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Dan Mangan is nice, nice, very nice

by Matthew Kassel on

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bcscene.ca

It’s challenging to listen to Dan Mangan’s song “Robots” without singing along with the refrain: “Robots need love, too / They want to be loved by you.” Those words may or may not be true, but you believe them when you hear them.

Perhaps Mangan, the 27-year-old singer-songwriter from Vancouver, isn’t really singing about robots. But your interpretation, he says, is as good as his.      

“I think the truth is that once you’ve written something and you kind of put it out there into the world, it’s going to take on different forms to you,” Mangan says. “I like the idea that songs are ever-changing and are never actually finished.”  

Having just returned to Ottawa from a three-week European tour with his band—including guitarist Gordon Grdina, drummer Kenton Loewen, and bassist John Walsh—Mangan will begin a month-long tour of Canada, entitled “Peculiar Travel Suggestions,” on October 25.  

“We’ve done a lot of touring in bars,” Mangan says. “This tour does have some bars on it, but we’re also doing some churches and halls, some places that are a little bit less chaotic.”

Not that he was casting any judgment on chaos.

 “I really enjoy playing bars,” he says. “You’re helping to kind of create a party.”  

But with the success of his most recent album, Nice, Nice, Very Nice, which was nominated for the 2010 Polaris Music Prize, Mangan has more freedom to write his own ticket.

“There are aspects of playing shows in more kind of civilized places that you feel like you can come across with a real concert from start to finish,” Mangan says. “It can be a more cerebral experience. For the time being I’m excited to take it into more intimate venues.”

Having spent about two months on tour with his band, Mangan is happy to feel less like a solo artist, which is how he first started touring, and more like a member of a tight, cohesive group.  

“I feel less and less like I’m writing songs and then having people play along,” he said, “and more and more like I’ve got a bunch of songs that are mostly written and then bringing them to the guys and saying, ‘What do you guys want to do with this?'”

Mangan feels he can rely on them to do something he would not have foreseen: Grdina and Loewen are jazz musicians, while Mangan’s music is more indie folk.  

 “It’s nice because they bring out all kinds of flavours that other musicians might not, and I get to drag things out of them that they might not normally do as well,” he says.

He and his band have been working out about three or four new songs while on tour and will use the upcoming shows to hone them on stage. Mangan plans on cutting a new record with the new material in December when he returns to Vancouver. Still, he doesn’t regard his other songs as essentially complete.  

“[It’s not good] if you can’t find anything relatable in the song each time,” he says. “I think that’s the most important thing—to just try and live a song every time that you play it.”

Dan Mangan plays La Sala Rossa, October 25. Tickets are $18.

Arts & Entertainment

Literary launch lacks laughs

by Ricky Kreitner on

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Local literati were out in full blazered regalia on October 5 for the re-launch of Montreal humourist Jonathan Goldstein’s first novel, Lenny Bruce is Dead, originally published by Coach House Books in 2001. The 41-year-old Goldstein, author of two books, contributor to Chicago Public Radio’s This American Life, and host of CBC’s popular radio show Wire Tap, read selections from the novel, which came out this month. The event also featured a jazz set and musical interludes from three members of the local band Nutsak, whose drummer, Howard Chackowicz, later recorded a scripted segment with Goldstein for Wire Tap.

The back room at Casa del Popolo, where the reading took place, was filled completely, and included several potential contestants in a Jonathan Franzen look-a-like contest. The audience hummed and drank until a woman from Mile End bookstore Drawn and Quarterly asked for quiet and introduced the band and the author to enthusiastic applause, and even a few rowdy cheers.

The Brooklyn-born, Montreal-raised Goldstein (pronounced “Goldshtyne” by the Nutsak bassist) approached the stage in a Yankees cap and, of course, a blazer, nursing a half-finished pint of beer in his hand. He propped up his notes and stood before his ogling, cheering audience, sticking out his belly as if sporting a phantom paunch. He read 15 brief sections from his novel, counting them down one by one so that the audience wouldn’t fear it might go on forever. Between each segment Nutsak played an reinterlude, providing colourful and often comedic emphases at the end of each story (often not more than three sentences long), achieving an effect much like that in This American Life. Goldstein joked  that the four performers used to be in a spoken-word band that broke up over “creative differences.” He said, however, there was “still that same energy.”

