So in addition to granting me admission to the seminars and awards ceremonies of Canadian Music Week, my very own delegate’s pass also gave me line-bypass status to all of the gigs and concerts that make up the accompanying Canadian Music Festival. I was almost as stoked for this pass as I was for the Crystal Awards. As you may recall from my foray to NXNE last summer, I do enjoy a free passport into all of the music events I can handle.

And man oh man, was there a lot going on in Toronto last week. Sammy Hagar was here, Melissa Etheridge, Janet Jackson…it was out of the park. Of course, I wasn’t interested in any of those people. I was interested in one name : JD Samson.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Little Queer Station That Could kicked off Canadian Music Week with a queer showcase at the Gladstone. I was a bit late, so I missed out on Kevin Wong, although I heard he put on a fantastic show.

I did make it in time to catch Chris Velan, and I was thankful I did. If you like indie folk rock in the vein of Wilco, Ryan Adams, or Sufjan Stevens, you’re gonna dig this guy. I was really into him.

It was a bit odd that Creature was the act to follow; their music really didn’t fit into the more acoustic indie sound of some of the other bands of the night. But who am I kidding? I didn’t care—they were the band I came out to see. And they were well worth it. They have just enough sass and attitude on stage to keep things entertaining without becoming a stereotype of queer camp. So much fun! I think I danced three inches of my ass off. I would have danced the entire ass off, but they had just the one-hour set, and I had to save some of it for JD Samson. But I’m getting ahead of myself again.
Brigitte Bardot

I was going to have to get up early the next morning for those Crystal Awards, so I just couldn’t stay for Gentleman Reg. I have seen him numerous times before; he’s kind of that indie-guy-about-town—he’s everywhere. And for good reason. As my buddy Acey Rowe said about it, “If you haven’t seen Gentlemen Reg live, chances are you’re not a real Torontonian. Kind of like if you haven’t killed a cockroach with your bare hand or had a heart attack at Yonge and Dundas induced by the ‘BELIEVE IN THE LORD!’ guy… Seeing a Gentlemen Reg show is the best and most enjoyable way to confirm your Torontonian status.”

The next day, of course, I won that Crystal Award—you know, no big whoop—so I spent the rest of the day celebrating with my co-winner, other staff from our radio group, and pretty much anyone who would raise a toast with me, and consequently I didn’t actually make it out to any gigs. Oops.

And after all of that celebrating, I had to get up even earlier on Friday morning for the Trailblazers’ Breakfast, celebrating women in radio. It took about everything I had to put on my best networking face and schmooze with some very intelligent women in the business. I was pretty much dead set on going home after work and skipping out on the gigs I had planned to see that night. They were with bands I had never heard of before, and as much as I like to discover new music, I like catching up on my sleep even more.

But then that thing happened. You know the thing where a friend updates Facebook with plans to see a gig you hadn’t been aware was going to be going on, and it’s a band you checked out for the first time at last year’s NXNE and you really loved them and no amount of hungover sleep-deprivation is going to stop you from seeing them again? That thing.

In this case the band in question was The Pack A.D.—Vancouver’s dykey answer to the White Stripes and the Black Keys. As soon as we heard they were playing, Michelle and I switched gears from tired and lazy to awesome and fantastic and excited. We got our gear on and headed down to meet some friends at the Bovine, a Queen Street institution that has been around for about 20 years now. Its façade is decorated with a mass of rusted bicycles, hub caps, and various assorted yard tools in a bizarre sculpture. You can’t miss it.

Interesting as it is to look at, it’s a narrow and dank space inside, and it’s always inevitably filled with punk and metal boys, which can be a pain in the butt—literally. We managed to get to the front of the stage for The Pack, but we were so wedged in that I could practically feel the bulge of the fella behind me wedging itself into my…well, my behind. It wasn’t pleasant.

Nonetheless, the show was awesome. There wasn’t much room to dance, but I did my best to rock out. The hotness of Becky Black makes up for a lot of discomfort. We stuck around for their set and then headed out to other, roomier bars in which to find libations.
Cobra Matte

And Saturday was the day I had been looking forward to from the moment I looked at the CMW lineup. I have finally caught up with myself! Saturday was all about JD SAMSON. Specifically, MEN was going to be playing at Sneaky Dee’s. My love for JD stems from my love for Le Tigre, which itself stemmed from my love for Bikini Kill and Kathleen Hanna. There was a time in my life when I believed that Bikini Kill was the best band ever to have existed in history. That time was last week. It comes and goes, actually. From time to time I really need to scream out all of my feminist rage.

