WHERE: Nathan Phillips Square

WHEN: Earlier today

WHAT: These 12 bronze animal-head sculptures, each representing a different sign of the Chinese zodiac, were unveiled by the Art Gallery of Ontario this afternoon at a ceremony with Mayor Rob Ford in attendance. They’re the work of Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, who attained something close to secular sainthood in 2011 after being held prisoner by the Chinese government for a few months. (He’s said to be under constant surveillance to this day.) This group of sculptures, known collectively as “Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads,” won’t be the last Toronto sees of Ai’s output, because the AGO will be opening a full Ai Weiwei exhibition on August 17. The animal heads, meanwhile, will remain until September 22.

The 2013 Toronto Jazz Festival descends on the city this Friday with a huge “free for all” event. That means all of Friday’s programming at every Jazz Festival venue is, yes, completely free of charge. There will be concerts from local favourites Molly Johnson and Mary Margaret O’Hara, plus a show by Smokey Robinson and Martha Reeves, who will be launching the fest from its epicentre, Nathan Phillips Square.

Here’s a rundown of some of the shows worth checking out on Friday—and during the rest of the festival, when you’ll actually have to pay.

Folks who are planning on having a swim in the pool at Scadding Court Community Centre over the next few days may find themselves a little disappointed. Those who want to go fishing, however, will probably be ecstatic.

For the rest of the week, the Community Centre will be holding its annual Gone Fishin’ event, meaning its indoor pool will be an indoor fish pond. The pool has been drained, dechlorinated, and refilled with 2,000 rainbow trout, to be caught by local children and families.

Photo by Brendan Ross/Torontoist.

With bustling patios, warm and sunny evenings, and plenty of long weekends, summer is the season most conducive to putting one’s responsibilities aside, heading down to the pub or liquor store, and dedicating a few hours to the pursuit of flavour and fun at the bottom of a glass. And while it’s not generally considered a great time for robust beers (unless you’ve saved some in your cellar, you clever/forgetful drinker, you) there are plenty of tasty summer beers to keep you cool during those long, hot, sticky days. Here are a few.

New and Notable From Toronto

On LCBO shelves now is the first in what we hope will be many collaborations among the GTA’s ever-expanding roster of brewers: Amsterdam Brewery and Great Lakes Brewery’s Maverick & Gose. Brewed in the style of Gose beers from Leipzig, Germany (which flout that country’s purity laws by using coriander and salt in the brewing process), it’s a pleasant brew with notes of citrus and spice. And speaking of those two breweries, both have some great summery offerings of their own. Ever the fans of none-too-subtle pun titles, Great Lakes has released its suitably bitter My Bitter Wife IPA at the LCBO, while the super fruity and hoppy RoboHop imperial IPA can be picked up in cans at the brewery. Meanwhile, Amsterdam’s Framboise offers a nice tart flavour that tastes like raspberry without tasting only like raspberry.

A Guide to Toronto’s 2013 Summer Beer Events

Previously only available at the brewery’s retail store, 10 Bitter Years, the local fan favourite from Black Oak Brewing Company, can now be had at LCBOs across the city, which means there’s one less reason to head out to Etobicoke. It’s a finely balanced double IPA with plenty of hops, but also notes of pine and citrus and a bitter finish. Just a really solid beer. Although, if you do still plan to head to the west-end brewery, pick up a bottle or two of Black Oak’s summer Saison, which should be ready by the end of June.

The Mill Street Brewery seasonal sampler packs have long been a mixed blessing for beer fans, as they usually feature one or two interesting, limited-run beers that can only otherwise be found at the Mill Street brewpub, mixed in with a selection of the brewery’s more staid and common offerings. This summer’s sampler pack, though, is enticing, with the inclusion of the hoppy Curious Parrot blond ale and the fruity, supposedly “Chardonnay-like” Don Valley Bench Estates ale. And while some of the other selections in the pack—such as the ubiquitous Organic Lager and Stock Ale—might not be so bold, they do make for good thirst quenchers when served ice cold on a hot day.

Keep an eye out later in the summer for The Wayward Son (shouldn’t be too hard to miss, given the artwork), the newest brew from the Black Oak offshoot Radical Road Brewing. If this Belgian golden ale is anywhere near as good as the brewery’s previous offering, the crazily smokey Canny Man, it’ll be worth putting up with the ridiculous packaging, and then some.

Creemore Springs Brewery may have been bought out by booze giant Molson, but that doesn’t mean it’s going in the direction of the bland. On the contrary, the brewery, through its offshoot Mad & Noisy Brewing, will soon be putting out yet another offbeat creation: the Sunny & Share Citrus Saison. It’s the first of the brewery’s experimental beers to be released at the LCBO and Beer Store. So why not buy a can, if only to marvel at how a craft beer movement that was almost non-existent 10 years ago has now gotten even the big guys on board.

If you like a little novelty with your beer, pick up a bottle of Flying Monkeys Craft Brewery’s latest collaboration brew, the City and Colour Imperial Maple Wheat beer, brewed with the help of Dallas Green. Considering how good the brewery’s previous collaboration with Barenaked Ladies was, we’ll give it a try despite the zaniness. Meanwhile, over in the Ottawa Valley, Beau’s All Natural Brewing has been working with comedian Tom Green on a milk stout. We’re a little hesitant to try this one, given Green’s prank comedy history. But we also understand the options for Ottawa-native celebrity collaborations are somewhat limited. (In the future, look out for beers dedicated to Paul Anka, Norm McDonald, and Tom Cruise when he was a kid.) And if collaborations are your thing, you can taste a whole whack of them at this year’s Session Toronto festival, later in June.

Summer Suds From Around the World

Back in spring, Brasserie de l’Abbaye des Rocs brought its Grand Cru to liquor store shelves in Ontario to great acclaim and Hoover-like buying patterns. For summer, the Belgian brewer has brought over its Blanche des Honnelles wheat ale, a complex witbier with pepper, fruit, and oat notes. If this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship between l’Abbaye des Rocs and the province, we’ll excitedly await what the future has in store.

Meanwhile, if you’re looking for something that will catch the eye, freak out house guests, and funkify your entire apartment like some kind of cheap bacon air freshener, it’s tough to beat the Voodoo Doughnut Bacon Maple Ale from Oregon’s normally stellar Rogue Brewery. With strong notes of bacon and something purporting to be maple on the nose (silly Americans), plus an intensely smokey taste, it might be fun to buy for the novelty, but make sure you’re with enough people that it can be shared without anyone having to drink too much.

Last time we checked, Hopfen-Weisse was a cheeky name given to a collaboration brew between the U.S.’s Brooklyn Brewery and Germany’s Schneider-Weisse. Apparently, now it’s become a style. Things sure do move fast in the beer world. If you missed that beer when it was here in years past, but you’re interested in a similar experience, you could do worse than Quebecois brewery Les Trois Mousquetaires’ Hopfenweisse, a German style wheat beer with spice and fruit flavours, complimented by a subtle hoppiness that becomes more pronounced as the beer sits.

It’s always fun to see how other cultures picture us, and now you can experience how Danish hipsters imagine us Canucks with the intensely hoppy Canadian Dream. If you’re in the mood for something with a bit more variety of flavour to go along with the hops, try the Kipling South Pacific Pale Ale from England’s Thornbridge Brewery. It’s a nice, light pale ale with notes of citrus, pine and caramel.

Psy performs at the 2013 MMVAs. Still from MuchMusic’s broadcast of the ceremony.

On June 16th, the MuchMusic Video Awards once again took over the downtown core, transforming the MuchMusic parking lot into a series of sharply geometric, glowing stages and several blocks of Queen Street into a roiling mass of screaming teens. With the spectacle of the red carpet, and with MuchMusic’s over-the-top, extraordinarily earnest dedication to making its award show one of the most glamorous events of the year in Canadian media, there’s always a danger that the ceremony will start taking itself too seriously. Which is why South Korean pop sensation and viral-video wizard PSY was perfect for this year’s co-host spot: his self-aware goofiness was the perfect antidote to the stilted banter and aesthetic excess.

PSY opened the show by performing his wildly infectious, high-energy smash hit “Gangnam Style,” which would later win the MMVA for Viral Video of the Year. Performing his signature horse dance along with a troupe of brightly-clad backup dancers, PSY brought an energy that reminded the audience why his well-loved and overplayed single garnered so much attention in the first place. Later in the show, to prove that he was more than a one-trick pony, he challenged the DJ to “hit me with anything you want” and performed an impromptu and hilarious dance to Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies.” The MMVAs closed with a performance of his newest single, “Gentleman,” back-up dancers now clad in gold pants while a huge, inflatable PSY rose in the background, surrounded by pyro. It was a perfect example of how spectacle can be self-aware and still wildly funny.

