DAN HILL in a round table with JIM CUDDY, EMM GRYNER, KAREN BLISS, NICK KREWEN, JASON SCHNEIDER hosted by JIAN GHOMESHI Saturday (October 23), 9 pm, at Lakeside Terrace.
When you read the juno award retrospective Music From Far And Wide, it’s obvious that the Canadian music awards have been battling pretty much the same complaints for the past 40 years.
[rssbreak]
Even before they were televised, people griped that the same people won every year or, conversely, that there weren’t enough celebrities – which means the organizers can’t please everyone, no matter what they do.
However, while some things never change, looking back over the history of the awards, you can’t help but be struck by how much Canada has shifted culturally.
“I remember when Carole Pope performed High School Confidential and grabbed her crotch on TV – it was like the whole world came to an end in Canada,” chuckles five-time Juno Award winner Dan Hill, who appears in a round table at the Authors Festival celebrating the new book’s release.
“The CBC fielded so many calls they couldn’t function. It makes you think about how different Canada was at that time. In a way, it almost becomes an anthropological lens through which to look at the culture. Everything was so much more provincial in the 70s, and everyone was so much more easily shocked.”
Hill’s own experiences with the Junos are a curious mixture of embarrassing incidents and sincere gratitude for the boost his career got from his multiple wins.
“The first time I played, I was 21 and just lost my bearings. You’ve probably noticed that when you’re nervous or in a confrontation, your breathing goes to hell, and as a singer you really need to hold that together. It was my first time performing on live TV, and I was terrible. I was ashamed to even leave the house, but all people wanted to talk about was that I won.”
His next red-faced moment would be a bit more positive, but no less cringe-inducing. In 1981, Pierre Trudeau was a high-profile guest at the awards ceremony, and he would soon find out just how passionate Canadians can be about their favourite singers
“Trudeau had no idea who I was, but [French-Canadian singer] Ginette Reno got it in her head that my song Sometimes When We Touch was the greatest thing ever written. She literally spent the whole night trying to explain to Trudeau who I was and what the song was. She kept singing it to him over and over, and he pretended that he knew the song, but he clearly didn’t.
“I just wanted to crawl underneath the table.”
benjaminb@nowtoronto.com
