Overture

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

"All my cousins live here fat off the land. I hear them lowing but I can't understand. And in the line-up where their souls can be sold, they've never heard of this Canadian band. But the dinosaurs are dying each day. They're going to wish I never got up to play." Rheostatics, "RDA (Rock Death America)," 1992

"If you read only the work of dead foreigners you will certainly reinforce the notion that literature can be written only by dead foreigners.... If, as has long been the case in this country, the viewer is given a mirror that reflects not him but someone else, and told at the same time that the reflection he sees is himself, he will get a very distorted idea of what he is really like." Margaret Atwood, Survival, 1972

In 1985, the landscape of Canadian music was changing. The boomers were washed up. Punk had exploded and crashed. The remains were a messy morass of largely embarrassing cultural icons and an endless parade of "hoser rock." Commercial viability seemed to mean Loverboy and nothing else. By 1985, it was time for tabula rasa: this generation would take classic rock, synth pop, country music and art-school approaches to crafting a new canon of creative, vital music that would create a new legacy from which future generations could extrapolate their own explorations. In 1985, it was clear that we were not going to be the same.

By 1995, this era was beginning to fade. Audiences were declining, indie labels were folding, and major labels were dropping quality acts and signing derivative ones sure to make a quick buck. Although there was no shortage of great music, it became harder to hear, and the polarized mainstream musical climate began to look a lot like 1985. So many things had regressed that we could only look back at the 10 years between '85 and '95 as a defining moment, and indeed, since then, we have not been the same. One only needs to look at the artistic and commercial triumphs of the years 2000–2010 — a time when those two poles no longer seemed mutually exclusive — to witness the lessons learned from the CanRock Renaissance.

This is not a book about the Juno Awards. This is not a book about record sales. This is not a book about major labels. This is not a book about rock radio. Those elements might come into play, but first and foremost this is a book about music and the glorious, intelligent, beautiful, ridiculous, talented and fucked-up people who make it. This is a book about a time and a place that deserves to be celebrated, even more so because the music in question was created in a climate of cultural bulimia, in a country with a nasty habit of eating both its young and its old and leaving them for dead, a country that believes nothing of any great historical importance ever happens here.

There once was a great book written about the American underground in the '80s, which the post-boomer author began by stating, "I grew up thinking everything had already happened." If the author had been raised in Canada — "twice removed," to borrow Sloan's phrase, both generationally and geographically — surely she would have added, "I grew up thinking everything had already happened somewhere else." This was accepted wisdom for songwriters growing up in the '80s. John K. Samson of the Weakerthans recalls, "Growing up I thought that songs were written about somewhere else. Real life is always elsewhere; life here doesn't matter. Unless you're at the centre of the culture, there is no traction to what you do." After the people in this book hit the road and started to unleash classic albums, future generations wouldn't have to ponder such issues.

I WANNA GO TO NEW YORK CITY

The year is 1985. Canadian music, as known to the general public, is right up there with Canadian television and Canadian film: the term "Canadian" is used as a derogative, or as a patronizing, medicinal adjective. Admitting you liked Canadian music was akin to declaring a strange affinity for turnips. Some would argue that the youth of the early '80s had no concept of their country's culture, but they most certainly did. They thought it sucked.

Impressions outside Canadian borders were no better, and as a result any interesting music that did come out of Canada tended to be dismissed as being guilty by association — or a freak of nature. Peter Rowan, an East Coast manager who helped launch the careers of Sloan and Eric's Trip, says, "Really, most music that comes out has been embarrassing Canadian music lovers for years and years, and has done nothing but have an ill effect on us trying to sell outside of Canada."

There's little question that the late '60s produced a series of artists who laid the template for CanRock as we know it today, although practically all of them had to find recognition in the U.S. first: Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, the Band, Gordon Lightfoot, Steppenwolf and others. But for a new generation of Canadian artists beginning to forge their own sounds and identities, Canada was perhaps the last place they would look to for inspiration. Discussing his band's formative influences, Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip recalls, "There were certain Canadian groups that you sort of had to relegate to a different file; it was never considered on the same level as the other stuff you listened to, somehow not as exotic. Not as — or more — ambitious, hence making it less exotic."

In 1985, the few heroes of Canadian rock were either extinct (the Band), in stages of irrelevance (Neil Young), in cultural exile (Stompin' Tom), in a separate class of their own (Rush) or rather ridiculous in the first place (Loverboy). There were few young artists creating exciting new music that didn't sound like it came from somewhere else. Even the Canadian punk pioneers were more or less aping records made in New York City, Los Angeles or London, England.

In London, Ontario, the Demics recorded a single called "(I Wanna Go To) New York City," which in 1979 summed up the aspirations of most Canadian musicians prior to 1985. "I'm getting pretty tired / and I want to get out / I'm getting pretty angry, man / and it's no good to shout." Shouting was about all you could do to retain your sanity above the din of "Snowbird" and "Sometimes When We Touch," both the epitome of proud cultural touchstones at the time.

Former Maclean's editor Peter C. Newman reflected in 1995: "Back in 1985, Canadians ... neither proclaimed themselves nor the potential of their country and were happy in their ignorance. They had long before given up asserting their identities or challenging the righteous claw of authority. They remained deferential and blindly obedient to the powers-that-be. They fantasized about being Clark Kent instead of Superman. Treading water became a national sport."

"What's Going On Around Here?" the Rheostatics would ask years later, and before 1985 the answer was negligible. As the Max Webster song goes, "You can only drive down Main Street so many times." And even the main streets of Canada's biggest cities weren't wide enough to accommodate the ambition of a new wave of musicians.

Joe "Shithead" Keithley moved from Vancouver to Toronto with his band the Skulls, thinking he was moving to the big time. He soon...