And at other times, I just really need to dance. Saturday was one of the latter times. Let me tell you, MEN provided everything I needed to do just that. Great beats, great energy, and great lyrics—the whole package. In fact, they even covered a Bikini Kill song! My brain would have exploded if I hadn’t been busy dancing the remaining inches of my ass off. It was fan-freaking-tastic!

After the show, I made my way up to the front, where JD was striking the stage in preparation for the next act. I screwed up all of my courage to squeak out that I worked in radio and would really like it if she would like to contact us whenever she was in town. She nodded, took my card, and said, “Thanks, I will.” I turned into a thirteen-year-old fangirl and *died*.
Off Our Backs

I pulled myself together and made my way over to El Mocambo, where Acey’s derby team was having a fundraising dance party. If there was anything left of my ass to dance off, I did so there. My friends arm-wrestled derby girls with varying levels of success, and we spent about four hours on that dance floor. It was the perfect way to cap off the festival.

I don’t know if it was because it was past four in the morning when I got home, if it was the beer I drank, or if it was the fact that I had danced parts of my body into oblivion, but on my way back to my humble abode at last, I managed to fall up the stairs. What I can tell you about that is that it sure beats falling down.

It was time to call it a night, and you know, I’ll also call it one of the best weeks I have enjoyed in a good long time.

Let me begin by wishing myself a happy anniversary! This week marks one year since I began as a copywriter for my Little Queer Radio Station That Could. Or writing radio copy at all, really, because before that I was writing lifestyle content pieces for one of the other radio stations owned by the company. The Creative Director for the Top 40 and Adult Contemporary stations was leaving, and they needed a writer to fill a position, so they gave me a try. It was a busy time and a tumultuous transition—basically they threw me in the water and hoped I could swim.

My being queer made me a logical choice to fill the role at the Little Queer Station That Could, located downtown in a separate studio and office from the radio group’s headquarters. I had been hoping to make my way over to the queer station since I started at the company—the people there just seemed to have a lot more fun. So I was smitten.

About two days into my tenure as a copywriter, I was handed someone else’s delegate pass and sent to learn the ropes at a series of seminars and panels at Canadian Music Week, an industry event that brings together record labels, artists, radio stations, and reps from all over the globe to share ideas and knowledge about all facets of the music world. I took fastidious notes and filled my head with ideas for taking over the creative world. I also got to attend the gala lunch for the Crystals, an awards ceremony honouring the top creative from all of Canadian radio.

As I sat listening to the year’s finalists, I thought to myself, I can do this. I made a pretty lofty goal for myself at that luncheon: next year, I was going to be among those honourees. I didn’t care if I was an honourable mention or a gold winner, I was going to be invited to this event instead of sneaking into the gala under an assumed identity.

Copywriting turned out to be a steeper learning curve than I had initially anticipated. Between client demands, time constraints, and talent diva-tude, there are a lot of potholes to manoeuvre on the road to the Perfect Commercial. My Programming Director is not always exactly the most forthcoming with praise (for which I can’t really fault him—he has high standards and maintains faith that we can meet them, which is actually a compliment…sorta…right?), and my own creativity could wane sometimes when faced with ways to make plastic surgery sound like something that isn’t totally against everything I ever believed in. Let me tell you, selling out is a buzz-kill.

But in October, there was a promotional opportunity that came up that was very close to my heart: International Coming Out Day. There was no sell to this promo; we just wanted to draw attention to the idea of coming out and drive people to our website. Given the last year’s rash of queer suicides, we felt it was a timely and necessary message that reached beyond just our core audience, but to the wider community.

The PD had an idea to have someone come out on air, maybe with some prizing, but that idea was soon shot down. There were just too many ways it could go terribly wrong. Instead, my BFF Producer Jonathan and I thought we could just have staff members tell their coming out stories, and invite listeners to share theirs with us via email. It was a celebration of our stories and a call to action.