Two other bright spots in the performances were Ed Sheeran’s acoustic and heartfelt rendition of “Lego House.” Played perhaps a hair fast because of genuine nerves, the singer-songwriter, who is currently on tour with megastar Taylor Swift (who was also in attendance and won the award for Your Fave International Artist/Group), added a soulful, bashful note to the proceedings. Serena Ryder, who would net the award for Rock/Alternative Video of the Year for “Stompa,” put on a gutsy and growling performance that left no doubt in our mind that she was genuinely overjoyed to be playing.

The red carpet is a kind of performance in and of itself, and this year Marianas Trench made the best entrance (and later would net the Your Fave Video award for “Stutter”). The group pulled up a with dunk tank attached to a flatbed truck, all the band members dressed as mermen. Backstage, Billy Talent, who took the award for Post-Production of the Year for “Surprise Surprise,” objected to suggestions that Marianas Trench’s arrival was the best in the history of the MMVAs. (In 1995, Talent arrived in a Sherman tank.)

Canadian-pop power couple Avril Lavigne and Chad Kroeger made a more understated—but highly anticipated—entrance, both clad all in black and making minimal small talk. Lavigne stepped from their car with a black leather, spiked crown atop her head. She would later perform “Here’s To Never Growing Up,” a song that is so perfectly suited to her that it may have been composed by an algorithm. She won International Video of the Year for the track.

Perhaps the greatest surprise of the night was an appearance by Drake, who, unexpectedly and unannounced, strode onstage to speak after winning Hip-Hop Video of the Year for “Started From the Bottom,” which would also take Director of the Year honours later in the evening. Drake was one of two big winners of the night, the other being another Canadian rapper Classified, who claimed both the Video of the Year and Muchfact Video of the Year awards for anti-bullying ode “Inner Ninja.”

Here’s a complete list of MMVA 2013 winners:

• Video Of The Year: Classified & David Myles, “Inner Ninja”
• Post-Production Of the Year: Billy Talent, “Surprise Surprise”
• Dance Video Of the Year: deadmau5 f. Chris James, “The Veldt”
• Director Of The Year: Director X – Drake, “Started From the Bottom”
• Pop Video Of the Year: Marianas Trench, “Desperate Measures”
• Rock/Alternative Video Of The Year: Serena Ryder, “Stompa”
• Hip-Hop Video Of The Year: Drake, “Started From the Bottom”
• Muchfact Video Of The Year: Classified f. David Myles, “Inner Ninja”
• International Video Of The Year (artist): Demi Lovato, “Heart Attack”
• International Video Of The Year (group): Macklemore and Ryan Lewis f. Wanz, “Thrift Shop”
• International Video Of The Year By A Canadian: Avril Lavigne, “Here’s To Never Growing Up”
• Your Fave Artist/Group: Justin Bieber
• Your Fave Video: Marianas Trench, “Stutter”
• Your Fave International Artist/Group: Taylor Swift

Literally everyone in the city came out to see The National on Friday night.

NXNE has come to a close for another year. Here’s the best and weirdest of what we saw. (Now please excuse us as we attempt to readjust to a regular sleep schedule and a diet that doesn’t just consist of free barbecue.)

Best Songs About Murder: This Hisses
FROM: Winnipeg, Manitoba
PERFORMED: Wednesday, June 12, 12 a.m. at the Hard Luck Bar

Pre-Show Hype: Moderate. Last year the group played to far too few audience members, but this year it had more support.

Performance: Great. The band’s smoky, swoony post-punk noir was a great fit for the comfortable griminess of the Hard Luck Bar. The set had a tightly coiled, shivering energy to it. Launching into the title track of its new record, Anhedonia, the band channelled the kind of cracking, electric energy that usually heralds a thunderstorm.

Best Moment: A live rendition of stunning murder ballad “My Love He Shot A Sparrow” was breathtaking. Vocalist and bassist Julia Ryckman’s voice was both tragic and syrup sweet.

Miscellaneous: Julia Ryckman may have been wearing the most stunning red dress I have ever seen in my entire life.

Verdict: The members of This Hisses are on the cusp of greatness, improving their stage presence and confidence each time they perform. Their set was one of the underground wonders of NXNE this year.

Best Cover: Gentleman Reg
FROM: Guelph, Ontario
PERFORMED: Thursday, June 12, 12 a.m., at The Rivoli

Gentleman Reg (indie) rocks the Rivoli.

Reason: There are all sorts of reasons for music acts to bust out a cover. Mikal Cronin used one to supercharge his closing number for an already fired-up crowd (in Cronin’s case, Wreckless Eric’s “Whole Wide World”). Dance outfit Bear Mountain used snatches of a familiar tune (Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”) in the middle of their own composition to lend it some familiarity. Vancouver duo Data Romance put their own haunting touches on Johnny Cash’s “If I Were a Carpenter” for a small but rapt crowd. But newly indie (again) artist Gentleman Reg’s cover of Sheryl Crow’s “If It Makes You Happy” was our favourite of the fest, thanks to vocals by both him and bandmate Kelly McMichael.

Best Moment: Reg stepped down to the lip of the stage for this one, to serenade the crowd.

Miscellaneous: “She’s awesome,” sighed a girl in the audience as McMichael started in on the song’s namesake refrain line.

Verdict: All of these artists had their own strong material. But it’s always a treat when a musician shares a favourite tune, and Reg and Kelly have made this one a lovely signature.

Best Band We Saw Out of Boredom: Janitors
FROM: Toronto, Ontario
PERFORMED: Wednesday, June 12, 12 a.m. at the Velvet Underground

Pre-Show Hype: Absolutely none. There literally could not have been less hype surrounding this show. We couldn’t even find a video of these guys to run with this post.

Performance: With hundreds of acts playing dozens of venues, you’d think it would be pretty much imposssible for there to be a dead spot in the NXNE schedule. Yet at least once a festival, we find ourselves looking at our smartphones saying, “I don’t really want to see any of this shit.” While most people would take this as a welcome chance to get some food, we just chose a band at random at hoped for the best.

In this case, we lucked out. The boiler-suit-and-Zorro mask-clad Janitors are the latest in the great Torontonian tradition of unbelievably loud two-person bands. They play high-energy, thrashy garage-punk with thoroughly bizzare lyrics. If we knew we were going to like them this much, we probably would have planned to see them.

Best Moment: Their stage banter, which consisted almost entirely of yelling “Janitors suck” in between songs.

Miscellaneous: They have a song called “This is Not a Song About Oscar Pistorius.”

Verdict: They’re still a work in progress, but what they lack in polish, they more than make up for in charisma and fun.

Best Outdoor Show: The Balconies
FROM: Ottawa, Ontario
PERFORMED: Thursday, June 13, 7 p.m., at St. James Park Gazebo

Reason: If you were taking a NXNE audience “best show” poll, The National would surely win, purely by dint of the fact that seemingly half of Toronto crammed into every available nook and cranny surrounding Yonge-Dundas Square to watch the band’s free show. NXNE certainly got its money’s worth from The National, who put on a typically accomplished performance. But we were more impressed by The Balconies, who drew and held a (much, much smaller) crowd for their evening park set, despite pouring rain.

Best Moment: This was our first time seeing the Balconies as a four-piece act, with former drummer Liam Jaeger moving to lead guitar and newcomer Theo Mckibbon taking the drum kit. Another guitar has given lead singer and guitarist Jacquie Neville more flexibility to move, and a highlight of many songs was when she started swinging her now flame-bright hair around, which nearly qualifies as its own instrument.

Miscellaneous: A tipsy couple wandering through the park ambled up to the side of the gazebo, and between songs, shouted out, “You’re better than Bon Jovi!” The band politely thanked them for the compliment.

Verdict: We already knew The National could entertain and hold the attention of a stadium-sized crowd. Now, we’re starting to think The Balconies aren’t that far behind.

Worst Timekeeping: Comedy Records/Happy Contest Time
FROM: Los Angeles, California via Toronto, Ontario
PERFORMED: Thursday, June 13, 10:45 p.m.—12:30 a.m., at the Lower Ossington Theatre Cabaret

Co-host Deborah Robinson talks to the judges of Happy Time Contest, who evaluate comics despite being less than fluent in English.

