Hey, before I get into the meat of today’s post, I hafta share a story about my gym in downtown Toronto. After months of towel shortages and a once-monthly absence of hot water, yesterday members of my gym were greeted in the lobby of the building by staff who were, apparently, locked out of the premises. The manager, who possesses all the managerial skills, authority and gravitas of a Britney Spears Fan Club President, was unreachable and the facility opened 4½ hours late.
Today, in an effort to make amends to the justifiably angry club members, we were offered a parting gift as we left the facility: bagels and chocolate. Yes, high-carbohydrate bagels and chocolate. At a health club. Where people go to become as fit and healthy as possible. Who hires these people?
Anyway.
So last week it was announced that the Canadian government — the same Canadian government which seeks this fall to make criminals of every single Canadian through implementation of Bill 61 — is cutting funding to Canadian artists on tour:
The Tories cut the PromArt funding stream, which subsidizes international promotional tours of Canadian artists, with one spokesman saying the groups getting the money were not ones the government believes should be representing Canada.
The prime minister’s press secretary, Kory Ten-nike, said “the [funding] choices made were inappropriate … because they were ideological in some cases, or the money was going to fringe arts groups that, in many cases, would be at best, unrepresentative, and at worst, offensive.”
Among the examples cited by Anne Howland, a spokesperson for Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson — the Toronto indie band Holy F—, which got money in 2007 to help with a tour of the U.K.
Fuck. That’s Holy FUCK. FuckfuckFUCK. The name of the band is Holy Fuck and, frankly, I’m getting a little tired of reading that Holy Fuck is an “unfortunately-named” band because it’s seriously an awesome name for a band whose low-fi, psychedelic mayhem is sacred and profane in equal measure.
I know it would be utterly ridiculous to expect the arts funding arm of the current Tory government to actually do a bit of research into the fruits of their funding of Holy Fuck’s 2007 tour, so let me help them out: The U.K.’s NME picked them as the #3 band at last year’s Glastonbury Festival:
Hailing from Toronto, Canada, electo-pop perverts Holy Fuck make a noise as abrasive as it is awesome. Witness the mean, serrated edge of bleep-bleeping ‘The Pulse’ and savagely squelchy ‘Safari’. Over on the Queens Head stage, led by the frankly unhinged Brian Borcherdt, these dark disco droogs thread every sound under the sun through their electric playground of wires. They come on like the nastiest electronic band since Suicide, or like the The Fall reworking their brains with screwdrivers, or Add N to (X) playing speed metal. They’re the kind of band that could hoof a hangover to kingdom come, or wring the neck of a banal main stage performance.
Or this, from New-Noise.Net:
In their allotted half-hour, Holy Fuck manage to pull off half decent impersonations of Sonic Youth, the Chemical Brothers, Can, the Boredoms and Smashing Pumpkins at their psychedelic best, often at the same time. In a circle, with their backs to the crowd, they wire their guitars and children’s instruments up to a mixing desk to produce unearthly electronica that justifies the their name tenfold.
Let’s get closer to home. Holy Fuck is up for the $20,000 Polaris Prize. Also? Holy Fuck’s most recent album, LP, was nominated for a Best Alternative Album Juno Award (PDF!) this year (for the uninformed, the Junos are Canada’s sad imitation of the Grammys). Yet our fucking clueless Conservative government considers partial funding of Holy Fuck’s tours “inappropriate … because they were ideological in some cases, or the money was going to fringe arts groups that, in many cases, would be at best, unrepresentative, and at worst, offensive.”
“Fringe”? “Unrepresentative”? It’d be funny if it wasn’t so stupidly sad. And, as for the “offensive” part, someone, please, tell me what could possibly be offensive about Holy Fuck’s gorgeous “Lovely Al(l/i)en”:
(Thanks to Charlize for the tip.)
7 comments
I know many artists who put out CDs without one cent of government money. They can, and do, use the internet to promote themselves and sell music worldwide. The idea that they have to have their tax money go to wealthy people to promote left-wing politics isn’t pro-artists, it’s elitist. The Harper government is moving in the right direction. The next step would be to end direct funding to select musicians and instead give Canadians tax credits for the puchase of Canadian artists. Everyone could buy up to X dollars a year and deduct it from their income tax. That would put the independent country, Acadian or Celtic artists on the same footing as the flash-in-the-pan downtown Toronto media darlings.
what’s offensive is Tal Bachman got 16 grand from PromArt and Holy Fuck only got 3.
i wonder if this will affect the Polaris prize outcome….
It’s bagels and chocolate, not chicken skins and lard. Besides, all you “fit” people and your “diets” mean nothing after reading what Michael Phelps eats to stay in shape for his 8 gold metals.
Turns out, I’m not big-boned: I’m an Olympian.
I dunno, Mike B., from the photo below — which, by the way, is the only known photo of Phelps in which he’s even remotely fuckable (and exceedingly fuckable in this one, for the record) — he looks like he could stand to lose a few:
Thanks for the intro to Holy Fuck. Here in the States, the only music that seems to get government funding is marching bands.
I think bagels and chocolate were a great idea. He’s just trying to keep the pounds on his clientele so they’ll keep coming back. That’s business acumen!
Thank you for the video. Snotty may not agree, but I’d say that band achieved more in five minutes than Mr. Harper and his Conservative members have in the whole time they’ve been in office.
And has there ever been a more crisply obvious Biblical reference than the words “Holy Fuck”?
Sorry to hear the Canadian government is misbehaving. I read once somewhere that the city-state of Berlin spends more on its artists and musicians every year than our NEA spends on the entire USA. It sickens me how little my government cares for its artists. Maybe when I’m old(er) and grey(er) we’ll have health care for everyone, 100% literacy and transparency in governance. That’s my dream, anyhow.