SpunkFest in Seattle with Gibby Haynes & The Paul Green Rock Academy performing Butthole Surfers and more!

The Canadian Romantic is performing AND Mcing Seattle this Sat at The Crocodile for SpunkFest with wild cabaret acts, Gibby Haynes and @paulgreenrockacademy_official (these students do Butthole Surfers songs so incredibly) and Victim's Family!!! Tell your Seattle pals! So excited to perform!!!! If you know me you know how much the Butthole Surfers inspired me…and the whole night looks VERY interesting! It’s going to be a blast!

Tix and info here:

www.spunkfest.org

Updated Reel

I have an updated reel of my ACTING! Thanks to Craig Irving for his help…you can view it in the REELS section on my website.

Grant rant (actually just a ramble ha)

My grant was rejected by the Canada Council For the Arts today. And you know what? I am doing fine. I am not depressed. Unlike my previous grant rejections, I have not spiralled into depression. Admittedly I hit a dark night of the soul about a few things a couple of weeks or so ago, including the forthcoming rejection, but I came out of it stronger with many realisations. I wanted to post about this because perhaps it can be of use to others.

Last year someone heavily involved in the arts recommended the book “Why Are Artists Poor” by Hans Abbing to me and I really am glad that they did. It helped a lot. This book doesn’t even mention Canada but it sure is about Canada. This invaluable book by an economist and an artist showed that artists generally are wealthier. In other words, many artists can afford to be artists because they already have wealth. But the book’s findings also stated that generally artists are wealthier in both countries with and without government funding. What this means is that even countries with lots of grant funding are still classist. Wealthier artists can and do get grants, there’s no income cap. People from money know how to make the system work for them. As well and quite importantly, the book’s findings were that countries with high levels of government funding created less innovative art.

Blander, less passionate art gets chosen and promoted through the government system (keeping in mind that Canada is not socialist, it is neo-liberal). I should note the author stated that he is not pro-free enterprise but these were the  findings of his research. Now, outside of this book, it has been written that the wealthy generally have less passion (a funny piece in The Guardian about Mumford and Sons for example). I made the mental connection that the rich thusly create more government friendly work.

More recently a great friend told me that I am not a “government artist.” Nor do I want to be.

But I really had tried everything in Canada: grant writing seminars, hiring grant writers, getting my MFA, applying and re-applying for grants (“The juries change” people would tell me: naw, the faces may change but they’re really all the same, people who write for Air Canada flight mags blah blah blah; I applied again this time because the grant officer told me that there was loads more funding OMG) etc. etc. etc. And that’s all just for grants alone! But the one thing I didn’t do was change my work to be more, well, dull or played out (I really work on trying to create meaningful work for an audience). I was trying to create work that was needed but approaching the culture industries in Canada made me feel needy. Do I sound self-important? Please understand that I am pretty fucking hard on myself and raise my bar high, when I fall I fall hard.   The one recent breakthrough I made was that Canada can approach me from now on -I have had wonderful things happen that way and am so excited to keep that door open! But I will no longer approach Canada because it’s like trying to please a distant father. So: keep the door open for Canada to approach me as I approach other countries.

I am super excited to keep moving forward with my work! To explore possibilities!

It’s easy to blame oneself because blaming an entire country can make one feel delusional. But hey, there it is, it really is the country (or I should say the industry infrastructure of the nation-state of Canada and not necessarily the audience), take comfort in that. Do not blame yourself like I used to oh so often.  It has nothing to do with the quality of the work.

Doug Henning Project

The Doug Henning Project is an absolutely incredible website! Check it out! They just put a nice blurb about the Doug Henning chapter excerpted in the latest issue of Maggot Brain:

https://doughenningproject.com/2022/02/17/maggot-brain-magazine-7-new-doug-article/

Seasons In the Sun Tues Sept 7th 7 pm PST

Seasons In The Sun Tuesday 7 pm PST

Though not Glam this is certainly a Canadian oddity!
I will be introducing the Seasons In The Sun movie Tuesday September 7th at 7 pm PST/10 PM EST on Cinephobe (cinephobe.tv). This oddity is not a documentary or a live performance, it is a feature film with Terry Jacks as rock star Terry Brandon and it has everything: brain disease, romance, spies, and live concerts that don't happen! It must be seen to be believed! I am so honoured to present this on Cinephobe, an amazing movie site that has really helped save my ass and bring me joy this past year and a half. Thanks to JC at the great YouTube channel unpopulararts for the movie hook-up, Danny Bejar for filming my intro, Gregg Turkington for first letting me know exactly what this movie was, and Greg Woods for some info and the VHS cover art hook-up.

