Isn't it more about the depth and breadth of the list though, high brow and low?
Pop music may not get your respect but it achieved something in its ubiquity that more niche genres didn't, it provided a constantly changing, shared cultural soundtrack. Who can't pinpoint personal memories and milestone events to the 'top 40' hits that played? Even in today's supposedly more sophisticated age the odd 'Call Me Maybe' or 'Happy' moment crops up as some sort of cultural throw-back phenomenon (called an internet meme today).
Thanks for the list, now I at least know what you think is important. But I don't find it at all empircal.
I don't want to speak for DSC, but I for one am not about to waste time posting a list of music recorded in the last 14 years. Such a tit for tat argument would be endless and pointless and would prove nothing. Such is the subjective nature of art.
I think the challenge was to pick one single year, as Fresh did. I don't know, I guess I'm just not understanding how a list isn't empirical? It speaks for itself, it's not about personal taste at all. You compare the lists and can start to have a real conversation rather than just dismissing people as sappy old nostalgics.
And dwelling on specific cases like the Gasworks is missing the forest for the trees.
On the contrary, discussing places like Sam the Record Man, the Gasworks or El MO or so many many more is to allude to the wider cultural movements that gathered and interacted there (music, fashion, political ideology, cultural identity, sexuality), the cultural 'forests' so to speak. These places aren't closing and being replaced by newer venues that have the same cultural impact, they're closing for the very reasons that the music industry is limping: iTunes... so if tapas restaurants are the new cultural hotspots it's because a smart phone can't serve up a hot meal (yet):
No of course it wasn't, but there are far more lively neighbourhoods and main streets now than there were back then, and far more residents going out to far more businesses. Music venues have also opened in recent years. As for condos and tapas, people do need places to live. Are tapas restaurants inferior to concert venues (never mind that plenty of places do both)? Concert halls are just a small piece of the urban vitality puzzle.
Yes, the city is bigger, busier and glossier today, no question. This absolutely does read as vibrant and urbanely vital, but according to a very specific and modern definition only and one that is largely consumerist. The point is not that Toronto today isn't vibrant, only that Toronto in the past was too but for different reasons and for
arguably better and more meaningful reasons.
