Lesser Known Artists From The Bristol Sessions

The 1927 recording sessions for Victor Records in Bristol, Tennessee are legendary as the single most important event in the history of Country Music, no less than Johnny Cash once referred to them as "The Big Bang Of Country Music". These sessions did indeed lead to the discovery of the two most important figures of Old Time Country Music; Jimmy Rodgers and The Carter Family. The small city of Bristol is a now major music shrine on a par with the Ryman Auditorium, Sun Studios or Motown Studios. Calling the sessions the beginning of Country Music is a complete oversimplification of course. By 1927 Fiddling John Carson, Eck Robertson, Harry McClintock, Uncle Dave Macon and Ernest Stoneman were already successful recording artists and Vernon Dalhart had already sold a jaw-dropping seven million copies of "The Prisoner's Song", still one of the biggest selling records of all time.




Accordingly when Victor Records scout Ralph Peer set up operations in Bristol, Tennessee, a small but important city in the area bordering Virginia and within easy driving range to West Virginia, North Carolina and Kentucky and sent out advertisements announcing auditions, he already assumed he would find some potential hits. One of the featured artists, Ernest Stoneman had already seen some recording success while the Carter Family had already auditioned once before only to have A.P.Carter walk out in a dispute after it was suggested that they should add a fiddle player. Jimmy Rodgers was part of a group called the Tenneva Ramblers who had a local reputation but had not recorded. As it happened the Ramblers broke up just before the sessions and Rodgers ended up recording solo. The Carters, Jimmy Rodgers and Stoneman would each score million selling hits and help establish country music as a serious business rather than a series of novelty hits. The fates of Jimmy Rodgers and the Carters are well known; with Rodgers dying of tuberculosis in 1933 and the Carters having an influential career into the 1940's (Maybelle carried on into the 70's after Sara and AP left) and beyond for Mother Maybelle. Ernest Stoneman is now less well known but he would actually have the longest career of all, recording well into the 1960's by which time he was known as Pop Stoneman and was backed by his beautiful daughters. He died in 1968. Henry Whitter was another well known country music veteran who had been recording successfully as early as 1923 with a number of hits including the original version of "Wreck Of The Old 97" and "Lost John". After the Bristol sessions he teamed up with blind fiddler BG Grayson for some successful singles including the classic "9 Pound Hammer" until Grayson was killed in a car wreck in 1930. After that Whitter would slow down and not record again. He died of complications from diabetes in 1941.

But what of the other artists who recorded at the Bristol Sessions? Here are some personal faves;

ALFRED KARNES ~ "BOUND FOR THE PROMISED LAND";


ALFRED KARNES ~ Not all of those artists were full-time musicians. Karnes was a singing Baptist preacher from Corbin, Kentucky who drove down to Bristol with his harp-guitar and some gospel songs. The harp-guitar was an odd and unwieldy hybrid instrument built on a large guitar body with a second set of strings which were unfretted and could give the illusion of two guitars.



A CONTEMPORARY PHOTO OF A RURAL STRINGBAND WITH A HARP-GUITAR

The harp-guitar had a brief vogue in the early twentieth century along with all sorts of other stringed instruments of various shapes and sizes. It was too bulky to be truly popular however (it was so large that some shorter players had to use a stand to prop it on) and it was already archaic by the time Karnes showed up to record. Karnes played with a distinctive string snapping style which gave a percussive drive to his soaring, stentorian baritone. He recorded thirteen sides, all gospel, and all excellent, including the rousing "Bound For The Promised Land" (later covered by Hank Williams sr) and "To The Work" and the soaring ballad "Where We'll Never Grow Old". He also sang and played backup to Ernest Phipps on his Bristol recordings. More on Phipps in a bit

ALFRED KARNES ~ "TO THE WORK";


Karnes certainly had the talent and a distinctive enough sound to have made a real name for himself. However Karnes was simply not interested in a musical career, preferring to return to the pulpit where he would remain for the rest of his life. He died in 1958 just a few years too soon for the Folk revival of the early sixties which certainly have led to a rediscovery of his work as it did for others of his era.

ALFRED KARNES ~ "WHERE WE'LL NEVER GROW OLD";


B.F. SHELTON ~ When Karnes drove down to Bristol he brought with him Shelton, a singing banjo playing friend who worked as a barber in Corbin, Kentucky and had reportedly served time in a prison where Karnes had preached. B.F.(Frank) Shelton recorded a few songs including "Oh Molly Dear" a version of a popular song already recorded as "East Virginia Blues" as well as a version of another well known song "Pretty Polly" which was later covered by Clarence Ashley, The Stanley Brothers, The Byrds and The Sadies among others. Shelton played in a stark modal style quite different from the rapid fire failing of the likes of Uncle Dave Macon, an effect enhanced by his ghostly tenor. Shelton made some other recordings but preferred to stay in the area rather than become a full-time musician. He did some more recordings a few years later which were not released. Like Karnes he also died just prior to the Folk Revival in 1963.

B.F. SHELTON ~ "OH MOLLY DEAR";


BLIND ALFRED REED ~ Unlike Karnes and Shelton, Reed was a professional singer who had already built up a local reputation before Ralph Peer invited him down to Bristol. Reed was fiddler and singer from Princeton, West Virginia who sang a mixture of songs traditional gospel, topical and protest songs he wrote himself. Reed usually had a few back-up musicians and brought a guitarist named Arthur Wyrick to the sessions. Musically Reed's songs are pretty conventional string band fare and not especially noteworthy, unlike those of Karnes and Shelton, however Reed did have a strong voice and good songs. The songs at this session included "Walking In The Way With Jesus" and "Wreck Of The Virginian".

BLIND ALFRED REED ~ "WALKING IN THE WAY WITH JESUS";


Reed would return to the local circuit and made further recordings including the better known protest songs "How Can A Man Stand Such Times And Live" (later covered by Ry Cooder) and "Why Do You Bob Your Hair Girls". This combination of conservative Christianity and political populism may seem strange now, but in the era of William Jennings Bryan, who was very popular in the region, such politics were quite common. Like many other rural artists Reed's recording career ended when the Great Depression hit and he was reduced to becoming a street corner preacher until banned by city bylaws around 1937. He died, reportedly of malnutrition, in abject poverty in 1956. Like Karnes, Reed also just missed the Folk revival that certainly would have helped him.

BLIND ALFRED REED ~ "HOW CAN A POOR MAN STAND SUCH TIMES AND LIVE";


ERNEST PHIPPS ~ Another singing preacher from Corbin, Kentucky, but unlike Karnes, Phipps was more of a full time musician with a backing band. Phipps sang with a Hellfire and brimstone style and included backup singers along with his backing stringband, which (at least at these sessions) included Alfred Karnes. This partnership is a little odd since Phipps was a preacher in a Pentecostal Holiness Church while Karnes was a Baptist. While the rest of Phipps band on these sessions are unknown it's also possible BF Shelton played with him as well since he is known to have driven down with Alfred Karnes. Originally from Gray, Kentucky, Phipps was probably not too different from other white Southern Gospel groups of the era although they are praised for the power of his singing. His recordings are also notable since such music was rather under-recorded. His Bristol sessions included the rousing "I Want To Go Where Jesus Is". Phipps continued on with his career including more recordings until he died in 1963.

ERNEST PHIPPS ~ "I WANT TO GO WHERE JESUS IS";


THE JOHNSON BROTHERS ~ An early example of the brother duos that would become a fixture in country music with names like The Carlisle Bros, Delmores, Monroes, Louvins, Stanleys, Lillys, and ultimately the Everly Brothers. Paul Johnson sang and played steel guitar while Paul backed him on guitar. Their songs are slow mournful ballads based on traditional sentimental Victorian themes like "A Passing Policeman" (based on an 1894 song) and "The Jealous Sweetheart". On the latter song they are accompanied by an unknown musician playing the bones, a simple percussion instrument used since ancient times, particularly with black musicians. It is assumed that this was El Watson, a black harmonica player who Charles Johnson would in turn back on his own single, a harmonica showcase called "Potlicker Blues" which was recorded the same day. The Johnsons, from nearby Happy Valley, were actually well known entertainers in the area having been regulars on the local vaudeville, minstrel and medicine show circuit and had already attended a recoding session in New York so they were known to Peer before the showed up in Bristol. However their singles were not notably successful("A Passing Policeman" was not even released at the time) and the Johnsons would drop out of sight with their ultimate fates unknown. El Watson is even more obscure. Although he is assumed to have been black, it is not even known for sure if he was. After Bristol Watson disappeared from the historical records entirely.

THE JOHNSON BROS ~ THE JEALOUS SWEETHEART";


THE ALCOA QUARTET ~ While the rest of the musicians at Bristol played various types of rural music both religious and secular, the Alcoa Quartet were a slick professional singing group from Alcoa, Tennesse made up of the brothers J.E and J.H. Thomas and W.B. Hitch and John Wells, who were already well known as professional musicians who performed at state fairs and conventions as well as on the radio. Like some of the other Bristol performers they had already recorded as well. Their repertoire was mostly religious in nature like "I'm Redeemed" and is a good example of a vocal tradition that had been popular since Victorian times. They would go on to a long career performing on radio as well as later backing the young Roy Acuff among others, becoming an inspiration to future quartets like The Blackwood Brothers, The Jordinaires, The Oak Ridge Boys and The Statler Bros (who later covered "I'm Reedemed").

THE ALCOA QUARTET ~ "I'M REDEEMED";

Prof. Kitzle's Time Machine Profile; Wilmer Watts

Wilmer Watts (1897 - 1943) Was a an Old Time Country Music singer, player and bandleader who recorded a series of 78 records for Paramount Records in the 1920's. Although not as well known as fellow North Carlina singer/banjo player Charlie Poole, who has undergone a revival over the last few years, Watts is for my money a more interesting artist with a crude but distinctive style.




Born in Mount Tabor (now Tabor City) a market town in Columbus County, between 1896 and 1898. After he moved to the city of Belmont where he worked as a worker in textile factories. Having learned several instruments including banjo, fiddle, guitar, dobro, autoharp, harmonica, musical saw and drums he became a semi-professional musician around 1921 and made his first recordings in January or Feburary 1927 as a duo with local guitarist Charlie Wilson (1900 - ?) with a single entitled "The Sporting Cowboy" which was not released at the time although it was later rerecorded. With a new trio under the name of Wilmer Watts and His Lonely Eagles they recorded six sides for Paramount Records in 1927 using a line-up that included Charles Freshour (1900 - 1959) on guitar and the then unusual steel guitar which was played by Wilson. In 1929 he returned to Paramount's New York studios. This time Wilson was replaced on steel guitar by Palmer Rhyne (1904 - 1967), a fellow factory worker friend of Watts. These sessions resulted in fourteen sides.

RECORDINGS AND MUSICAL STYLE;




Wilmer's banjo playing was quite simple and repetitive, staying to mid-tempo songs and quite different from the more complex ragtime influenced picking of Charlie Poole or blues singer Papa Charlie Jackson or the fast choppy style of Uncle Dave Macon. Unlike most of his contemporaries Watts' musical influences seem to be based mostly on traditional Anglo-Celtic sources along with blues, ragtime, or minstrelsy and his songs have a distinctive droning modal quality compared to those of his North Carolina contemporary Charlie Poole. In his lyrical themes (at least in his recorded works) Watts largely avoided traditional folk songs and focused on more modern themes ranging from blues to a few political protest songs usually in a mocking vein similar to those of song writer Joe Hill collected in the "Little Red Songbook" of the I.W.W.




Among Watts' best known recordings are;






"Cotton Mill Blues"; a bluesy protest song about the plight of factory workers, based on a 1900 poem "A Factory Rhyme" by George Stutts.

"COTTON MILL BLUES" (an explanation of the song with cover versions, done by a descendent of Posey Rorrer, who played with the better known fellow North Carolina singer/banjoist Charlie Poole )


"Been On The Job Too Long"; a murder ballad later covered by such artists as Leadbelly and Bob Dylan under the title of "Duncan and Brady".

"BEEN ON THE JOB TOO LONG";

"Walk Right In Belmont"; the first known recorded version of "Midnight Special", a later standard later covered by Leadbell>, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Mac Wiseman. This single was originally released under the name "Watts & Wilson" and later through Paramount's subsidiary label Broadway Records under the name "Watts & Wiggins". Note this song is not to be confused with the Gus Cannon song "Walk Right In".

