Hello-lo-lo-lo... to the Echo Prize
Laura Barrett at the Music Gallery in March, in a photo by thecjm on Flickr.
If the Polaris Prize shortlist hasn't polarized the nation quite yet, here's another Canadian music contest to bitch about: The Echo Songwriting Prize, to be awarded this year for the first time by Socan (the Canadian songwriters' association). Before the deets, here are the sweets, the nominated shortlist, in alphabetical order by artist:
Laura Barrett, Deception Island Optimists Club (written by Laura Barrett)
Final Fantasy, This Lamb Sells Condos (by Owen Pallett)
Propagandhi, A Speculative Fiction (by Chris Hannah, Todd Kowalski, Jordan Samolesky)
The Stills, Destroyer (by Olivier Corbeil, Timothy Fletcher, David Hamelin and Liam O�Neil)
Wolf Parade, You Are a Runner and I Am My Father�s Son (by Daniel Boeckner, Hadji Bakara and Arlen Thompson)
As with the Polaris, I was among the jurors for this one. Unlike with the Polaris, for which a smaller jury (also including yours zoilusy) convenes to make a final choice at a gala-ish event on Sept. 18, on this one you get to vote. Audio of the nominated songs - one set in English, the other in French - will be up on the Socan site on Thursday (Aug. 31) and remain up till Oct. 31, when the public vote will be tallied.
I'm pleased and surprised to see my Laura Barrett nomination (each of the 8 jurors nominated 3 tracks) made it through - congratulations, Laura. Just another step in the Barrett take-over-the-world scenario that continues with her North American tour this fall with the Hidden Cameras.
I'm also happy, but not surprised, to see most of the rest. I nominated a different Final Fantasy song, but totally can get behind this one. (Guess my third nomination. It's very easy.) The Stills ain't my cup of tea, but I bear them no particular ill will. The focus for the Echo is songs by "emerging" artists rather than just the "best" song - the rules were that the songs had to be released between the start of July 2005 and end of June 2006, that they be original compositions, written by Canadians, and from albums that sold less than 50K copies in Canada (ie., below "gold" status). All genres were supposedly eligible, but you see the results. (A note to organizers: If you truly want all genres to be included, the genre interests of the jurors have to be really well-balanced, or you'll end up leaning rockwards every time. There was no jazz, for instance, but some hip-hop and dance on the long list - but predictably none of it survived the second round.)
Laura's nomination also raises some thoughts in response to Frank Chromewaves's post today on Torontopia and its (or at least his) discontents, but I'll have to save that for later in the day. Meanwhile, again, congrats to all the touched-by-an-Echo songwriters and performers.
| Posted by zoilus on Tuesday, August 29 at 2:45 PM | Linking Posts | Comments (11)
COMMENTS
I've said it before and I'll say it again - yer the man. Seriously, its a sweet idea, I like the fact that you try and think of things outside the norm. I'd post this to css-d for comments myself, especially to get the last 10% working
Posted by Billie on October 6, 2006 9:55 PM
I agree with what you said earlier. You are perfectly right
Posted by Billie on October 6, 2006 6:10 PM
1. Move that damn cancel button somewhere else!
2. Amended here: http://www.chromewaves.net/index.php?itemid=2323
3. Now all I have to do is box with Steve Kado in an alleyway, and Toronto will be right as rain (this relates to Exclaim's piece on Torontopia) .
Posted by Matt Collins on August 30, 2006 4:41 AM
Guy: To vote for any of these artists, go to the Socan link in this post later in the week -from Friday, at the latest, it should be set up. I'll post a reminder early next week.
Posted by zoilus on August 30, 2006 3:01 AM
> Matt and Guy, you're being very harsh on Frank, who does very good work on his site, and whose comments I thought were very thoughtful and not at all self-aggrandizing.
I have nothing more to say than hear hear to that.
Posted by DW. on August 29, 2006 6:49 PM
Matt and Guy, you're being very harsh on Frank, who does very good work on his site, and whose comments I thought were very thoughtful and not at all self-aggrandizing. (And whose site is read by plenty of smart people daily.)
I have to go out but will be back later tonight with a fuller post on this matter - maybe hold your fire - in whatever direction - till then? I probably shouldn't have lit the fuse before I had my own ammo packed.
Posted by zoilus on August 29, 2006 5:33 PM
Just to clarify one thing -- what I should have said was "why not post there AS WELL." Wasn't trying to imply that MC shouldn't be posting here or that his comments weren't welcome or anything.
However, it seems to me that if someone pisses you offor even disses you, why not engage them directly instead of just slagging them in another forum that you can count on to be more sympathetic?
And Guy:
> I also would rather comment here because smarter people read this blog.
Nice.
Posted by DW. on August 29, 2006 5:33 PM
Before I get into it I wanted to know isnt SOCAN voted online by "the people" ? if so can Carl update us on how we can vote for Laura and Owen?
Now DW I can read what Matt Collins has to say all day long. I also would rather comment here because smarter people read this blog.
Now. Frank's comments are actually not interesting, they are small minded. To me anyway they come across as being in line with this whole
"I am not part of this stillepost thing, Im just a music geek, im not cool like you people, I dont get what you people do and go on about".
This sort of proves that yes indeed Frank is not one of the cool kids, you know neither am I. Whether you get Ninja High School or doesnt need not matter matter unless you decide you are being left out of something. Frank evidently feels he does, that is sort of his problem and kind of not intresting by itself.
There is this bottom line here everyone ignores which is that there are a million good bands in this city and also that in gerenal they get along. This is unique in certain ways as far as I can tell. Even if it wasnt unique who cares? Its good, can we concentrate on the goodness rather than come up with names and counter and countercounter nomenclature?
What Frank needs is to do is come for a beer with me and matt sometime and stop whinging
G.
Posted by guy tanentzapf on August 29, 2006 5:01 PM
Hey Matt Collins,
I think Chromewaves has a comments feature of its own -- why not post there?
DW.
Posted by DW. on August 29, 2006 4:37 PM
It also occurs to me now that many of those who are the most troubled by any press on "Torontopia" are those who write about bands that already dominate the press, which could account for the "decline" aspect of the article itself- calming everyone down and saying "It's fine, we can go back to articles about Feist again. Look! She was on TV!"
Also, it is exceptionally funny that Owen is routinely left out of criticisms of Torontopia- as if he is on blocks, but in no way part of the "intellectual music problem". This happened with Pyramid Culture during the Bad Bands Revolution fallout, albeit in a wildly more condescending way, where those assuring them that they were a "good band" felt that they had adopted the Bad Band stance due to low self esteem.
Is it possible that fans of Final Fantasy believe he's merely "biding his time" on Blocks (with all the annoying "over-intellectualizing" bands) before moving on to "bigger and better things"?
Posted by Matt Collins on August 29, 2006 4:14 PM
His "head scratching" seems a lot like the standard "I don't like it! When will britpop be popular again?" whining we've seen four or five pages of in the past 6 months.
The real questions to ask about his blog are: where does the need for "Is there an echo in here" established critical outlet reiteration blogs come from? Are we going to see a trend of blogs that are just photographs of the same record collection over and over again?
Posted by Matt Collins on August 29, 2006 3:59 PM