Reason: We were exceedingly happy with the amount of comedy in this year’s NXNE schedule, and how it was fully featured in the program.

But we did have an issue with the comedy program: unlike the rock acts, which are timed down to the minute, many comedy shows started late, and ran later. This caused a cascade effect for those of us seeing multiple shows. Happy Time Contest, for instance, started nearly 45 minutes late, and ran an hour over its scheduled time. Unfortunately, much of the audience left before the winner was announced.

Best Moment: Happy Time Contest winner Amanda Brooke-Perrin, who also co-hosted Wednesday’s Chuckle Co. cabaret with Michael Kolberg, silenced a six-beers-in heckler asking questions about her online dating routine by explaining her username and singing a few bars of Montell Jordan’s “This Is How We Do It,” delighting the crowd and the judges.

Miscellaneous: The Laugh Sabbath Film Festival (which did run roughly on time) recognized some exceptional comedy shorts. $250 prizes were awarded to Daniel Warth and Deborah Robinson’s “Future Assassin,” and The Sufferettes’ “Ben.” The $1,000 grand prize went to Tony Ho Comedy’s “Japan,” which the sketch trio plans to bring to other festivals.

Verdict: It’s great that comedy is in the regular NXNE program. But now that it is, comedy producers need to get with said program. When you’re running later than the hip-hop showcases, that’s a definite problem.

Most Joy-Filled Live Set: Imaginary Cities
FROM: Winnipeg, Manitoba
PERFORMED: Friday, June 14, 9 p.m. at the Virgin Mobile Mod Club

Pre-Show Hype: Decent. Many people had come to see showcase headliners July Talk, and then wound up being completely sucked in by Imaginary Cities.

Performance: There is a pure, effervescent joy in the way Imaginary Cities perform. The chemistry between vocalist Marti Sarbit and guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Rusty Matyas is palpable, and it’s clear that together they adore every minute of stage time. Having recently released their sophomore effort, Fall of Romance, there was an additional layer of excitement to the performance.

Best Moment: The way they were able to inject even their most plaintive and soulful pieces with a sense of hopeful joy.

Miscellaneous: Marti Sarbit’s ivory and gold dress was like a piece of wearable confectionary; in other words, perfect.

Verdict: With layered production and the liberal use of field recordings and unexpected sound elements, it would be easy to assume that Imaginary Cities is strongest in the studio rather than on stage. As it turns out, even without real bells from Cologne playing on “Bells of Cologne,” the group is still capable of something magical.

Best Instrumental Metal Set: Shooting Guns
FROM: Saskatoon, Sakatchewan
PERFORMED: Friday, June 14, 10 p.m. at the Hideout

Pre-Show Hype: Less than there should have been. Having made the Polaris Prize long list last year for Born To Deal in Magic: 1952-1976, this band’s show should have been absolutely packed rather than simply rather full.

Performance: Instrumental aggressive music is challenging to pull off in any context, and the sheer cloudy density of the doom-inspired material that Shooting Guns writes could easily become greyed out and featureless if executed without precision. This performance ebbed and flowed appropriately. It’s rare to see a band navigate so dense a set so deftly.

Best Moment: The complete and utter lack of stage banter. There was just a wall of tar-thick, poppy-sweet, hallucinatory riffs and clattering, insistent drums.

Miscellaneous: Props for the keyboard/synth/effects master’s radical Lavagoat shirt.

Verdict: If this is what comes out of the frozen wastes of our most rectangular province, we need more psychedelic, stoner doom from Saskatchewan.

Best Unexpected Catharsis: Pick a Piper
FROM: Toronto, Ontario
PERFORMED: Friday, June 14, 11 pm, Comfort Zone

Pre-Show Hype: Orginally an electronic side project of Caribou drummer Brad Weber, with Angus Fraser and Dan Roberts, the buzz for Pick a Piper was what you’d expect: very enthusiastic, if a little on the sparse side. With Pick a Piper, though, you could actually watch the kinetics of word-of-mouth publicity, as the floor at Comfort Zone went from tumbleweed-bare at the beginning of the set to full and attentive by its end.

Performance: Pick a Piper took the stage a little after 11 p.m., joined by trombone player Steve Ward. For the group, about to embark on a tour of western Canada, there was evidence of energy waiting to explode, supernova-style. At other times, the dark, undulating tones of the group’s electronic/organic style seemed restrained, but focused and simmering, setting the baseline for the night. The percussive severity of Pick a Piper overlaid with Ward’s mournful trombone made us scribble the words “plaintive urgency,” which endures as the best lingering impression of Pick a Piper’s performance. More on that below.

Best Moment: The optics of a studious, deliberate performing style grinding out this blisteringly intense, almost angry sound. The evidence of academic musicianship in action.

Miscellaneous: In the context of that plaintively urgent theme we mentioned, the name “Pick a Piper” came across as particularly salient. This is the music that plays as skylines burn and chaos rages, at least in the back of our Friday-night imagination. The idea of “pick[ing] a piper”—the idea of choosing a side—reflecting the subtly dramatic feel of the group’s sound, as if it was the theme music underpinning the third act of…well, something. Like Godspeed or A Silver Mount Zion, only more aggressive.

Verdict: Pick a Piper slot pretty neatly into that Godspeed description, actually. Making new fans may be a more deliberately nuanced process for the group, but holy hell, will those fans ever be merited. Solidly an 8.

Best Nostalgia Show: Sloan
FROM: Toronto, Ontario via Halifax, Nova Scotia
PERFORMED: Friday, June 14, 11 p.m., at The Great Hall

Sloan celebrate two decades of Murderecords at The Great Hall.

Reason: There were plenty of veteran pop rock acts that fans were waxing nostalgic about this year at NXNE. Local band Tangiers reunited after 10 years apart, turning The Garrison into a sweaty sauna during their 10-song set. Evan Dando thrilled fans at the Rivoli with renditions of classic Lemonheads songs like “Confetti.” But the biggest crowd pleaser was Sloan. The band, now recognized as the quintessential Canuck rock band of the ’90s, thrilled long-time adherents by playing its first-ever EP, Peppermint, from start to finish.

Best Moment: It’s a tough call, but during “Lucky For Me,” we quickly jotted down “thunderous,” and, “drummer (Andrew Scott) is crushing it,” so let’s go with that.

Miscellaneous: Nearly as many fans stuck around after Sloan’s set to see fellow ’90s east coasters Superfriendz.

Verdict: Sloan is Canuck-rock royalty, and the Great Hall was as packed as we’d ever seen it with fans there to pay homage.

Best Surprise Guest: White Lung
FROM: Vancouver, British Columbia
PERFORMED: Friday, June 14, 2 a.m. at BLK BOX

White Lung’s Mish Way tries to figure out how she’d review her own show.

Pre-Show Hype: Hard to say. People were really stoked for this Saturday night show at The Horseshoe, but no one actually knew the show was happening until a couple hours beforehand.

Performance: Having White Lung’s tough, urgent, art-damaged thrash come on after a low-key, melancholic set by Gold & Youth was kind of an odd call, but we’ll take this band any way we can get it. It more than delivered, with a hard, aggressive set that even managed to motivate the slightly heavy-lidded crowd to start a small pit.

Best Moment: When Gold & Youth finally announced that yes, White Lung were up next.

Miscellaneous: Frontwoman Mish Way is also an accomplished music journalist.

Verdict: White Lung are bad ass.

Number One Hometown Hero: Rich Kidd
FROM: Toronto, Ontario
PERFORMED: Saturday, June 15, 11 p.m. at Wrongbar

Pre-Show Hype: Medium to high. People were mostly there to see headliner Joey Bada$$, but Kidd was certainly a draw in his own right.

Performance: In the hip-hop community, Toronto is widely referred to as “The Screwface Capital,” thanks to our tendency to produce scowling, skeptical audiences. Local acts notoriously get the worst of this treatment. On Saturday night, Rich Kidd was the exception to the rule. The incredibly dynamic MC and producer had the Wrongbar crowd rapt. The entire room was screaming back the lyrics from his latest mixtape, In My Opinion.

Best Moment: When he ran into the crowd and instructed several young women to “Rub on my chest like I’m Usher.” They obliged.

Miscellaneous: After his own set ended, Kidd stayed on stage and acted as Deniro Farrar’s impromptu hype man.

Verdict: Drake may be the city’s most famous MC, but Rich Kidd may be challenging him for his crown as King of the City.

