This is an original manuscript / preprint of an article published by Taylor & Francis in the Journal of Radio and Audio Media on June 19 2020, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/ [https://doi.org/10.1080/19376529.2019.1678163].

Taking Care of Authenticity on the CBC’s Randy’s

By Henry Adam Svec

Abstract: This essay explores the radio program Randy’s Vinyl Tap, which is hosted by

Randy Bachman and airs on CBC Radio 1 (2005-present). I argue that the show’s complex reception can be explained, in part, by the fact that it transgresses dominant conceptions of authenticity in both and public broadcasting discourses.

Drawing on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin (1984), I explore ways in which, by transgressing these discourses as host and curator, Bachman evokes a “carnivalesque” approach to public communication.

Key Words: Authenticity, rock, music, public broadcasting, CBC, carnival

Introduction

I have been performing an ongoing joke for friends over the past several years: I claim to enjoy listening to Randy’s Vinyl Tap. This CBC Radio 1 program has aired since

2005, initially as a temporary replacement for Finkleman’s 45s and then as a staple of the

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Saturday night schedule. Hosted by Randy

Bachman himself (of and BTO fame), the two-hour broadcasts each focus on a specific theme, such as work, or bubble gum, or natural disasters; Bachman presents his listeners with an assortment of songs, which are interspersed with his own guitar playing (“live” in the studio) and off-the-cuff anecdotes about the performers 2

(many of whom he has met). My claiming to love Bachman’s Vinyl Tap, and my enthusiastic re-tweeting and sharing of Bachman’s own Twitter teasers, have landed as jokes with my community radio–loving friends because many people I know revile the program and, especially, Bachman’s approach to his role as deejay.

Discussions about public broadcasting in Canada have been fraught since the work of the Aird Commission in 1928; the presence of content perceived to be too commercial or advertiser-oriented (too “crass”) has been thought by critics not to have a place on the public airwaves (Peers, 1969). Bachman’s reception as host has drawn particular ire, despite the program’s simultaneous resonance across large swaths of the listening populace. It must be acknowledged, however, that the audience has appeared to be strongly divided. In a feature for blogTO, Matthew McAndrew (2010) claims that

Bachman’s “earnest approach, legendary career and lifelong passion for music make for an intimate and authentic experience.” Meanwhile, a letter published in The Coast,

Halifax’s entertainment weekly, entitled “CBC, Please Fire ,” states the anti-Bachman case bluntly:

With the recent cuts to CBC, why not make a simple accounting ledger change

and move the money from Randy’s salary to Radio Three? […] So, I ask of you,

CBC Radio management: The time has come. With the recent CBC cuts, and

future cuts, please remove Randy Bachman’s voice (also: please remove any solo

material from Randy and his cohort, ) from the airwaves and

the hosting chair. Permanently (Hartling, 2015). 3

How can we explain these conflicts of taste, and why do the stakes seem so high? What is

Bachman doing on Canadian public radio? In what ways might his transgressions become valuable, if heard from the right angle?

In this essay, I aim to interrogate the discourses of authenticity with which Randy

Bachman engages—and from which he often departs—focusing primarily on his CBC

Radio program, online discussion, as well as Bachman’s recent book publications that draw on his on-air musings (e.g. Bachman, 2011). After identifying some of the key features of authenticity within rock music and public broadcasting discourses in Canada,

I chart engagement with these tropes across Bachman’s self-presentation on Randy’s

Vinyl Tap. By examining Bachman’s articulation of the themes of promotionalism, commercialism, professionalism, authorship, and attitude, I argue that Bachman manages to trouble and even to transgress dominant conceptions of authenticity, which makes the program an especially valuable contribution to Canadian media culture.

Authenticity in Rock Music and on Public Radio

What does it mean to be real, or genuine, or authentic? Who gets to decide which of the many possible answers to these questions are more or less legitimate? The concept of authenticity has occupied the minds of many working in the field of popular music studies, especially those researching the genres of folk, , country, and rock (see, for example, Barker & Taylor, 2007; Bendix, 1997; Filene, 2000; Grossberg, 1992;

Hamilton, 2008; Peterson, 1997; Storey, 2003; Svec, 2018).1 As Allan Moore (2002) observes, authenticity is not something that exists out in the world; it is rather a feature attributed to certain objects, artists, traditions, or performers: “[Authenticity] is ascribed, 4 not inscribed” (p. 210). Therefore, to study authenticity is not to study actual things that are or are not authentic, but rather to study the ways in which “the authentic” as a concept has been conjured, rendered, displayed, or framed through discourse.2

The ways in which authenticity has been historically ascribed, however, are hardly neutral or innocent; critics informed by the cultural studies tradition have thus emphasized the ideological contours of the concept.3 For instance, Simon Frith (1982b) argues that the communitarian values of the folk movement in the —the emphasis on stripped away performance and dress, the anti-commercial sentiments— were adopted by rock culture, which has paradoxically always been a commercial and mass-mediated phenomenon (see also Frith, 1981a.). The perception of authenticity here thus involves the misrecognition of the material grounds of cultural production. Keir

Keightley (2001) has extended these insights into a sociological analysis of rock music culture, one of the key values of which is authenticity. Keightley (2001) identifies two overlapping but distinct cultural sources for rock’s conception of authenticity,

Romanticism and Modernism: “Where Romanticism believed in an organic, even traditional, connection between the artist, the material means of expression and the audience, Modernism encouraged shock effects and radical experimentation” (p. 136).

