blog post Live on CBC Radio 3 w/ Grant Lawrence: Best Songs of the 2000s Encore Special!

Just curious why your head is on the statue of Augustus Prima Porta.

There are way too many good songs to pick a favourite, but I will work on it.

Yeah, Grant is stuck flying without a tv, not sure how he found a plane these days without one.  Ha!

I finally figured out my favorite song of the 2000's, it's I'll Believe in Anything by Wolf Parade. 

Martin

You entered in the contest, right?

Hope one of us wins the T&S prize package.

I'd also have to say Monster by YSP!WSD!

Was 7/4 Shoreline by Broken Social Scene.

It was 95-ish when a disenfranchised John who hadn't bought a new CD in easily 4 or 5 years, heard that song and fell in love with music again.

Soon to follow was the the first purchase I ever made on iTunes – that s/t Broken Social Scene album. Then came an iPod, and then I found podcasts. And that was what led me to Grant's CBC Radio3 podcast, and then, eventually here. 

April 3, 2006, I was born here.

Some 35,000,000 comments later, and a CBC Radio 3 Bucky for Fan of the Year in the first year of the awards, we have to thank (maybe) 7/4 Shoreline for it all.

I don't mind sharing at all! 

tb3, I haven't entered yet!  I should, it may be too late.  And also, I have to back up my choice as well, which requires thinking beyond gut reactions...

beat me to it by, but take my comment as i agree with your choice. great song

Stars - Heart (2003

Awesome album... great songs, "Life Effect" is a standout, but they're all really good.

Also, Shad - When This is Over (2005)... with "Rock To It" being amazing :)

I was playing around with itunes, and created a smart playlist just to show the decades of where my music comes from.

Of the 7902 songs on my ipod, 5180 of them come from the 2000s! That's 65.8%, or pretty much 2/3.

I guess that sorta makes sense, lots of my old CD's probably never made it onto the computer and from about 00-05 I really focused on classic rock, being in high school for most of those years.  From 05 on, it's really been focused on NEW music.

I'm just surprised that I have 5000+ songs from the last ten years.  That seems absurdly high.  And would explain where all my money went.

Weeeeeird.  I do that a lot too.  In fact, last night I was thinking to myself how I got into Spoon.  Started at Gimme Fiction and worked backwards.  And now back to forwards with the new stuff.

Ditto with Wilco.

and Jay Z.

....pretty much my 3 favorite artists.  congrats John, you've just blown my mind.

Second that Shine a Light nomination. Great effing tune.

Album: Daniel Lanois Here Is What Is.

Bands that made an impression: The Organ, Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, Woodhands, Junior Boys, Plants and Animals, man so many to list. Too many.

To pick a favorite song for the last decade is challenging... too challenging because there are so many good ones that would qualify.  My fav band, though, has to be Stars (coincidentally, Grant, you are player Your Ex-Lover is Dead right now!). 

Stars embodies a wonderful mixture of pop/rock, masculine/feminine, electronic/analogue, poetic/in-your-face, soothing/rebellious, melancholy/inspirational... I could go on.

Set Yourself on Fire is an unbelievable piece of art and is one of the best Canadian albums of all time!

Cheers!

Thanks for asking!  It went really well I thought.  It was a big opening for the Music PEI Awards stuff as a whole, and no one can pronounce my last name, but it was really great!  Lots of people were out, and I saw and overheard lots of great comments and discussion on the photos/art.

This Cuff the Duke song would definitely be on my list. First heard it live in Regina quite a few years ago and the intro just gets me every time.

Lost in the Plot - The Dears (2003)

Awesome, awesome song and even better live.

Sounds like the scream accompanying a karate move.

I like it ninja! I like it a lot.

p.s. Make sure to give Grant a Snuggler hug this weekend. 