Weirdest Audience Interaction: Deniro Farrar
FROM: Charlotte, North Carolina
PERFORMED: Sunday, June 16, 4 p.m. at Yonge-Dundas Square

Deniro Farrar raps to one child, ignores everyone else.

Pre-Show Hype: Medium. He played two very well received sets at Wrongbar over the course of the week.

Performance: In retrospect, Deniro Farrar may not have been the best choice for the 4 p.m. time slot at Yonge-Dundas Square. It’s not that he wasn’t good—he was amazing—but his bleak, intense, thugged-out rhymes were probably a little heavy for the early hour. That said, he made the most of it, getting the audience involved and winning over the crowd with his captivating presence and laser-focused delivery.

Best Moment: When he rapped directly to one 10-year-old child in the front row.

Miscellaneous: We saw Farrar play twice this week. Apparently he’s incapable of rapping while wearing a shirt.

Verdict: Farrar calls his subgenre “cult rap.” We see why now. He has the sort of charisma that could get people to move to a remote compound.

Earliest Finisher: Ludacris
FROM: Atlanta, Georgia
PERFORMED: Sunday, June 16, 9 p.m. at Yonge-Dundas Square

Ludacris was also kind of bummed out that Big Boi had to cancel.

Pre-Show Hype: High-ish. On one hand, he was headlining Yonge-Dundas Square. On the other hand, he was called in as a last-minute replacement after original headliner Big Boi injured his knee and had to cancel.

Performance: While most NXNE sets clock in around 40 minutes, Dundas Square headliners are given two hours. Apparently no one told Ludacris. After starting 20 minutes late, Luda ran through a tight, high-energy, hit-heavy set, and wrapped things up half an hour early. People had a good time, and we guess it’s better to leave ‘em wanting more, but we still felt a little let down at the end.

Best Moment: When everyone from patch-covered crust punks to Persian moms started dancing to “What’s Your Fantasy?”

Miscellaneous: Apparently Luda’s Disturbing Tha Peace label still exists? Who knew?

Verdict: We would have been happier with Big Boi.

CORRECTION: June 18, 4:30PM We previously stated that the Balconies’ new drummer was Steve MoLella, when it is in fact Theo Mckibbon. The correction has been made above.

At rep cinemas this week: Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy stroll through the southern Peloponnese, Leonardo DiCaprio makes a decent Gatsby, and a man documents his last months with ALS.

TIFF Bell Lightbox (350 King Street West)
Showtimes

In his wild swings between crowd-pleasers like School of Rock and didactic side projects like Fast Food Nation, Richard Linklater has charted an unpredictable career trajectory, with the lone exception of his dependably wonderful Before series. Arriving roughly every 9 years, the films pick up with stars (and, since 2004′s entry Before Sunset, co-screenwriters) Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy as they roam through different European cities, engaged in some of the most sustained philosophical discussion in American cinema.

Before Midnight is the third and richest installment in the unlikely franchise, an uncommonly perceptive sequel that finds Hawke’s Jesse and Delpy’s Celine settled into their forties long after the last time we saw them, when Jesse missed a flight back to his wife and child in America to bask in Celine’s Parisian apartment. Though the couple seems more comfortable now, lounging in a Greek summer house in the waning days of Jesse’s apprenticeship with a more-senior novelist, Before Sunset‘s cliffhanger ending, and more specifically its substitution of one family for another, turns out to have set the tone for the intervening years.

Though Before Midnight‘s predecessors go out of their way to make time for the couple’s famously charming conversations—the last installment saw them killing an hour and change between a book signing and a flight—this film is an autumnal variation on the formula, mindful of how parenting and the scheduling realities of both creative and activist jobs make such pockets of reflection scarce. The change adds a new kind of tension: as we watch the stars catch or avert glances from across the room, seeing their younger selves (and future doppelgängers) reflected in other couples at their host’s home, we wonder if they’ll find the time to debrief about what they’ve seen. The anticipatory “Before” of the series has always been a key part of these movies’ success, with Sunrise hinging on the knowledge that the two strangers would eventually have to part ways, and Sunset running up against a non-refundable plane ticket. Before Midnight has the most intense deadline yet: mortality, which is slyly represented by a romantic hotel getaway the pair have been putting off for the whole trip until their hosts (and Linklater) force them to go. It’s coming this time, whether they make their plane or not.

The Great Gatsby
Directed by Baz Luhrmann

Fox Theatre (2236 Queen Street East)
Showtimes

In the promotional lead-up to The Great Gatsby‘s release, much was made of Jay-Z’s involvement as music producer, which some read as a token of Baz Luhrmann’s intent to pull F. Scott Fitzgerald’s modernist novel into an all-new modern age. The bigger reveal, though, might have been Luhrmann’s licensing agreement with Brooks Brothers, which the company has flaunted in Gatsby-inspired ads that have the gall to unironically quote the book’s object of desire, Daisy Buchanan, a frivolous collector of shiny things who swoons over the titular character’s gorgeous collection of shirts. What’s troubling about the tie-in isn’t that the retailer has mangled the spirit of Daisy’s exclamation—as far as we know, she really does love all those shirts—but that it’s all too fitting a promotion for Luhrmann’s adaptation, which turns Fitzgerald’s angry screed against Jazz Age indulgence and consumption into a fashion show, where the most you can say is that the clothes are all beautiful enough to covet.

If the governing spirit of Luhrmann’s version is precious socialite Daisy, who is at the very least nicely played by Carey Mulligan, it’s narrator Nick Carroway (Tobey Maguire) who’s undergone the most substantial transformation, from passive observer to drunken hysteric. Nick’s account of the spectacular rise and fall of self-made Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio, appropriately drawling out his working class huckster’s words like a lost Kennedy) is presented this time as a novel in progress, brought to life by Luhrmann’s usual hyper-cranked photography, rapid cutting, and anachronistic music cues, and abetted by some luscious 3D.

It’s debatable whether the pop-up novel is the right form for Fitzgerald’s minor tragedy about a man who discovers that money can’t buy status even in vulgar America. Still, Luhrmann deserves some credit for coaxing good dramatic work out of his cast, save for a heavily dazed Maguire, who looks to still be recovering from his involvement in Spider-Man 3. It’s especially nice to see DiCaprio freed from his recent brooding widow schtick, even if it’s for the sake of a glorified diorama.

I Am Breathing
Directed by Emma Davie and Morag McKinnon

Bloor Hot Docs Cinema (506 Bloor Street West)
Friday, June 21, 6:45 p.m.

Documentaries about illness have a bad habit of flirting with the maudlin, but Emma Davie and Morag McKinnon acquit themselves nicely with I Am Breathing, a refreshingly unsentimental video diary and last testament of the final months of Neil Platt, a 33-year-old architect with ALS. Neil’s unlucky situation gives the film a sense of urgency and purpose it might otherwise have lacked, insofar as he envisions his life story as something to be passed on to his 2-year-old son, who was just an infant when his father was diagnosed. That makes the documentary a rare thing: not just a profile of a wry man grappling with his rapidly declining physical health, but a time capsule for a hypothetical viewer who we’re left to cover for in the meantime.

As Neil approaches the critical stage where he can no longer swallow on his own, I Am Breathing becomes difficult to watch. But it’s a testament to the filmmakers’ empathy for their subject—and his equally sardonic, loving spouse Louise—that they keep a respectful distance in his hardest moments. Aside from an unnecessarily lyrical shot of a bird chirping away outside his room, this is a consistently minimalist portrayal of illness, tender in its observation, but not invasive. That modest touch is a nice fit for the subject, a man who at one point professes his wonderment, despite the gravity of his illness, that humans are so adaptable when they have to be.

The film screens at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema in recognition of National ALS Day.

The mystery around this cast photo of “Whodunnit”: which of these people was NOT Photoshopped into the picture?

Monday

World’s Weirdest Restaurants returns for a second season of novelty restaurants you’d never want to eat at. Tonight’s featured restaurant: a German eatery where guests must communicate what they want for dinner to the staff via charades. Yes, that definitely is someplace we wouldn’t want to eat. (Food Network, 9 p.m.)

Don’t Drive Here is a pretty clever idea for a travel/reality show: dude goes to various densely populated third-world cities, learns what traffic is like, and then tries to drive there. Tonight’s episode starts off relatively easy in Delhi, which is just insanely chaotic vis-a-vis its traffic (“Have you ever seen anybody die in traffic?” “Oh yes, many times”), but later episodes will feature the host trying to drive tuk-tuks and motorcycle taxis as opposed to just cars. Don’t know if there’s more than one season’s worth of fun here, but that’s enough for now. (Discovery, 10 p.m.)

