Q the End v.2.0

When the CBC does something right it ranks with the best broadcasters in the world. When it does something wrong my, my does it screw up sensationally. Not long ago the host of Q, whose name escapes me, was invited to vacate his chair at CBC Radio. He did and Shad a rapper with no previous broadcasting experience got the gig. I wished him luck, but cautioned that the Hogtown culturati would be listening. It was, but too few ordinary folks - myself among them - were not and Shad just got his marching orders accompanied by some corporate claptrap about the guy from London, Ont. staying in the "CBC family." Uh, huh.  Tom Power, a musician and broadcaster from Newfoundland is now in the Q hot seat. I wish him well, but like the parrot in the Monty Python sketch, the Q bird is dead.

I said as much way back in November, 2014. Q and its ex-host were and are inextricably linked. I suggested then, and I haven't changed my mind, that the music and cultural affairs program needed a complete retooling: a new name, a new host, new producers, writers, the whole nine yards. Go on hiatus. Wait till the air has cleared once and for all. Then come back all clean and lemon-fresh and start building an audience again. Uphill, sure, but much better than this latest 'do. By the time another heatwave is upon us next year it's better than 50-50 that Q will have gone to that great broadcast archive in the sky.  

But down here there'll still be a Q. That would be the Mighty Q, Q-107, where every Sunday, usually without fail, I get my much needed dose of '60s rock 'n' roll with Psychedelic Sunday until about 7:00pm, when I flip the dial to Jazz FM and Glen Woodcock's excellent Big Band show.  

At Long Last: Cabin Fever Cured

When I lived in Yellowknife in the early 1970s I routinely caught cabin fever. I have lived in Hogtown since then and I can't remember a winter when I've been so frequently reminded of those socked in days North of 60. But at long last this icy burg of ours is showing every sign of cultural life again as we accelerate towards the Spring Equinox next Friday.

I picked up NOW earlier today, and after reading Dan Savage's sex advice column first - it's usually the most entertaining item in the weekly tab - I turned to the letters page and saw that Mendelson Joe, the painter and bluesman formerly known as Joe Mendelson, is back after too long an long absence from the opinion section. It's a typical Joe letter: a take-no-prisoners diatribe warning Canadians about the danger of Stephen Harper's politics. Of course, lots of pundits, paid and unpaid, have said the same thing in other forums, but no one says it quite like Joe.

Still with words - and music - the Trinity College Dramatic Society at U of T is putting on the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at the George Ignatieff Theatre. My son has a friend in the cast so he was duty bound to attend, and good lad that he is he's bought me a ticket. I tried to tell him that his friend, who's not a student but a musical theatre pro who auditioned for the gig, should be comping his pals, but no dice. Some of the show is adult, I've been warned, so I'll find out exactly how adult March 19th, although it can't possibly be anymore grown up than Savage Love.

Even more words are on tap April 7th at Supermarket in Kensington Market. Quattro Books is having its spring poetry launch with new work from Ian Burgham, Kate Marshall Flaherty, Keith Garabian and Donna Langevin. Quattro deserves to thrive. Those guys work so hard publishing poetry, and single-handedly they've resurrected the novella.

Switching mediums, at Corkin Gallery at 7 Tank House Lane in the Distillery district, Canadian photographer Thaddeus Holownia has an exhibition on now called Paris After Atget. Eugène Atget, is, of course, the famous French photographer who captured so much of architectural Paris before it was destroyed or remodelled at the turn of the 20th century, and who was championed by American photographer Berenice Abbott. David Jager's short but positive review of the exhibit in NOW doesn't mention Abbott, even in passing, which is a curious omission. Without her work on his behalf it's 50-50 whether Atget's remarkable achievement would have been preserved.

I have no idea if anyone from CBC Radio reads this blog. But I like to think someone has, given that I suggested  - free and for nothing - that the Mother Corp look beyond the usual places for it's new permanent host for Q - and it has! Rapper Shad, whose real name is Shadrach Kabango, has landed the gig after the music and culture program's long time host, whose name escapes me, departed in the aftermath of a sex scandal. I wish Shad luck. Hogtown's culturati will be all eyes - OK all ears - and keen to find out if an real outlier can do the job.

ps CBC stop telling all and sundry that Shad is the Kenyan-born child of Rwandan immigrants. He came to London, Ontario at one. Yes, one. Shades of Esi Edugyan when she won the Giller Prize for Half Blood Blues.