Real Rock: Authenticity and Popular Music in Canada, 1984-1994
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
REAL ROCK: AUTHENTICITY AND POPULAR MUSIC IN CANADA, 1984-1994 PAUL DAVID AIKENHEAD A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN HISTORY YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO SEPTEMBER 2018 © PAUL DAVID AIKENHEAD, 2018 Abstract This dissertation investigates the production and reception of English-Canadian rock music sound recordings, from 1984 to 1994, in relation to mutually constitutive understandings of race, ability, gender, sexuality, class, age, and place. It examines how different forms of domestic Anglo rock served to reinforce or subvert the dominant ideologies undergirding the social order in Canada during the late twentieth century. This study analyzes a multifaceted discourse about authenticity that illustrates the ways in which a host of people – including musicians, music journalists, record label representatives and other professionals from across the music industries, government administrators, and consumers – categorized recorded sound, defined bodily norms, negotiated commerce and technology, and evaluated collective communication in Canada. This study finds that the principle of originality fundamentally structured the categorization of sound recordings in Canada. Originality, according to rock culture, encompassed the balancing of traditionalism with innovation. This dissertation determines that Whiteness organized English-Canadian rock culture in terms of its corporeal standards. White bodies functioned as the norm against which racialized Others were compared and measured. This study also shows how the concept of autonomy encouraged the proper negotiation of commerce and technology in an increasingly neoliberal political and economic condition. Independence of will fostered acceptable behaviour. Finally, this dissertation reveals that the rock status of a given concert rested upon the actions of the performers as well as the composition and reactions of ticket holders in the audience. ii To Robert and Rosalba. iii Acknowledgments The History Department at York University provided fertile intellectual ground for this thesis to root and flourish. I am very grateful to the kind staff members there for helping me navigate the crucial administrative aspects of the doctoral program. I also greatly appreciated the camaraderie I found in my fellow graduate students. Nonetheless, I feel most indebted to the guidance and efforts of my supervisor, Marlene Shore. I sincerely thank her for the timely advice and exemplary mentorship in cultural history. Willie Jenkins represents another faculty member deserving of commendation. His judicious edits, critical questions, and constructive suggestions pushed my work to reach its fullest potential. I would like to extend a special thank you to Rob Bowman of the Music Department at York University as well. His musicological insights proved invaluable to this study. I could not have completed this dissertation without the help of the staff at Library and Archives Canada, the Statistics Canada Library, the University of Ottawa Library, the Toronto Reference Library, the Clara Thomas Archives, and the York University Library. I wish to thank all the workers at these fine institutions whose assistance enabled me to gather the raw historical materials upon which I built this research project. In addition to several years of York University graduate funding, this thesis benefitted from the financial support of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Award, an Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and two Ramsay Cook Fellowships. I remain incredibly thankful that these awards provided for the subsidization of my research trips, and the general cost of living in Toronto. iv On a personal level, I feel truly appreciative of all my friends and family. Their love and encouragement throughout this lengthy process sustained me. In particular, I want to express my deep gratitude to Émilie Pigeon. Merci pour ta patience, ton esprit, et ta gentillesse. v Table of Contents Abstract ii Dedication iii Acknowledgements iv Table of Contents vi List of Images vii Introduction 1 Chapter One: New Romanticism Peaks, 1984-1986 49 Chapter Two: Roots Rock Revival, 1987-1989 96 Chapter Three: Changing of the Guard, 1988-1990 149 Chapter Four: Disintegration, 1990-1992 209 Chapter Five: From the Margins to the Mainstream, 1991-1993 259 Conclusion 323 Bibliography 338 vi List of Images Image 1.1: Platinum Blonde (1984) 54 Image 1.2: Platinum Blonde (1985) 69 Image 1.3: Glass Tiger (1986) 84 Image 2.1: Blue Rodeo (1987) 104 Image 2.2: Platinum