Tuesday

It’s the live finale of The Voice, and this year’s finalists include two of Blake Shelton’s country protégés: the quite-decent Swon Brothers (the first duo to advance to the finals) and the 16-year-old, might-be-good-in-a-decade-but-why-is-she-a-finalist-right-now Danielle Bradbery. This just goes to show that The Voice‘s fanbase is skewing more and more towards country singers. Maybe fellow finalist Michelle Chamuel, rocking the “talented nerd with pipes” schtick and coached by Usher, can sneak up between the middle of the two country acts and eke out a win. (NBC, 9 p.m.)

Wednesday

Tonight’s The West Wing rerun, “In The Shadow of Two Gunmen,” kicked off the second season following the assassination-attempt cliffhanger of the first season. It’s generally considered to be where The West Wing ascends to true greatness. (CTS, 8 p.m.)

Thursday

If you’re in the market for a comic book adaptation that utterly failed in every possible respect, how about The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Because it’s a bad movie: horribly shot, horribly directed (Stephen Norrington has not directed anything since), the acting is mostly awful (it’s not for nothing that Sean Connery retired from acting after making this flick), the plot mostly stupid and all the subtleties of the original Alan Moore/Kevin O’Neill comic are shoved in your face and exaggerated to irritating, ridiculous levels. It’s not even fun bad. It is just bad bad. (FX Canada, 7 p.m.)

The Simpsons rerun of the week: “G.I. (Annoyed Grunt),” wherein Homer joins the Army when Bart accidentally enlists. “Yo! I don’t know which one I dig more: Hip-hop, crunk, or serving my country.” Comedy Network, 8:30 p.m.)

Friday

Hey! Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle! We never have anything bad to say about this movie, or indeed any of the Harold & Kumar movies, not even A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas. Really, the franchise resurrected Neil Patrick Harris’s career, and aren’t we all thankful for that? The answer to that question is “yes.” (MuchMusic, 10 p.m.)

The Weekend

Whodunnit? is a reality competition series with an interesting gimmick: the contestants’ challenge each week is to solve a mystery (usually a “murder”). This is the sort of show that could be brilliantly fun or it could be awful, based largely on how difficult the murders are to solve. If they’re too simple, we’ll think the contestants are idiots, and if they’re too hard, we’ll think the contestants are idiots. So basically, appearing on this show is a lose/lose when you get down to it. (CTV, 9 p.m. Sunday)

If you’re sitting around thinking, “man, I wish I had a summer TV series to watch that had a lot of cops in it” then Crossing Lines is your cup of cop tea! This is a show where William Fichtner leads a team of international (almost entirely white) cops to fight international crime, in places like Europe and also other parts of Europe. Donald Sutherland plays the boss of the international cops because he can do what he likes at this point and nobody will say boo about it. (NBC, 9 p.m. Sunday)

CNN premieres Crimes of the Century, leading off with the 2002 DC sniper attacks, so basically this is yet another excuse for CNN to do CNN’s Greatest Hits, because it’s easier for them to do shows about when they were relevant rather than do anything to become relevant again. (9 p.m. Sunday)

Okay, so we haven’t had time to watch practically any of this season of AMC’s Mad Men and have no idea what’s going on. All we know is that there is a character named Bob Benson and people are obsessed with him having some sort of secret, and also during one episode all the characters took drugs and the show got real trippy. Oh, and Pete is now balder than ever, and if we were Vincent Kartheiser we’d be annoyed about having to shave our heads partially to portray “guy balding early,” but then again that’s why Vincent Kartheiser makes the big money, right? (10 p.m. Sunday)

Photo by Julie Lavelle, from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

A cool, relaxing beverage by one’s self or in the company of a few friends can be just fine, but with the sheer number of beer events this summer, anyone looking for a crowd to drink with won’t have to look too far. Here are a few that are worth checking out.

Ontario Craft Beer Week

Ontario Craft Beer Week, one of the main drinking events of the summer, started on Sunday, June 16 and goes until the end of this week. (And yes, we’re aware it’s not technically summer yet.) With tap takeovers, beer and food specials, and concerts, there’s something to keep you imbibing every night of the week.

After work on Monday, head east to the Relish Bar and Grill near Woodbine subway station to take part in the Craft Beer Week Danforth Pub Crawl (2152 Danforth Avenue, 5:45 p.m.). It’s a great excuse for east-enders to come out, and for everyone else to realize fun doesn’t stop and turn around at the Don. And once you’re all cozy with the east end, drop in at The Only Cafe on Wednesday or Thursday for some beer accompanied by that classic beer accoutrement: live music. Specifically, live music by the folks who made your beer, who will be competing in a battle of the brew bands (972 Danforth Avenue, 7:30 p.m.). If that kind of entertainment isn’t fancy enough for you, take a trip to south Etobicoke on Thursday night for a round the world tour (60 Horner Avenue, 6:30 p.m.) put on by Beau’s Brewery. It’s an experiential event involving food, beer, costumes, axe throwing, and make-believe. It sounds ambitious and fun.

While it can be tough to spend a whole lot of time out on weekdays (especially if you’ve got, like, a job you care about), there’s really no excuse not to go all-out at Craft Beer Week on the weekend. And what better way to do that than to start the weekend early by taking Friday off and going on a full-day “Marathon Madness” Toronto beer tour (Downsview Station, 11 a.m.)? You’ll head to every corner of the city (well, not Scarborough), meet with brewers, eat food, and, of course, drink. On Saturday, hang out in the sun at Wychwood Barns for this year’s Session Toronto festival (76 Wychwood Avenue, 4 p.m.), a day-long party that includes music, learning, and strange collaboration brews by various celebrities, because why not? End the week with a “nose to tail” five-course dinner with craft beer pairings at the Monarch Tavern (12 Clinton Street, 5:30 p.m.).

Coming Up In July

While many of the events on this list are focused on having fun with others, every now and then there’s nothing wrong with a little exclusivity. And what could be more exclusive than your own growlers of small-batch Bellwoods Brewery beer made with cherries you picked yourself? It can be yours with a donation to Not Far From the Tree (July 6).

We like to rag on each other, hate each other, and mock each others’ hockey teams, but when you get right down to it, Toronto and Ottawa aren’t that different (apart from Toronto being like a thousand times cooler, of course). And the good folks at Brewer’s Backyard have realized that, which is why they’re putting on back-to-back events that feature collaboration beers made by teams of brewers from both cities. The Toronto event takes place July 1 at the Evergreen Brickworks (550 Bayview Avenue, 12 p.m.). It’s a great chance to try brews from some of Ottawa’s craft breweries, which might not otherwise make it this far down the 401.

If you’re like us, you’ve always thought the Filipinos Making Waves Festival is a great cultural celebration that suffers from its lack of a major alcoholic component. Well, that all changes this year. On July 13, the festival will feature the launch of Bamboo Beer (Yonge-Dundas Square), which could be the world’s first bamboo-based beer. Between it and those two bamboo-hungry pandas that recently showed up at the zoo, this region is well on its way to becoming one of the world’s major bamboo consumers, we think.

After taking a couple of weeks to recover from all the boozin’, stop by The Rhino in Parkdale on July 14 for the bar’s Summer Beer Festival (1249 Queen Street West, 11 a.m.). You’ll be able to sample beers from a whole whack of breweries from Toronto and southern Ontario. And if you get bored, the bar has one of the most expansive and (relatively) inexpensive international bottle menus in the city.

Finish off the month with a trip to the granddaddy of all the summer beer festivals, Toronto’s Festival of Beer (Exhibition Place, 4:30 p.m. Fri, 1:30 p.m. Sat and Sun). This is no subdued tasting event. It’s a weekend of fun (and loud) times with beer from breweries both big and small, international and local. And there will be a musical roster that includes the New York hip-hop group De La Soul. Take that, everything else.

Coming Up In August

Kick August off the right way (that is, with beer, barbecue, and music) at the Hart House Craft Beer Festival (7 Hart House Circle, 7 p.m.) on August 1. This year also includes a talk by beer guru Mirella Amato. A bunch of Toronto’s brewers will be serving their creations. Also on tap will be Niagara-on-the-Lake’s Oast House Brewers and Caledon’s Spirit Tree Estate Cidery.