Over the Christmas holidays my friends and I were talking about songs that remind us of each other. Stars' Calender Girl was suggested for me, But my favourite has to be Soft Revolution. I think the "Set Yourself on Fire" album changed my life. Well at least my musical life. 

theseus: your profile pic is beauteous... love it.

martin: thanks for the report! glad to hear it was a success. and i'm glad to learn how to pronounce your last name... I was in the Cathode Ray without the Ode camp, I'll admit.

fave album: I'll say Hawksely Workman, For Him and The Girls, because it changed my musical life. although so did "You Were Here" by Sarah Harmer. Both of those artists could be my faves.  Oh, and Luke Doucet.  And Danny Michel. And Neko Case.

umm Kathleen Edwards reminds me that all my favorite albums I've said so far are by dudes.  Which is wrong.  What about Feist's The Reminder?!

My new and improved top albums of the decade:

1) Arcade Fire Funeral

2) New Pornos - Twin Cinema

3) Feist - The Reminder

4) Cons - Shine A Light

5) BSS - You Forgot..

I'm going to go on record and laminate that.  Except all the albums I mentioned are in the first half of the decade.  Shit.  That can't be right.  Maybe I'll have to think of a 6-10 and really hammer on the last few years.

Excellent. 

Well, for matters of debate, I love my cat, but...am I IN LOVE with him...I can't say for certain.  I'm too bashful to ask how he feels about me.

@grant

is there going to be a list of the best of the 2000's songs published with itunes links

I can't even pick a favourite colour, because I don't want the rest of the spectrum to feel left out.  Favourite song of an entire decade?  Impossible.

no webradio, but can stream playlists...is it time to point the Bucky signal towards Calgary?

As a relative newcomer to the indie Canadian music scene, I have to say that I am really enjoying reading about everyone's favorites and using that as a starting point for discovering new music. 

Thanks.

I have noticed that about the year end lists as well.  My thinking is this: a lot of times, the Polaris doesn't pick the most obvious winner.

I mean, I'm not knockin Final Fantasy... but he did beat the New Pornographers and the Arcade Fire and Feist that year right? In the grand scheme of things, those albums have fared a lot better. 

That being said, you gotta take those lists with a grain of salt. They seem to be more about "influence" whereas the Polaris is a snapshot of the "best of that given year".

That's my take on things.

C'mon now! Further than that I killed firefox, still no luck, same with Chrome...turned on a video stream, worked like a peach. Stream back for me though now...not sure what was wrong. I choose to believe that there was a problem with Shaw, Scott got the call on his two way wrist watch and fixed my network issue in 15 mins. All this inspite of the fact that he's not a network expert...:)

Dear Lee,

Don't worry, it'll start to fill up before you know it! (concert calendar that is)

hehe..thanks. Me too, I haven't been able to listen the whole day until now. Did everyone listen to Grant's top 20 from the 2000's? Hahah...Grant sure know's how to get his way...there he is on air suggesting he needs to make it a top20 instead of top10, even though Chris "will kill" him. He just has to say on air they need to do something, and then, well, they have too...because we will demand it!

one of my favourite parts of this entire recording is Justin saying "..and we mean it." I tend to like weird moments in recordings..

I missed the first run through of this show, but I did catch Grants two personal top twenty shows.

These are just great shows, full of great music.

It somertimes seems kind of easy to forget how much truly great music this country produces. Listening to this show I kept finding myself, song after song, going, "Oh yes, that's a great tune! Oh, ya, that one too is a great tune...."

And on, and on, and on.

Impossible to choose just one song.

F’ed up made a number of lists, but the point is still quite correct, and it’s true for many albums in the top 10 each year, not just the winner.  What it means is that the Polaris Prize is not what it claims to be.  With a few exceptions the Polaris Prize does not identify the best albums of the year based on artistic merit.  This year I would say that 4 of the actual top 15 albums made the Polaris prize top 10 list.  I guess it’s an open question whether this is the result of incompetence or fraud, but what is clear is that no one should believe the Polaris Prize results, at all.  A lot of credit needs to be given to Exclaim for the article they did exposing the PP (make sure you read between the lines) but it would be nice to think that the major national media outlets would blow the whistle on what’s going on as well.  Unfortunately this is part of a much bigger problem within a segment of the national media, and I’m sure that’s why this isn’t happening.  If you read between the lines in the Exclaim article you’ll see the problems, “structural” and otherwise.  Here’s another fairly clear example. The Juno award for best new artist in 2009 went to LIGHTS, but LIGHTS did not have an album out that year.  In fact LIGHTS had never put out an album at that point.  Six months after winning the award she put out her first album, and it proceeded to get little to no critical acclaim.  You won’t find in on any prominent year end lists.  How on earth can someone win a Juno without even having an album out?  Good question, but note that she is managed by Jian Ghomeshi.  IMO, the Canadian music industry is probably the most corrupt in the western world, and every serious music fan needs to be very aware of who is trustworthy and who isn’t.

