National Post (National Edition)
I’ve seen more concerts than I could ever count, yet each one of them played a role in determining who I am, who I know, who I’ve loved.
We will eventually die without medication, but our souls will wilt without music
Ihad to fill my thyroid medication the other day. As you might expect, it was an elaborate affair: red carpets paved my way into the store, special offers were pressed into my hand. Dazzling lights illuminating a maze of cosmetics booths led me astray, but one of seemingly hundreds of assistants stepped in and escorted me to the basement. There, I had to dodge video cameras and chatting groups of glamorous executives to get to the pharmacy, where everything righted itself in a typical scene of older couples and kindly white-coated technicians.
I wondered: when Bob Dylan arrived at this building more than 50 years ago, was he treated the same way? Or did he dash upstairs, slide into a booth unnoticed and order whatever was on tap, settling in for the barrage of noise that eventually became his backing band? Because, you see, the very building where a three-storey Shoppers Drug Mart just opened is the site of Dylan first meeting members of The Band. The scraggly Toronto rock group – with a residency in Friar’s Tavern – eventually became one of the most legendary groups in rock history, backing Dylan on The Basement Tapes and recording their own debut Music at Big Pink soon after that first encounter.
Those concerned about the vanishing of Canadian rock history, the morphing of this storied venue into yet another site of conspicuous consumption, shouldn’t be so concerned. You can take the elevator to the third floor of Shoppers, where the Friar’s Museum awaits, along with shelves of President’s Choice Pub Recipe Chicken Nuggets and Triple Chocolate Cheesecake Lollipops: a one-stop history lesson, cultural fill-up and grocery trip.
It’s hard not to feel like a virus has descended over Toronto, seeping silently into pockets of the city, infecting our once clear-headed engagement with music and culture. The especially peculiar pathological determination of drugstores to swallow music venues seems to be the mutant strain that’s infected us. The Brunswick House on Bloor Street is now a Rexall. A Rexall also sits across from where teens hung out on Yonge at Club Bluenote and the Bermuda Tavern. Remember The Riverboat? The Purple Onion? The Avenue Road Club? Record World? Now a Rexall Pharma Plus.
The cynical – and perhaps pragmatic – view of this transformation would suggest that drugstores are needed now more than ever, as that original population of counterculture freaks has to fill their prescriptions instead of hitting three clubs in a night to listen to earnest folk songs. The line-ups at the pharmacy do little to disprove this. An even more cynical view would position this moment as the peak of commodification. What does it matter that a site of music-making now functions as a beauty bar? These products, in a late neoliberal world, are interchangeable. Whether a blues band or a Quo bronzer brush, both offer the chance to further shape our identities, for a mere 20 bucks.
Out in Calgary, another long-running venue, Mikey’s Juke Joint, announced its closure last week, after a month that saw three other music clubs in the city shut down. Torontonians might think a place like Calgary is impervious to the same real estate crisis we face here, what with its expanse of surrounding land, and higher per capita income. That’s proving untrue, and the closing of venues is often the first indicator that things are very, very wrong.
I suppose it’s indicative of our tendency to think we’ve beaten the system when it comes to art, that cultivating our own entertainment is the ultimate entrepreneurial achievement. We save money by subscribing to Netflix and Spotify; we draw up playlists and rate shows. We stay in when it’s too cold. And we accomplish the best part of capitalist accrual in withholding our money from other entrepreneurs (musicians) by not going to see them labour right in front of us.
My job, as a culture critic and academic, is to view these shifts objectively. I’m supposed to see them in the broader scope of ongoing change, to comment from a distanced perspective on our nature as audience members and musicians. I could offer that here: maybe we are increasingly becoming our own curators, picking and choosing entertainment from a range of cheap options. Perhaps we are finding value and community in playing music at home, with friends, or through learning new techniques via YouTube lessons. This moment is possibly one of crisis for music, wherein we stop treating it like a commodity, or an avenue for making a living, and transform it into something that is as yet unfamiliar to us. There are positive and negative possibilities that spin out of a neutralized analysis.
However, just this once, I’d like to eschew a critical framing of dying venues and let my own personal despair rise to the surface. Of all the causes I might champion, this is the one I’m most passionate about. I’ve spent the last 25 years going to music venues, sometimes when the very act of getting there seemed impossible. I’ve seen more concerts than I could ever count, yet each one of them played a role in determining who I am, who I know, who I’ve loved. I have come to understand sound; its magic, what I appreciate, what I dislike, what astounds me about human interactions, what I regret, what I dream of, and so much more in moments of live performance. Being close to a singer as they sweat their way through their verses, seeing the way a steel guitarist works the volume pedal: these moments cannot be replaced by buying lavender shower gel.
I do not need another Shoppers Drug Mart. If I can’t get somewhere to pick up my thyroid meds, I will eventually die. But that will take quite a long time. If our venues keep vanishing, though, we’re all going to wilt. Very soon.