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How can someone from another city write an honest article on a scene they haven’t been involved with?

By Cameron Reed

Thursday September 18, 2008

…why didn’t someone from Vancouver get off their ass and write the damn article them self instead of having an ex-pat from BC do the dirty work? Is this another symptom of the typical apathetic Vancouver attitude, or did we just want to keep this our little secret for as long as possible? I sincerely hope it’s the latter.



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Expressway To My Skull on Exclaim’s article on Vancouver punk.

Okay, this shit about Josiah living in Calgary has been bugging me.

Answer: Neither. I don’t believe Exclaim has many Vancouver writers. One or two maybe. You think you can just pitch a feature to a national magazine on a little underground music scene that hasn’t produced any big-ish Canadian music “names” yet? No, you need some clout, like say, writing for said magazine for over a year. Like Josiah has. He cut his teeth reviewing every release from Vancouver he’s received since he started. This was also Josiah’s first feature article for our major national music publication and he chose to do it about Vancouver’s punk scene. That’s got to earn him some cred considering the magazine typically ignores our coast. He did a great job of it too, so why the fuck is anyone complaining?

Also, FYI: Josiah played in punk bands and booked shows in and around Vancouver for years before ever moving to Calgary. He may not have been “involved” with this scene but he definitely understands the hustle. More than say, someone simply going to live shows and writing about it.

And the reason why no one “involved” with the scene wrote the article is same reason your “apathetic” comment is ridiculous: They’re busy making music, booking shows, touring, practicing, working their asses off at their jobs to make money to put out their friends’ bands 7” on a little label they run, etc.

The whole blog entry pretty much reads “Waaah, I wish I could have gotten money to write that.” Want to talk about writing honestly, dude, at least recognize you are the apathetic one you’re talking about.

It could be worse, you could go into an embarrassingly overwrought analysis of said punk scene.