Most of Goldstein’s stories, however, were short, forgettable vignettes, reminiscent of the first scene in Woody Allen’s 1979 movie, Manhattan. Woody Allen’s character is trying to to begin writing the first chapter of his autobiographical first book after the iconic black-and-white footage of Manhattan, which is accompanied by George Gershwin’s jazz symphony “Rhapsody in Blue” and an eruption of fireworks over Central Park.

He read aloud and repeatedly dismissed his own ideas: “Ah, too corny. Too corny for a man of my taste.” Another idea is “Too angry, I don’t wanna be angry.” And another: “No, it’s gonna be too preachy. I mean, face it, I wanna sell some books here.” He finally settles on an idea, and it works perfectly.

The segments Goldstein tonelessly read were almost all what Woody Allen, or really anybody, would have dismissed as a series of first-draft sketches that should have immediately been tossed aside. Goldstein didn’t toss them aside, but rather convinced some gullible schmuck to publish them—now, twice—in a volume described by one reviewer as containing “almost as much white space as there is type.” The label “experimental” can only be taken so far before it stretches into an epithet, a line Goldstein seems to have crossed without ever realizing it was there.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Bonjay : Broughtupsy

by Alex Hamilton on

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Broughtupsy is the fresh debut album from reggae/dancehall duo Bonjay—and fresh is exactly what it is. Fronted by singer Alanna Stuart and produced by beats/effects master Ian “Pho” Swain, Bonjay brings an invigorating mix of dancehall rhythms and crisp hooks to the floor, displaying ample evidence that these two have the savvy and experience needed to pack a club. Their influences are harder to pin down. In addition to their aforementioned reggae roots, they incorporate a blend of R&B, soul, and hip-hop, cemented by an indie rock songwriting sensibility.

Broughtupsy brings the jungle to your living room. At only six songs that play in just under 20 minutes, the album is short, but it’s the kind of record that can and should be listened to more than once. From the background chanting of the persistently groovy “Stumble” to the slick, eerie piano riffs on “Creepin,” Broughtupsy remains consistently enthralling, even on the short interlude track “The Small Hours.” Much of the credit should go to Stuart’s varied vocals, which keep the tracks fresh when they’re in danger of becoming repetitive. The dub horn is admittedly overused and the stream of beats barely leaves the listener time to breathe, but that’s all part of Bonjay’s charm.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

The Postelles : The Postelles

by Kyle Carpenter on

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The Postelles are an English accent and a few cheeky lyrics away from being a full-fledged Arctic Monkeys knockoff, but unfortunately their debut lacks the complexity of a Monkeys tune. Instead, it’s pretty straight pop. The instrumentation is minimalist at best (though not at it’s best when it’s minimal), with the light guitar lines and virtually fill-free drums taking a backseat to the vocals.  

The album picks up a smidge on “Boy’s Best Friend,” a nicely structured song with the welcome introduction of backing harmonies. However, its novelty is short lived, as the following tracks show little variation on the vocal driven “hit you over the head with pop hooks” theme. This homogeneity leads to the album’s biggest problem: it’s forgettable. The songs are too similar, and for what it is, it’s simply not grabby enough; I couldn’t even pick out the single, but the Internet told me it’s the opener, “White Night.”  

The album feels like an EP rather than a full-length. It’s got some good ideas, but the execution isn’t fully thought out. There’s potential here, sure. But in the wake of so many emerging indie pop bands, it’s hard to know whether or not the Postelles will get a chance to come back swinging.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Ice Cube : I Am the West

by Nicholas Petrillo on

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“Ice Cube is the West Coast” is the mission statement for his new album. But after 16 tracks loaded with self-indulgence, Cube and his small posse of gangster no-names, has-beens, and never-weres can’t give a decent reason for why he deserves the title of “Best in the West.”