Another point here is that rock’s discourses of authenticity emerge, not in opposition to mass media and pop culture, but from within a variegated mainstream (Keightley, 2001, p. 127). For example, it is not an embarrassment for or The Beatles to find success on the hit parade, so long as they have stayed true to their vision as artists: “What is truly at stake in rock culture is the differentiation of taste, not an affiliation with forms of cultural action” (Keightley, 2001, p. 129). According to Keightley, the concept of 5 authenticity thus acts as a sorting mechanism for certain strata of music consumers—a means of categorizing and valuating the products of the cultural industries.4

As Ryan Edwardson’s (2009) detailed book Canuck Rock demonstrates, the values and logics of rock have mutated since the mid-sixties into the values of “Canadian popular music” writ large.5 The question of sorting through culture in order to amplify, preserve, or even produce that which is “authentic” (as opposed to that which is not) has also been at the forefront of discussions of public media; indeed, the development of public broadcasting in Canada was motivated by some of the same concerns and influenced by some of the same modern discourses as rock culture according to

Keightley. As Frank W. Peers (1969) suggests in his history of the Canadian

Broadcasting Corporation, it was partly fears of Americanization and massification in the sphere of culture that motivated some of the CBC’s earliest proponents, such as members of the Aird Commission and the Canadian Radio League’s most public proponent,

Graham Spry, whose activities led to the formation of the Canadian Broadcasting

Corporation in 1936. Although early arguments for public broadcasting voiced elite rather than “folk” tastes, there was nonetheless an overlaying concern about what kind of system would best enhance the unencumbered autonomy of a distinctly Canadian culture

(see also Filion, 1996; McChesney, 1999). Decades of cuts to the CBC’s funding—in addition to attempts to adapt to quickly shifting demographics and technologies—have challenged the hegemony of the originary visions of public broadcasting in Canada

(Cwynar, 2017; Fauteux, 2017). In addition, there has been a broader shift in Canadian cultural policy and funding models towards an industrialization of the concept of culture

(Edwardson, 2008). At the same time, however, practices and discourses die hard, and a 6 sense of authentic, national culture-building purpose continues to be connoted by the

“Canadian Broadcasting Corporation” into the 21st Century (see CBC Music, 2018;

Editorial Staff, 2017).

What happens, however, when these discourses collide? Rock music culture and history, on one hand, and public radio in Canada, on the other, can perhaps be said to have uneasily aligned. In general, rock has involved “high” aesthetic achievement and/or youth-community expression but from within a mainstream, market-driven consumer culture (Keightley, 2001). On the other hand, the CBC’s avowed mandate has been to disseminate content that might not be consistently produced within a profit- and conglomerate-driven media landscape (McChesney, 1999). This is why rock music

(thinking of the genre broadly, including more recent permutations such as punk and electronica) on the CBC has tended to involve additional criteria: rock on the CBC has often needed to be independent, subcultural, forgotten, or distinctly “Canadian.”6 For instance, Brave New Waves (which ran from 1984 to 2007) was a late-night and open- format CBC program featuring an eclectic range of post-rock genres. In the recent words of one of the program’s hosts, Brent Bambury,

It was eclectic beyond belief and every night was a marathon. There was an hour

or two of alternative music — hardcore, electronic, anarcho-syndicalist,

queercore, post-punk, hip-hop, ska, industrial, neo-folk, minimalist, maximalist or

just uncategorizable — and then, later, a conversation, which was also live.

Kathy Acker, Angela Carter, Genesis P-Orridge, John Zorn, Greg Curnoe, Joyce

Weidland, Skinny Puppy, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Gil Scott Heron, Sun Ra, Jaki

Byard, Laurie Anderson: those guests were actually sitting at the table as were 7

hundreds of young Canadian musicians, actors, and subterranean subversives

(Brambury, 2019).

Though perhaps targeted primarily to a youthful demographic, this vision for Brave New

Waves is a clear contemporary echo of the originary visions of Graham Spry or the majority members of the Massey Commission. Though rock discourse in general makes it possible to achieve both market and artistic success, this program’s basic assumption is that market imperatives do not necessarily distribute the truly authentic gems of contemporary cultural production, a vocation that is and shall remain distinctly public.

