p2pnet news view Music:- Vancouver, BC, the Canadian city built on a mudslide close to the sea and a mere 1.5-hour ferry ride from p2pnet’s luxurious central headquarters on Vancouver Island, is deeply honoured.

“The Juno Awards started to move into GM Place yesterday,” says Vancouver 24 hours.

“A crew of 60 worker bees buzzed around the floor of the home of the Canucks, constructing a massive stage that will present the likes of Russell Peters, Bryan Adams and Great Big Sea across the country Sunday.”

wow.

The Junos is/are a Canadian advertising mutual admiration fest organized by Vivendi Universal (France), Sony (Japan), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US), none of whom have a significant presence in Canada, to promote ‘product’.

In other words, they have nothing to do with anything important.

It/they is/are named after former CRTC (Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission) boss Pierre Juneau.

A couple of years back, “Canadian federal heritage minister Bev Oda recently covered herself in shame when Liberal MP Brian Savage asked difficult questions about her use of limousines at last year’s Juno Awards in Halifax,” p2pnet reported, going on to quote Michael Geist as saying:

“It turns out that as Oda was moving begtween events (including her private lunch with CRIA and the foreign-owned record companies), Oda and her staff ran up $5,500 in limousine bills, ordering several cars each day with some idling for seven hours at a time.

“On the day of the Junos, Oda had three limos on stand-by at all times. All of this in a city where virtually everything is accessible on foot. Oda subsequently paid back $2,200 of the bill, but Canadian taxpayers are still left on the hook for thousands of dollars.”

Yes.

Anyhow, “Peter Faragher, production designer for the Sunday’s gala event, said the city gave inspiration to a ‘Zen like’ stage strongly influenced by the psychedelic aspects of the novel Alice In Wonderland,” says 24 hours.

oooooooooo

But according to the Canadian Press, Matthew Good (right), himself the recipient of three Junos, won’t be there because he says the Junos are pointless.

“When it’s actually a television broadcast that celebrates actual Canadian music, rather than who’s doing well internationally and has been in car commercials and iPod commercials … I’ll go,” the story has him saying.

For seven of the biggest Juno categories – including album of the year, artist of the year and group of the year – nominations are based at least partially on sales, says the story, adding:

“And therein lies the problem, according to Good and others. In the major categories, the Junos take their cues from what sells, and, Good says, that usually means celebrating bands simply for making commercially viable music.”

So he won’t be there.

“When it actually promotes Canadian music at root levels, and it isn’t kind of this weekend when the Canadian music industry pretends that it’s this independent industry and not just marketing warehouses for the United States, then sure, I’ll be a part of it,” Good stated.

You don’t have to stay tuned unless you’re a member of the corporate music industry.

[The pic of Matthew Good is from the Wikipedia, posted on Flickr by seanmcgrath under CC Attribution 2.0 http://www.flickr.com/photos/mcgraths/1582617474/]

Vancouver 24 hours – Stage set for Junos, March 24, 2009
p2pnet – Bev Oda: immortalized on YouTube, February 28, 2007
Michael Geist – Bev Oda’s ride on the wild side, February 6, 2007
Canadian Press – Matthew Good on Junos: ‘I really have no desire to be a part of it at all’, March 23, 2009

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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