State of the Beats

Posted By: Shagz
Date:

Just a quick update here on some things that have been going on in Shagzland...

First off, I'm really happy to say that an audio restoration project that I worked on earlier this year has finally seen the light of day!

A friend of mine contacted me a few months ago about taking some old LPs, digitizing them, cleaning them up and burning them to CD. His Dad was in a Canadian soft rock/pop duo back in the 1970's, recording under the name Gary and Dave. They were quite popular at the time, with a number of hits to their credit.

Alas, much of their music didn't make the cut to the digital age, and many oldies stations only have a couple of their songs to play. The goal of this project was to produce a CD that Gary and Dave could send to their contacts in the radio and music biz and hopefully generate some renewed interest, not to mention air play of some great Can-con.

It took a few weeks to clean and a few weeks more to get the printing and mass CD reproduction done, but my friend Ben Weeks gave me the final version just recently, and it looks soooo sweet. :) I'll be sure to post some pictures later.

Update, 2007-07-05: Pics! Here's the front and here's the back.

I'm really proud to have been part of a project like this, to have restored the music to something of its original glory so that a new generation might discover it, or that the older generation might *re-*discover it at the least.

Elsewhere, I'll be finishing up my first run as a teacher at the Off Centre DJ School! For the past few weeks I've been helping out at the school, teaching the Intro to DJing group lessons with DJ headmasters Steptone and Professor Fingers and it's been a lot of fun, and definitely an educational process for me.

It's funny, when you know a lot about something, it's very easy to think you can just teach it. But teaching is most definitely a whole other discipline, requiring it's own sets of skills, and some people are good at it, and some people are bad. So far, I think I've been doing ok. :) But I have much to learn, just as much as I have to give to my students.

If you're interested in taking lessons, either group lessons or individual private lessons, hit up the Off Centre DJ School website for contact and pricing info. We have two intro group sessions coming, starting July 16th and the other starting Aug 8th, both running for 4 weeks. Make sure you get in there early, lessons book up fast!

That's it for me, hope you all enjoyed your Canada Day weekend!

Your Comments

It's totally true...
Posted by: Shagz on

I know some people complain about the mandatory Can-con rules in place for radio and stuff, but really the Canadian music industry, in some respects, needs it.

Canadians make great stuff and continue to make great stuff, and much of that would go by the wayside if we didn't have rules in place to make sure it gets played.

The problem is, the rules are only good for the present and don't do much about the past.

I was talking to a record crate digging friend of mine about the excellent Jamaica to Toronto funk compilation (a CD chock full of 60's and 70's funk, ska, reggae and soul made right in our back yard), about how so much Can-con from the past has gone missing and has been lost, and in this case, it took a record label based in Washington to rediscover our own funky stuff.

When you think of the 60's and Canadian music, you invariably get Steppenwolf and Anne Murray...maybe Paul Anka. So much of the rest of it, probably remembered by our parents, is no longer available to us and those after us due to lack of interest, popularity, whatever.

And as you stated, all of this is very true for the 80's as well. (I remember most of the bands you mentioned except Martha and the Muffins)

Then again...maybe the system is too protectionist, giving Canadian bands a leg up when they don't deserve it and making them weak? I dunno...still, the fact remains that there's a lot of good analog-only Can-con out there that we don't know about and may never hear again.