It is for these reasons that contempt for Randy’s Vinyl Tap often seems to go beyond the so-called “close reading” level of critique; the perceived mandate and role of the CBC is often implied if not outright stated. As music journalist Brad Wheeler writes in one of multiple critical tweets of the program, “I’d rather endure a spinal tap than listen to Bachman’s Vinyl Tap. Lazy non-Canadian, non-topical CBC radio content”

(Wheeler, 2019). Or, as the signatory of an online petition puts it, “CBC has become a mundane broadcasting outlet run by a bunch of self-serving [Mr. Randy for one], bland, wannabee media gurus. No more funding to the CBC” (Gary Topp, 2011). These are arguments not only about the intentions of the artist/host, or the degree to which he or his playlists are authentic in rock-historical terms; they are also about what kind of content should be distributed by a public broadcaster. Tied to taste, then, are notions of what

Canada is or should be. In the words of Paul Saulnier (2018), guitarist from the indie band P.S. I Love You, we can see how high the stakes can appear to be: “Trump may threaten canada [sic] but he is a little late to be its ruination…that task is taken by Vinyl

Tap with Randy Bachman on CBC radio 1.” 8

In sum, the concept of authenticity, though historical and arbitrary, has been crucial within both rock culture and public radio discourses, despite important cultural and historical differences between these fields. However, because they are contingent rather than essential, all cultural categories—including that of “authentic” and

“inauthentic,” public and private, Canadian and un-Canadian—are susceptible to deconstruction and transgression as well (Derrida, 1976). Another way of putting it is that the integrity of the hierarchical categories of discourse is always subject to challenge and opposition (Foucault, 1978). For example, in her analysis of sexism in mid-1960s rock discourse, Norma Coates (2003) suggests that the “groupie” image, while an object of derision and revulsion, simultaneously troubles the logics of rock’s masculinist assumptions (pp. 85-86). Following Coates, I want to draw on Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1984) conception of the “carnivalesque” in my reading of Bachman’s transgressions of public broadcasting and rock authenticities. For the Russian theorist, “the carnivalesque”— which derives from medieval ritual but which persists in literary art, such Rabelais’s novel Gargantua and Pantagruel—involves the overturning and temporary suspension of the hierarchical rules of Western culture: “As opposed to the official feast, one might say that carnival celebrated temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order; it marked the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms, and prohibitions” (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 10). Key to Bakhtin’s aesthetic is what we now call affect (see Massumi, 2002); the carnivalesque work is not just a critique but is rather a pleasurable and joyful affirmation of a different way of being (Stallybrass & White,

1986). Bakthin’s focus on the body makes this concept highly germane to the study of radio, a (corporeal) medium that “locates and connects listeners through the sounds they 9 receive and increasingly through the sounds they select” (Berland, 2009, p. 186). As I will attempt to demonstrate, through a carnivalesque transgression of both rock and public broadcasting discourses of authenticity, Randy’s Vinyl Tap points to a weird, complex vision of publicly mediated community. Rather than seeing him as an

“inauthentic” rock artist or public broadcaster, I thus want to consider Bachman the broadcaster as an artist who challenges conventional assumptions and value systems within these cultural fields.

Randy’s Vinyl Tap

First, it must be acknowledged that there are multiple ways in which Randy

Bachman’s biography symmetrically aligns with the Romantic discourses of rock culture outlined by Keightley and Frith. As Ryan Edwardson (2003) writes of their most iconic recording, “Grungy and overdriven, The Guess Who’s 1970 title track ‘American

Woman’ acted as a Canadian call-to-arms, an unofficial national anthem, and became the most popular song in Canadian rock ‘n’ roll history” (p. 339).7 Further, the guitar player and key songwriter (Bachman himself) leaves The Guess Who at the height of their fame in 1970, an “authentic” creative/personal act (which is complicated by the fact that

Bachman’s Mormonism and straight-edged lifestyle had also come to clash with the hedonistic lifestyles of his fellow rock stars in The Guess Who).8 Bachman returns to

Canada from the road to launch the folk-rock group Brave Belt in 1971, the sound of which eventually transforms such that the group is renamed in 1973 as BTO (Bachman–

Turner Overdrive). Bachman’s commitment to living in Canada, his association with both folk and rock sounds and song structures,9 and his rejection of his own meal ticket at the 10 peak of economic success would seem to fit the script of a great Canadian “authentic”

(and CBC-ordained) rocker. There are parallels indeed between Bachman and his more critical-canonical contemporaries such as , , and Joni

Mitchell.

However, as host of The Tap, Randy Bachman’s performative engagement with both rock and public broadcasting discourses is complex and contradictory. The first set of transgressions has to do with Bachman’s penchant for promotional communication. In the first set of his “Oh Canada” episode, for example, he plays both “” and “Raise a Little Hell,” the first of which he co-wrote and the latter which he produced

(Bachman, 2018). The theme song of the program as well is the warm, distorted intro to

BTO’s “Takin’ Care of Business,” which immediately keys the ensuing performance as one of self-brand propulsion. This is all in marked contrast to, for example, Bob Dylan’s radio show Theme Time Radio Hour (2006-2009), where the rock star host rarely even hints at the fact that the voice is Bob Dylan’s. In sharp relief from Dylan’s cool nonchalance, Bachman is straining, we feel, to be heard. His efforts are apparently not directed towards expression for expression’s sake but towards an instrumental end. This has perhaps been the most infuriating aspect of the show for some critics. As a

Change.org petition entitled “No More BTO on the CBC!” suggests, “Given that Mr.