"WALK RIGHT IN BELMONT";


"Banjo Sam"; an especially repetitive modal song with surrealistic lyrics later covered by Pete Seeger.

"BANJO SAM";


"Knocking Down Casey Jones"; a version of one of the many tribute songs then common to famous train engineer Casey Jones. This song is notably more heroic than Joe Hill's I.W.W. version.

"KNOCKING DOWN CASEY JONES";


"Fighting in The War With Spain"; an anti-war song mocking the Spanish-American War in which Watts makes light of the war and portrays himself as a deserter.

"FIGHTING IN THE WAR WITH SPAIN";


"The Fate Of Rhoda Sweetin"; A murder ballad sung and reportedly written by Charles Freshour about his own sister. This single was credited to Charles Freshour and The Lonely Eagles.

"THE FATE OF RHODA SWEETIN";


"She's A Hard Boiled Rose"; A version of a Tin Pan Alley song later used in another version by stripper Gypsie Rose Lee.

"SHE'S A HARD BOILED ROSE";


"Charles Guitaw"; A ballad (with a misspelled title) about Charles Guiteau, the assassin of President James Garfield. This song was also covered by Kelly Harrell.

"CHARLES GUITAW";


"CHAIN GANG BLUES";





LATER CAREER;

After the 1927 sessions Wilson left the group and was replaced by Palmer Rayne for the 1929 sessions. The Great Depression ended the recordings of many rural artists and Paramount Records went out of business in 1935 so Watts made no further recordings. He returned to Belmont were he continued working as a textile worker, tenant farmer and gas station owner as well as a part-time musician albeit without the Lonely Eagles who broke up. Watts often gigged as a one-man-band playing as many as five instruments at once. In 1931 Watts won a talent contest for his act awarded by Uncle Dave Macon. Later from the mid nineteen-thirties he formed a Southern Gospel group with his daughters as the Watts Singers who performed two regular shows on the radio but did not record. He was diagnosed with stomach cancer and retired in 1939 dying in 1944 at the age of approximately 47. His daughters continued as the Watts Singers with one of their husbands replacing Wilmer into the 1960's but did not record.

OTHER MEDIA;




The only photo of Watts commonly known (showing him holding a fiddle rather than his usual banjo) was reproduced by the artist R. Crumb for a collection of trading cards of old time country musicians.

Music At The 1963 March On Washington

2014 marked fifty years since the Freedom Summer which followed the iconic March On Washington. This year brought the release of "Selma" about the only slightly less iconic Freedom March To Selma. So to wrap up Black History Month I thought I'd take a quick look at the musical artists that played at the March On Washington. Martin Luther King's speech is the one thing everybody remembers but there were also a few singers who added their voices to the day.

Joan Baez ~ Baez had been the star of the Folk scene since her breakout at the Newport Folk Festival in 1959 including a coveted "Time Magazine" cover. Besides her musical success she was also a committed supporter of the Civil Rights Movement having gone down, by herself, to Clinton, Tennessee to escort black students seeking to integrate the high school there, protecting them from an angry mob with her very presence. The mob backed down even though she was alone. She more than earned her stripes and her presence at the march made sense. She was the first singer to perform and helped the crowd to settle down and set the proper mood for the rally to come. Baez would never waver in her commitment to social justice, including going to jail for protesting the Vietnam War and Apartheid several times and putting herself in the line of fire, literally, in Bosnia. At the March she sang "We Shall Overcome" and "Oh Freedom" along with a duet with Bob Dylan.

JOAN BAEZ ~ "WE SHALL OVERCOME";


Bob Dylan ~ Dylan was considered a bright young star and the romantic foil to the Folk Princess Baez who he often sang with. Baez probably insisted on bringing along the often remote and diffident Dylan to the rally for his own good. In later years he would distance himself from the folk scene, both musically by plugging in and embracing Rock & Roll, and politically flirting with Christianity, Judaism and apolitical cynicism. At the March he sang "When the Ship Comes In", as a duet with Baez. Dylan also performed "Only a Pawn in Their Game",

BOB DYLAN & JOAN BAEZ ~ "WHEN THE SHIP COMES IN";


Peter, Paul & Mary ~ Although they are best remembered today for "Puff The Magic Dragon" they were major crossover stars of the early to mid sixties with several hits. Considering their safe, all-American image and friendly songs it's a little surprising that they were considered rather controversial among folk purists for what some considered their overly polished versions of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger songs. Besides their star power they were also vocal supporters of the Civil Rights Movement and played at other rallies so their presence here to help keep the crowd happy was an obvious move. They would continue to have hits well into the Psychedelic Sixties even though by end of the decade they were considered distinctly conservative in musical terms. At the March they sang "If I Had a Hammer" and Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind".

PETER, PAUL & MARY ~ "IF I HAD A HAMMER";


Odetta ~ A respected figure in the folk scene as well as a vocal supporter of the movement, and one of the few politically oriented black folk singers. Active as a recording artist since the mid-fifties she was cited as an influence by white artists like Baez, Dylan and Peter, Paul & Mary. She did the classic version of "Take This Hammer" but at the rally she sang "I'm On My Way". She had a long career dying in 2008 at the age of 77.

ODETTA ~ "WATERBOY";


Mahalia Jackson ~ The Queen Of Gospel was a powerful figure in the Civil Rights Movement with it's roots in the black churches, and was the favorite of Martin Luther King in particular. She sang at many of his speeches to warm up the crowd with her powerful voice and he would have wanted her there to set the mood for her speech. She sang "How I Got Over". She then in fact stood behind him during his speech, goading him on as in a sermon in a black church. She would continue to play the role of warm-up for King at other rallies in years to come. Jackson was a huge influence on soul singers like Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight. She died in 1972.

MAHALIA JACKSON ~ "HOW I GOT OVER";


Marion Anderson ~ A respected opera singer for many years Anderson was at the rally as a nod to historical symbolism. In 1939 Anderson gained natural attention when the Daughters Of The American Revolution banned her from singing at one of their functions at Constitution Hall . An outraged first lady Eleanor Roosevelt then responded by inviting her to sing at the Lincoln Monument to far more attention than she would have had if the DAR had not banned her. Anderson later became a Civil Rights Ambassador for the United Nations while continuing her career as an opera singer at the Met. She was awarded the Presidential Medal Of Freedom in 1963. Although she was an opera singer at the March she sang the gospel standard "He's Got The Whole World In His Hands". She died in 1993.

MARION ANDERSON ~ "MY COUNTRY TIS OF THEE";


Josh White ~ A blues and gospel singer from the 1930's to the 40's, White was considered a possible cross-over star in the 40's and early 50's. He was handsome and charming with a smooth voice capable of making the blues palatable to the larger white mainstream. However his political activities harmed his career. Like Paul Robeson (and Leadbelly, who died in 1949) White became a vocal supporter of left wing radical causes including civil rights, he also became a supporter of the Communist Party. Like Robeson he became a target of the FBI and McCarthy's Red Scare. He found himself largely banned from radio and TV with shows cancelled in the prime of his career. Unlike the defiant Robeson, White caved in the pressure and largely avoided controversy and was allowed to eventually continue performing as the Red Scare petered out in the late fifties. By that time however White's style had been surpassed by rock and roll and smoother singers like Nat King Cole. White moved to Britain where he hosted a TV show. He returned to America and his defacto blacklisting was ended in 1963 when President Kennedy invited him to perform on a televised show.

JOSH WHITE ~


The Freedom Singers ~ Unlike the other musical artists at the March the Freedom Singers were not actually a professional singing group but rather a group of black students who were part of the Student Non-Violent Co-Coordinating Committee who often sang at rallies with a mixture of gospel songs with political undertones. As such they were quite familiar to Martin Luther King who was a fan. Their performance at the March was one of the highlights of their short career. They sang "We Shall Not Be Moved". After the March they sang at the Newport Folk Festival (with Dylan, Baez and Peter, Paul & Mary) and recorded a well reviewed album before breaking up although a reconstituted version calling itself The New Freedom Singers continued on.

THE FREEDOM SINGERS ~ 'WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED"


Note that while Harry Belefonte was a prominent organizer of the rally and in the movement in general as well as being a highly successful singer he did not sing at the rally.

Somewhat predictably there has since been some criticism of the rally for not having enough black singers present (notably by Dick Gregory) but as we can see there was a five-to-three ratio, that's assuming Dylan was originally invited by organizers rather than by Baez. Such carping leaves aside two questions; firstly the issue of time. As a condition of allowing the rally in the first place organizers had to promise to be in at sunrise and out by sundown, no excuses. And they kept to that schedule tightly. Although music, both gospel and folk, were long considered important parts of the movement there was not the luxury to have much time set aside for music at this rally.

More interesting is the question of exactly who they would have otherwise invited if they had the time. Some obvious possibles include;
Paul Robeson ~ A towering figure of the civil rights movement since the 1930's, Robeson also had a devoted black following. Robeson had been an international star as a singer, actor and football player who's had a long and very active involvement with political causes for which he had paid a heavy price. Long a vocal supporter of the Civil Rights Movement, Peace Movement, Labour Unions, Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War and freedom of speech Robeson became a supporter of the American Communist Party (although never actually a member) and remained so even at the height of the Red Scare. He had been the target of brick throwing mobs, police harassment, targeting by the FBI and Joe McCarthy, had his passport cancelled, shows cancelled, blacklisted by Hollywood and Broadway and banned from TV and radio. He had played for hundreds of rallies over the years, including some in defiance of Jim Crow laws. He would have been an obvious, if not the obvious person to speak and sing at the rally. However what he had suffered a complete nervous breakdown a few years earlier along with panic attacks and a suicide attempt, by 1964 he was in total seclusion at his home from which he never left, certainly not to perform. Although the public would not have known much of this rally, organizers certainly would have. He watched the rally on television from his room. He died there in 1976.

PAUL ROBESON ~


Nina Simone ~ The jazz/soul singer known for her deeply personal and political songs and her mournful voice, Simone was a vocal advocate of civil rights who performed at several rallies but she sometimes she dismissed non-violence as a tactic and called for revolution and self-defense which would have been enough to get her dis-invited to sing at this particular rally where the organizers had promised the White House there would be no incendiary rhetoric. Like some other jazz figures she was happier in Europe and in 1970 she had moved to France (escaping a possible arrest for tax evasion after she refused to pay taxes in protest of the Vietnam War) having spent much time there so she may not have been available even if she had been invited which she probably was not. She continued on with her career, focusing mostly in Europe until her death in 2003.

NINA SIMONE ~ "TO LOVE SOMEBODY";


JB Lenoir ~ A blues singer from the 1950's and sixties and one of the few to sing political songs. Having a light tenor voice, was a talented guitar player and possessing plenty of style and stage presence Lenoir had recorded for Chess Records and had a small but devoted following in Europe but he was never a major success in America and was not a real activist so it's doubtful the rally organizers ever considered him. He died suddenly in 1967.

JB LENOIR ~ "THE WHALE HAS SWALLOWED ME";


Louis Armstrong ~ Modern Jazz historians like to claim Jazz as a force for progressive social change and it's true that Jazz probably did play a role in encouraging racial integration, as did Rock & Roll. However revisionist histories notwithstanding the blunt truth is that most Jazz performers were studiously apolitical or indifferent and played little role in the Civil Rights battles. Pretty much the only public exceptions (which Jazz historians always point to) were; Billie Holiday's anti-lynching ballad "Strange Fruit", Charles Mingus' "Fables Of Faubus" and few more oblique instrumentals by Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, and later Albert Ayler, Pharaoh Sanders and The Art Ensemble Of Chicago (on the other hand Stan Kenton would actively campaign for Barry Goldwater and George Wallace). Besides these there were some very direct public statements by Louis Armstrong calling out the government for allowing segregation. In spite of this Armstrong was not considered a major Civil Rights figure and mostly stayed away from controversy. His usual public personal as a grinning, shuffling, sweating, eager-to-please entertainer offended many activists as an embarrassing throwback to earlier times. The workaholic Armstrong also toured heavily and was probably not easily available even if he had been considered.

LOUIS ARMSTRONG IN AFRICA;

The SUN Never Shines On TV

It's schadenfreude time as SUN TV shut down for good this past Friday morning at 5 AM when the screen suddenly went dark and was then replaced with the Sun logo and the caption "Sun News Network is no longer available, at the discretion of the programmer. We apologize for any inconvenience and hope you will continue to value all the channels included in your package." The station's website has also been replaced with the Sun logo and the links are broken. There was no public warning that this shutdown was imminent, some Sun staff actually found out by news reports from other networks, some of whom couldn't resist a few tactful choruses of "I told you so".