While running a food truck in this city might not be as lucrative as it could be if, say, food trucks were legally allowed to park on the street, there are many events this summer that will hopefully make it worth those creative entrepreneurs’ while. One such event is the Roundhouse Craft Beer Festival (255 Bremner Boulevard), taking place this year on the weekend of August 10 and 11. Last year’s festival included beer from a slew of local brewers and eats from five different food trucks. Given how much more awesome Toronto seems to get every year in the realms of both beer and food trucks, this year should be even better.

“All right, let’s get up a bit more speed and gradually ease it into second,” Bob Newhart, as a soft-spoken driving instructor, explains to a student taking just her second lesson. “Well, I didn’t want to cover reverse this early, but as long as you shifted into it….Of course, you’re nervous. I’m nervous. I’m not just saying that, I’m really very nervous. Just don’t pay any attention to their honking. You’re doing fine….You’re not blocking anyone’s lane…..No, as long as you are here on the safety island, you are not blocking anyone’s lane.”

It was January 1961, and the show was An Evening with Bob Newhart on Trans-Canada Telemeter, an early experiment in coin-operated pay-television that took place in Etobicoke between 1960 and 1965. Filmed in a spartan Bloor Street West TV studio, because of Telemeter’s small catchment area the special was seen by fewer than 2,000 viewers. But, as the world’s first live (non-sports) pay-per-view production, the Newhart special captured the attention of heavy-hitters from the film and television industries—all eager to witness pay-TV’s revolutionary promise “of a splendorous new show business in the future,” as Variety (December 14, 1960) put it.

Telemeter advertisement from the Toronto Star (February 26, 1960).

Trans-Canada Telemeter debuted its pay-TV services on February 26, 1960, capturing international attention from newspapers, trade journals, and magazines. After introductions and speeches by a variety of talking heads, the first program they aired was a brief tourist film, The Wonders of Ontario. Then, Telemeter’s opening-night audience of 1,000 subscribers could choose to watch The Journey to the Centre of the Earth or The Nun’s Story—uninterrupted and commercial-free.

Given that Trans-Canada Telemeter’s parent company, Famous Players Canadian Corp., was itself a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures, the venture was initiated as a transparent attempt to recover box office revenue being lost to television. After proposals to test pay-TV elsewhere fell through, Paramount selected Etobicoke because it offered the desired population density and per capita income level, as well as market competition from the handful of television stations available via rooftop antenna. Most importantly, the suburb was beyond the purview of the FCC and other American governmental agencies that had previously interfered with small-scale pay-TV field tests in the United States in the 1950s. As one Telemeter official put it, “if Pay-TV could be sold there, it could be sold anywhere.”

Within a year of launch, 13,000-14,000 homes, centered on the company’s facility at Bloor and Royal York Road, were wired with coaxial cable, buried or strung along telephone poles by the Bell telephone company. Of these potential subscribers, 5,000-6,000 paid the $5 installation fee for a device to access Telemeter’s service.

After tuning the television to Channel 5, subscribers could select 5A, 5B, or 5C by turning a knob on the coin box: a device about the size of a mantle radio and connected to the television by two wires. Depositing the required coins—ranging from 75 cents to $2 depending on the program—at the appropriate time descrambled the television signal to give a crisper picture than that available by antenna alone. (Right: Telemeter advertisement from the Toronto Star [January 8, 1960].)

Broadcasting for about five hours each evening, and longer on weekends, Telemeter offered subscribers their choice of first-run and older movies (some of them available in colour), live sports, and public service programming.

From 1960 to 1961, film options ranged from The Ten Commandments, Psycho, Old Yeller, and Village of the Damned to the Presley-vehicle Flaming Star, as well as risqué fare targeted to an adult audience like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Baby Doll.

This being post-war Toronto, of course, it took less than a month for Telemeter to run afoul of the Lord’s Day Alliance, the moralistic do-gooders who slavishly ensured the Sunday closure of shops, children’s playgrounds, and just about everything else in Toronto. “This is, in a sense, paying for one’s entertainment,” an alliance spokesman argued of Telemeter, “and to pay for Sunday amusement is, with some notable exceptions, considered unlawful, if not sinful, in this province.” After some initial hand-wringing, the opposition quietly petered out.

From the Toronto Star (January 29, 1961).

From its launch, Telemeter carried Maple Leafs’ road games for $1 a game, prompting some sceptical critics to question whether the public would pay for something available for free on Saturday nights. But avid sports fans also proved willing to pay for boxing and football games. Nearly a quarter of Telemeter’s subscribers paid a hefty $2 for live coverage of the CFL Argonauts’ exhibition games against the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers and St. Louis Cardinals in the summer of 1960, and the regular season CFL games broadcast on Telemeter through the 1962 season.

Prior to Newhart’s appearance, Telemeter’s only experience in original television production came from each evening’s 15-minute Toronto Star News and the other public service programming that occasionally aired free-of-charge. Debates by local educationalists, clergymen, and charities were sometimes recorded for re-broadcast, municipal and Metro election results were carried live in December 1960, and eventually a series of documentaries explaining how local government worked aired beginning in April 1961.

Advertisement from the Toronto Star (December 31, 1960).

Through its manager, William O. Crampton, Telemeter sought to create original programming that would differentiate pay-TV from regular broadcast television. A graduate of Toronto’s Central Tech and the Royal Conservatory of Music, Crampton had worked as a big band drummer and photographer before moving to New York City in 1948 to work in television. Described as “tough, shrewd, personable, and definitely experienced” by one Toronto television critic, Crampton had worked behind the scenes on a couple of variety shows before becoming a specialist in launching new television stations, which he helped do in Syracuse, Alabama, Brazil, and Puerto Rico. Returning to Toronto in 1955, he was a pioneer producer of television commercials at MacLaren Advertising before being hired by Telemeter.

Crampton called upon his industry contacts to secure rising comedy star Bob Newhart to star in Telemeter’s first live-to-air production. Newhart agreed to do the special for an estimated $2,500-$4,000—only a fraction of the $10,000 fee he regularly commanded for a week-long nightclub engagement. The potential of pay-television intrigues Bob,” his handlers explained to the press. “Being a studious and naturally curious young man he’s anxious to see for himself what pay-television is all about.” In reality, it was likely the potential royalties he’d earn each time the videotaped show was re-run that enticed him—as it was for numerous other stars who later accepted lower-than-usual fees to appear on Telemeter.

“It ought to have considerable guidepost value for both wary broadcasters and exuberant show-men,” Variety explained about the importance of the Newhart program, “whether or not it resolves the pro and con of paysee’s efficacy versus commercial tele.”

From the Toronto Star (January 7, 1961).

Along with Shelley Berman, Jonathan Winters, and Lenny Bruce, Newhart was part of a new wave of comedy in the Eisenhower years. Traditional comics continued to do dull “mother-in-law jokes and one-liners about their wives being bad cooks,” Newhart recalled in his autobiography. “Generally speaking, ours was a different kind of comedy than telling jokes,” he continued. “We did situational comedy. We told stories and did comedic vignettes.”

Just one year earlier, Newhart was an unknown in Chicago, doing stints as an accountant, a hardware salesman, a law student, and a bureaucrat in an unemployment benefits office—quitting the last when he realized he could make nearly as much money collecting instead of dispensing unemployment cheques. While working as an advertising copywriter in the late 1950s, Newhart and a co-worker entertained themselves composing absurdly comic situations over the telephone. Some taped samples wound up in the hands of Warner Brothers Records, and the unknown comic was signed to a record deal in 1959.

When Newhart recorded his first album, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, over two weeks at a club in February 1960, it was the first time he’d ever performed before a live audience. The record was an immediate sensation, remaining the top seller for 14 weeks. Newhart became particularly popular among college students, who preferred having pizza and beer while listening to comedy records over an expensive evening watching a nightclub comedy act. Next for Newhart came a series of television appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show and The Tonight Show with Jack Paar, ever-more-lucrative nightclub engagements, and the release of two follow-up LPs.

An Evening with Bob Newhart was hyped in the local newspapers, on radio stations, and in the Telemeter Guide distributed to all subscribers. Although he declined an offer to autograph records at a local department store, the 31-year-old comic did advance press with journalists and radio personalities who visited the studio the afternoon before the show; a wise-cracking Newhart tried to not appear bored working with technical staff to test the audio-video equipment.

At 8:30 p.m. on January 5, he stepped in front of the cameras, performing his 70-minute show before a studio audience of 100 invited guests and the viewers at home who’d deposited their $1.25. “To the usual invited studio audience, primed by intimacy and warm-up rituals,” Variety (January 11, 1961) raved on its front-page, “Newhart’s debut on pay-see seemed impactful as the shy little guy whose satires on the political foibles of the age verge on hilarity.”