Bachman constantly plays his own music on this show, receives royalties for the theme song, and might also be receiving ACTRA payments for incessantly wanking on his guitar between songs, CBC should consider whether or not this is a conflict of interest, as a public broadcaster” (Marsella, 2012). A handful of the 72 supporters of the petition echo this concern—that Bachman is perhaps financially benefiting when he plays his own 11 songs. One particularly unhappy listener has made a chart of all episodes in which

Bachman plays his own songs, which was published online only one year into the program’s run: “In the 49 unique editions of Vinyl Tap broadcast in the last year, 27 of them feature his own music and/or performances” (Russell, 2012).

However, we might consider how Bachman’s perceived penchant for self- promotion establishes a different relationship to community and nation than that most often found on the CBC, whose celebrities have had the unique function of promoting the naturalness and legitimacy of the Canadian state (Cormack & Cosgrave, 2014).

Bachman’s self-amplification foregrounds what we might call a desiring will-to- expressivity that can characterize the individual creative practitioner, in opposition to collective structures, conventions, and institutions. Evocative of the “language of the marketplace” that characterizes the carnivalesque (Bakhtin, 1984, pp. 145-195), as well as the ambivalence that is also a marked feature (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 11-12), Bachman’s self-fandom is a defamiliarizing flaunting of nepotism within the cultural industries at the same time that it is a defiant commitment to the power of an individual to communicate.

A related point of conflict between Bachman’s persona and performance style vis-

à-vis rock and public broadcasting discourses has to do with Bachman’s consistent valuation of economic success. As Keightley (2001) explains, the contradiction between commerce and art is perhaps the central conflict of rock discourse; it is possible to achieve mass success but also artistic success simultaneously. Although it is possible, within rock ideology, to achieve both aesthetic and commercial success simultaneously, the strength of Romantic and Modernist discourses of authorship within rock culture have implied that creative expression needs to be privileged—at least in the composition of the 12 work, before its commercial capitalization (Keightley, 2001). In Bachman’s discussions of his taste as a consumer of music and his own achievements as a songwriter, however, commercial markers are consistently foregrounded as essential to the value of music. For instance, when Bachman introduces a song, he often makes mention of its earning power before discussing other aesthetic features of the work, if any. “Now we’re going to give you an incredible song written by the great Robin Thicke,” he says. “Robin Thicke made a lot of money on this” (Bachman, 2017). On an episode about “Homegrown” Canadian music, he similarly introduces Eddie Schwartz’s “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” (which was recorded by Pat Benetar): “It’s a monster song. It was on her album Crimes of

Passion; it sold a million copies, certified gold in the States; and she has sold 30 million albums 10 top-ten singles” (Bachman, 2016). On Randy’s Vinyl Tap, aesthetic criteria seem to be reduced, consistently, to mere selling power.

From the point of view of the carnivalesque, Bachman’s focus on sales shifts the focus away from elite or avant-garde criteria of excellence, overturning conceptions of authenticity that privilege art or expression over economics. Bachman’s constant evocation of the charts is not exactly crass commercialism, then, but is rather an expression of faith in the agency of audiences.10 As Bachman (2014) has said of his desire to form a band, “[My dream] was to get a band together and get something played on the radio. […] I was more into creating something not merely for my own satisfaction or creative outlet but for wider acceptance by the public” (p. 260). For Bachman, the mechanisms of the market are not just a means of profit generation; these mechanisms are a vehicle for the democratization of taste. 13

Bachman also offers a fascinatingly anti-Romantic account, furthermore, of the creative process. By his own account, Bachman’s authorial practice tends to involve the outright copying of hooks or lines that he hears on the radio or on other artists’ records.

His hit single “She’s Come Undone,” for instance, was inspired by him hearing the same line in a Bob Dylan song: “We couldn’t think of any lyrics that fit. So I’m listening to

CKLG when the deejay played Bob Dylan’s ‘,’ and somewhere in all the lyrics Dylan sings, ‘she’s come undone’. That was the I needed” (Bachman,

2011, p. 61). He gives similar accounts of “Believe Me” and “Undun” (Bachman, 2011, pp. 75, 101). Perhaps one of the most indebted of his songs, however, is “Laughing”:

I really liked the opening minor chord strumming of the Bee Gees’ ‘New York

Mining Disaster 1941,’ but instead of a minor chord I turned it into a major chord

and just started playing the opening chord. We took the chord progression from

the Dave Clark Five’s ‘Because,’ which was a fairly standard chord pattern used

in lots of songs. Burton even used it later in ‘Stand Tall’. Then we added the

background vocals pattern from the old Platters song ‘Twilight Time,’ the

ascending ‘ah’s’, and put them in behind the lyrics. This was all done right on the

spot sitting on the bus. That got us started. The rest of it was original, the idea of

laughing at someone who broke your heart. We both loved Roy Orbison’s hit

song ‘Crying’ and thought the idea of laughing was clever. We also liked the

buildup in ‘Crying’ where it starts quiet then builds to a crescendo. ‘Laughing’

was finished in about thirty minutes. It was one of those songs written to order

and gave us our second gold record. Sometimes songs can come so easily

(Bachman, 2011, p. 60). 14

In these examples we see the individualist ideology of both Romantic and Modernist authorial authenticity deflated. Whereas for the Romantics, for instance, the creative act was not to reflect nature but to spark the inner lamp of the poet (Abrams, 1953), creativity for Bachman is merely to gather fragments of other creative works and to assemble them together after some slight modification or working over. Bachman is a postmodern remix artist, an unabashed thief of the ever-evolving rock archive (cf.