LAST MINUTES OF SUN NEWS;


(NOTE; This was probably a prerecorded segment as it makes no mention of their impending death knell and even has promos to two shows which will never see the light of day)

Setting aside old enemies like the CBC and the Toronto Star, even the conservative leaning press were not terribly sympathetic. The Globe & Mail piled on with "Five fatal flaws that led to the Sun News Network's demise" and The National Post's Jonathan Kay chipped in with "Why Sun News never had a fighting chance". Kay blamed the network's out-of-touch far-right demagoguery and did not offer many excuses for their failure but did ask for sympathy for the staff, but more on that later. First the facts ma'am;






SUN News started up in April 2011 with the stated intent of offering a right-wing "alternative" to the supposedly "liberal media bias" with "hard hitting commentary", (a.k.a. "bloviating, blowhard assholes") like Ezra Levant, Micheal Coren and Krista Erikson. The network quickly attracted plenty of attention with their often wildly, and at times comically, slanted reporting and the hysterical and paranoid race-baiting, from Ezra Levant in particular, as well as for the Network's never ending jihad against the CBC and arts funding in general. SUN News quickly earned itself the derisive name FOX North. However while SUN TV got plenty of attention one thing they did not get was viewers. The ratings ranged from the embarrassingly anemic to the laughably pathetic, averaging a mere few thousand a day, even during prime-time. That's less than a decent Campus/Community radio station (as long as it's not run by Ryerson University). Literally the only two shows they ever had that got decent ratings was a celebrity boxing match wherein an audience of horrified Conservatives watched as Justin Trudeau pounded the snot out of Conservative bully boy (and future probable felon) Senator Patrick Brazeau and the abortive Ford Brothers Show which was cancelled after one episode. No viewers means no advertisers which means no money and SUN TV reported (according to CRTC documents), loses of $17 million in 2012 and $14.8 million in 2013.

Right from the start there were problems. To begin with the whole thing just looked ugly. The studio was a garishly eye assaulting blast of neon and dayglo, like an episode of a "Sports Center" shot from the flight deck of the Starship Enterprise in a 1970's casino slot-machine floor. Harsh lighting made everybody look like mannequins in a Young Conservatives K-Mart store. They managed to achieve the look of a student amateur production with none of the charm.

The ugliness of SUN TV's very appearance was nothing compared to the ugliness of it's content. All of their onair talent was at best made up of smug blowhards reciting boilerplate right wing talking points, like FOX News's Sean Hannity in a cheap suit. But the need for SUN News to get attention by saying outrageous things or to create a "star" to be Canada's Rush Limbaugh, Bill O Reilly, Glen Beck or Anne Coulter led the likes of Krista Erikson to make a complete fool of herself with that infamous Margie Gillis ambush interview. Worse it led to the misguided attempt to build their foundation on the reckless, cynical, hateful, narcissistic pile of rancid trollshit that is Ezra Levant. SUN TV clearly counted on him being their marquee name but he was so over-the-top offensive and repellent that he quickly became more trouble than he was worth. His increasingly nasty rantings led to numerous complaints to the CRTC and Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (two of which SUN lost), a libel suit (which he again lost), and even a police investigation for hate crimes, which, rightwing paranoia notwithstanding, is quite rare. That one forced Levant to issue a reluctant apology after first bravely vowing he would never back down. In 2013 Levant aired a report (one of many) attacking Native protesters including some by name who turned to not even be in Canada at the time. Once again he refused to back down until losing yet another CSBC complaint. This past fall Levant did a typically unhinged personal attack on Justin Trudeau and his family which provoked a full Liberal Party boycott of the network until SUN News did a humiliating backpeddle and issued another apology. Levant topped himself after fatal the Lac Megantique train crash when he blamed "Native or Environmental Protesters" for derailing the train and committing mass murder. And what was the source of this gripping news flash? The shit between his ears. Most recently Levant followed that up with a rant claiming that Muslim students were boycotting Remembrance Day cuz they hate Canada and Freedom based on a memo (sent by one of his patriotic "sources") from a school board in Essex County. This memo actually tried to deal with parent's concerns about safety after the Ottawa attack and had nothing to do with any Muslim boycott. That led to yet another CSBC complaint that SUN would have most certainly lost if it had been heard before they went belly up.

To make things worse SUN lost it's free over-the-air signal within a year when it turned out they hadn't properly applied for such a signal in the first place. That was entertaining. That also left them relying purely on cable access.






So what do you do if you are a rabidly right-wing corporation who is morally opposed to "big government picking winners and losers" or "bailouts"? Why; blame the CRTC of course and demand a bailout for themselves. Duh.

Accordingly in 2013 SUN TV shocked many of their ideological soulmates when they applied to the CRTC to demand "mandatory carriage", a complicated scheme whereby all cable subscribers would be forced to buy (and pay for) SUN TV whether they wanted to or not. "Mandatory Carriage" is usually given to channels that serve a public interest such as the Weather Channel or described video for the blind, or for channels that reach under-served communities like aboriginal, multi-cultural or francophones. Most people who are not right wing assholes have no problem with this. But it certainly was never intended to bailout a for-profit corporation. And that's not even taking into account the embarrassing fact that SUN News had a loud and well documented history of opposing the very idea of "mandatory carriage" from their very inception. In fact during their initial license application process SUN News had explicitly denied that they ever had any intention of applying for such a socialist program. SUN TV head Kory Tenekye went so far as to state that any suggestions to the contrary were "slanderous lies". Once SUN TV had gotten it's license they went on a slash-and-burn campaign against such subsidies and arts funding, notably with ambush interviews such as Ezra Levant inviting an obscure indie band called Living With Lions only to browbeat them for accepting a small arts grant. The shell-shocked teens sheepishly returned the grant, so score one victory for "The Little Guys" I guess. This led Krista Erikson to up the ante by inviting on award winning modern dancer Margie Gillis on the pretext of discussing her work only to harangue her about arts funding (an issue Gillis is not an authority on, much less in charge of) in a bullying interview full of ad-homminum attacks and right-wing soundbites. That one so disgusted people that they filed a record number of complaints to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. After these appetizers SUN TV upped the ante and went on the warpath against their real enemy; the CBC, in a series of attacks on the CBC's funding. This even leading to Teneyke testifying in government hearings on the CBC. Finally having enough of these attacks the CBC responded with an expose of it's own on the fact that SUN News through it's parent company Quebecor was the beneficiary of millions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies every year, far in excess of the penny-ante grants given to the hated artists SUN TV targeted. That one hurt SUN News where it would hurt any media organization; attacking their basic integrity and honesty. Kory Tenekye reacted with outrage, threatening a lawsuit, but then quietly backed down. By that time he must have known that SUN would be applying to the CRTC for mandatory carriage and this would not be good time to be having that particular fight, especially since they would lose. Rather than spend more time on this here you can read the article I wrote at the time here and here and here. (My; I have bashed them a lot haven't I? I am a terrible person. More on that later)

Speaking of jihads against big government boogie men; there was their crusade against the CRTC itself. "Big Government Overeach" doncha know. All good conservative regularly rail against CRTC regs in general so when the CRTC finally pulled the plug on the notoriously inept Ryerson station CKLN in 2011, Ezra Levant took the opportunity to attack the CRTC with a laughably slanted and blatantly dishonest report that claimed that CKLN was shut down for "playing too much hip-hop" and slyly playing the race card. It was the kind of snide hatchet job only a professional activist could like. Accordingly in an example of breath-taking cynicsm the sneeringly far-left marxist CKLN spokesman Andrew Lehrer who would normally be reduced to posting smirking tweets calling Levant a racist (which he is) gleefully tweeted and re-posted Levant's article like garlic to ward off the CRTC during CKLN's predictably fruitless appeal. When it comes to politics weasels of a feather flock together. Naturally when SUN TV discovered they would need to suck up to the very same CRTC in 2013 this principled campaign suddenly dropped out of sight.



When SUN TV made their CRTC application for "mandatory carriage" they sound found out that karma's a bitch when even most conservative pundits reacted with open disdain. To say nothing of the legions of enemies SUN had been busy making since going on air; Muslims, Aboriginals, Gays, Francophones, Roma, Greens, Unions, feminists, atheists, artists, all the groups SUN TV had targeted for insult and abuse for the past three years pounced on SUN like a pack of jackals on a wounded wildebeest in an blizzard of letters to the CRTC opposing the application. I actually fired off one myself and wrote a blog urging others to do the same which some did. It turned out the CRTC probably didn't need much of a push, the SUN's application was pretty flimsy on it's face, even setting aside it's blatant hypocrisy. During the hearings SUN executives got a rough ride with Kory Tenyeke reduced to saying that SUN TV would be forced out of business without the subsidy. The CRTC was not sympathetic; pointing out that when SUN had applied for the license in the first place they had swore they would not need such subsidies and it was not the CRTC's job to bail them out now. The answer was no. However the CRTC did allow that there might be a need to reassess some of their policies around the bundling and placement of news channels. Leading to another round of hearings last year.



Looking to slap lipstick on a pig SUN TV grabbed at this like a drowning man and pushed their way into the hearings to urge some sort of bundling arrangement that might force cable companies to carry SUN in a solid bundle of news channels thus once again forcing at least some customers to buy the wretched channel. I considered writing again but after carefully reading the CRTC's terms of reference for the considered revisions I decided against it. The suggested changes seemed reasonable enough and certainly not worth opposing just to torment SUN News some more. Besides I also couldn't see anything that would actually save SUN TV anyway despite their whistling-past-the-graveyard bravado.

It turned out that the CRTC did indeed make several changes to their rules which would incidentally lead to including SUN TV in more packages, and group the Canadian news channels together to make them easier to find. It would also make SUN TV available in areas where it had not been. Much of this was pretty obvious stuff but that didn't stop SUN TV from doing a victory lap. However my reaction was a shrug. Making your product more available is irrelevant if you have a shitty product that nobody wants. You would think that rabid free enterprise capitalists would get that. As for the areas of the country that SUN was previously unavailable; that was mostly in areas where SUN TV's patented blend of rightwing paranoia, race-baiting, war mongering and oil company worship would be least likely to find a friendly audience; Quebec, The Martimes and the Far North. SUN TV's problem was never that people couldn't find it, it was that they didn't want it.

Accordingly SUN TV's ratings did not improve but then things got more complicated when the owner of Quebecor, SUN News's parent company, Pierre Karl Paladeau announced he was going into politics as a high profile candidate then leader of the separatist Parti Quebecois. That was weird. One of the defining characteristics of the SUN Newspaper and TV empire was it's strident federalism and disdain for Quebec nationalists so the revelation that Paladeau was a separatist all along came as quite a shocker showing just how cynical the whole enterprise was. The damage that might have caused to to the credibility of SUN News was somewhat lessened by the fact that Paladeau would have to divest himself of his business holdings. Accordingly an offer came from Post Media (who own conservative news paper The National Post) to buy out SUN Media. However after SUN TV lost their bid for mandatory carriage Post Media took a look at the numbers and decided SUN TV wasn't worth the trouble. Post Media would buy the publishing arm of SUN but left SUN TV out of the deal. Then stepped up radio exec Moses Znaimer, founder and former owner of Much Music, Bravo, CITY TV, CHUM and current owner of ZOOMER Radio to make a bid for the channel and save the day. Znaimer has a successful record in TV and might have been able to save the floundering network somehow. Ezra Levant certainly thought so and issued an asskissing statement welcoming his new master, although I suspect that if he had bought SUN TV one of Znaimer's first jobs in re-branding would have been to fire Ezra Levant. As it turned out the deal fell through when Levant's current bosses demanded too much of a cash payout in severance. That's right; in a fine example of twenty-first century capitalism the thoroughly inept management of SUN News, after losing millions of dollars, demanded so much money to fuck off that they ended up sinking the whole deal. Next to these clowns the idiots behind Target Canada look like Andrew Freaking Carnegie.

There would be no other suitors and so this Friday SUN TV put up the white flag. In a masterpiece of understatement Julie Tremblay, president and CEO of Media Group and Sun Media Corporation. Said; “This is an unfortunate outcome; shutting down Sun News was certainly not our goal.” No Shit, Captain Obvious. They naturally took absolutely no responsibility for their own failure. Of course.