The album isn’t all bad. Tracks like “Life In California,” “Y’all Know How I Am,” and “I Rep That West” have strong, quick hooks over catchy beats, but it’s the lyrics that drop the album from tolerable to vapid. The first half dishes out the phrases “West Coast” or “California” ad nauseam, while the second half bashes Kanye West, Lil’ Wayne, Eminem, and sends a huge “F-you” to the American system that took Ice Cube out of the slums of L.A. and made him a multimillionaire.

There was a time in the early 1990s when Ice Cube could have said he was the best in the West and all of California would have believed him. But it’s 2010, and he just doesn’t have the same storytelling style or energy he had on his ‘91 classic Death Certificate. The concept of representing your side of the country is irrelevant today, and it makes Ice Cube sound bitter, cranky, and short on material. If he doesn’t realize this soon, he’s going to wonder why the incessant gratitude and appreciation he shows for California isn’t mutual anymore.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Michael Franti & Spearhead: The Sound of Sunshine

by Alex Hamilton on

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Michael Franti & Spearhead is best known for its frontman’s vocal politics. On The Sound of Sunshine —Spearhead’s seventh studio album—Franti continues to preach, spreading a message of positive change through his music. Issues of world peace and social justice aren’t as prominent on this album as on previous ones, but the aim remains essentially the same.

The band’s songs have always been difficult to classify. There are obvious reggae and hip-hop elements, especially in Franti’s vocal style, but the band borrows from funk, jazz, and folk as well, though reggae-folk is the most prevalent. Many of the songs are about love and focus on the need for caring in our personal relationships.

The songwriting is always upbeat and occasionally poignant. “Gloria,” featuring regular collaborator Cherine Anderson, is an uplifting and emotional track that is one of Spearhead’s best efforts. The first couple of songs on the album are some of the strongest: the title track “Sound of Sunshine” is an airy, light-hearted reflection, while “Shake It” is an exuberant exhortation to get up and dance. The Sound of Sunshine ends with a gospel-y number, “The Sound of Sunshine Going Down,” echoing the melancholic end of a day. The album is slow, but it evokes positivity with its lyrics and music.

News

Conference tackles worldwide human rights problems

by Richard Ramcharan on

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A diverse group of scholars, lawyers, politicians, and members of various academic disciplines gathered last weekend for the Global Conference on Human Rights and Diverse Societies at Centre Mont Royal, steps away from the McGill campus.  

Founded by Gordon Echenberg as the Echenberg Family Human Rights Conference, this was the second event of its kind. Its predecessor, the Global Conference on the Prevention of Genocide, took place in 2007. Hosted by the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, the aim of the conference, Echenberg said, was to “have some practical contribution to human rights.”

François Crépeau, a professor of international law at McGill and the conference’s chair, opened the discussion by asking the audience to reflect on societies’ tendency to view issues in black-and-white terms. Societies tend to simplify issues, he said, to “us and them, thereby reducing the individual to a stereotype and thus dehumanizing the human.”

Numerous descriptions of human rights violations followed during the conference, with examples from locations as diverse as Afghanistan and Tibet.

The disregard for human rights due to a lack of respect for diversity exists around the world, and some speakers emphasized that Canada is no exception from this problem.

“Canadians tend to think that human rights [are] an issue dealing with others, those of developing countries,” said Commissioner Marie Wilson of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, which works on issues of suffering with Canada’s native population.

Through her work, Wilson highlighted the Canadian government’s imposition of rules and laws on First Nations which separated parents, children, and siblings from one another. In addition, she said, First Nations peoples were forced to give up their own laws, religion, and language while they attended residential schools that were administered by Catholic, United, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Methodist Churches on behalf of the government.

Malalai Joya, a member of Parliament in Afghanistan, made a heartfelt speech to the panel about the current situation in her country. She blamed the United States, NATO, and Canada, along with Taliban forces, for leaving Afghanistan in its current state of turmoil.

Since the American invasion, Afghanistan has become progressively worse and a “haven for terrorists,” Joya said. She added that rape, violence, and crimes against women have increased sharply in the country since the U.S.’s war on terror began.

“The donated democracy of the West,” Joya said, “[Has] made Afghanistan what it is today.”

Joya said the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan only brought more terrorists to the country, and called for a total withdrawal of overseas forces.

