November 2004
The Dears' 3932-Day Overnight Success Story
I suppose everyone, now, has a Dears story.
Back in the early 1990s, Wren, as they were then known, were a 4-piece band of angry young men in sharp suits with a mesmerizingly heroic lead singer and a good line in If The Smiths Had Stayed Together tunesmithery (most of which today you can get on the ...Nor The Dahlias contractual-obligation cd from Grenadine.)
I saw them play at an early Marlowe gig, in a venue that later evolved into the nightclub Cathedrale on the Main at Roy. I later found out a classmate of mine at Concordia was producing their demo.
Full disclosure: I auditioned to be the bass player in Marlowe a million years ago. Guitarist-producer Joey and I jammed with a gangly, 17-year-old drummer named George, who at the time was living at home in Ville St-Laurent, who grew up to be George Donoso, drummer for The Dears. Such is the small village of Montreal indie rock.
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November 18, 2004 in Music | ✍ 3
Understanding The Red States: Leviticans vs. the Beatitudes
I was raised fairly non-religiously, which is, I think, pretty common here in Quebec.
We are a nation of lapsed Catholics: like Spain, we threw off our religious yokes and a quasi-fascist leader to become International Style Modern (in time for Expo 67, no less).
We are still Catholic in culture. We didn't go too Calvinist-skyscraper crazy: we love our indulgences and wrestle with our demons. In our social policy, we fuse aspects of liberation theology to New Deal economics. The old-school pure laines born since the Quiet Revolution are not, as a rule, churchgoers; the faithful in Quebec now are congregations of immigrants - Korean Presbyterians, Chinese and Haitian Catholics, Sikhs and Hindus, some of whom have gladly taken over the historic old churches, others have built new, modernist temples in the suburbs.
Apparently there is quite a bit of evangelism in Southern Ontario, crossing the border around the Niagara region, I'm told.
But I can't imagine Canadian politics ever really, really splitting over a "culture war" as it has in the States.
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