‘I Believe’: a song you can’t stand is on guard for thee
Montreal vocalist Nikki Yanofsky turns 16 today — old enough to annoy a critical mass of viewers of the Super Bowl via CTV, who were hoping to wake up Monday morning with renewed enthusiasm for The Who, and left instead with their ears ringing with one too many impressions of the network’s theme song for their Vancouver 2010 coverage, “I Believe.” But now that you can’t count on most folks to be familiar with the No. 1 song on the download charts — incidentally, this week in Canada, it’s the FIFA World Cup anthem “Wavin’ Flag” by K’Naan — a tune that a critical mass can despise is an ideal metaphor for the Olympic spirit. While first tasting fame as a tweenage jazz vocalist, Nikki couldn’t say no to the exposure afforded by the anthem composed by Stephan Moccio, with lyrics by Glass Tiger stalwart Alan Frew. Toronto Star pop scribe Ashante Infantry described the results as “‘I Believe I Can Fly’ set to the Chariots of Fire theme” but no one will mistake this bombast for R. Kelly and Vangelis. Now available in retail stores — accompanied by French and bilingual versions, “J’Imagine,” sung by Annie Villeneuve — this is sure to be the biggest retail CD single in Canada since Elton John’s tribute to Diana, “Candle in the Wind 1997.” Then again, major record companies gave up on releasing CD singles after that. Continue Reading
‘Starweek’: 50 cents for 56 per cent more newsprint about TV
Starweek, the newspaper supplement that was once the most coveted thing about the Saturday Star for some, is now moving to home delivery distribution that requires opting-in via the internet — this will cost an extra 50 cents for subscribers who explicitly ask for it, while it will continue to be packaged in stores and boxes as part of a $2.50 package. The move allows the Star to bulk up the listing features that were perniciously shrinking for lack of revenue: a decade ago, based on figures published in trade publication Masthead, it was the ninth most successful publication in Canada by revenue, taking in $13.6 million of advertising in 2002. The print edition of TV Guide sold nearly as much print space, $11.1 million, but that was combined with $13.6 million in circulation revenue — while a multi-market newspaper supplement, the Southam-turned-Canwest-owned TVTimes, was making $9 million. Both of those vanished by 2008, when Starweek was down to taking in $4.4 million, far and away the fastest-falling Canadian periodical. The legacy of Starweek was such that when its longtime Hollywood-based freelancer Eirik Knutzen died in 2008 — his claim to fame was the ability to succinctly answer “TV Talkback” questions in the pre-interweb age — the Star tossed off an obituary that spelled his name wrong. Continue Reading
February 8: Bears, Expos, Slackers
Today on the Scroll: a Kevin Smith-approved trip to Bear Nation; little man on big girl-laden campus sports logo of Montreal Expos; and pundits contemplate the slacker. Continue Reading
Dreadlocked dude on dorm room wall gets his own day
Bob Marley Day has been proclaimed for Saturday by Mayor David Miller, the 20th such occasion in Toronto — even held when Mel Lastman was in charge at City Hall. The annual day now coincides with the anniversary of the reggae legend’s date of birth, February 6, 1945. In 1992, the singer’s late mother Cedella Booker came to town to receive the second proclamation — albeit for May 11, the date of his 1981 passing — and when The Globe and Mail solicited her opinion on the preceding week’s wannabe Rodney King riot on Yonge Street, she replied with his lyrics: “Until the colour of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the colour of a man’s eyes, there will always be war.” This year, a fundraiser for Haiti at the Kool Haus on Saturday night will be headlined by Bob’s wife, Rita Marley, who drew a huge crowd to the record department of Honest Ed’s in 1982, when her single “One Draw” crossed over to become a local hit with college kids. But the Marley legend was foremost on the Toronto media radar: J.D. Roberts of Citytv’s The NewMusic was the only reporter from North America to fly down cover his funeral in Jamaica — today, even grunge revisionist 102.1 the Edge spins Marley & the Wailers tunes once or twice a day as their only regular acknowledgment of the 1970s, and/or black people. Related reading: rock critic Michaelangelo Matos‘ 2007 presentation from the EMP Pop Conference — “A Matter of Trustafarians: Behind the Bob Marley Poster on the Dorm Room Wall.” Yet, the most meta thing about the weekend’s Rita Marley-headlined tribute show will surely be local rapper Shaun Boothe performing his “Unauthorized Biography of Bob Marley.”
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