Barthes, 1990).

This remix aesthetic comes alive on one of Vinyl Tap’s oddest and most interesting episodes, which explores mashups. The mashup trend reached its creative heights perhaps in the early 2000s, with the release and consequent copyright controversy surrounding DJ Dangermouse’s The Grey Album.11 Bachman comes to mashups late, but he makes up for his tardiness with zeal, aurally tickled and fascinated by the pleasures of this distinctly digital art-form: “The best part of the mashup is you put the best part of the song, the hook, the lines, and everything that everyone can sing along to” (Bachman,

2017). For Bachman (2017), the mashup is a pure pop confection, a juggernaut logically beyond the sum of its constituent parts: “We are rockin’ and rollin’ in the free world here.

Who likes Adele? Who has loved ACDC? Let’s put them together. She should be their new lead singer because Bon Scott’s deaf and can’t play anymore. That would get sellouts all over the world.” As Kembrew McLeod (2005) argues in his close reading of the mashup aesthetic, the genre is a distinct affront to the myth of the sole creator in rock culture. Thus Bachman, on a Saturday evening on the beloved CBC, brings a hierarchy- dissolving tradition out into the airwaves. 15

Beyond the specific mashup episode, however, one might compare Bachman’s curatorial practice as a whole to that of the postmodern remix or mashup artist. Each episode is oriented around theme and so, just like on Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio

Hour, there is room for generic and temporal flexibility. Yet, whereas Dylan’s playlists cohere around mood and taste (often playing “deep cuts”), Bachman’s coheres around economic power and content, which makes some of his juxtapositions startling. In the

“Woke Up This Morning” episode, for example, Bachman moves from Robert Johnson’s

“Hellhound on My Trail” to Weird Al Yankovic’s “Generic Blues.” If authenticity in rock culture was about sorting “high” from “low,” good from bad, Bachman seems to have rejected this principle of cultural consumption and fandom. As he put it in his interview with George Stroumboulopoulos, “I’m a fan of everybody” (in Strombo, 2014).

Rock requires the existence of non-rock or “pop,” and public radio requires commercial or private radio, to make sense rhetorically (Keightley, 2001). For Bachman, these distinctions do not hold.

One could push back against the argument as presented thus far by pointing out that one of the show’s distinct dramaturgical features is Bachman’s low-key approach to his hosting duties. There is an improvisational character to his performances—in both the vocal delivery of Bachman and in the guitar playing that is often woven into the outros of songs and throughout Bachman’s discoursing. In turn, frequent sentence fragments and repetition characterize Bachman’s vocal performances; his delivery is propelled by an often breathy and heaving energy. These features, the continuous “noodling,” along with his apparent unpreparedness, however, have been mentioned in criticisms of the show

(e.g. Hartling, 2015). Although his performance style perhaps fits the mold of how a rock 16 artist should/could host a radio program, he is not fulfilling the CBC’s perceived standards of professionalism: as host, he is going through the motions, phoning it in. (In the early years of the show, literally phoning it in, as he recorded from his home studio on Salt Spring Island.)

Yet, Bachman violates both the discourses of rock authenticity and public broadcasting in Canada with the driver of the show, which is his affectation of enthusiasm, energy, and joy. Since Romanticism, writers and artists were thought to stand back from the world as it is, to affirm perhaps that which has been lost but to negate that which exists (Adorno, 1997). A negative disposition has also characterized Canadian identity, according to Michael Dorland (1988), who argues that ressentiment has a privileged place in the Canadian psyche. In fact, Bachman’s precursor, Finkleman, who played roughly the same genres and eras of popular music, did not draw the same ire perhaps precisely because of Finkleman’s consistent performance of ressentiment. In between classic doowop, rock, and r&b singles, Finkleman would grumpily rail against the modern world, everything from recycling blue boxes to cell phones eliciting his contempt.12 Bachman’s attitude, on the other hand, is indefatigably excited and optimistic, saturated with wonder. Everything is cool and great in Bachman’s world, from his roots in , to the commercial (and not the public) radio stations that imprinted onto him the genre of rock ‘n’ roll in the late 1950s, to the new work of Robin Thicke, to mashups, to Adele. What is more inauthentic than joy? Both the discourses of authenticity in rock culture (where joy might be found in community or in drugs or sex, but certainly not in everything) and public broadcasting in Canada are exceeded here in one affective gesture, overflowed by Bachman’s voice, which is fanatical about 17 everything and everybody. “We are rockin’ and rollin’ here…,” as Bachman has said dozens of times as host, often while noodling along on his guitar.