Besides the earlier mentioned articles from The Post and Globe listing some reasons for the spectacular crash and burn of SUN TV and with which I have no dissent I'd like to add a few more;

BAD PRODUCT + POOR PLANNING = INCOMPETENT MANAGEMENT;
As I've already detailed SUN News was a truly crappy "News" channel. It looked ugly and it acted worse. Canadians simply didn't want it. Being fervent "free market capitalists" the management of SUN News should have taken steps to improve their product. That's the way business is supposed to work right? However Kory Tenekye (unlike Moses Znaimer) is not an experienced TV or radio exec, he was a Conservative Party political hack and clearly out of his depth.
(as an aside I can't resist pointing out; I've noticed that most of the most strident "free market" crusaders have no actual business experience; Stephen Harper, Mike Harris, Paul Ryan, Preston Manning, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Ezra Levant, Kory Teneyke, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, have spent their entire lives in right wing politics, think-tanks or media. Rather like how most of the most bellicose warhawks have no military experience)
I'm not suggesting that SUN TV would drop their conservative slant, distasteful though I find it. Their reason for existence was to promote the Conservative Party after all and The National Post was also started by Conrad Black for the express purpose of defeating the Liberals and electing a Conservative government. However the Post was able to look and act like a real newspaper and keep professional standards. But SUN's focus was so narrow, strident and mean-spirited that even many conservatives found them unwatchable, let alone having any crossover potential. However instead of making any changes to either the look or content of the channel, they stubbornly kept trying to push that boulder up the hill of indifference and hostility, with predictable results. SUN TV started out shabby and nasty, and they went out the same way.

TWO WORDS; EZRA LEVANT;
Nothing better illustrates the utter failure of SUN News management than their decision to build their brand around the dubious charms of Ezra Levant. Clearly they thought he was going to be their star as Canada's version of Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck. Clearly Levant thought so too, but then Ezra Levant has never suffered from a lack narcissistic self-regard. However setting aside that Levant is a terrible person, he is also a terrible broadcaster. With his flat, nasally sneer and smug smirk that just begs to be punched, Levant is truly obnoxious in any context, even if he hadn't made a career of being a total asshole, which he has. Although SUN TV had some other "names" like Micheal Coren, Charles Adler, Brian Lilly, Pat Boland and Krista Erikson (until she quit), it was Levant who got top billing, as "Canada's Freedom Fighter" no less. With all the focus on Levant it's worth noting that he actually had little practical broadcast experience. Coren, Adler, Lilly, Boland and Erikson all have had extensive careers, mostly in talk radio, but Levant had not. His prior experience was as a right wing newspaper columnist, where people wouldn't have to actually see or hear him, and where he wouldn't have to hold anyone's attention for longer than a half dozen paragraphs once a week. As for his rather short political career Levant showed a consistent inability to be a team player. His vicious personal attacks and careless disregard for the facts led to many Conservatives to distance themselves and at least one embarrassing back-down after a lawsuit threat. The biggest fiasco came when Levant decided to run for office, in the same riding Stephen Harper had chosen for himself. This led to an embarrassing showdown until party power brokers convinced Levant to pull his head out of his ass long enough to step aside with all the transparently fake humility he could muster. The notoriously touchy Harper was not amused and Levant's brief, if entertaining, political career was over. So all the warning signs were there. Nothing that happened after that should have come as a surprise.



The grind of a daily show was simply to much for Levant's meager talents which is one reason why he spent so much time in the same unhinged hysterical tirades about the various brown people who are ruining civilization. It's also a reason why he did not bother to research or fact check before going on the air with his latest easily debunked anti-muslim rant. Levant's cartoonish behavior quickly went from being hateful to farcical. Much as SUN TV saw itself as FOX North I seriously doubt that Roger Ailes would have given Ezra Levant a show of his own, much less built his network's reputation on such shaky foundations. True, Ailes did briefly give a show to Glen Beck, but dumped him as he became an embarrassment and Rush Limbaugh has been kept at arm's length. Even FOX has some standards, or at least a sense of self-preservation, but not SUN TV. I can easily see FOX hiring Krista Erikson, they always have a gaggle of bottle blonde harpies and Erikson couldn't possibly be any dumber than Elizabeth Hassleback or Gretchen Carlson. But not Levant. But Hiring Levant was one thing. We'll call that a gamble. But keeping him is inexcusable. After it became obvious that Levant was only generating complaints and the occasional lawsuit while picking stupid fights with the regulators that SUN needed to work with, but not getting ratings, he should have fired. Keep in mind other networks cancel shows and fire hosts for far less reason all the time. Political activists may see such stubborn refusal to admit a mistake as admirable courage and steadfast leadership, but for alleged businessmen it's just pig-headed stupidity. Rather like if during the Ford Edsel or New Coke fiasco those companies had responded to their miscalculations by saying "Fuck it; We spent a lot of money on promoting this lemon so you commie are going to buy it and like it".

FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND THE MARKET PLACE;
When SUN set out to be FOX North they never stopped to consider that Canada and America are in fact completely different nations with different cultures. FOX works in America because of historical demographic trends in racial politics, urban vs. suburban conflicts, regional rivalries, cold war disputes, religious extremism, a corporate media environment, and celebrity worship. Not mention slavery and a civil war. There is obviously a sizable built-in audience of resentful, older, poorly educated, whites who live in small towns and suburbs ready to believe in the conspiracy to take their hard earned tax dollars and give it to lazy black and brown people, gays, rude teenagers, uppity women, union thugs and greedy teachers while "surrendering to terrorists". Not that we don't have some Tea Party types here of course, Hell I assume even Iceland has their share. However much of what passes for political discourse in America is viewed by most Canadians as outlandish, bizarre, distasteful or downright offensive. A TV network dedicated to shrill rants about the dangers of big government, union thugs, environmental fascists, feminazi's, multiculturalism, creeping sharia law, lazy Indians, greedy gypsies, and parasitic artists, was never going to find much of an audience here.
But then again most if not all Conservatives and Libertarians in Canada worship America and secretly (or not so secretly) despise Canadians as weaklings, enfeebled by decades of big government Liberalism and Socialism, held back by Quebec, Multiculturalism and the lack of recent military glory. They also deeply believe that Canadians, at least the white, anglo variety, secretly want their very own Thatcher to subject them to a tight-fisted rule of austerity, tax-cuts, law & order and and a good shooting war, preferably against some dirty Muslims. They saw the victories of Stephen Harper and Rob Ford not as odd aberrations caused by specific events but permanent majorities and as confirmation that their time had come, in spite of the fact that public opinion polls consistently show otherwise. SUN News bought into this self-delusion harder than most. To admit mistake would call into question their entire reason for existence so they continued to live in their right-wing fantasy world. It's one thing for politicians to live this way, but not supposedly hard-headed businessmen are supposed to be able to distance themselves from personal emotions and change course when their product isn't connecting. SUN TV was selling a product that even if it had been of a higher quality, would have had little demand. Once again SUN News execs showed they had no business running a business.

FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND THEIR OWN AUDIENCE;
Levant may have embarrassed most respectable conservatives but the campaign for mandatory carriage showed that SUN TV was out of touch even with much of their own obvious audience. Even many conservatives were disgusted with such blatant hypocrisy and said so publicly. Most conservatives were happy to applaud SUN TV's attacks on arts subsidies, "tax payer bailouts", the CBC and mandatory carriage, so asking them, no begging them, to help SUN TV get the very same subsidies was a bridge too far. Rather like when a family values crusader gets caught with underage prostitutes. Even conservative politicians and pundits have some standards. At least in public. Not many mind you, but a few. Hatred in right wing circles for arts subsidies of any kind is deep, for SUN TV to cross that line, after spending so much effort in stirring up those very resentments was just too much for many self-respecting conservatives to hide their disgust. In America, where politics is more tribal and the pundit class more shameless they might have gotten away with this. But not here. SUN ended up having to play up a crude politics of tribal, us-vs-them, resentment against the "liberal elites" that were conspiring against them because SUN TV "Stands Up For The Little Guy". Rob Ford built a career around such rhetoric but a corporation can't really pull that off. Especially since they aren't promising to build a free subway to your front door.





In the end the only real base audience they had was made up of a fringe of poorly educated, paranoid, angry, older, white, English speaking bigots, conspiracy theorists, Islamophobics, and xenophobes. Not enough to build a respectable nation-wide brand on. At least not here. Yea team!

FAILURE TO WORK WITH REGULATORS;
Like all good far-right conservatives the execs at SUN TV held regulators like the CRTC, CSBC, Industry Canada in contempt. But they forgot they have to actually work with these people, and in the end they fundamentally did not understand the CRTC's role. As I pointed out during the CKLN fiasco; They are a regulatory agency, they are there to make sure to make sure everybody follows the rules. They are not there to bail you out of your own stupidity. When SUN TV first applied for a license they promised that they would never need mandatory carriage and submitted a business plan that they swore would work. The CRTC takes these promises seriously even if SUN TV did not. For SUN to come back just a few years later and basically say; "Remember all that bullshit we shoveled last time? Um..Yeah; Fuck that." showed a complete misreading of the CRTC's likely response. Then there's the issue of the numerous complaints to the CSBC.
A word of explanation here; contrary to what many people believe, the CRTC and CSBC (Canadian Broadcast Standards Council) are completely unrelated. In fact the CSBC is not even a government agency, it is a industry run watchdog to deal with complaints so the CRTC doesn't have to micro-manage them. However the CRTC certainly keeps track of serious complaints and serial offenders and takes that into account when license renewal time comes around. With it's record number of serious complaints and their dismissive attitude towards them SUN was not helping themselves. To have any hope of getting mandatory carriage SUN would have to argue that they were offering a service important enough to subsidize. A history of open hate-mongering, race-baiting, lying and slander hardly qualifies.
Once they belatedly realized they would have to crawl back to the CRTC to beg for their largess SUN TV execs acted like the political hacks they were by looking for a Conservative bagman to lobby the CRTC for them. Enter Mike Duffy, Canada's current favorite cartoon villain, who got into the act by getting caught lobbying the CRTC on SUN's behalf. The usefulness of this was somewhat compromised when everybody found out what a corrupt lying sleazebag Duffy The Hutt is. Leading to SUN News desperately firing off a press release that basically said "We did not have sexual relations with that corrupt Senator". You may have even caught some mention of this on by watching SUN NEWS, in between the never-ending, panting plugs for SUN NEWS. The CRTC must have been so pleased to find themselves dragged into a corruption scandal that had nothing to do with them. It also once again called into question SUN TV's basic competence not to mention their integrity.

DUFFY THE HUTT & KRISTA ERICSON;



As an additional CRTC related fuckup was the comical spectacle of SUN News initially going on the air with an over-the-air signal that they did not realize required a separate license. Leading a no doubt annoyed CRTC to issue an order to shut down which they did with amusing suddenness. There was little advance warning and with Ezra Levant literally in mid-rant. To quote William Hurt in "A History Of Violence"; "How do you fuck that up?!".
Another word of explanation. An application would have to first go to Industry Canada to check on the viability of the proposed signal and to make sure it doesn't interfere with any existing signals as well as to confirm the corporation is legally registered. Next it goes to the CRTC for a more in depth review of the programming and business plan. I have no idea where SUN fucked up but there's no excuse for this. It's worth remembering that rinky-dink community stations manage to get this right the first time so what's SUN's excuse? Too many Muslims in the way? Later SUN were reportedly planning to reapply for an over-the-air signal but apparently hadn't gotten around to doing so. I haven't seen such jaw-dropping incompetence since the good old days of CKLN circa 2010, but while CKLN's management were arrogant idiots, at least they were amateur idiots. SUN TV were high priced professional idiots.

MANAGEMENT GREED;
Just to recap something already mentioned, but it bears repeating. There were two offers on the table to rescue SUN TV; once when Post Media bought out the entire SUN Newspaper chain and again when that deal excluded SUN TV Moses Znaimer offered to buy the network itself. That deal fell through specifically because of the greed of SUN News execs who demanded such a rich payout that Znaimer walked away and no other offers came. Znaimer may be a egomaniac but he's not a fool. If he thought the license had some value and he could make a news network succeed he probably had good reason to give it a shot, and unlike the SUN TV execs he has the track record to make that plausible. With his breezy style and eye for talent Znaimer would have no doubt re-branded as "Zoomer News", aimed at seniors (like his current radio station) with lot's of friendly life style news and some commentary. I could see him keeping Charles Adler, business editor Pat Boland and his old-timey handlebar mustache and possibly even Coren. But definitely not Levant. He would be toast. Of course the first thing Znaimer would want to do is fire all the old, inept management and put in his own team. Hence the need for a payout. Not surprisingly they got greedy enough to scuttle the whole deal. Not surprising that is in an economic system where even the most corrupt or stupid executives are expected to get bonuses no matter how much money they loose or how much damage they cause to their own company.