Still, there were members of the staff that wanted to kill the promo. They didn’t like the idea of coming out; they didn’t see why it was relevant or necessary. Some of them were disinclined to talk about their experiences and didn’t understand why anyone else would want to do so. I am inclined to believe that they remembered what it felt like to be told not to flaunt their sexuality, and they had internalized the admonition. I understand that position. Hell, I lived it for my entire early life, and even now I have trouble holding my partner’s hand when I return to my conservative hometown. All of this only makes my position on the matter even more adamant: our stories are important because when we share them with each other we feel less alone, and with any luck we love ourselves a little more.

Jonathan and I really went to bat for this one. We believed in the message and we believed that we had the ability to treat the event with dignity and respect even while promoting the radio station. After no small amount of debate, we received approval from the right people and went ahead. I gathered together some of the staff members who were willing to talk about their coming out experiences, and Jonathan recorded them. I wrote a promo that spoke to the idea of coming out as a powerful and personal decision. We invited the community to join us in sharing in the celebration. We put everything we had into this promo.

Photo Credit: loudervoice

Early in January, I was walking by our Music Director’s office to let a guest into the office, and I heard him casually say, “Congratulations, stark.” I was like, “What’s that now?” He showed me the email he had just received. The first line read: “On behalf of the 2011 Crystal Awards Committee, congratulations! The entry you submitted has been selected as a Finalist for a 2011 Crystal Award…”

And I think it was at that moment that my mind blew up.

I burst into the studio to let Acey, the afternoon co-host, know that her guest, a local restaurateur, had arrived, and I fairly screamed out the name of the guy in my excitement. Acey was a bit confused as to why I was quite so ecstatic about this guest, but she responded goodnaturedly, “Great!” And then I told her about the email and she jumped into my arms and squealed. Acey’s pretty cute, so it was a good day to be stark.

I spent the next two months trying not to get too excited. I had already achieved my goal to be invited to the Crystals as a finalist, and that in my first year in this particular leg of my career. I felt already like I had won.

But still, you know, I had some hopes. I wanted to bring home a Crystal. It wouldn’t just look good on my resumé. It would make me feel like I had really found something that I was doing well. So I bided my time until Canadian Music Week, when the Crystals Gala Luncheon would take place.

Last Tuesday the tickets and passes for CMW came in at last. This year I didn’t have to go as Alex McDonald from programming; I had my very own delegate pass! I am thrilled by small things. The Crystals were going to be awarded on Thursday. Jonathan and I made plans to coordinate our outfits to be as fabulous as possible, and when we met that morning, I have to say, we made a pretty sexy coupla queers.

We were nervous as hell and drinking all the wine that we could coax out of the server. He was already somewhat disdainful of me after I had demonstrated my inability to choose the correct fork for the salad—I’m not used to $130-a-head lunches after all—so he gave us a bit of the stink-eye, but what can you do, the wine was a necessity for two reasons:

1. We were, as I said, nervous as hell.
2. The comedian they had hired to emcee the event was awful.

Thus, wine was required. In copious amounts.

We sat with our PD and shared a table with some other folks, including someone who admitted that he had been part of the independent judging committee that had looked at the radio promotion campaigns. He said to us, “You know, I shouldn’t probably be talking about this, but I remember your promo. It immediately stood out from all of the others.” That was promising news!

Our category came up and we awaited the verdict in anticipation… I swear I sweat half my weight in the ten seconds it took the emcee to introduce the category name.

I heard him announce it through the pounding of blood pulsing in my ears: We won Bronze! Out of around 500 entries from all across Canada, our little queer promo from our Little Queer Station That Could came in third. I was ecstatic!

The PD was not. In fact, his first response was to mutter, “Fuck!” He later apologized and allowed that it was actually a great achievement. He just thought that we deserved gold. I did, too, but I was less inclined to be put off by petty details. Hello, top three in all of Canada. And this from a couple of first-timers at a 50-watt radio station! I am quite satisfied with that status.

…For now. Next year the goal is GOLD.

If there was anything we did all year for which we could have been recognized, I personally am so proud that it was this promo. Jonathan and I fought hard for this thing to happen, and we put our blood, sweat, and other various bodily fluids into making it happen. I am so honoured, I have been beaming for three days straight. I’m a Crystal Award Winner!

International Coming Out Day Promo