Eleanor McMahon thinks it’s time to change the conversation around cycling in Ontario.

McMahon is the founder of the Share the Road Cycling Coalition, who will be hosting the fifth annual Ontario Bike Summit this week in Toronto. She says that we need to stop talking about things like bike lanes and other bicycle infrastructure as a zero sum game between cars and bikes.

“We do polling, and our polling tells us that 89 per cent of Ontarians are both drivers and cyclists,” she says. “The notion that it’s cars versus bikes is overblown, and it’s really not working anymore. Deciding to change the conversation means going out of our way to poke holes in that idea and say from the get go ‘We don’t buy into that philosophy, and just because you say it, doesn’t make it true.’ ”

Even with the success of acts like Lonely Island and Flight of the Conchords, people still tend to view musical comedy with some suspicion, and not without reason. Those high-profile success stories aside, at the club level, musical comedy is too often the province of people who aren’t quite good enough to make it as musicians, but not quite funny enough to make it as comedians.

Two local comics, Robert Keller and Rush Zilla, are out to change that perception with their show, Off Key Comedy, which features a wide variety of acts whose only commonality is that they combine music and comedy in one form or another. The third edition of the monthly show will take place on May 23, at Comedy Bar.

Despite the fact that the last show in Buddies in Bad Times Theatre’s 2012/2013 season is titled Of a Monstrous Child: A Gaga Musical, Lady Gaga herself takes a secondary role. There are no homages to raw-meat dresses and gold-plated wheelchairs here. Instead, writer and director Alistair Newton uses the House of Gaga as a pathway into the history of the notable performance-art stars that came before her in the pantheon of queer iconography, and how she is and isn’t a construct of all of them put together.

After news of the death of Apple co-founder and CEO-until-recently Steve Jobs spread across the internet on Wednesday night, local fans of his work began to flock to the nearest physical manifestation of the California-based company’s corporate might: the Eaton Centre Apple Store. Two days on, the exterior of the shop has turned into a surprisingly touching memorial, with some mourners leaving their thoughts scrawled on Post-it notes, and others leaving more substantial trinkets behind. Here’s a gallery of photos of the scene as of earlier today.

Like other “affiliate” labels, the Canadian mainstream music companies have also been plagued by a series of mergers and staff cutbacks over the last few years. Sony BMG’s February restructuring saw the ouster of president Lisa Zbitnew and a stable of key staff, and the company had already experienced the elimination of most of the Sony staff post-merger despite calling it an “equal represention” union. The Toronto-based affiliate also pruned-off domestic artists like Shawn Desman, Liam Titcomb and Jeremy Fisher (Fisher is now enjoying unexpected success thanks to being featured on YouTube’s front page, and Titcomb—son of musician Brent Titcomb—just finished recording a new album independently).
Just days earlier, EMI Music Canada also cut staff and liquidated half its roster in what some claim was anticipatory of a merger with the Warner Music Group (Warner has already made four failed bids for EMI). EMI is home to acts like Nickelback, Broken Social Scene, k-os and Feist.
Probably one of the most brilliant books on how it feels to be swept-up in the contemporary music business is Jen Trynin’s Everything I’ve Cracked Up To Be. Trynin describes being caught in a label bidding war, trying to avoid the Lilith Fair circuit, being juggled as a commodity, and being ruthlessly slashed from her label as quickly as she was courted, leaving her disenchanted and confused.
This is what the industry has become, and Ezrin doesn’t feel it can sustain itself as such. He calls for true artists to develop a determined, single-minded approach that doesn’t conform “at the expense of intuition.” He has lived through—and created much of—the Golden Age of rock music, yet remains cautiously optimistic that we can summon a new Golden Age of music, where artists are in control of their voices and value is placed on creativity.
Until then, we are reminded of the lyrics of “My Record Company,” by K’s Choice:
They like your band / They shake your hand
They smell like food that has gone bad
Today it’s you / Today will pass
I’m so sick of all this trash
The full text of Bob Ezrin’s letter follows:

Trent Reznor is a true visionary. He has broken and reinvented the rules of
engagement on every level, from recording to touring to interacting with his
fans.
He’s an intensely determined person—aware and on top of everything that happens in his name, from his music to his marketing. Trent controls all things Trent. Yes, he’s had help along the way, but he’s the captain of the Trent ship and his career is a product of his imagination and drive. He is not manufactured, homogenized, manipulated or packaged. He is Trent—and the rest of the folks get to react.
There’s a clue in here to how to run one’s life as an aspiring artist. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in situations where aspiring artists (as you know, I hate the designation but will grant it to a few sublimely talented folks like Trent) have created something and have had a vision that has not resonated with their “handlers” from management to producers, to the record company to even sometimes their lawyer—and have succumbed to the pressure to conform to the taste and judgment of these people at the expense of their own intuition—and have failed either immedately or ultimately because, in the end, they simply weren’t distinguished enough to connect to a large group of people in a lasting way. They may have produced a “hit song” but they typically did not create a career.
If Trent had done what everyone wanted him to, he would not have become a better selling act or bigger star as some of his advisors may have secretly thought. Instead, he would have disappeared long ago.
No one knows the heart or genius of true artists but the artists themselves. No one can predict them or imitate them or even steer them towards success. They are, by definition, single-minded people who cannot—and must not—see things the way the rest of us do. Once upon a time, we had a business built by passionate amateurs who revered the artists and who became their protectors, advocates and promoters. These folks didn’t presume to tell their artists what to do. Oh, every once in a while, they might beg and plead for more or different to help them to do their job, but they never imposed their creative will on the people they most admired in all the world.
And so we had a landscape of determined individualists who made very individual music—lots of it. We all know who they were—and some still are. But now the biggest part of the business is run by cold-hearted professionals whose reverence is for the bottom line first and last—and who think nothing of imposing their ideas and will on the people they sign. And most of those signings are not because they are enthralled by genius or art but because they smell “a hit” or know that someone else does and that they’d better get in there first.
Now, when I say stuff like this, all the record company people get pissed off at me and say I’m an asshole and that they are there because of their love for music, etc. And I don’t doubt that this is what propelled them at the start (though I suspect the notion of getting rich and hanging with rockstars may have had a bit to do with it too), but how many of the new leaders of our industry are able to resist the pressures of making their numbers in favor of supporting their artists? In fact, isn’t their primary job to “increase shareholder value”? So, they really can’t resist those pressures honestly and still be doing what they’re being paid to do. The problem with this is that it takes more than a [business financial] quarter to build something of value and real art cannot be scheduled or projected—only commodities can. But if we’re just a commodities business, then by definition we cannot build anything of real value—for the shareholders or the world.
So, what’s the biggest lesson here? It is that, if we can all agree to do as Ahmet [Ertegün, co-founder of Atlantic Records] recommended and surround ourselves with brilliant people and help those people to develop their craft, their own voice, and become artists making things of real value, we might see our way into the next golden age of popular music.
Thank God for Trent—and for all the others like him who will not compromise and will fight to realize their vision. In the end, they might save us all.
Bob