In sum, Bachman’s carnival, by overturning authenticity, emphasizes an array of values in a complex and contradictory fashion: self over state/nation, marketplace over cultural elite, collaborative creativity over individual genius, corporeal joy over intellectual/critical detachment. We might additionally consider ways in which, in offering a carnivalesque overturning of rock and public media authenticity, Bachman’s work in radio could also be seen as a contribution to discussions about what authenticity could be or become. Bachman might be seen as answering Charles Taylor’s (1992) call to reimagine and redefine authenticity as a moveable feast: less precious and/or elitist than both rock and public radio discourse’s articulations of the concept, Bachman’s authenticity is rockin’ and rollin’, acknowledging the collaborative nature of creativity, open to the inclinations of the audience.

Conclusion

Although Randy Bachman’s CBC program has become a target of critique and even ridicule, in this paper I have attempted to consider the value of Bachman’s transgressions of rock and public broadcasting discourses. To return to my personal relationship with the show: perhaps the laughs that my re-tweets and joking fandom have elicited are not a product of mere mockery but a symptom of the show’s carnivalesque qualities, which overturn the hierarchies of authenticity inscribed in these discourses.

“[C]arnival is the people’s second life, organized on the basis of laughter. It is a festive life” (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 8). 18

The stakes of this discussion go beyond the understanding of a single radio program, for there has been much discussion recently, in both academic and non- academic venues, as to the role and function (and future) of the Canadian Broadcasting

Corporation, especially in a time of great demographic, technological, and social change.

As the CBC responds to a rapidly shifting landscape, some are calling for the alternativeness of public broadcasting—vis-à-vis for-profit media—to remain a primary commitment (Cwynar, 2017). I would not go so far to say that Randy’s Vinyl Tap needs to be on the CBC, whose music offerings could benefit from further generic diversification; and I agree with those who argue that public broadcasting has a role to play in the era of “fake news” and persistent media concentration (see Canadian Media

Concentration Research Project, 2019). Still, Bachman’s attempt to move beyond rock and public radio authenticity, and towards carnivalesque and boundary-dissolving joy, is worth reckoning with as we collectively decide how to take care of this business.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For broader treatments of authenticity in the disciplines of philosophy and literature, see also Guignon, 2004; Taylor, 1992; Trilling, 2000.

2. For a rich development of the concept of discourse, to which I am indebted throughout this paper, see Foucault, 1982. 19

3. This body of work extends and, in some cases, blends post-structuralist, postmodernist, and Marxist critiques of authenticity, the voice, and truth, such as Adorno, 2003;

Althusser, 2005; Bourdieu, 1984; Derrida, 1976; Huyssen, 1986.

4. In addition to Keightley, numerous scholars have since contributed to the critical analysis of authenticity in popular music culture, exam for example, Albrecht, 2008;

Auslander, 2006; Coates, 2003; Fox, 1998; Meier, 2011; Moore, 2002; Wilson, 2007. I have already elsew to contribute to some of these discussions, too, in an essay about the rock group , which explores the competing notions of authenticity articulated by the groupAuthor, 2012).meaning of media in the , 2018).

5. For a recent journalistic account of “Canadian songwriting” that privileges the rock era, see Schneider, 2009.

6. An additional example would be certain CBC studio’s record production efforts in the

1960s and 1970s, as revealed by the recent anthology Native North America, Vol. 1

(Howes, 2014). I acknowledge, however, that that which constitutes “Canadianness” is historical and discursively constructed (Edwardson, 2008; Pattinson, 2018).

7. As Edwardson (2008) also argues, the “Canadianness” of Canadian rock music is not so much inherent in the music as it also has to do with the institutions and gatekeepers through which music is discursively understood and produced (see also Edwardson,

2009).

8. According to Theodor Gracyk, Romantic hedonism is a crucial component of rock’s aesthetic (Gracyk, 1996). From this angle, then, Bachman’s gesture of quitting the group is perhaps personally “authentic” but socially/institutionally conformist. 20

9. For a fascinating musicological analysis of The Guess Who’s sonic articulation of identity, see Dalby, 2009.

10. In this respect, there are fascinating parallels between Bachman’s approach to broadcasting (and music) and the approach to communication developed by John Durham

Peters (1999) in his book Speaking into the Air. Peters, drawing on Jesus in the Gospels, suggests that (“authentic”) dialogue often overshadows the ethical contributions of the disseminative model of communication, which places more emphasis on the agency of receivers.

11. Danger Mouse remixed instrumental sounds from The Beatles’s The White Album, which formed the foundation against which Jay-Z’s vocals from The Black Album were set on top.

12. In a Globe and Mail feature entitled “Finkleman’s 45s: An Escape from the Hype of

Modernity,” Michael Posner (2001) puts his finger on Finkelman’s distinct ressentiment:

“As rich and amusing a character as you will find on the air, Finkleman breaks up the 25 songs by venturing opinions, briefly, on whatever catches his fancy. Riffing off notes scribbled out on a yellow pad of paper, he opines on the modern world, the bad and the worse. He calls it being cranky. I call it being in the nostalgia business—a conviction that most things today (not just ) simply aren’t as good as they were when he was growing up in River Heights, middle-class south Winnipeg, circa 1955.”

