Beatnuts Bomb in T-Dot

OLD SCHOOL THROWBACKS OUTSHINED BY FEMALE AUDIENCE 'DANCERS'

It's always nice to be invited to tag along to a show you know will not be like the regular urban yawnfests in T-dot. Gone are the days of head noddy, lyrically driven shows that Toronto used to be famous for. Back in the day, the Concert Hall was infamous for holding shows that surpassed all others in terms of real hip hop. New York crews had Toronto on their regular touring schedule as the city developed one of the most elite reputations for being a destination that knew what good hip hop was. This high standard soon manifested the label 'Screwface Captial', a moniker born out of audiences who were non reactionary whenever a sub par lyricist came into town.

The Beatnuts, while not being the most lyrical crew in hip hop, maintained a certain credibility due to the stellar beats by JuJu who had crafted gems for the likes of MC Lyte, Pete Nice and Common. Their flow was always nice though - a tight, party type vibe without the filler bullshit and nonsense waste lines.

The show was taking place at Sound Academy. Ever since the smurf village on Toronto Island muscled out The Docks Night Club, the new management have slowly developed a reputation for being overly strict and unimaginative when it came to events. Promoters in Toronto who have been around for a while seemed to have stayed away from Sound Academy, forcing the otherwise ideal venue to find creative ways to make money throwing live events. While the show itself was promoted by the normally reliable REMG Entertainment, the production partner was either not experienced or had one of their worst days in the company's existence. In fact, it was surprising to know that REMG was involved in any capacity, as the crowd was sparse and did not reflect the skills of one of the country's best urban promotions and events firm. Enter push.ca.

I had never heard of this web site but was intrigued to learn the event was more than just a hip hop throwback show. The Push Payout, as it was suspiciously dubbed, also claimed to have a skateboarding contest thrown in the mix, promising to pay cash to the skater with the best trick. A dismal failure in event production, the ramp was positioned to the right of the club, squished beside a wall and featuring jumps that grandma could land. As it turned out, grandma would have won first place as none of the skaters even landed a trick, leaving the host, whoever it was, scrambling to come up with not-so-witty banter on the spot. Nice try, but no.

The opening act was a testament to how nepotism can backfire...badly. Jeremy Chambers, younger sibling of FLOW 93.5 DJ Jayson Chambers, was beyond weak; one of them painful rappers with an overzealous mic man that had the Screwface Captial racing for the smoking patio. See, in Toronto, the underground heads know hip hop, and FLOW isn't hip hop, so why would a rookie with a brother at FLOW seem like a good idea? The answer: the industry in Canada is run by dummies. Watered down, wanna-be businessmen without a clue in the world what the market is looking for. Unfortunately, this lack of understanding leaked its way into the set of the Beatnuts.

My friend and I squirreled our way to the front of the show, leaned up against the railing and waited for the show to begin. Psycho and JuJu came out with good energy, leading off with tracks I don't know the name of but getting the crowd as involved as you can in Toronto. As the set progressed they reverted, smartly, back to their old school classics and the crowd looked like it had been won over.

And then it happened.

I've been to hip hop shows in New York, Miami, Los Angeles and Houston. I can tell you that at almost every show, depending on the artist, random ladies from the audiences almost always end up on stage, droppin' it like its heavy while rappers circle them and spit out their lyrics for the millionth time. It is a facet of hip hop i have tried to learn how to live with. But in Toronto, not only do you lack the scantily clad women normally associated with this silly ritual, but the crowd will stop nodding their heads and begin to focus their attention on just how stupid these people look behind what is supposed to be a semi-reputable hip hop crew. It was more than painful to watch. Drunk girls falling, girls dancing badly (picture the chicken dance, urban style), and two distinct females who obviously thought that this would be their 'big break'. The crowd in the front row began calling for the Beatnuts to eject the 'Toronto Hos' from the stage but ignored these calls - likely feeling the effects of the Hennesey they were drinking on stage.

The Toronto Ho spectacle, and that's exactly what it was, lasted, get this, 45 minutes. That's right - these unskilled, conservatively dressed, drunk, sloppy, starry eyed "dancers" spent the better part of an hour distracting the crowd from what could have been a half decent show, not to mention a saving grace from an otherwise horrid event thrown by www.push.ca.

To top things off, the over excited lone security guard at the front of the stage was exercising Nazi-like tactics to those who sparked up a blunt here and there, demanding they put it out or get ejected. Perhaps someone forgot to tell him that enforcing a no weed policy at a hip hop show is like trying to get a Tiesto crowd to just get high on life. Right.

Next time, leave the ramp at home, turn a blind eye to a hip hop staple requirement and book Mos Def.

Michael Ignatieff - The Electable Liberal

Yesterday was one of those moments where the political landscape changed drastically in Canada. The Liberal Party, long seen as a tired horse in the slowest stampede on the continent - i.e. Canadian politics - turned a page when it announced Michael Ignatieff as their new federal leader. It also quietly reinforced a notion that many had felt since Jean Chretien was halfway through his tenure as PM - the Liberals need not just a qualified leader, but an electable one.

There have been case studies since the 1990s that have proved this hypothesis. Paul Martin inherited the office of the Prime Minister and was eventually discovered to be a man who either was or seemed incredibly nervous in front of the cameras, often dithering his way through town hall meetings and debates. And when the time came to elect a new leader, the party went with Stephane Dion, a principled but watered down version of what Chretien was in his prime. Let's be honest here - your party can't expect to get elected in Canada if your English sounds forced. And while many point to Chretien's often incomprehensible banter when he spoke, the man was as tough as they come. Ask any protester. Dion, on the other hand, seemed nerdy, weak and not very believable when he put on his tough guy face. Add to the brine the permanently marred reputation of Bob Rae, a green horned youngster (Justin Trudeau) and a slew of cast members who fall short of being Prime Minister material and your recipe for a viable contending party seems rather weak.