Bob Ezrin photo: CP

Your protagonist Egg sets herself apart from the other children of celebrities at her high school by shaving her head and wearing a white cloak everywhere. She also creates her own masks, with her father, who’s a renowned special-effects creator. What’s your dream sci-fi creature?
Good question. An alien I would like to see would probably have a big brain and a big heart. And probably nice, large kind eyes. But not like your typical alien him being a special-effects creator in the book. I was extra-ing to make money on movies in L.A., and I was interviewed to be a child ape on the Planet remake. (I’m very small.) I went to the interview, and it was just me and a bunch of little people at Rick Baker’s studio trying on these ape masks. In the end, my boobs were too big, so I didnt get picked to be an ape. I cried and cried about that.
She’s a hard-core sci-fi and comics devotee. What’s your favourite comic book?
The latest one I read, Y The Last Man. And The Runaways, about those kids whose parents are an order of evil people.
The fictional film in the book, Terminal Earth, is Egg’s Star Wars-meets-Star Trek film obsession. You stood in line for 6 weeks for the first Star Wars prequel. Thoughts on the final movie?
I was a little disappointed in Episode One, in shock and awe of Two, and by the time Three came around, I feel like I have Stockholm syndrome. “OhmyGod it’s so much better than One and Two!” But it’s still a thrill, the scrolling credits, the theme music, I’m always going to love Star Wars. Darth Vader starts breathing and I get excited. When I first saw Darth Vader spin off at the end of A New Hope, I was 7 years old and I wanted to write the sequel myself. It was the first time I understood that that was someone’s job. For me it was a really big deal. So waiting on line for Episode One was kind of like to honour that moment for me.
What is it about YA today, like the bestselling Gossip Girl series, that makes it the hot genre, to read and to market?
I think that there is always going to be mass-market fiction, and whatever gets people reading is a really good thing. Personally, I like different kinds of literature [than GG], a little bit more challenging. But there’s room for everything because different people have different tastes. If when you’re reading a book and it’s not for you, its just not written in your code. And some people’s code is Gossip Girl. Mine isn’t.
Were you a fan of Douglas Adams, Madeleine L’Engle and the like?
As a teenager, one of my favourite sci-fi middle-grade books was The Tripod Trilogy by John Christopher, coming of age, sci-fi, fantastic with these kids, tripods invade Earth, they have to walk across England to France and the white mountains and save humanity. That was my first big sci-fi book I found on my own. And of course, Madeleine L’Engle! I even wrote her a letter 10 years ago, gushing ‘I really want to write kids books.’ And she wrote me back and wished me luck! And I really like Citizen of the Galaxy, by Robert Heinlein. There’s something about that book…
What else are you up to in T.O.?
First stop: Coupe Bizarre. When I lived in Montreal, Vince always did my hair because we were in film school together, so whenever I come to Canada I try to get to Toronto, so he can do it again. Whatever he wants to do – he’s done incredible things. He would experiment on my head, and I’d walk out a different person. Once, I had to sleep on my face for a month because I had copper wires sticking out my head.
So what’s your Montreal connection?
I lived in Montreal for 8 years, in the Plateau, while attending Concordia film school. I spent every single morning at a coffee shop that’s now called Laika, at the corner of Duluth and Saint Laurent.
So you’re on a sort of hiatus from L.A., spending the summer in Canada?
Canada really energizes me because my family is all in Montreal. They’re French-Canadian, all from Quebec City, where I spent all my summers growing up. There’s something really soothing about being here. Poutine. St. Hubert chicken (that sauce!). And speaking French. Or maybe it’s as simple as not being in America, being somewhere different and people thinking differently. I love L.A., it inspires me and it’s my muse, but its a little bit beige sometimes. Whereas here, everybody is just exploding with passion, from every angle. Everybodys cute. Even the things you can buy to put on the table are cute. Everything is good-looking here, and I love it. Maybe it’s the hard winter, creating a completely different point of view. I can breathe in a different way when I’m in Canada. My vie quotidienne is American and Los Angeles, but I’m so glad that I can get Canadian humour. I get the joke.