‘Culture warrior’ Joe Martek dies
p2pnet news | Music:- Canadian punk rock pioneer Joe Martek is dead of a heart attack.
He was only 48.
His heart gave in on September 27, says the Montreal Mirror.
“In late 1978, Martek, along with Boris Shedov and Pierre Tremblay, founded Bambi Concert Productions, the first concert promoters in town to actively book both local and international alternative/punk bands on a regular basis,” it says, going on:
Not surprisingly perhaps, they never made any money. But, armed with a borderline-insane enthusiasm and quixotic belief that punk rock could change the world for the better, Martek, an otherwise savvy businessman still in his early 20s, thought nothing of risking the little cash he and his partners earned through their low-paying day jobs to enlighten us all by bringing acts like the Stranglers, Pere Ubu, Madness and Iggy Pop to the city.
Montreal music promoters rarely booked punk bands because the city didn’t have the audience to make it profitable. But, “for Bambi, profit was almost a secondary concern, and on those rare occasions when they did walk away from a gig with a few extra dollars, those monies were inevitably lost on their next few financially risky bookings. They didn’t seem to care all that much, and so long as Montrealers got to witness, say, the Exploited or John Cooper Clarke or Wayne Kramer’s Air Raid, Martek and the Bambi crew were happy.helped build a Helping to create a local alternative music scene, ‘that simply didn’t exist before them’.”
Bambi sponsored Montreal’s first and last Anti-CHOM rally, “a gig whose sole purpose was to pressure the city’s only rock radio station into playing something other than Chris de Burgh for a change,” says the Mirror, adding:
“The rally was a success, but effectively alienated Martek et al from the one major station in town that actually played the bands they were booking, if only for a few hours on Sunday nights. It was classic Bambi, forsaking profit for principle.”
After “a financially devastated Bambi Concerts finally closed shop in the early ’80s,” Martek moved to the “newly-spawned” Montreal Mirror, “where, in his role as business manager, he succeeded in bringing the struggling arts weekly a little cred in the local business community, reining in some of the key advertisers and business players that would enable the paper to continue publishing to this day.”
Also See:
Montreal Mirror – Joe Martek 1959–2007
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