The studio set was sparse—just a simple backdrop—but it suited Newhart’s ability to conjure vivid scenes with only a few words. “This was one whale of an advantage for an outfit attempting its first production of this sort,” Bob Blackburn argued in the Toronto Star (January 6, 1961). “All they had to do was shove him in front of a curtain, point a camera at him, and let him go.”

In his characteristic fashion, Newhart weaved mild exaggerations of everyday life situations into more and more ridiculous scenarios, fumbling along as he revealed more details, and patiently turning his pregnant pauses into punchlines.

In addition to “The Driving Instructor,” Newhart performed several of his classic routines. There was the one where a plain-clothes policeman nonchalantly uses psychology to talk a jumper down from a ledge. “He could conjure up an image of an essentially tragic situation,” a Globe and Mail (January 6, 1961) reviewer noted, “and make you shake with laughter without slipping into bad taste about the man, who eventually jumps.”

“I wish I knew where the material comes from,” Newhart had told Marvin Schiff of the Globe and Mail (January 5, 1961), “and I’d go back there. I draw a lot from personal experience.”

Blackburn raved about An Evening with Bob Newhart, but remained disappointed that the comedian’s then-modest repertoire meant most of the routines were familiar to anyone who owned Newhart’s records. As a condition of his Telemeter contract, however, Newhart also composed at least one new routine especially for the program which he was not allowed to perform again in any other format unless he purchased back the rights from Telemeter.

One original piece involved a plane passenger who suspects his seat-mate is Hitler (it “still needs to be worked on” one critic assessed) which later re-appeared on Bob Newhart Faces Bob Newhart (1964). Another new routine imagined Wernher von Braun’s responses to a Mike Wallace-style hard-hitting interview—included on the album Behind the Button-Down Mind (1961) released shortly after Newhart’s pay-TV appearance.

The day after his Telemeter premiere Newhart flew to New York to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show (his third time) and the The Dinah Shore Show later that month before launching a 40-stop North American tour on January 30. By the time he was back in Toronto on May 4 to perform at Massey Hall, Newhart had cleaned up at the 1961 Grammy Awards—winning best new artist, album of the year for The Button-Down Mind and best comedy performance for its follow-up, The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back. Although a variety show he started hosting on NBC in 1961 lasted only until 1962, Newhart was well on his way to establishing himself as a staple of television comedy for decades to come.

The Telemeter special was rebroadcast the following two nights. According to figures published in Broadcasting (February 6, 1961), 30 per cent of Telemeter subscribers, or an estimated 1,740 homes, paid $1.25 to watch Newhart between January 5 and 7. The actual number of viewers was somewhat higher because Telemeter subscribers frequently invited friends over to watch pay-TV programming—so much so that rush hour-levels of traffic in and out of Etobicoke were often reported on hockey nights.

Newhart’s program was hailed by Telemeter officials as “a fabulous success.” The company was consistently tight-lipped about its viewership actuals, preferring instead to refer to the percentage of subscribers who tuned in. The assumption was that if a given percentage of Telemeter subscribers were willing to pay for a program, then so would the same percentage of all viewers, if pay-TV were more widely available. Officials at the parent company were ecstatic at Newhart’s 30 per cent penetration, which compared quite favourably with recent free-TV specials by Jackie Gleason, Bob Hope, Victor Borge, and Fred Astaire. “It was a shot heard round the show business world,” one Paramount executive told Variety (January 18, 1961).

Telemeter quickly sought to follow up with more experiments in original content. Seeking programming unavailable on free-TV, the company invested an estimated quarter of a million dollars in acquiring rights and production costs for a series of special presentations that winter and spring.

(Left: Advertisement for Telemeter’s Hedda Gabler from the Toronto Star; April 20, 1961.)

Performances of several theatrical shows in New York—Gian Carlo Menotti’s opera, The Consul, a hit off-Broadway production of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, and Chekhov’s The Country Scandal—were filmed for airing on pay-TV. Promoted with the tag line “From Broadway to Bloor Street,” each was aired unabridged and uninterrupted.

Failing to see how The Consul differed from something the CBC might have done, at the Star Blackburn critiqued that the opera was “all very well, but it isn’t the sort of thing, quite, that’s going to make people sit up and say, ‘Here’s something that’s never been tried on television before.’”

Ninety minutes of improvisational comedy from Chicago’s Second City Revue, which made its television debut with a special on the pay-TV service in early July 1961, proved to be an outstanding critical success. “Their humor is pungent, their attack probing,” said the Star‘s critic Nathan Cohen of the Second City performers. “They can invest the most threadbare subject with a fresh and invigorating quality.” But, as with aforementioned theatrical screenings, few subscribers handed over $1.25 to watch the comedy troupe.

The only real success of the post-Newhart original programming was Show Girl, Carol Channing’s two-hour one-woman show. Five cameras focused on the stage at New York’s Eugene O’Neill Theatre, and another filmed audience members milling around the lobby before the show and during intermission, in order to simulate the live theatre experience for Etobicoke viewers. (Right: Promo for Telemeter’s Second City special from the Toronto Star; June 24, 1961.)

The first Broadway show televised live-to-air in its entirety, Show Girl was so popular with Torontonians in April—capturing 38 per cent of the potential audience at $1.50 per household for the live broadcast, and supplemented by numerous reruns over the ensuing weeks—that the O’Keefe Centre was added to Channing’s summer tour.

After Crampton left Telemeter to become general manager of Toronto’s just-launched CFTO-TV in late May 1961, the pay-TV enterprise all but abandoned producing original content outside of sports and local politics in subsequent years.

From the Toronto Star (July 27, 1963).

Critics of pay-TV couldn’t figure out Telemeter’s math. One independent survey in October 1960 found that subscribers were only spending an average of $1 per week on pay-TV programming, well below the estimated $100 per year each customer had to spend for Telemeter to break even.

Around the time of Newhart’s special in early 1961, Telemeter reached its peak of nearly 6,000 subscribers. Faced with a waiting list of 450, with demand outstripping the supply of coin boxes, Telemeter began removing coin-boxes from homes if the subscriber failed to deposit at least 75 cents each week. The company found, however, that because the set-top boxes had become something of a status symbol—a perk hyped in rental classifieds and real estate ads—consumers were unwilling to give them up. As a result, Telemeter eventually implemented a $15 annual fee on top of the program pricing to boost its sagging revenues.

“We are not making money…but we are satisfied with results so far,” one prominent Telemeter official professed in 1961. Telemeter was only an experiment, went the company line, for testing the pay-TV equipment and learning what types of programming viewers are willing to pay for.

Despite frequent proclamations that pay-TV would soon be available across Metro Toronto, Telemeter made no serious efforts to expand its service apart from adding some portions of nearby Mimico and New Toronto in late 1961. The total number of subscribers, however, remained constant, an indication that new subscribers were off-set by cancellations as the novelty wore off.

Telemeter was, in reality, losing money hand over fist, even on its most popular programming. This didn’t become apparent until boardroom turmoil became front page news. In the fall of 1961, Toronto lawyer and businessman Norman Robertson resigned as a director at Famous Players, alleging that Telemeter had lost Famous Players over $400,000 in 1960. Not only were shareholders being denied a full financial picture, he argued, but the company was being milked by Paramount Pictures, absorbing financial losses while the American firm accrued the benefits of the pay-TV field trial.

(Left: Telemeter ad from the Toronto Star; January 15, 1960.)

Although Paramount officials responded swiftly, announcing that they would assume all Telemeter operating costs retroactive to January 1, 1961, there were growing murmurs from the United States that film industry shareholders were losing interest in coin-operated pay-TV.

Telemeter straggled on, without any real effort to attract or retain customers, or to expand its geographic reach. Even as the company’s dwindling subscription base was rumoured to be as low as 2,000 by August 1964, Paramount just kept absorbing losses that cumulatively reached into the millions.

The service was, at long last, wound up at the end of April 1965. Cable systems, supplanting roof-top antennas as the future of the television industry by the end of the decade, would eventually usher in Canada’s next foray into pay-TV.

Nathan Cohen was scathing in his post-mortem of the Trans-Canada Telemeter scheme. “But what it has all come down to is that all those visions of millions upon millions of people at home gladly paying money for specific shows, instead of taking whatever free TV has to offer them, were just pipe dreams,” he wrote in the Toronto Star (March 24, 1965). “For hockey games, yes, for boxing matches, maybe, and for anything else—most likely, no.” Calling pay-TV a mirage, Cohen concluded: “For that is what Pay-TV is: the biggest, most expensive act of collective self-deception in the experience of show business.”