Adding a perspective from a different part of the world, Thupten Jinpa Langri, a professor in McGill’s Faculty of Religious Studies, and the principal English translator to the Dalai Lama, presented a talk about Tibetan Buddhists under Chinese rule. He suggested that there was no religious  persecution of any individual Tibetans, but that Tibet’s troubles were instead part of “a greater human rights crisis in China, which is a non-democratic, totalitarian state.”

Languri argued that if a ruling party views itself as the only legitimate voice of the state, then human rights cannot really be upheld in that society.

“Any expression of ethnicity and religiosity is seen as subversive and criminalized,” Jinpa added.

Professor Frances Raday, director of the Concord Research Center for Integration of International Law in Israel, took a more upfront approach to the issues of human rights violations and religious diversity.

“The problem of understanding religion and human rights,” she said, “is that most [violations are] actually racial hatred and not religious disagreement.”

She insinuated that many leaders and governments conveniently refer to these violations as an issue of religious discrepancies, which makes the problem into something it is not. According to Raday, racial hatred is often ignored, so progress is rarely made in dealing with these issues.

News, Science & Technology

New research shows video games may be addictive

by Victor Szuper on

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Many people play video games as a temporary retreat from work or study, or to occasionally escape in the experience of traveling virtually to places and situations unlikely or impossible in the real world.

According to recent studies by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto and by psychology researchers at Iowa State University, putting in a lot of joystick time might not be all fun and games. These studies have connected video games with the potential for both attention disorders and addiction problems.  

Iowa State University researchers Edward Swing and Douglas Gentile have been at the forefront of this new research topic. Their collaborative study, published in the journal Pediatrics in July, has found a modest link between playing video games and watching television, and attention problems in more than 1,300 children between the ages of eight and 11, based on assessments by teachers.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that children watch a combined maximum of two hours day of television and video games. This study found that children who watched more than this suggested amount were 1.5 to two times more likely to display attention difficulties.

“Most children are way above that,” Swing said. “In our sample, children’s total average time with television and video games is 4.26 hours per day, which is actually low compared to the national average.”

One possible reason for the link between video games and attention issues is the effects of video game play on the brain, Gentile said.

“If we train the brain to require constant stimulation and constant flickering lights, changes in sound and camera angle, or immediate feedback, such as video games can provide, then when the child lands in the classroom where the teacher doesn’t have a million-dollar-per-episode budget, it may be hard to get children to sustain their attention,” he said.

Based on the study’s findings, Gentile and Swing concluded that excessive video gaming may be a contributing factor to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children. They caution that while the association between attention problems and video game exposure is significant, it’s relatively small.

In addition to co-authoring the study, Gentile also published a study in 2009 in the journal Psychological Science that found that 8.5 per cent of video game players aged eight to 18 showed pathological behaviours when playing, spending twice as much time playing and receiving poorer grades in school—even after controlling for sex, age, and weekly amount of video games played. This minority was classified as addicted by exhibiting at least six out of 11 destructive symptoms in family, social, school, or psychological functioning.

However, not all games are equal in their addictive potential. Online role-playing games, like World of Warcraft, seem to be especially alluring.

There are often in-game advantages given to teams consisting of several players. The social pressure and expectations of being available to go on “runs,” (coordinated group game missions) at specific times can promote unhealthy levels of play.

Cyber café Battlenet 24 in Montreal provides 24/7 access to all gamers. 21-year-old Sebastian Hendren, an occasional Battlenet gamer, said he could understand the addictive potential of such games.

“They make you want to play more,” he said. “You finish a game, and you just want to keep on going.”

 Hendren said he knows individuals who would regularly meet to play for several hours in the evening on World of Warcraft game missions—he considered them to be addicted.

A survey conducted last year by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto confirmed that young people are spending increasingly more time playing video games, watching television, texting, and performing similar activities.

Of 9,000 students surveyed in Ontario from grades 7 to 12, nearly 10 per cent got at least seven hours of “screen time” every day, meaning video games and television. Over 10 per cent of the participants had reported a problem associated with video game use in the previous year.

Dr. Bruce Ballon, head of CAMH’s Adolescent Clinical and Educational Services, commented that seven hours a day in front of screens seemed a “bit out of control.”