http://exclaim.ca/articles/generalarticlesynopsfullart.aspx?csid1=115&csid2=844&fid1=41162

I’ll probably post this again in another thread, but I’ll park it here for now in case anyone’s still reading this thread. 

This is somewhat related to today’s topic.  The 2009 Pazz & Jop list came out yesterday, the last one of the decade, so here’s a list of all the Canadian* albums in the top 40  of the Pazz & Jop Critics Polls in the 2000s:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pazz_&_Jop

2000

36. Neko Case & Her Boyfriends: Furnace Room Lullaby (Bloodshot)

2001

10. Rufus Wainwright: Poses (DreamWorks)

17. New Pornographers: Mass Romantic (Mint) - This album came out in 2000 in Canada.

2002

23. Neko Case: Blacklisted (Bloodshot)

2003

7. New Pornographers: Electric Version (Matador)

12. Rufus Wainwright: Want One (DreamWorks)

40. Broken Social Scene: You Forgot It in People (Arts & Crafts)

2004

6. Arcade Fire: Funeral (Merge)

40. A.C. Newman: The Slow Wonder (Matador)

2005

9. The New Pornographers: Twin Cinema (Matador)

28. Wolf Parade: Apologies to the Queen Mary (Sub Pop)

37. Stars: Set Yourself on Fire (Arts and Crafts)

2006

8. Neko Case: Fox Confessor Brings the Flood (Anti-)

35. Destroyer: Destroyer's Rubies (Merge)

2007

5. Arcade Fire: Neon Bible (Merge)

11. Feist: The Reminder (Cherrytree/Interscope)

2008

38. Fucked Up: The Chemistry of Common Life (Matador)

2009

3. Neko Case: Middle Cyclone (Anti)      

33. Japandroids: Post-Nothing (Unfamiliar)

35. K'Naan: Troubadour              (A&M/Octone)

http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/index.php

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/albums/2008/

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/albums/2009/

-9 of the 20 albums are by the New Pornographers or members of the New Pornographers.  This is simply incredible, and it makes them one of the most critically acclaimed groups of artists in the world this decade, and one of the most critically acclaimed groups of Canadian artists of all time.  Neko caught people’s attention in 2000, but IMO it was really in 2001 when Mass Romantic started creating a buzz that Canadian indie music really broke onto the world scene.  That album made the NPs a much talked about band at SXSW, and then that that buzz was heightened by the famous incident where the keynote speak of SXSW that year, Ray Davies, jumped on stage and did a song with them. 

 http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1441827/20010319/new_pornographers.jhtml

From then on the New Pornographers collective, and later Arcade Fire, led an unprecedented parade of Canadian artists onto the international scene.  Now, with multiple highly acclaimed albums under their belts and new albums coming out this year, they’re poised to lead us into the 10s as well.  Which other artists will join them?    

Other notes about this list:

-10 albums are by Vancouver* artists.

-6 albums are by Montreal* artists. 

-3 are by Toronto* artists.

-1 is by a Calgary* artist. 

* -Neko Case is not a Canadian citizen but her music career came out of the Vancouver music scene.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_Case

-Two members of Arcade Fire come from Texas but the band was formed in Montreal.  

-Stars is largely made up of a group of Torontonians who moved to Montreal and formed the band there.

-The members of Wolf Parade are from Victoria BC, but the band was formed when they were all living in Montreal.

-K’Naan was born in Somalia and moved to Toronto as a teenager. 

-I believe Feist was living in Paris when she wrote and recorded this album.