The Conservatives, on the other hand, have a real leader in Stephen Harper. You can say what you want about the man - he's arrogant, self serving and a control freak - but you'd be lying to yourself if you didn't recognize his gifts in political strategy and exploiting oppositional shortcomings. But, as is often the case in politics, it is our gifts that turn into our weaknesses. It happened to Douglas. It happened to Trudeau. It happened to Mulroney and Chretien. And it is right now happening to Stephen Harper.

When the house of cards coalition failed last year, Harper set the stage for an eventual Conservative defeat by proroguing Parliament. He didn't roll the dice at a time when the Liberals were essentially leaderless. Granted, it could have backfired, but the odds on the Liberal/NDP/BQ somehow working together in the interests of all Canadians seemed more than far-fetched. Harper should have taken the risk and allowed the coalition to fail, but instead chose the path of least resistance and gave the Liberals enough time to regroup.

Enter Michael Ignatieff.

The Etobicoke/Lakeshore MP has only been in Canadian politics for 3 years but has a biography of a leader in waiting. His family tree includes several prominent Canadian and Russian scholars and diplomats, and he has the nostalgic additive of being a youth volunteer for the Trudeau campaign in 1965. Aside from the metaphorical nepotism, his moderate positions are more attractive to the segment of Canadians who normally back the Conservative Party. He can speak eloquently, has a high political acumen and is well rounded enough to identify with most Canadians. His downside is tangible as well, but they tend to fall on the side of Conservative dogma, rather than socialist sticking points. His stance on torture was widely criticized by the Canadian left, but occurrences such as the Omar Khadr affair seem to put his views more cohesive with the Conservatives who would be foolish to take him to task on issues they seem to agree with in principle.

The Conservatives must have relished the moment Stephane Dion was elected the new leader of the federal Liberal Party, but that honeymoon is over. Stephen Harper, the ultimate strategist and scrupulous to the core, will now face his most formidable match to date. And while nothing is scribed in stone, you get the feeling that this time the opposition party is not only ready, but waiting with an electable leader, instead of an ordinary man with a few good ideas.

Whine Flu - The Duck and Cover of 2009

I'm not old enough to have experienced it, but every time I hear stories of the American government telling its citizens how to best remain safe during a nuclear attack I bristle just a little. Of course, it's easy to say that in hindsight - but it seems equally as simple to dismiss the notion that ducking under a table and covering your head might not be a good way to protect yourself from a nuke, even if you are living in the 1950s. Just a thought.

So, when the so-called swine flu hit the airwaves last week, it was easy to imagine millions of people heading to loot the pharmacy for all the Tamiflu they could find. After all, if the telly and the newspapers were right, this was to be a pandemic not seen since 1918 when an estimated 40 million people perished in the Spanish Flu pandemic. Even more startling, after the first few days of coverage where it was discovered that the flu had spread to 7 different countries on 4 different continents, the death toll didn't jive with the hype. Hell, aside from Mexico, where the flu was originally spread by the now-recovered 5 year old Edgar Hernandez (dubbed Patient Zero by the media and science fiction nerds alike), there has been but one death related to the flu in the United States - a 23 month old Mexican toddler who died while in Texas. Any death is tragic, especially when it is someone so young, but to even utter the word 'pandemic' when scientists are still learning how the virus mutates and what the long term effects might be is careless and dangerous.

But it sells newspapers and advertisements, captivates television audiences and fires up the conspiracy theorists on the Net. Oh yeah, haven't you heard? The Swine Flu was engineered by the New World Order who are trying to get the public to take an eventual vaccine laced with nano robots that will track our every move and eventually enslave us through mind control. Right. OK, then. Got it.

Back to Tamiflu - the best known flu treatment and prevention medication on the planet. Canada has 55 million doses of the stuff, mostly purchased from the drug's parent company Roche Pharmaceuticals after the SARS scare in March of 2003. Interesting though, and I fully admit I am a mild conspiracy theorist - most members of the former Bush administration and many members of the current Obama administration are Tamiflu stockholders. Not bad fodder, eh? Well, the kicker is that, according to the World Health Organization, this particular strain of flu virus is Tamiflu resistant. That's right folks. There is a pandemic, Tamiflu is our best hope, and it doesn't work.

To recap, nobody knows how powerful this flu virus really is (an estimated 36 000 Americans each year die from the traditional flu, by the way), the media are calling it a pandemic to boost ad sales and stock prices of a drug that won't work, Patient Zero has fully recovered, any potential vaccine might lead to a world of obedient slaves and, to add to the folly, Jewish religious zealots are now asking the WHO to rename it 'Mexican Flu' because apparently calling it Swine Flu is offensive to their religion. Really. No shit. I suppose Mexicans will be tickle pink to have a potential pandemic named after their actual culture, but at least the god fearing nut cases feel better.

I don't know whether this will turn into a pandemic or not, and if I did give an opinion you'd be an idiot for listening to me. I am a writer, not a doctor. But I can tell you this. When SARS struck Toronto I was living in the heart of the city. My daily routine did not change. Every morning I would walk and get my morning coffee and daily newspaper, talk to neighbours who were walking their dogs and return home. Then I would turn on CNN and watch the talking heads describe Toronto as the diseased version of Chernobyl.

It's OK. Go outside...you'll be fine...maybe.