Fine Art Comics of Canada: Sixties to Seventies - Heart of London, Snore & More by Robert Dayton

The Vancouver Comic Art Festival asked me to write these intensive pieces with original interviews that again get at aspects of Canadian culture that are less discussed due to being exciting and interesting! Mail artists! Nancy! The connections between The Hairy Who and London, Ontario! The Nihilist Spasm Band! bpNichol’s poetry comix!
This is a massive two parter. Read it here:
Fine Art Comics of Canada: Sixties to Seventies - Heart of London, Snore & More by Robert Dayton

Snore Comix table of contents.jpeg

Canadian Glam Super Fun Video Parties!

Hi! I have been upping my Canadian Glam Patreon posts of late, along with Super Fun Video Parties! I dig deep and curate all sorts of wild videos mostly related to a specific chapter in the Canadian Glam book (which I am making amazing progress on by the way). You can basically access all of them for five dollars! I post a new one every month. I really enjoy doing them and this latest one is also a hoot getting into classic Canadian film and television as well, link here:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/53968908

The Medium

Marshall McLuhan’s words still ring true, stronger than ever even. “The Medium Is the Message.” I grasp that now. I recently got a full page in a local newspaper for some of my most recent work, a big photo too! This rarely happens anymore, a lot of outlets have no interest in covering what I do, so I was pretty grateful. It was a well-written piece, the writer conveyed what I was doing perfectly (trust me, this doesn’t always happen), the jokes landed.

People on my social media were excited. In fact, they shared the newspaper article far more than the actual work that I am making -which was what the piece was about. I found this disheartening. I made this work about our current time and I made it for an audience, deliberately meaningful, fresh, modern, and entertaining. For that month all money made from this work was going to a very important cause (BC Residential School Association) but the work only made ten dollars that month -even with the coverage. I looked up the web stats and everything for when the article appeared: barely a blip. I guess all that mattered was my picture in the local paper. And yes, that coverage is useful for other things (one example: to help my U.S. visa so that I can leave Canada).      

Conversely in that same newspaper there is a regular celebrity section with photos of people I often do not recognise. Except that these people are presented without any context whatsoever, but are often described doing very banal things (albeit often with great wealth and bland looks), especially in the Pandemic. The people in my actual personal life are far more interesting.

I remember the excitement of creating The Canadian Romantic character ten years ago and launching the videos which I put up on YouTube for everyone to freely watch, I sent out press notices, but the press ignored it. I created this character as a positive force for people, trying to do meaningful and entertaining public service work. Right as I launched the videos a commercial I was hired to be in for some office supply company started airing on television. Filming that commercial was a fun day with everyone and it helped pay me good money to survive and continue to create my own meaningful work for an audience. But people genuinely seemed more excited about seeing me on television for a split second in an office supply commercial than the meaningful work I had just launched. I still haven’t seen the commercial (absurdly enough The Canadian Romantic character was ripped off a few years later for a series of condom commercials, they did a terrible job: if they had just approached me and paid me to do the real thing, well, I really could have used the money…).

When the Canada 150 propaganda rolled around a couple years ago, like many people I was quite rightly against it and made a rather covert criticism: a funny video of The Canadian Romantic’s version of “Oh Canada.” I called in favours from friends to help, bless them, it was from the unreleased The Canadian Romantic album that no label wanted to release, even though I tried to create the funniest, most listenable album I could for people: it remains unreleased. I called in press favours trying to get this “Oh Canada” video out there on platforms to the people. No one replied. I have been told that these industry people are scared of me. I get this a lot. “They’re scared of you.” But why? Can someone tell me why they are so scared of me? I am just trying my best to create good, unique, meaningful work -positive work- for people and just want to get it out to people. Is there something I don’t know or understand? This is a serious question.

I have so many more anecdotes, endless.