A few, probably well meaning people, like Jonathan Kay, have expressed sympathy for those staff who are now unemployed, with Kay saying if you gloat over their job losses "You are a bad person". I don't think so. These "talented young news staffers" (as some have put it) were perfectly happy to be working for a hateful propaganda machine that regularly targeted marginalized groups like Muslims, Roma and Natives who could not fight back. They happily used sleazy ambush interviews, often on the the flimsiest pretexts, sometimes on obscure figures who have no media experience on subjects they had little knowledge. They were quite prepared to broadcast blatant lies without bothering to do basic fact checking, and when they got caught they simply brushed it off until they were forced to back down in the face of a CBSC complaint or lawsuit. They regularly used ugly graphics showing blood or bombs over Muslim faces. They learned that it's OK to use vicious personal attacks, race-baiting, lying and slander as long as it suits your political agenda. If you think that's OK then you are a terrible person and a worse journalist and you are no loss to the profession. I know you would argue they were just following orders but I wouldn't go there if I were you. The best you can say about these people is that they were collateral damage and I notice that conservatives have no problem brushing off collateral damage in any other context so I'll not shed any crocodile tears over them.

As a final tribute I scanned through a few remarks in the comments section of one of the news stories about the crash and burn of SUN TV. Most were of the "good riddance to bad rubbish" variety but there were a couple Ezra Levant fans out there to send SUN off with a touch of class. One read "This is a great victory for radical Islam" (yeah those damn Muslims over at the CRTC) and another more hopeful stating; "Wouldn't it be great if this freed up Ezra to run for Prime Minister or Premier of Ontario?"

Great? That would be FUCKING AWESOME!!!

Three Musicians From Classic Canadian Punk Bands Pass On

Rob Brent ~ Guitarist with London, Ontario (later Toronto) punk band The Demics. The Demics recorded the classic song "New York City" on their fist ep "Talk's Cheap" in 1979 which became a surprise hit in Canada. They later rerecorded it on a subsequent album in 1980 getting an American release and becoming a mid-size hit there as well. By that time Brent had left and been replaced by Steve Koch as the Demics moved from London to Toronto. Following the usual turmoil the band soon broke up without any more releases. The DEmics may have been a one-hit-wonder but it was quite a hit; "New York City" is one of the most beloved songs of the Canadian early punk era and was chosen as the greatest Canadian single of all time by Chart Magazine in 1996 as first "Talk's Cheap" and later a full album were released.

THE DEMICS ~ "TALK'S CHEAP" (full ep);


THE DEMICS ~ "NEW YORK CITY";


Brian Goble ~ Bassist with The Skulls, one of Vancouver's first punk bands. After they broke up singer Joey Shithead went on to form DOA while Goble became singer and singer with The Subhumans. He would later rejoin DOA in the 1990's ~ 57;

THE SUBHUMANS "FUCK YOU";


THE SUBHUMANS ~ "TWO BIT WHORE";


DOA ~ "WORLD WAR 3";


JEFF DEPEW ~ Drummer for London Ontario punk band 63 Monroe. A band of the early eighties who scored a minor hit with a goofy run through of the Herman's Hermits song "Henry VIII". That wasn't really an accurate taste of the band's sound which was a much heavier and louder New York Dolls type of Glam-Trash Punk. 63 Monroe put out a few albums locally throughout the 80's but never left London. Various members also had a side band named Osterberg, which as you might assume started out as a Stooges cover band before later turning to originals. I actually booked them a few times in the 2000's and they were a rock solid live band. 63 Monroe also did a session at CIUT a few years back. A version of 63 Monroe, including Depew, was playing as late as a couple of weeks ago when they did a benefit for a Christmas Toy Drive in London.

63 MONROE ~ "HENRY VIII";


63 MONROE ~ "GIVE 'EM UP";

The Drums Of August

The Drums Of August;

DIRE STRAITS ~ "BROTHERS IN ARMS";


As we all know by now 2014 is the centennial of the start of World War One. Naturally this gives an excuse for watching plenty of TV retrospective documentaries. Less desirable it also gives politicians a chance to grandstand off of someone else's heroism and sacrifice. I am really not looking forward to the next four years of watching Stephen Harper take credit for Vimy Ridge. As if the last four years of War Of 1812 pandering wasn't annoying enough. Still it does give history buffs the chance to indulge in our favorite hobbies; visiting the counter-factual world.

A counter-factual world is an exercise in trying to imagine how things would be different if certain historical events had happened differently, or not at all. Such as; what if Chamberlain hadn't backed down at Munich in 1938, or if the 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler had succeeded, or if the assassination of Lincoln had not, or if Lincoln had not been elected at all, or if Bonnie Prince Charlie had won at Culloden in 1745 or Montcalm on the Plains Of Abraham in 1756 or Napoleon at Waterloo, etc, etc. How would the world be different? There is no real answer of course but it's cool to make a reasonably educated guess.

DEATH OF ARCHDUKE FERDINAND;



In a recent book entitled "Archduke Francis Ferdinand Lives!" author Richard Ned Lebow asks the question; "How would the world look if World War One had never happened. The book is a quick read managing to cover both best and worst case scenarios in a brisk 238 pages. Lebow is mostly concerned with the political and scientific ramifications and spends more time on the "best case" rather than the worst, clearly thinking the former more likely than the latter, as do I.




Space limits my ability to go into great detail but suffice it to say Lebow postulates a world in which not only World War One but World War Two never happen since the second obviously was brought about by the conditions caused by the first. Ditto for the entire Cold War and post Soviet Balkan wars along with some of the wars of Third World Liberation and religious wars of the Middle East. Communism and Fascism do not take power except perhaps in some isolated cases (such as Spain and some parts of Latin America) and the Japanese are still militarists. There are no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. There is no post-war influenza pandemic. There is certainly no Holocaust, Armenian Genocide, Cambodian Genocide, Chinese Cultural Revolution or mass starvation in Russia. So far so good.

Unfortunately scientific development is slowed greatly and we are still driving in Model T's, flying in Zeppelins and biplanes and riding in steam trains. There is no radar, sonar, nylon, computers, submarines, jets, rockets and various chemicals, vaccines and drugs. Smallpox, Polio and Tuberculosis are still scourges. Cultural development is also slowed. There is still racial segregation in America and South Africa. Jews are still openly discriminated against and there is no Israeli state. Some parts of the third world are still colonies. Women have to wait decades longer for the right to vote and although they would have it by now, they would still not have full equal rights. America does not have a black president and will not be getting a woman president any time soon. No other country likely has one either.

"THE AIRSHIP DESTROYER" (1909)


Lebow is mostly concerned with the political and scientific ramifications and I'm not going to spend more time on those elements, instead I wish to examine the possible ramifications on music, film and related youth culture which Lebow deals with only briefly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
YOUTH CULTURE IN A WORLD WITHOUT THE WORLD WARS;
To begin with the very concept of Youth Culture and "Teenagers" is a completely modern one. There had always been teenagers of course. But for centuries they were simply young adults, with the same opinions and tastes as their parents. Very few would ever dream of going to university and the network of cheap community colleges were not even built until after World War Two. Most simply finished high-school (if they were lucky) and got jobs. The guys that is. Most girls did not work outside the home nor did they expect to. Most were married by the time they hit twenty. If there had been such a concept as "cool", teenagers would not have been seen as such. They were not cute like kids but they were not as experienced and confident as adults. This is why most of the romantic leading men of the early days of pre-Great War film were expected to be in their thirties rather than the early twenties of today's screen heartthrobs. Women sex symbols could be younger of course. In the end they all had the same political, musical, artistic and fashion tastes as their parents and none thought that strange.

A HAPPY VICTORIAN FAMILY;



This started to change somewhat in the Edwardian era just before World War One as the strict grey world of the Victorians loosened up somewhat and new political ideas like Progressivism, Socialism and Anarchism took root. New or newish scientific ideas theories became mainstream. Some good; evolution, pscho-analysis, relativity, some bad like eugenics and some merely silly like phrenology. New artistic schools as well; Futurism, Cubism, Expressionism, Art Nouveau, and musical experiments with tonality, serial music, syncopation and Ragtime come from this era. In literature the French Symbolists like Rimbaud, decadents like Oscar Wilde and Huysmans and modernists like Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Anton Chekhov and the Norwegian playwright Ibsen had broken new ground. But these developments were largely limited to a small group of well-off, well-educated elites in the west. The mass of people, even in the Americas, Europe, Japan, Australia, white South Africa and urban Latin America, whether rural or urban working class, still accepted Victorian attitudes as the norm.

World War One shattered this quiet and insular world for good. Obviously the old order and the old platitudes had not prevented a traumatic international cataclysm. Political reforms mostly stalled however (except for women's suffrage) as the political systems in North America were tilted in favour of a conservative rural electorate still obsessed with Prohibition, but artistic and intellectual reforms plunged ahead. A larger demographic of disenfranchised youth were looking to challenge the old order which had failed them so dramatically. Also many in North America and Australia/New Zealand had toured some of the cultural capitals of Europe and found the contrast with the provincial, and often puritanical small towns back home jarring. Prohibition in America and parts of Canada encouraged this cultural and moral disconnect. They also had for the first time the economic freedom to indulge in cultural pursuits like music, fashion, literature, art and film as the war had led to industrial growth. Technical progress was a related factor as suddenly large numbers of people could afford a car, thanks to the Model T Ford, giving them a freedom to travel quite easily where their parents could have scarcely dreamed of. This meant they could, and did, go out on the town every week, to speakeasies or dance clubs with no parents around for miles. A new invention, radio, meant that the new musics like Jazz could circulate in ways that would have been impossible before the war. The Gramophone was not a new invention but it became cheap enough for practically anyone to afford further bringing Jazz to the masses. Jazz was perfect for young people looking to blow off steam; it was loud, it was fast, it was carnal, it was new, it was fun. The fact that parents hated it was irrelevant since kids now had their own scenes. This was new and led to a new phenomenon, a teen subculture with it's own music, fashion, slang, drinks, dances and a sense of itself. Once that bridge was crossed later trends like swing and rock and roll were just a matter of time. Likewise after that the later subcultures of the sixties and seventies like beats, hippies, punk and hip-hop.

NOBLE SISSLE & EUBIE BLAKE ORCH ~ "ST LOUIS BLUES";


With this cultural and recreational distance between youth and adult cultures social and political distance was bound to follow. If adults reacted by trying to prohibit and censor, youth would react with defiance which would in turn lead to further resentment by adults and so on. If adults would ban booze then youth would naturally insist on drinking in larger numbers. If adults insisted on enforcing Victorian attitudes about sex then youth would become more free wheeling. And so it has gone ever since. The rock and roll of nineteen fifties, the larger cultural upheavals of the sixties including the peace/civil rights/woman's lib movements, the punk rock/hip-hop/anarchist/environmentalism/gay rights of the seventies onward all have their roots in the world created by the fallout from World War One. Without the war the easygoing but still conservative consensus of the Edwardian era would have survived for decades, even generations. With a soundtrack to match.

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MUSIC IN A WORLD WITHOUT THE GREAT WAR;
Before the war jazz was a localized music known by urban blacks and a few white musicians. Almost as soon as the war ended jazz exploded internationally in absolutely unprecedented way. Similarly before the war blues had been even more limited to blacks in the rural south, while country music was limited to whites in the rural south and west and parts of Canada. Rural blacks and whites also had their own versions of gospel music as well. Records and radio brought all this to audiences outside their regions and to the wider world that would never had happened otherwise. Some black jazz musicians like James Reese Europe, Dan Kildare, Sidney Bechet, and Josephine Baker brought their music to Europe in person and created a sensation. Without the war would they have thought to do so? Lebow argues that they would have and further that they would have stayed there since career prospects, not to mention social advancement in Jim Crow's America was obviously blocked. Their success in America and all around better treatment would have encouraged other black jazzmen to emigrate as well. This would have enriched Europe's musical scene at the expense of Americas. However I have my doubts about the willingness of blacks to pick up and head off to Europe without the catalyst of the Great War.