References

Abrams, M. H. (1953). The mirror and the lamp: Romantic theory and the critical

tradition. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 21

Adorno, T. W. (2003). The jargon of authenticity (K. Tarnowski & F. Will, Trans.).

London, UK: Routledge.

Adorno, T. W. (1997). Aesthetic theory (C. Lenhardt, Trans.). Minneapolis, MN:

University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published in 1984)

Albrecht, M. M. (2008). Acting naturally unnaturally: The performative nature of

authenticity in contemporary popular music. Text and Performance Quarterly,

28(4), 379–395.

Althusser, L. (2005). For Marx (B. Brewster, Trans.). New York, NY: Verso. (Original

work published 1969)

Auslander, P. (2006). Performing glam rock: Gender and theatricality in popular music.

Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Bachman, R. (Host). (2018). O Canada. In Randy’s Vinyl Tap. , BC: CBC.

Retrieved from https://www.randybachman.com/vinyl-tap

Bachman, R. (Host). (2017). Mashup A. In Randy’s Vinyl Tap. Vancouver, BC: CBC.

Retrieved from https://www.randybachman.com/vinyl-tap

Bachman, R. (Host). (2016). Homegrown A. In Randy’s Vinyl Tap. Vancouver, BC:

CBC. Retrieved from https://www.randybachman.com/vinyl-tap

Bachman, R. (2014). Tales from beyond the Tap. , ON: Penguin.

Bachman, R. (2011). Randy Bachman’s Vinyl Tap stories. Toronto, ON: Viking Canada.

Bakhtin, M. (1984). Rabelais and his world (H. Iswolsky, Trans.). Bloomington, IN:

Indiana University Press. (Original work published in 1968)

Barker, H., & Taylor, Y. (2007). Faking it: The quest for authenticity in popular culture.

New York, NY: W. W. Norton. 22

Barthes, R. (1990). Image, music, text (S. Heath, Trans.). New York, NY: Farrar,

Straus, and Giroux. (Original work published in 1977)

Bendix, R. (1997). In search of authenticity: The formation of folklore studies. Madison,

WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste (R. Nice,

Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Brambury, B. (2019). “1 minute to midnight: Brent Bambury reflects on the 35th

anniversary of Brand New Waves.” CBC.ca. Retrieved from

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/1-minute-to-midnight-brent-bambury-reflects-on-

the-35th-anniversary-of-brave-new-waves-1.5003624

Canadian Media Concentration Research Project (D. Winseck, Dir.). (2019). Media

and Internet concentration in Canada, 1984 – 2017 (UPDATED). , ON:

Carleton University.

CBC Music. (2018). “CBC Music’s top 100 Canadian songs of 2018.” CBC.ca.

Retrieved from https://www.cbcmusic.ca/posts/20754/cbc-musics-100-best-

songs-of-2018

Coates, N. (2003) “Teenyboppers, groupies, and other grotesques: Girls and

women and rock culture in the 1960s and early 1970s.” Journal of Popular

Music Studies, 15(1), 65–94.

Cormack, P., & Cosgrave, J. F. (2014) “Theorising the state celebrity: A case study of the

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.” Celebrity Studies, 5(3), 321–339.

Cwynar, C. (2017). On thin ice: Hockey Night in Canada and the future of

national public service media. International Communication Gazette, 79(2), 23

135–147.

Dalby, S. E. (2009). Electric, eclectic, Canadian: Issues of genre and identity in the

music of The Guess Who. MA Thesis, University of Victoria. Retrieved from

http://dspace.library.uvic.ca/handle/1828/1751

Derrida, J. (1976). Of grammatology (G. Chakravorty Spivak, Trans.). Baltimore, MD:

Johns Hopkins University Press.

Dorland, M. (1988). “A thoroughly hidden country: Ressentiment in Canadian

culture, Canadian nationalism, Canadian culture.” CTheory, 12(1-2), 130–164.

Editorial Staff. (2017). What Song Reminds You of Canada? CBC.ca. Retrieved from

https://www.cbcmusic.ca/posts/18781/what-song-reminds-you-of-canada

Edwardson, R. (2009). Canuck rock: A history of Canadian popular music. Toronto, ON:

University of Toronto Press.

Edwardson, R. (2008). Canadian content: Culture and the quest for nationhood. Toronto,

ON: University of Toronto Press.

Edwardson, R. (2003). ‘Of war machines and ghetto scenes’: English-Canadian

nationalism and The Guess Who’s ‘American Woman.’ American Review of

Canadian Studies, 33(3), 339–356.

Fauteux, B. (2017). The radio host and piloted listening in the digital age: CBC

Radio 3 and its online listening community. Journal of Canadian Studies, 51(2),

338–361.

Filene, B. (2000). Romancing the folk: Public memory and American roots music. Chapel

Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

Filion, M. (1996). Broadcasting and cultural identity: The Canadian experience. Media, 24

Culture & Society, 18, 447–467.

Foucault, M. (1982). The archeology of knowledge and the discourse on language (A.

M. Sheridan Smith, Trans.). New York, NY: Vintage Books.

Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality, volume 1: An introduction (R. Hurley,

Trans.). New York, NY: Vintage Books.

