Hogtown! Summer in the City

It's been hot and miserable and I want desperately to be lolling on the Italian Riviera, a book in one hand and a Campari and soda in the other. My chances of swanning off to Porto Fino, say, are exactly zero, and a penury-induced summer purgatory here in Hogtown is almost certain. So forgive me if I'm crabby, and if I step a bit beyond my usual posts about scribble and daub to include popular music.

A few days ago the Beach Boys rolled through town to play the Molson Amphitheatre. By most accounts it was a good show, and yes in their heyday the Beach Boys were, with CCR and The Doors the American answer to the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and The Who.  But I watched the Californian band on the Jay Leno show about a week before they performed in Toronto and it was just terrible to watch -and hear. How, I wonder, did the group improve so much so quickly. Or were critics cutting them lots and lots of slack? And if they were, will they do the same for the many greybeards playing the summer pop circuit hereabouts? Enough with the nostalgia. Bring on the jazz. Bring on the blues. Bring on the old time country. They never go out of fashion and only improve with time.

Switching things up a bit, new Luminato artistic director Jorn Weisbrodt is getting plenty of ink, but I can't figure out why I'm so unenthusiastic about this year's lineup. There are some good writers on tap, some -but far too few - free events, and a blend of new works and old. But with several exceptions there's nothing much here to jolt me out of my summer torpor and compel me to head to Dundas Square (one of the worst public spaces in the country, nay, in the world) or some other venue.

A couple of weeks ago I got an email telling me this summer's Toronto Small Press Book Fair has been cancelled, although the fall edition is still on. What a shame. TSPBF is an important cultural event and an important market/schmooze/meeting place for small pressers of every stripe. A few years ago I worked on publicity for the fair, held at the JCC for the first time - at my suggestion - and was pleased and relieved at the good turnout. I think the fair should return to the JCC, be cut back to an early summer only event, and try to hook up with Luminato some way somehow, also my suggestion. I'd hate like hell to see the fair go under, so if a TSPBF organizer sees this post, give me a shout. I'd be glad to help.

   

The Toronto Small Press Book Fair is upon us. Since you enquire it's Saturday June 19 from 11: 00 am to 5:00 pm at The Great Hall, 1087 Queen Street West. So far so good. After all, the TSPBF (an acronym that could double as a writer's sobriety test) has been around for years and will, I'm guessing, see off its imitators and detractors. But...but I can't shake the notion that some aspects of the Fair could be better. It needs a permanent home. Traipsing from the JCC to the Tranzac Club to the Reference Library to The Great Hall is no way to build its reputation among the yet-to-be-converted. I know circumstances - cost, availability, pointless G-8 summit meetings - will necessitate the occasional change of venue, but with such long lead times disruptions can be worked around.

And since the summer event is the more anticipated of the two TSPBFs (the other is in the fall) and its timing dovetails with Luminato, which has gone from 0 to 60 in no time flat, why not attach the Fair someway somehow to what has become a splashy arts affair. The profile and the media coverage of the TSPBF would soar - OK, go up some - and small presses may well discover another stream of new, enthusiastic readers which is, surely, the point of the Fair. I realize some elderly hippies will object to the vulgarity of such an idea, but so what? Let them read their work to each other and remain pure. Oh, and since we're being heretical, here's something else to ponder: it's time to dump arts & crafts and anything else at the Fair that's not strictly literary.