It is true that some black musicians did indeed travel to Europe even before the War. Some even recorded there and had successful careers. However most did not. We must remember that traveling to another continent was a much more unusual event in those days. Most people lived their entire lives without traveling more than a few hundred miles for any reason. Unless they were immigrants of course, in which case they made one long trip once, then settled down. Steam power had made long distance travel at least feasible but it was still a long and arduous journey. When Woodrow Wilson went to Europe to negotiate the end of the War in 1919 he was in fact the first American President to journey to Europe while in office and only the third sitting President to leave the country at all. Trivia note; The Other two were Teddy Roosevelt who visited the Panama Canal and Chester Allan Arthur who stopped off in Canada for a picnic while fishing. And that was literally it. In fact some seriously wondered if Wilson could still be President at all if he were so far away for weeks at a time. In 1938 when Neville Chamberlain went to Munich to negotiate with Hitler the fact that he went at all (and by plane no less) was still news in itself. In fact the leadership of Nazi Germany, Italy, Japan and the USSR was notable for how few of them had ever traveled much outside their countries. In World War One this was even more true. All this means that the idea of a large influx of blacks to Europe was unlikely. It would have been a trickle without the war. Besides the Great War led to a far more significant black migration. An internal one.

MISSISSIPPI FRED MCDOWELL ~ "BLUES MAKER";


At the turn of the century the vast majority, at least three quarters, of all blacks in America still lived in the south, and the rural south at that. Most lived lives of poverty and oppression as sharecroppers, manual laborers and small farmers. They were oppressed by segregation at every level of society as well as peonage laws that were barely different from slavery, not to mention the constant threat of violence. Still remarkably few left. Partly through loyalty to families but many were also kept down by debts which could never be repaid and from which they could be arrested for trying to escape. Besides with no guarantee of jobs and housing up North or out West why risk it? The War changed that with it's incessant demand for workers to fuel the war economy there were suddenly plenty of well paying jobs needing to be filled. There were also jobs to be had in the army, which was segregated of course, but jobs nonetheless. The mass exodus of blacks (and some whites) fleeing the south for the north, mid-west and west coast caused the largest migration in American history with most moving to inner cities. And these black internal immigrants took their musics with them.

"HARLEM REVIEW" (circa 1930);


One of the great myths of jazz is that it was spread from New Orleans northwards after the Army closed up the red light district sending the musicians up the Mississippi in search of gigs. There is a kernel of truth in this. Many fine New Orleans musicians moved north who might otherwise have been happy to stay where they were in their easy gigs. King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Jellyroll Morton, Sidney Bechet, The New Orleans Rhythm Kings, Original Dixieland Jazz Band among others made their mark this way. But part of the reason for this success was the vast and loyal audience who went north as well, bringing with them jazz, blues, gospel as well as Soul Food and a set of slang as a seasoning. It was this that led to the jazz explosion that would dominate American and world music for the next twenty years. As well as the blues and gospel that (when blended with country music) would lead to the rock and roll that would dominate after that. Without the Great War this musical exodus would certainly not have occurred. Jazz, Blues, Gospel and Country would have still existed of course, but few outside the south would know much about it for many years if not decades.

ILLINOIS JAQUETT ~ "ONE NIGHT BOOGIE";


During the Second World War this process repeated itself in yet another exodus from the South. Besides the black exodus there was also an smaller but still significant white exodus from poverty stricken Appalachia, Ozarks, and Oklahoma bringing their folk and country musics as well. More importantly World War Two also completed the international reach of jazz through Swing which became the undisputed music for young people in the developed world for anyone who wasn't politically opposed to it such as Fascists, Communists or conservative Christians. This finished the job of selling jazz that had started during the first war and would lead inevitably to the later conquest of Rock and Roll. Without the two wars bringing these cultures together in a great crusade for democracy it is hard to see any of this happening. Jazz would have still made it's way to Europe and beyond, as indeed it was already doing, but it would have stayed as a fad for a small number of urban Bohemians and adventurist youths, it would not have become the lingua franca of youth culture.

GENE RODGERS ~ "JUKEBOX BOOGIE";


Besides the larger cultural and sociological ramifications it's worth a quick look at how the wars affected certain notable musicians. For some the first war was a boon. As stated, black bandleaders James Reese Europe and Dan Kildare created a sensation in Europe with their proto-jazz as well as inspiring great pride in the black community. Lebow in fact does take note of James Europe's importance. Without the war they would not have had anywhere near the same impact even if they had gone to Europe anyway as Lebow assumes. On the other hand without the war they both would have probably lived longer. James Europe was murdered by a band member soon after returning home, a tragedy that might have been avoided if his band had stayed in the less stressful confines of Harlem. While Kildare had a meltdown in Britain and killed himself and his wife in a murder suicide in 1920. Original Dixieland Jazz Band pianist Harry Ragas died in the influenza pandemic that spread in the aftermath of the Great War, as did Ragtime pianist/composer Felix Arndt and New Orleans band leader King Watzke.

JAMES REESE EUROPE ~ "BROADWAY MELODY" (1919);


As is well known Glenn Miller died in a plane crash in the next war. British Jazz bandleader Ken "Snakehips" Johnson was killed by a German bomb along with sax player Dave "Baba" Williams while on stage, similarly British Big Band singer Al Bowlly was killed in another air raid and Big Band singer Chick Henderson killed in yet another. Avante Garde composer Anton Webern was killed by an American sentry in occupied Germany immediately after the war. Even after the wars the draft continued in America and Britain (two countries who had not had the draft before, and certainly would not have done so without the wars), among several musicians who had their careers derailed by the Cold War draft include; Rockabilly singers Terry Dene, Glen Glenn and Tibby Edwards and bluesman Magic Sam (imprisoned for a few years for going AWOL). Old Time Country singer Davy Miller went blind after an infection suffered in the Great War. Gene Vincent was seriously injured for life in a traffic accident on a military base, a factor that led to his later fatal addiction to painkillers. Not all musician's experiences were negative however. Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck got a gig playing for the USO during WW2 and therefore got to travel to exotic places like Turkey where he was exposed to local music that would heavily influence his trademark sound. Nineteen sixties Doo-Wop group The Del-Vikings and Garage band The Monks were actually formed while the members were in the military, while Doo-Wop singer/songwriter Fred Parris wrote the classic "In The Still Of The Night" while on guard duty. Stride piano player Willie The Lion Smith claimed he got his nickname due his bravery under fire during the Great War. Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston served in the merchant marine in WW2 and also entertained the troops from various races and nations and from whom they learned a number of songs they passed on in the later folk boom of the later fifties. Arlo Guthrie owed his biggest hit (later also a movie) "Alice's Restaurant" from his account of his experiences with the draft during the Vietnam War, a war that America would certainly not have been involved in were it not for the Cold War. Some artists would have their careers derailed by the Cold War Red Scare including The Weavers, Paul Robeson and Josh White.

GENE VINCENT ~ "BLUE JEAN BOP";


It would be absurdly easy to come up with a list of individual songs that would not have existed without the wars; besides the afore mentioned "Alice's Restaurant", there's "Eve Of Destruction" (Barry McQuire), "Sky Pilot" (Animals), "Draft Morning" (Byrds), "Last Train To Clarksville" (Monkees), "I Ain't Marching Anymore" (Phil Ochs), "Fixing To Die Rag" (Country Joe), "Atomic Cocktail" (Slim Gaillard), "Volunteers" (Jefferson Airplane), "War" (Edwin Starr), "Ball Of Confusion" (Temptations), "Fables Of Faubus" (Charles Mingus), "Machine Gun" (Peter Brontzman Octet), "A Survivor From Warsaw" (Arnold Schoenberg), "Mr Hitler" (Leadbelly), "Fortunate Son" (CCR), "Oakie From Muskogee" (Merle Haggard), "Sink The Bismark" (Johnny Horton), "War Pigs" (Black Sabbath), "Holidays In The Sun" (Sex Pistols), "Belson Was A Gas" (Sex Pistols), "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" (Dead Kennedys), "California Uber Alles" (Dead Kennedys), "Holiday In Cambodia" (Dead Kennedys), "Sheep Farming In The Falklands" (Crass), "Reich And Roll" (Forgotten Rebles), "Nazi Apocalypse" (Simply Saucer), "99 Luft Balloons" (Nena), "Zyclon B Zombie" (Throbbing Gristle), "War Dance" (Killing Joke), "Abolish Government" (TSOL), "World War 3" (TSOL), "Flame Of The West" (Big Country), "Fields Of Fire" (Big Country), "Where The Rose Is Thrown" (Big Country), "Red Skies At Night" (The Fixx), "The Lebanon" (Human League), "Two Tribes" (Frankie Goes To Hollywood), "Enola Gay" (O.M.D), "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" (Pere Ubu), "Final Solution" (Pere Ubu), "Mussolini Headkick" (Cabaret Voltaire), "Baader-Meinhoff" (Cabaret Voltaire), "That's When I Reach For My Revolver" (Mission Of Burma), "Let's Start A War" (The Exploited), "Nuclear Device" (The Stranglers), "They Walked In Line" (Joy Division), "I Was A Kamikaze Pilot" (Hoodoo Gurus), "Tojo" (Hoodoo Gurus), "Atomic Power" (Louvin Bros) "Brothers In Arms" (Dire Straits). And of course "I Ain't No Communist (Carson Robison & Lulu Belle & Scotty) and "Right In The Fuhrer's Face" (Spike Jones). And those are just off the top of my head.

CABARET VOLTAIRE ~ "MUSSOLINI HEADKICK";


That misses the larger point however since there would be no Rock and Roll at all without the massive cultural, demographic and technological changes brought about by the two wars. Ditto for all post Swing Jazz such as BeBop, Free Jazz and Fusion. I am assuming Swing itself would have developed anyway since all the ingredients were in place with the original Hot Jazz, however it would have developed much more slowly and with a smaller (and blacker) audience. Likewise the Blues, both Folk Blues (Delta, Piedmont and Jug Band) and more urban Classic Blues would have existed even if the Black Migration had not happened, however the post World War Two Chicago style Electric Blues and probably the Kansas City style Jump Blues would not. The more formalized Black Spirituals of the 1920's would have still existed but the Blues influenced post war Gospel and Doo-Wop might not. Old Time Country Music and Bluegrass would sound the same but Honky-Tonk, Western Swing, Hillbilly Boogie and The Nashville Sound would probably not.

THELMA WHITE & HER ALL GIRL BAND ~ "CHOO-CHOO";


Moving away from Jazz and Rock; electronic music is a development of the nineteen twenties Dada (and Futurist) art movement that was inspired by disgust of the Great War when the Italians Filippo Marinettii and the brothers Luigi and Antonio Russolo developed their theories about "The Art Of Noises" and invented giant electronic instruments to play their "Industrial Music". This would later directly influence figures such as Leon Theremin, George Antheil, Karlheinze Stockhausen, Iannis Xanakis, Edgard Varese, Steve Reich and later The Velvet Underground, Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltarie, Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk.

LEON THEREMIN;


Arnold Schonenberg, father of Avante Garde music, was already composing challenging works in Vienna prior to the Great War in which he would revolutionize music by breaking down it's tonal structure and abandoning melody. However the rise of the Nazis forced the Jewish composer to flee to America where he would influence a new generation of Americans like Henry Cowell, John Cage, Wallingford Reigger, Lukas Foss, Henry Partch and Phillip Glass. Italian conductor Arturo Toscaninni would flee to America as well. Charles Tomlinson Griffes, openly gay American Avant Garde composer would die in the 1919 influenza pandemic.

ARNOLD SCHOENBERG ~ "A SURVIVOR FROM WARSAW";


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RADIO AND TELEVISION;

Lebow argues that technological developments were greatly advanced by the wars and actually this is a common assumption. In most cases this is certainly true; airplanes, submarines, rockets, radar, sonar, nylon, plastics, and various medicines and chemicals, not to mention nuclear and atomic power came from the wars. However there are two inventions having a crucial cultural impact for which the wars either had no impact or which would have actually developed faster without the wars. Radio is the first case. Commercial radio began broadcasting immediately after the Great War and became ubiquitous throughout the developed world with shocking speed. Within only a few years it was everywhere and it's impact in spreading music, news, entertainment and culture truly can not be overemphasized. Perhaps the War had delayed or sped up the radio's unveiling by a few years but this does not appear to be the case and even if it was, it was a minor factor.