Michael Hoechsmann, a professor at the departments of integrated studies in education at McGill and an expert on video game culture, said that he was “uncomfortable with the medicalization of video game playing behaviour which is implied in an addictions model.”

 However, he added, “many games are compelling, time-intensive and structured in such a way that players can be drawn to spending more and more time trying to reach new levels of achievement within the game environment.”

 He said that in many cases, “the same player who seemed ‘addicted’ to game playing will unplug and walk away, or become a casual player.”

Montreal, News

Montreal General Hospital cuts down MRI waiting times

by Kyla Mandel on

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The Montreal General Hospital and the Royal Victoria Hospital have made a dent in the long waiting lists for some MRI examinations by extending their MRI operating hours.

With hours now stretching into the evenings and weekends, the amount of time a patient must wait for an MRI scan for a minor injury has decreased. Waiting times, however, can still be up to three to seven months, depending on the injury.

A less serious injury entails an MRI exam for which a dye does not need to be injected into the patient. Examples include knees injuries, small joint and shoulder injuries, and wrist injuries. For more serious cases, such as tumors, lymphomas, pelvic organs, and certain brain MRIs, a radiologist must inject dye.

“It’s an interesting phenomenon,” said Dr. Larry Stein, chief radiologist at Royal Victoria Hospital. “The less serious of those patients have had their waiting time shortened, the more serious [ones haven’t] changed very much.”

Because radiologists only work on weekdays, the waiting time has not changed for the more serious MRI exams. The problem is exacerbated by the shortage of specialists in Quebec, including radiologists. The problem is particularly acute in Montreal.

“What people don’t know is that the government does not allow us to hire more radiologists,” Stein said. “We can’t even take on our brightest McGill graduates.”

Stein explained that if the McGill hospitals were able to hire five more radiologists, this would decrease the waiting time for all MRI exams significantly. Another way to shorten wait times would be to change the way the governments count the number of people working in a hospital.

At the moment, the government “counts bodies” rather than full time equivalents. Currently many of the female radiologists work 80 per cent of the full workweek—four days instead of five. If the actual amount time they put in at the hospital was taken into account, Stein said, it would show that there is room for five more radiologists.

Hospitals have been fighting for such changes for years, he added.

“It is attainable,” he said. “It’s attainable at the stroke of a pen.”

News, SSMU

SSMU considers switching to kegs for on-campus events

by Maria Flores on

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The Students’ Society is looking into the possibility of substituting kegs for bottles at campus events such as Frosh and OAP. SSMU President Zach Newburgh said that the recently proposed alternative has several benefits over the use of beer bottles, including sustainability, safety, and ease of use.

“By using kegs we are avoiding the process of having to use bottles,” Newburgh said. “They get thrown away and are unfortunately not reusable in the same way. Kegs hold a lot more and the containers in which they are supplied cut down on the transportation cost and the recycling reusability.”  

Switching to kegs will also  make transportation easier and therefore improve safety standards, he said, since their use minimizes the potential for an accident, and therefore the chances of students getting cut or injured.

“We’ve been using bottles for years and it’s been extremely difficult to transport them,” he added. “It has been a safety issue, [and] people have reported injuries. It isn’t as effective as the better alternative that it is offered by the keg.”

Furthermore, the aesthetic benefits stemming from keeping liquid in a single container behind a serving location rather than out in the open makes kegs an appealing option.

“It just simply does not look good on the part of the university to have a pile of empty beer bottles sitting on campus, or to have empty beer bottles scattered across Lower Field,” Newburgh said.

Even though switching from beer bottles is arguably beneficial to the university community, the decision will not be finalized until SSMU receives the university’s approval.

SSMU has determined that the operation of kegs on campus is in accordance with Quebec law as long as the university grants permission for it to do so. McGill has stated that it is receptive to SSMU using kegs as long as such use is legal.

“We raised this point at the Advisory Committee on Alcohol Policy and further to that we have been speaking with legal services and the deputy provost (student life and learning) on this issue,” Newburgh said.

SSMU is in the process of getting the university’s approval, and hopes that by OAP in April the policy will be finalized and implemented.

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