GROUCHO MARX

Let’s just say that I might easily be classified as that sort of “alternative”, “downtown” white middle class young(ish) Canadian who would sit in a bar with his buddies talking about rock and roll over pints of beer for hours. Who owns all of the Velvet Underground works. Who has an REM t-shirt from a small club gig before they were fab. Who venerated Hüsker Dü. Who dug Momus. You know. And so I might have been assumed to be delighted to attend, last night here in Montreal, a talk by über rock critic Greil Marcus, delivered as the keynote speech in an academic conference on popular music.

But no. In fact, I was horrified to find myself in a dingy academic auditorium surrounded by academic guys who looked just like me, in their black t-shirts and spectacles and motorcycle boots and pudgy bellies and black jeans. They furrowed their slightly sweaty pale bald academic egghead foreheads and nodded seriously as Greil said, for about an hour and a half, that the LA doo wop of the early fifties was a good thing.

LA doo wop was a good thing. And I am certain that all of the academic guys were nice fellows. That I would enjoy having a beer and talking about Yo La Tengo with them. But to be in a room full of chaps who look like me and who have made an entire career out of pub rock talk filled me with nausea.

“You are ideally suited to this life,” said my sly pal C, who is himself now an academic making an entire career out of pub rock talk, and who is here for this very conference. And I suppose I am ideally suited to that life. So it was a kind of self-loathing. I was all the more appalled for feeling that any of those men could have been me in an alternate universe. And that I would have been perfectly happy, spending my days in deep academic thought about rock and roll. And that it’s really no different than my life now, except that they actually don’t have to work at a day job to support their rock and roll thoughts; the thoughts support them. And that’s good, right?

But I wanted only to mock them all, which I do now, cruelly, wickedly, by showing you their abstracts.

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MONTREAL

Does it ever end? No. Having just returned from Barbados, I am now off to Montreal to meet the elusive C, who is in town to look for an apartment. Yes. I will report from there.

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RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

An unexpected aversion to gossip. A tendency to develop painful burning sensation in the eyes after working at the computer too long. A fondness for fresh seafood. A fascination with the minor scale. Financial ambition. Interest in scuba diving. An odd, warm, head-shaking nostalgia for the first two Sammy Hagar-era Van Halen albums. A surprising preference for moderation. A simultaneous attraction and repulsion towards expensive restaurants. An inability to emotionally connect with a majority of casual acquaintances. An unshakable certainty that western civilization peaked in 1976.

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BARBADOS

Yes, today we are back from Barbados; bronzed, brilliant and badder than ever. Massaged into a state of advanced relaxation by the tropical sun and Banks beer and pina coladas and rum punch and the beautiful Caribbean, we are now prepared for the next level. We are ready.

But good god! Canada is dingy isn’t it?

Okay. Anyway. The doctor is in. We are ready for your questions. Go ahead, caller. You’re on the air.

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