As for television; it's development was actually slowed by WW2. As I've already written elsewhere, television broadcasts were already well underway in Britain, America and Germany by the late thirties with reasonably full schedules and several thousand sets in all three countries. Broadcasting on a smaller scale was also underway in a number of other countries. The war stopped most of this in it's tracks for the duration and postwar development in Europe was slowed by the economic challenges of rebuilding in Europe and Japan. Likewise FM radio (as opposed to the already common AM) was also stopped for the duration of the war.

A FRAGMENT OF GERMAN TELEVISION CIRCA 1936


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FILM;

The international film industry was already well underway when the Great War started. Full length films were being made in America, France, Italy, and to a lessor extent Britain, Germany, Scandinavia, Canada, Australia, Russia and even Japan, China and India. Such figures as George Melies, DW Griffith, Mac Sennett, Charlie Chaplin, Max Linder, John Bunny, Bert Williams, Bronco Billy Aronson, Asta Neilson, Paul Wegener, Theda Bara, Florence Labadie, Florence Lawrence, and Nell Shipman were already famous, the war did not change that. Genres like Westerns, Mysteries (including Sherlock Holmes, although oddly not in Britain), Slapstick Comedies and Serials were already common-place. Long big budget epics were being made by Griffith as well the Italians.

However the end of the war brought about a major development that would indeed change the way films were made and perceived. The changes came out of Germany, a country that had actually not been an important film center before the war. While America, France and Italy exported numerous films internationally, Germany made mostly low budget comedies, slightly risque burlesques and escapist adventures and crime stories (including Sherlock Holmes, always popular in Germany). However the depression, both psychological and economic, brought about by their defeat turned the Germans toward a new approach to film, Expressionism. As an artistic genre Expressionism had been popular in Germany and Scandinavia for at least a decade since the works of Edvard Munch. This dark and moody approach had already graduated to theatre and even two classic films made just before the war by actor/director Paul Wegener; "Der Golem" and "The Student Of Prague". However it was after the war that the iconic film "The Cabinet Of Doctor Caligari" (by director Robert Wiene and starring future stars Conrad Veidt, Werner Krause and Lil Dagover) would open the floodgates with films by Fritz Lang, FW Murnau, GW Pabst, Paul Leni and later Leni Reifenstall. Their decade long series of brilliant films would break new ground in film techniques as they developed new ways of using cameras, lighting and sets along with topics like horror, the subconscious, sex, and crime. They would influence Hollywood into new directions like horror, Film Noir, and sci-fi in a sophisticated way that made the films of DW Griffith seem old fashioned almost overnight. Perhaps without the war some of this would have happened anyway as German filmmakers experimented with Expressionist theatre and set design techniques already in use in Germany, (as stated Paul Wegener was already doing so) but there is no guarantee. Certainly the conditions that led to the creation of "Dr Caligari" are so specific to the chaos of post war Germany that it is hard to see the film being made otherwise. Or of it's finding an audience if it did. At any rate even Expressionism would not have nearly so dark and gloomy without the war's baleful cloud, and without this influence Film Noir and Horror would likely not exist as we know it.

"GENUINE" ~ DIRECTED BY ROBERT WIENE 1920;


Another lesser known but influential German film-maker was Hans Richter, a Dadaist who made a series of brilliant short films that developed new types of editing and double exposures to create innovative collages. Without the influence of Dada he would probably not have become a film-maker at all, let alone a revolutionary one. And Dada would not have occurred without the War. More famous, or infamous was Leni Reifenstall who's Nazi propaganda films like "Triumph Of The Will" would certainly have never been made if there were no Nazis to glorify. Her films have influenced propaganda and advertising to this day. Walter Ruttmann was a pioneer of Animation and Documentary film in Germany since the early Twenties including the classic "Berlin; Symphony Of A Great City", died while serving as a filmmaker with the German army in World War Two. American director John Collins, considered a rising star with the film "Children Of Eve" died in the post World War One Flu Epidemic at age 36.

"INFLATION" BY HANS RICHTER (1927);


At the same time, while German film was immeasurably improved by the Wiemar years it was seriously crippled by the Nazis. Among those who fled to America were Fritz Lang, FW Murnau, Conrad Veidt, Marlene Dietrich, Werner Klemperer, and Maximillian Schell. Asta Neilson returned to Denmark. Incidentally a number of actors and dancers died in the 1919 Spanish Flu Pandemic including Gaby Deslys (French actress/dancer and a major star), Vera Kholodnaya (Russian actress, also a big star), American actors Julian L'Estrange, Harold Lockwood, Myrtle Gonzalez and Elijah Tahamont (AKA Indian actor Dark Cloud), Walter Stradling (English cinematographer) not to mention Mata Hari of course. Actor Leslie Howard died while serving in the R.A.F. in World War Two. British actress Mary Lawson (in the original versions of "To Catch A Thief" and "Scrooge"), S.J. Warmington ("39 Steps" & "Sabotage") and dancer Lydia Cecilia Hill were killed in an air raid. German actor Hans Brauswetter was killed in an air raid,actor Friedrich Kayßler was killed by Russian troops in Berlin in 1945. More actors, film-makers and script writers would however have their careers ruined by the Cold War Red scare and blacklists of the 1950's. Polish/German actress Diana Karenne ("Marie Antoinette", "Loves Of Casanova", "White Roses Of Ravensburg") killed in an air raid as was Swedish actress and singer Aino Bergo.

After WW2 the existence of a large teen culture with disposable income and a need to blow off steam away from their parents led to the creation of a new medium; the Drive-In Theatre. This in turn led to a need to create product tailored for teens; Science Fiction. Very little Sci-Fi was made prior to World War Two, and what had been made were fairly sophisticated and big budget films from Europe like "Metropolis", "The Woman In The Moon" (both by Fritz Lang), "Alarune", "Things To Come" (written by HG Wells), "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea", "Mysterious Island" (both based on Jules Verne works) and "Aelita Queen Of Mars" (Russian), all aimed at adults rather than teens. Similarly Horror films would move from the moody and Gothic like "Dracula", "Frankenstein", "The Wolfman" to low budget creature features. Other more obvious teen fare would include beach blanket movies, Rock & Roll movies, Hot Rod and Biker movies.

Some films would certainly not have been made at all without the wars; "All Quiet On The Western Front", "Saving Private Ryan", "Wings", "Tora Tora Tora", "From Here To Enternity", "Enemy At The Gates", "The Battleship Potemkin", "Platoon", "Full Metal Jacket", "Forest Gump", "MASH", "A Bridge Too Far", "Das Boot", "Apocalypse Now", "Reds", "Paths Of Glory", "The Longest Day", "Sink The Bismark", "Casablanca", "The African Queen", "Cabaret", "Dr Strangeglove", "Invasion Of the Body Snatchers", "Road Warrior". The James Bond, Indiana Jones and Tom Clancy movies would certainly be very different without Communists and Nazis to fight. Not to mention any number of Cold War fantasies like "Rambo" and "Red Dawn".

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ART;

Many Avant Garde art movements of the early twentieth century were already underway before World War One including Cubism, Futurism, Fauvism and Expressionism along Art Nouveau. It may be said that the cultural upheaval of the 1920's along with the increased travel to and from Europe probably helped to publicized these movements. Particularly noteworthy are the Futurist war paintings of C. W. R. Nevison, the murals of Diego Rivera and later Picaso's "Gurenica". On the other hand at the same time it also led to Art Nouveau being super-ceded by the more modernist Art Deco and Bauhuas movements. The later Abstract Expressionism and Op-Art might have happened anyway as an outgrowth of these movements but it's hard to see it finding much of an audience in the more conservative world without the modernizing influences of the wars.

C.R.W. NEVINSON ~ "RETURNING TO THE TRENCHES";



That said there are two vital art movements that clearly came about as a result of the dislocation and disillusionment of the Great War; Dada and Surealism. Dada was founded by a group of largely German and Rumanian writers and artists hiding out in Switzerland during the war, for the express purpose of outraging the bourgeois society and the traditional art world they blamed for society's breakdown. Surrealism was both an outgrowth of and a response to Dada based in France. It is hard to imagine either movement happening without the 1920's Wiemar arts and Paris Cafe culture. It is also hard to imagine later Pop-Art, Conceptual Art and Minimalism without them, not to mention the works of George Grosz, Francis Bacon and HR Giger.

GEORGE GROSZ;



As an additional note; for some reason artists were particularly hard hit by the 1919 Spanish Flu epidemic spread in the aftermath of the Great War; Amadeo de Souza Cardoso (Portuguese Cubist & Expressionist painter), Harold Gilman (British post-impressionist painter), Bohumil Kubišta (Czech Expressionist painter), Ruby Lindsay (Australian Art Nouveau illustrator and painter), Morton Schamberg (American cubist painter) Raymond Duchamp (Cubist sculptor and brother to Dadaist Marcel), Toronto photographer Edwin Haynes and most importantly Austrian Art Nouveau painters Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. Klimt was one of the towering figures of the Edwardian Era and with his love of gilt, colour, glamor and sensuality so if anyone was the bridge between Art Nouveau and Art Deco Klimt was that man. Without that bridge painting would become more and more purely abstract.

GUSTAV KLIMT;


German painter Franz Marc was killed in WW1, German Primitivist painter Walter Spies was killed when the ship he was on was sunk in the Pacific, after he had fled Germany. Irish painter William Gerald Barry was killed in an air-raid. Italian Futurists were particularly hard hit with Umberto Roccioni, Antonio Sant'Elia, French artist Henri Gaudier Brzeska, while the founder of Futurism, Flippio Tomaso Marinetti made it to World War Two when he once again enlisted (despite being too old for the draft)as a propagandist and died of a heart attack. British artist Eric Ravilious disappeared while on a plane flight while serving as a war artist.

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LITERATURE;

An article for online academic mag "The Conversation" entitled "Without World War One, What Would Literature Look Like Today?" by Max Saunders deals specifically with the literary fallout from the great war. However he only really concerns himself with the immediate fallout, and mostly with British Post Modernist writers, although he does mention Erich Maria Remarque's "All Quiet On The Western Front" in passing.

Saunders argues that while it obvious that the "War Poets" that came out of the Great War such as Rupert Owen, Siegfreid Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke (being English he neglects to mention Canadian John MacRae), would not have written their best known works there is a more significant development to come out of the war. He credits Modernist writing to the War and post war world. Pre-War English writing (he argues) was mostly known for it's formal Victorian and pastoral sensibilities and the Romanticism of Keats, Shelly, Byron, the Brontes and the Brownings. Saunders doesn't mention Canada but here it would be much the same with the nature poems and sonnets of Pauline Johnson and Bliss Carmen, and the small-town sketches of Stephen Leacock and Lucy Maud Montgomery being most famous. In Quebec it would be the deeply Catholic rural homilies of Felix Leclerc. If not for the war those War Poets would have been "vacuous, conventional sonneteers". Of course some of these writers did not survive the war at all, including Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke and John McCrae. Without the War they might not be remembered at all. McCrae would no doubt stayed as a successful doctor in Guelph, popular and respected but completely unknown today. In fact the Great War took a terrible toll on writers and poets including French writers; Edmond ADAM, Charles Jean AJALBERT, Guillaume APOLLONAIRE, Jean BEAUFORT, Jean-Baptiste BEGARIE, Francisque-Anatole BELVAL-DELAHAYE, Hernan de BENGOECHE, Edouard BERNARD, Leon BERTHON, Adrien BERTRAND, Jean-Pierre CALLOC'H (pseud: "Bleimon"), Jean BOINE, Henri de BOISANGER, Aristide-Louis-Armand BRUANT, Roger BRUNEL, Joseph CAHN, Eugene CAPDEVILLE, Charles CARRAU, Henri COCARDAS, Auguste COMPAGNON, Antoine DUJARDIN, Jean de FOVILLE, Leon Isreal, Jean KLINGEBIEL, Rene LANCON, Marc de LARREGUY, Jacques LAVOINE, Anatole MEPLAIN, Charles PEGUY, Marius TOURON. British writers; H.B.K. ALLPASS, Harold BECKH, T.P. CAMERON-WILSON, Alec de CANDOLE, Leonard Niell COOK, Leslie A COULSON, Richard DENNYS, Rex FRESTON, Julien GRENFELL, William Noel HODGSON, Donald Frederic Goold JOHNSON, Rolland Aubrey LEIGHTON, W H LITTLEJOHN, Arthur James "Hamish" MANN, Charles John MASEFIELD, Francis St Vincent MORRIS, Hector Hugh MUNRO (pseud. "Saki"), Nowell OXLAND, Harold PARRY, Henry SIMPSON, Vivian Telfer PEMBERTON, Colwyn Erasmus PHILIPPS, Alexander ROBERTSON, Isaac ROSENBERG, Patrick SHAW-STEWART, William Ambrose SHORT, Henry SIMPSON, John William STREETS, Edward "Bim" TENNANT, Edward THOMAS, Robert Ernest VERNEDE, Arthur Graeme WEST, Gilbert WATERHOUSE, Cyril Morton HORNE, Ewart Alan MACKINTOSH, Alexander ROBERTSON, Charles Hamilton SORLEY, Robert STERLING, Walter Scott Stuart LYON, George C. DUGGAN, Tom KETTLE, Francis LEDWIDGE, Ellis EVANS. Canadian writer Bernard Freeman TROTTER, Germans Kurd ADLER, August Macke, Gerrit ENGLEKE, Franz JANOWITZ, Alfred LICHTENSTEIN, Albert MICHEL (Expressionist writer and poet), Adolf PETRENZ, Wilhelm RUNGE, Ernst STADLER (Expressionist poet), August STRAMM, Georg Trakl, and the Bulgarian Dimcho DEBELYANOV. French playwright Edmond Rostand, best known for his play Cyrano de Bergerac, died in the 1919 Spanish Flu pandemic as did Hungarian writer Margaritte Kafka (no relation to Franz) and American Progressive writer Randolph Bourne. British detective writer William Hope Hodgson was killed in action while Russian writer Alexandre Blok died during the Russian Revolution as did Nikolai GUMILEV and American writer John Reed ("Ten Days That Shook The World"). In World War Two German writer Adolf Brand was killed in an air raid as were Rumanian symbolist writer Ion Minulescu and Slovenian writer Josip Vandot, Russian writer Yevgeny Petrov was killed in a plane crash while working as a war correspondent.