Blonde (1987) 116 Image 2.3: The Tragically Hip (1988) 123 Image 2.4: Cowboy Junkies (1988) 136 Image 3.1: Glass Tiger (1988) 157 Image 3.2: Blue Rodeo (1989) 169 Image 3.3: The Tragically Hip (1989) 179 Image 3.4: Margo Timmins (1990) 191 Image 3.5: Cowboy Junkies (1990) 193 Image 4.1: Blue Rodeo (1990) 216 Image 4.2: The Tragically Hip (1991) 225 Image 4.3: Glass Tiger (1991) 236 Image 4.4: Barenaked Ladies (1991) 245 Image 5.1: Cowboy Junkies (1992) 267 Image 5.2: Blue Rodeo (1992) 278 Image 5.3: Barenaked Ladies (1992) 288 Image 5.4: The Tragically Hip (1992) 303 vii Introduction In the mid-1980s, New Romantic bands marked the airwaves in Canada with their glossy synthetic sound and flashy androgynous looks – a seemingly perfect combination for the increasingly postmodern cultural condition of the country. By the end of the decade, however, select roots rock groups had ushered in a changing of the guard in English- Canadian rock music. These alternative outfits brandished unadulterated tones and appeared utterly unconcerned with fashionability. The early 1990s marked a period of stylistic fragmentation wherein leading Anglo rock acts in Canada produced an assorted, eclectic range of expressive modes, most of which fell under the broad umbrella of alternative music. A heterogeneous mix of bands that had each recently resided on the margins of domestic rock music now constituted the country’s cutting-edge mainstream. This dissertation explores the production and reception of Anglo rock music in Canada between 1984 and 1994. By means of a multifaceted discourse about authenticity, a host of people – including musicians, music journalists, record label representatives and other professionals from across the music industries, government administrators, and consumers – categorized recorded sound, defined bodily norms, negotiated commerce and technology, and evaluated collective communication. Mutually constitutive understandings of race, ability, gender, sexuality, class, age, and place permeated the discourse about authenticity, forming multiple evolving constellations of intelligibility in and through which a range of musical styles and practices became rock music in Canada. This dissertation finds meaning in the ways in which different forms of popular music served to reinforce or subvert these aforementioned interdependent dominant ideologies. 1 It employs dialogic criticism to ascertain how certain Canadian sound recording artists arbitrated tensions between co-optation and opposition at a given historical moment.1 I argue that domestic Anglo rock music functioned as a ground on which Canadians negotiated both social preservation and transformation in the late twentieth century. Rock resulted from an ongoing historical conversation. In this manner, not only did the popular music genre routinely affirm the social hierarchies of the status quo in Canada, it also occasionally served as a potent mode of subversion that stimulated imagined alternatives and fostered change. This dissertation contributes to the study of Whiteness: the countless social and political processes that secure White bodies and cultures as the norm against which racialized Others are compared and measured.2 Several scholars have interrogated the role of Whiteness in United States history.3 A number of other academics have examined it in the Canadian context as well.4 Drawing upon that foundational corpus, this 1 George Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 102. Building upon the work of literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin, Lipsitz uses the concept of dialogism to show that rock ‘n’ roll, far from being a mere commercial vulgarization of popular music tradition, re-accents elements taken from American folk and blues in order to articulate a new, more urban style of resistance to the imperatives of the dominant North American order. 2 The author gleaned this formulation of Whiteness from: Ruth Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). 3 Some of the leading historical works on Whiteness in the United States include: Alexander Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Verso, 1990); David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York: Verso, 1991); Cheryl Harris, “Whiteness as Property,” Harvard Law Review 106, no. 8 (June 1993): 1707–91; Theodore Allen, The Invention of the White Race (New York: Verso, 1994); Theodore Allen, The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America (London: Verso, 1997); Ian Haney-López, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New York University Press, 2006). 4 Some of the most influential studies of Whiteness in Canada include: Sherene