerebral art projects based on creating a new hyper-hyphenated ironic genre for the amusement of themselves or their friends, and not necessarily for the purpose of just getting together and creating good (by my definitions) music. Not that the two goals have to be mutually exclusive, but to my ears the more important of the two – the music – ends up taking a back seat.”

Well, this is a very limited conceptual view of what music is, and a lot of those “bad” bands are trying to point out the fact that what music *is* is a lot more broad than someone like yourselves seems to conceive it. The music you seem to be talking about (I don’t read your blog very often) is based on the aesthetics of entertainment. It’s entertaining, in whatever way you determine that, and that’s the function it’s meant to serve. There’s a lot of stuff that isn’t entertaining, but is art. Christine Taylor (or whatever her name was) wasn’t trying to entertain you with her photos of rotting corpses. She was making a point, which is also true for a lot of the bands you seem to be talking about. I can understand if you don’t like the Ninja High School album, but have you seen a show? Same with Garbage! Violence Enthusiasm! These bands are much more about the experience of their music and the aesthetic of the experience of their band as a whole than just how it’s translated when you hear it on your iPod. The recordings are just a representation of what those bands are. To “get” them, you need to listen to the lyrics, check out the website, go see a live show (or a few). Bands like the Postal Service put all of their art into their recording, and (in my humble opinion) they put on a piss boring live show. NHS has, bar none, the most amazing live experience of any band I’ve ever seen. And G!V!E! is pretty close. Those live shows are involving and are a spectacle unto themselves. To the point where the band plays amongst the audience. G!V!E! even wear helmets and encourage you to throw things at them. Feist will never do that. GBV will never do that. Yo La Tengo will never do that. And it’s the involvement, the blurring of the audience and artist barrier that really epitomizes Torontopia. We’re all participants. We’re all in this together. Let’s do something! Granted, you may think that people aren’t getting together to make "good" music, but they’re making music, and "good" is subjective.

What point is Do Make Say Think trying to make other than “we make amazing music”? It’s an artistic band, and one with an amazing live show, but for very different reasons than, say, The Barcelona Pavilion. As an art form, there are no limits. There is no "should". It’s not about what music should be, but what music can be.

I think the reason you don’t “get” these bands is because you aren’t interested in giving them a chance. Because they don’t fit into your narrow, one-dimensional conception of what it means to make music, you’re throwing the baby out with the bath water. Music is more than what a band sounds like and you’re neglecting what it really means for music to be an art form.

If Broken Social Scene’s Cause=Time was poorly recorded, would that make it a bad song? No. It’d be a good song that was poorly recorded. There’s a huge difference there. Are you listening to what the music sounds like or what the music is? What music is goes far beyond what’s coming out of your headphones and that’s what a lot of these band are trying to get you to realize.

I intended to comment yesterday but I was having problems with my computer. I am enjoying the intensity of this discussion. Man, do you know how to stir up bullshit. ;-) But seriously, although I can generally see where you’re coming from with regards to your reasons for not being a fan of much of the music coming out of the Torontopia/Stille Post/Bad Bands revolution/what-have-you scene, I think you hastily dismissed some of those bands’ music as being insincere by expressing that the scene is an "over-intellectualization of music and art". You’re definitely a ‘meat and potatoes rock n’ roll guy’ and I don’t think you should form such an opinion of the Torontopia music scene based on your musical standards.

You stated that you can’t listen to Ninja High School. Well that’s a given since I believe you don’t listen to rap/hip-hop music. I suspect that if you were a fan of rap/hip-hop, there’s a better chance that you’d appreciate NHS more or at least not dismiss them so hastily.

Finally, I’ll have to agree with Spitz with regards to her point, "And if your aim is to hold yrself at a critical distance, it can hardly be accomplished by dismissing others’ "personal experiences" while using yr own as an escape route". Having already stated ‘first’ your opinion of the Torontopia music scene(and obviously caused a stir), leaving your comments till the end of the discussion that attribute your viewpoints as a combination of your own personal experiences doesn’t seem sufficient.

Although you consider Chromewaves as the opinions of one music fan(that being yourself), I think the reason why there’s such a stir of emotion is that Chromewaves’ influence is far more outreaching. On one hand you are Frank the music fan, but on the other as Chromewaves, your remarks are much more deeply felt. I’m not saying that you have to only talk about bands you like or lie about the stuff that you don’t like but in dealing with the stuff you don’t like, a little more diplomacy will go a long way.

Carl, I have a copy of March of the Penguins that I’d really like to overdub with your own narrative. Kinda serious.

Also, not all the bands are trying to make some statement about art or be ironic or any of that. I’m in GVE because I wanted to participate in the whole toronto thing instead of just being a bystander, and have fun doing it. And some people at our shows really enjoy it too. And that means a lot more to me than any "artistic merit". Wait…maybe that gives it artistic merit…i’ll leave that up to the art nerds to argue over.

Frank, I agree. I’m not the most articulate guy, by my point is not that music must be experienced one way or another, but that all ways are valid. And I feel like a lot of people call NHS or G!V!E! or Bad Bands invalid as forms of music or experience because of preconcieved notions of "irony" or "sceneters" or "music" which I think are grossly untrue.

Well, to be honest, judging by the comments left here, one thing that the Toronto music scene lacks is self-irony. Anybody who doesn’t like us = scenester… Good-bye

PS: Not all irony is intentional irony. For example, when people who gravitate to and immerse themselves in forms of expression that are quite obviously not aimed at a mass audience and are born of a reaction against whatever is considered "popular" at a given moment, yet complain that it does not get enough publicity, that is ironic, but probably not intentionally so.

I’m also impressed by how tempered Frank’s responses have been. Perhaps his ability to stick to walls and web things provides him a perspective on power/responsibility the rest of us just don’t have.

And also in chromewaves’ favour – I think Frank has demonstrated that his opinions certainly aren’t sacred cows. I seem to recall several instances of "now I get it!" posts on bands he previously didn’t like. Certainly a paean to Panic! At The Disco is forthcoming.

Speaking of tempered observations; is the original posting that started all this really a slam on local bands? Are a lack of props really the same as a diss…..um, yo?

thanks for the "exception", le mignon :-) perhaps you should dig deeper there are a quite a few exceptional experimental bands, i do agree there are a few more mediocre ones, but there are a lot of mediocre other bands too…

good places to start: the rat-drifting label (the silt, eric chenaux, drumheller, st. dirt elementary school, guayaveras), nick fraser & justin haynes are faking it, barnyard drama, singing saw shadow show, polmo polpo, awesome, deep dark dark united, songs of the new erotics, six heads, CCMC, odradek… these among others are excellent avant acts in toronto.

I’d have to say that mediocre bar bands are committing worse atrocities to "music" and "artistic creativity" than any of these retarded concept bands.

OK, I know I’m late on this convo, but I just saw it and wanted to respond to kermit the frog. I’m also in GVE and I actually think it is kind of wicked that you hate my band because if everyone dug it, I would feel like I was doing something terribly wrong. I do want to address this idea you seem to have about our goals though. Since when does playing in a band mean that your aim is to have a career in music? I have a career aside from music that I quite enjoy. What is wrong with fucking around and making some songs based on a couple of random ideas? Furthermore, I don’t get why you draw such solid distinctions between performance art and music. Hating my band is totally fine, but making assumptions that I have some overblown "scenester" careerist motivation because I beat dudes over the head with garbage? Random, guy.