It was unlikely enough that this band existed in the first place - a posse of visual artists and intellectuals and a few actual musicians congregating around the cheeky songs of Joel Gibb, whose description “gay church folk-choir music” really does communicate quite effectively what this dozen-strong party band sounds like — except that it leaves out the element of the whole audience dancing and singing along to the words on the overhead projector, the go-go crowd-stimulation leaders kicking it in their underwear, and the generally ecstatic experience that the Cameras have taken everywhere they go for the past two years. Unlikely enough. For the rest look here.
But then, last spring, when Rough Trade decided to sign them and propagate the word around the world, it wasn’t just the quintessential pop experience - I felt a bit as though I’d been hanging out at the Cavern Club in Liverpool in 1962 — but a huge stroke of redemption for Toronto. Along with gay marriage in Canada (to which idea the Cameras sing “Ban Marriage!”) and the brief, fruitless promise of legalized pot, the Hidden Cameras put the planet on notice that little Toronto isn’t exactly the sexless bore it used to be. It’s kind of a miracle.