Additional sources consulted: Ian Anthony in Broadcaster (October 2002); Ken Easton in Cablecaster (April and June 2001); Mike Filey, Toronto Sketches 4 (Dundurn, 1995); Bob Newhart, I Shouldn’t Even Be Doing This! (Hyperion, 2006); and articles from Billboard (January 9, 1961); Broadcasting (January 2, 1961); Globe and Mail (October 17, 1959; January 22, February 27, March 9, and August 2, 1960; March 3, 17 & 18, April 19 & 29, May 5, 9 & 15, June 26, July 1, October 17, November 8 & 23, and December 6, 1961; April 25, 1962; February 25, May 29, August 6, August 22, and December 11 & 16, 1963; January 27 and August 8, 1964; March 25 and November 12, 1965); Montreal Gazette (December 27, 1960); Sports Illustrated (December 26, 1960); Toronto Star (November 1, 1958; June 18 and July 23, 1959; January 29, February 26 & 27, March 7, 8 & 26, April 4 & 30, May 14, June 24, October 11, November 8, 9, 10 & 29; and December 2, 24 & 29, 1960; January 20 & 21, February 11, 14 & 18, March 2, 4, 5, 16 & 17, April 3 & 6, May 5, 19 & 29, June 12 & 24, July 8 & 21, August 2, 11 & 19, September 9, October 6, 7 & 20, and November 22, 1961; July 26, 1962; July 27 and December 5, 1963; November 10, 1964; June 3, 1965; September 2, 1966; June 4, 1976; November 8, 1999; and May 7, 2000); and Variety (March 29, 1961).

Every Saturday, Historicist looks back at the events, places, and characters that have shaped Toronto into the city we know today.

This guy is so stoked for the Sunday night hip-hop show, he can’t even keep it together.

How did everyone enjoy The National? Are there any good day shows we should know about? Let us know. Anyway, here are our selections for Saturday and Sunday.

Tre Mission

When: Saturday, June 15, 9 p.m.
Where: Wrongbar (1279 Queen Street West)

We’ve been pretty high on local MC/producer Tre Mission for about a year now, which is also roughly how long we’d waited for his next mixtape, Malmaison. (The project was supposed to be done in time for last year’s NXNE, but rappers aren’t always huge on punctuality. It came out on Tuesday.) Mission may be one of the most intriguing characters in rap, not only locally, but period. A North American MC who made his mark in the very British grime subgenre, he’s equally comfortable talking street shit or analyzing his own self-doubt, and he does things like rhyme over instrumentals from Jamie xx and sample Imogen Heap.

Go if: You like a mix of sharp wordplay and unexpected influences.

(Chris Dart)

White Lung

When: Saturday, June 15, 11 p.m.
Where: The Horseshoe Taven (370 Queen St. W.)

Vancouver’s White Lung is one of Canada’s aggressive music gems. The band’s last record, Sorry, is an incredible piece of punk songwriting, fusing acerbic wit and relentlessly infectious song structures. Mish Way is a commanding frontwoman (and a great music journalist as well, who broke taboo and reviewed her own record for Vice), and we fully expect this set to steal the show at the incredibly strong punk showcase it’s part of.

Go if: The idea of fast, menacing, yet cerebral punk is irresistible.

(Natalie Zina Waschots)

Ryan Hemsworth

When: Saturday, June 15, 1 a.m.
Where: BLK BOX (1087 Queen Street West)

Halifax producer Ryan Hemsworth is at the forefront of the cloud-rap trend. In the last 12 months, he’s become one of the most sought-after remix artists around, and has reworked songs by everyone from Grimes to Lil B to Lana Del Rey. His original productions blur the lines between rap instrumental and electronic experiments, and his big, expansive soundscapes, dense layers of synths, and dramatic builds work equally well when backed with a house-music thump or a skittering hi-hat.

Go if: You want to see whether his studio wizardry translates to his live shows.

(Chris Dart)

Deniro Farrar

When: Saturday, June 15, 12 a.m.
Where: Wrongbar (1279 Queen Street West)

When: Sunday, June 16, 4 p.m.
Where: Yonge-Dundas Square (1 Dundas Square)

Charlotte’s Deniro Farrar has compared himself to both Tupac Shakur and Charles Manson. He’s dubbed his incongruous, sometimes jarring blend of pretty, ethereal cloud-rap beats and ultra-thuggish rhymes “cult rap.” In short, he’s supremely weird, but he may be one of the more interesting acts at this year’s festival.

Go if: You dig this whole “cloud-rap” thing, but wish it had more edge.

(Chris Dart)

Tangiers

When: Saturday, Jun 15, 12 a.m.
Where: The Garrison (1197 Dundas Street West)

A decade ago, Tangiers were often being mentioned in the same breath as the Strokes (or being unfairly compared to them), and the energetic young post-punk rockers were one of Toronto’s fastest rising rock acts. But Tangiers burned too brightly, and its members scattered to other projects (Josh Reichmann has had a particularly eclectic solo recording career). Now, however, the band has reunited for one hometown show.

Go if: You want to see the original line-up responsible for 2003′s Hot New Spirits rip through those blitzkrieg tunes again.

(Steve Fisher)

Joey Bada$$

When: Saturday, June 15, 1 a.m.
Where: Wrongbar (1279 Queen Street West)

When: Sunday, June 16, 8 p.m.
Where: Yonge-Dundas Square (1 Dundas Square)

Brooklyn-based MC Joey Bada$$ may only be 18, but his style is strangely reminiscent of the classic east-coast MCs of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. His breakout 2012 mixtape, 1999, was filled with with sharp wordplay and sample-heavy beats. Rap nerds have spent years waiting for someone to resurrect “real” New York rap. (The Southern-influenced styles of A$AP Rocky and French Montana don’t really count, area codes be damned.) This guy looks like the man for the job.

Go if: You’re out to see the next big thing.

(Chris Dart)

Fat Tony

When: Sunday, June 16, 6 p.m.
Where: Yonge-Dundas Square (1 Dundas Square)

Houston’s Fat Tony became a blog darling after he released “Hood Party” earlier this year. The song was both a high-impact party jam and a scathing sendup of gentrification. It also did a great job of encapsulating what’s great about Fat Tony: a versatile flow that can go from fast and syncopated to slow and laconic on a dime, as well as scads of smart references. You’re going to like him.

(Chris Dart)

Go if: You’ve recently bought a fixer-upper in a formerly blue-collar neighbourhood.

Social Distortion plays for a damp crowd at Yonge-Dundas Square. Photo by John Tavares, Jr. from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

How was everyone’s first full night at NXNE? Was the Social Distortion show wet enough for you? Did someone block your view with an umbrella? Don’t worry. Tonight is supposed to be much nicer. Here’s our rundown of what to see.

The National

When: Friday, June 14, 9 p.m.
Where: Yonge Dundas Square (1 Dundas Street East)

The National returns to Toronto with its new record, Trouble Will Find Me, already flying off (e-)shelves. Husky baritone Matt Berninger and his bandmates will play for free at the “centre of Toronto,” Yonge-Dundas Square. This is one of just a handful of shows that could conceivably outdraw last year’s free Flaming Lips gig.

Go if: Crescendo Rock is just the rock for you.

(Steve Fisher)

Shooting Guns

When: Friday, June 14, 10 p.m.
Where: The Hideout (484 Queen St. W.)

Saskatoon’s Shooting Guns might hail from the frozen tundra of our most rectangular prairie province, but its sound is vast, buttery, and full of sweet, hot smoke. With bits of drone, stoner metal, and sludge mixed into each track, the group’s compelling and hallucinatory record, Born To Deal in Magic: 1952-1976, earned it a spot on last year’s Polaris Prize long list. Expect this NXNE performance to be heavy, psychedelic, and remarkably dense.

Go if: You like your riffs fat, fuzzed and deliciously droning.

(Natalie Zina Walschots)

Blowfly

When: Friday, June 14, 1 a.m.
Where: The Horseshoe Tavern (370 Queen Street West)

It’s probably a bit of a stretch to call Blowfly a hip-hop artist, but for NXNE’s purposes he doesn’t really fit anywhere else. The masked soul singer from the ‘60s and ‘70s is often considered to be the first-ever rapper because of his penchant for almost mind-blowingly filthy rhyming couplets.

Go if: You want to hear a really filthy version of the alphabet song.

(Chris Dart)