JOHN MCCRAE



Saunders points as well to the Modernist writers of the post war 1920's such as T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Virginia Wolf, Joseph Conrad and Ernest Hemingway as products of the War. Oddly he neglects F.Scott Fitzgerald, George Orwell and Franz Kafka, writers most associated with the 1920's. An even more more odd omission is any mention of the most notable literary development of the post World War Two era; the Beatniks. Obviously they could not have happened without the Modernist trailblazers. This holds true for their influence on songwriting since the sixties.

Kafka



Maybe so; I'm no literary historian (I'm on firmer ground with music, film and to a lesser extent art) but it seems to me that the seeds of Modernism were laid in the Victorian Era by the likes of the French Symbolists Beaudelaire, Rimbaud and Verlaine, Decadents like Oscar Wilde, Huysmans and Gogol and the likes of Joseph Conrad (who was already writing before the war). It also seems to me that, as in music and art, Modernism would have more less happened anyway, albeit slower and for a smaller audience.

There was another influential literary development stemming from the post Great War era, albeit one taken less seriously by literary critics; the Fantasy writings of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Robert Howard (the Conan series), Edgar Rice Buroughs (Tarzan), the Germans B. Traven and Ernst Junger and others. These writers had been deeply affected by the war (Tolkien and Junger had seen action) as well as the entire faster, noisier, crowded and impersonal pace of Modern life and unlike the Modernists, Futurists, Expressionists or Dadaists they chose to respond not by embracing, dissecting or even rebelling but by escaping to a world of Ancient/Medieval myth and allegory. These works, while derided by critics have become among the most widely read and influential of the century.

One more literary development of a more street level sort was the Pulp Fiction novels, Crime Stories, Western Stories (especially Zane Grey), Comic Books and Tijuana Bibles which spread in the wake of both wars. True some of these books and comics had been around to some degree for years but there is no doubt that they were spread by American troops, sailors and airmen to Europe and Asia where they would not have gone to otherwise, much the same way that Jazz and Rock & Roll spread. The popularity of these Pulps & Comics has had a definite effect on Youth Culture throughout the developed world, again much the same as Jazz and Rock.

CAPTAIN AMERICA TRAILER (1940's);


In the category of books that would not have been written we must also include a number of classic works of non-fiction. Historians like Barbara Tuchman ("The Guns Of August"), William Shrier ("The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich"), Cornelius Ryan ("The Longest Day", "A Bridge Too Far"), Hannah Arendt ("The Banality Of Evil"), numerous works by A.J.P. Taylor, economics works by Kaynes and Galbraith, military works by J.C. Fuller and John Keegan, Hitler biographies by John Toland and Ian Kershaw, not to mention Anne Frank's "Diary Of A Young Girl". The leftist works of John Reed including "Ten Days That Shook The World" would obviously not exist although he would still have written on left-wing issues. Reed would definitely longer instead of dying of typhus during the Russian Civil War aged only 32.

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FASHION;

Fashion changed dramatically after the Great War. Before and after photos tell the tale. Before the War women in particular dressed much the same as they had since the early Victorian Era with long and restrictive dress and tight corsets. The ideal in women's fashion was The Gibson Girl. Even those women who played sports, and most did not, wore full length skirts and sweaters to play tennis, golf or cricket. And don't even ask about swimwear. Men were slightly better off but were still expected to wear jackets, ties, vests and hats at all time regardless of the weather. Since most men's clothes were made of wool this was doubly uncomfortable.

A GIBSON GIRL;



The 1920's brought liberation symbolized by the Flapper. Suddenly women could and did wear short, calf-length dresses without corsets. They could also let their hair down, literally, often bobbing it in the fashion of film stars Louise Brooks, Colleen Moore, Clara Bow and singers Helen Kane, Annette Henshaw, Ruth Etting and dancers Josephine Baker and Isadora Duncan.

BONNIE POE AS BETTY BOOP (1930's);


Men's fashion didn't change as much but it did get sleeker in the 1920's. Fashion and jewelry designers also felt free to run wild with designs based on Art Nouveau and Art Deco motifs. Later developments would steadily move towards more comfort and ease for both sexes leading to the unimaginable day when both men and women could wear shorts in public. Even the most forward thinking Edwardian never foresaw that happening. Let alone today's tatoos, piercings and dyed hair.

On a more war specific note to items came directly from the trenches. First the wrist-watch. Prior to the Great War men used pocket-watches, which meant they also had to wear a vest with pockets. However officers in the trenches, artillerists, pilots and submariners discovered that they needed a hands-free alternative and the wrist-watch was the solution. It caught on after the war. The leather jacket, emblem of Teen Rebels from the 1940's to today, was a product of the next war. Leather jackets were used by Pilots, Mechanics, Motorcycle Express Riders and Submariners as they were water-proof, wind-proof and stain resistant. They remained popular with motorcyclists afterwards and from there to teens in general becoming associated with Rockabilly and Doo-Wop. In fact the original motorcycle gangs were also a product of World War Two as the original members were dispatch riders, pilots and mechanics from the War blowing off steam. Later these weekend warriors would be followed by full time rock and roll rebels riding both cycles and hot-rods in the fifties and sixties. Later that impulse would filter down to skateboards and BMX's.

THE WILD ONE



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THE HOLOCAUST

Of course hanging over everything is the influence of The Holocaust. There are all those artists, actors, filmmakers, musicians, composers and writers who had to flee Germany and occupied Europe, mostly to America. These artists vastly improved the culture of America and their leaving had a disastrous effect on the arts, music and especially film scenes in Germany. Names like Arnold Schoenberg, Fritz Lang, FW Murnau, Hans Richter, Conrad Veidt, Marlane Dietrich, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrain, Erich Maria Remarque have already been noted. Worse however is the list of those who did not escape and were instead killed by the Nazi's.

FELIX NUSSBAUM;



Musicians & Composers;
German Jewish composer Heinz Alt was killed by the Nazi's as were composers Zikmund Schul, James Simon, Carlo Taube, Sigfried Translateur, Viktor Ullmann, Ernst Bachrich, Žiga Hirschler, Pavel Haas, Rudolf Karel, Gideon Klein, Hans Krása, Rafael Schächter, Erwin Schulhoff, Leo Smit, Viktor Ullmann, Lazlo Wiener, Marian Neuteich, Simon Pullman, Andrzej Włast, jazz musicians and arrangers Fritz Weiss, Szymon Kataszek, Artur Gold, libretist Fritz Lohner-Beda, violinist (and cousin of Gustav Mahler) Alma Rose, opera singers Richard Breitenfeld, Hans Erl, Henriette Gottlieb, Madga Spiegel, Ottilie Metzger-Lattermann, Erhard Wechselmann, Grete Forst, Juan Luria, choreographer Rod Riffler, Theodore Ritch, Polish/Yiddish composers David Beigelman, Zygmunt Białostocki, violinist Ludwik Holcman, Polish cantor Gershon Sirota (The Jewish Caruso), Polish folklorist Władysław Skierkowski.

Actors;

GEORG JOHN;



Kurt Gerron ("Diary Of A Lost Girl", "The Blue Angel", "People On Sunday", "The White Hell Of Pitz Palu", "Road To Rio"), actor Georg John ("Dr Mabuse", "Die Nibulngen", "The Last Laugh", "M"), Lisl Frank, Karel Hašler, Dora Gerson, Ernst Arndt, Christa Tordy, Anna Čalounová-Letenská, Cabaret comics Max Ehrlich and Fritz Grunbaum, Cabaret and film actor, singer and composer Willy Rosen, child actress Lea Deutsch, Dutch actor Coen Hissink, Dutch theater owner Abraham Icek Tuschinski, magician Ben Ali Libi, French Theatre and Ballet impresario Rene Blum, Franco/Rumanian actor/director Bernard Natan, Norwegian actor and director Henry Gleditsch, Polish actor Yitzchak Lowy, dancer Franceska Mann, Polish film pioneer Kazimierz Prószyński, Polish actor Igo Sym, Rumanian actress & opera singer Maria Forescu.

RUDOLPH LEVY;



Artists;
German/Jewish Art Nouveau and Art Deco sculptor Friedrich Adler, architect Alexander Beer, Cubist and Dada painter/sculptor Otto Freundlich, Post-Impressionist painter Rudolf Levy, Surrealist painters Felix Nussbaum and Peter Hammerschlag, Expressionist painters Charlotte Salomon, Natan Spigel, Art Nouveau painter Julie Wolfthorn, painter and illustrator Menachem Birnbaum, Bauhaus painter and designer Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, painters Tina Morpurgo, Malva Schalek, photographer Erich Salomon, architect Rudolf Wels, Imre Ámos, architect Harry Elte, Dutch graphic artist and mentor to MC Escher Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita , Polish painters Bronisław Czech, Stefan Filipkiewicz, Abraham Neumann, Jan Rubczak, Moshe Rynecki, Bruno Schulz, sculptor Henryk Hochman, Russian painter Abraham Berline

OTTO FREUNDLICH;



Writers;
Theatre critic and historian Max Herrmann, Expressionist poet Jakob van Hoddis, novelist Fritz Reck-Malleczewen, poets Gertrud Kolmar, Ivan "Goran" Kovačić, Viktor Rosenzweig, Pavel Friedman, poet and playwright Moriz Seeler, children's author Else Ury, playwright and poet Else Feldmann, playwright and screenwriter Ida Jenbach, novelist Oscar Rosenfeld, Czech Sci-Fi writer and artist Josef Capek, Editor of Franz Kafka's works Camill Hoffmann, writer Milena Jesenská, poet and libretist Peter Kien, playwrights Paul Kornfeld, Josef Taussig, poets Ilse Weber, playwright Károly Pap, novelist and critic Antal Szerb, poet and critic Jan Campert, feminist writer Anna Sophia Polak, Dutch publisher Emanuel Querido, French Surrealist poets Max Jabob and Robert Desnos, Franco/Romanian surrealist poet, playwright and screenwriter Benjamin Fondane, novelist Irène Némirovsky French poet Sarah Gerau Powell, Polish poets Franciszka Arnsztajnowa, Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, Grażyna Chrostowska, Mordechai Gebirtig, Zuzanna Ginczanka, Józef Stefan Godlewski, Igor Korntayer, Debora Vogel, dramatist Itzhak Katzenelson, children's author Janusz Korczak, Polish critics Konstanty Troczyński, Kazimierz Zdziechowski, Slovenian writers Ivo Brnčić, Anica Černej, Avgust Pirjevec, Russian poet Maria Skobtsova,

JULIE WOLFTHORNE