Fox, P. (1998). ‘Recycled trash’: Gender and authenticity in

autobiography. American Quarterly 50(2), 234–266.

Frith, S. (1981a). Sound effects: Youth, leisure, and the politics of rock ‘n’ roll. New

York: Pantheon.

Frith, S. (1981b). ‘The magic that can set you free’: The ideology of folk and the

myth of the rock community.” Popular Music, 1, 159–168.

Gracyk, T. (1996) Rhythm and noise: An aesthetics of rock. Durham, NC: Duke

University Press.

Grossberg, L. (1992). We gotta get out of this place: Popular conservatism and

postmodern culture. New York, NY: Routledge.

Guignon, C. (2004). On being authentic. New York, NY: Routledge.

Hamilton, M. (2008). In search of the blues. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Hartling, A. (2015). CBC, please fire Randy Bachman. The Coast. Retrieved from

https://www.thecoast.ca/halifax/cbc-please-fire-randy-

bachman/Content?oid=4729131

Howes, K. (Producer). (2014). Native North America (vol. 1): Aboriginal

folk, rock, and country, 1966–1985. , WA: Light in the Attic Records.

Huyssen, A. (1986). After the great divide: Modernism, mass culture, postmodernism. 25

Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Keightley, K. (2001). Reconsidering rock. In S. Frith, W. Straw, and J. Street

(Eds.), The Cambridge companion to pop and rock (pp. 109–142). New York,

NY: Cambridge University Press.

Marsella, R. (2012). “No more BTO on the CBC!” Change.org. Retrieved from

https://www.change.org/p/canadian-office-of-broadcast-integrity-no-more-bto-on-

the-cbc

Massumi, B. (2002). Parables for the virtual: Movement, affect, sensation. Durham, NC:

Duke University Press.

Meier, L. M. (2011). Promotional ubiquitous musics: Recording artists, brands, and

‘Rendering authenticity.’ Popular Music & Society, 34(4), 399–415.

McAndrew, M. (2010). Guitarology 101 with the Randy Bachman Band. blogTO.

Retrieved from

https://www.blogto.com/music/2010/01/guitarology_101_with_the_randy_bachm

an_band/

McChesney, R. W. (1999). Graham Spry and the future of public broadcasting.

Canadian Journal of Communication, 24(1), 25–47.

McLeod, K. (2005). Confessions of an intellectual (property): Danger Mouse,

Mickey Mouse, Sonny Bono, and my long and winding path as a copyright

activist-academic. Popular Music & Society, 28(1), 79–93.

Moore, A. (2002). Authenticity as authentication. Popular Music, 21(2), 209–223.

Pattinson, J. R. (2018). Popular music and Canadian national identity. Canadian

Journal of Communication, 43(2), 221–244. 26

Peers, F. W. (1969). The politics of Canadian Broadcasting, 1920–1951. Toronto, ON:

University of Toronto Press.

Peters, J. D. (1999). Speaking into the air: A history of the idea of communication.

Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Peterson, R. A. (1997). Creating country music: Fabricating authenticity. Chicago, IL:

University of Chicago Press.

Posner, M. (2001). Finkleman’s 45s: An escape from the hype of modernity. The

Globe and Mail. Retrieved from

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/finklemans-

45s-an-escape-from-the-hype-of-modernity/article4149085/

Russell, S. C. (2012). A bit too much Randy Bachman. Scruss.com. Retrieved from

https://scruss.com/blog/2012/03/04/a-bit-too-much-randy-bachman/

Saulnier, P. (2018, September 8). Trump may threaten canada but he is a little late to be

its ruination...that task is taken by Vinyl Tap with Randy Bachman on CBC radio

1 [Tweet]. Retrieved from

https://twitter.com/psiloveyouband/status/1038360974296801280

Schneider, J. (2009). Whispering pines: The northern roots of American music—from

Hank Snow to The Band. Toronto, ON: ECW Press.

Stallybrass, P., & White, A. (1986). The politics and poetics of transgression. Ithica, NY:

Cornell University Press.

Strombo. (2014). Randy Bachman on George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight:

EXTENDED INTERVIEW. YouTube. Retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zlpb1zG0GlI 27

Svec, H. A. (2012). ‘Who don’t care if the money’s no good?’: Authenticity and The

Band. Popular Music and Society, 35(3), 427–445.

Svec, H. A. (2018). American as tactical media. Chicago, IL: Amsterdam

University Press.

Taylor, C. (1992). The ethics of authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Topp, G. (2011). Re: Reasons for signing. Retrieved from

https://www.change.org/p/canadian-office-of-broadcast-integrity-no-more-bto-on-

the-cbc

Trilling, L. (2000). Sincerity and authenticity [1972]. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press.

Wheeler, B. (2019, August 25). I’d rather endure a spinal tap than listen to Bachman's

Vinyl Tap. Lazy non-Canadian, non-topical CBC radio content [Tweet].

Retreived from https://twitter.com/BWheelerglobe/status/1165679826533081093

Wilson, C. (2007). Celine Dion’s Let’s talk about love: A journey to the end of taste.

New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing.