A Bit More Detail

blogTO's Derek Flack notes that Toronto's Ontario Place entertainment complex, a bit shabby and currently being revitalized, is going to host a new concert venue.

Ontario Place is getting another outdoor concert venue. Named Echo Beach — presumably after the song by Martha and the Muffins — its first action will be when Robyn comes to town on June 3rd.

Although the details are pretty scarce right now, EYE Weekly's reports that the venue is the work of Live Nation and will have a capacity of about 4,000. Given the layout near the Molson Amphitheatre, it's likely to be built in the area to the immediate southeast of the current venue. Wherever it ends up, though, it probably won't be a part of the renovation plans for Ontario Place, which is due for a full-scale redesign in the near future. The two month construction time screams of something that'll be mostly temporary.

The song Flack refers to is, yes, the classic 1980 Martha & The Muffins song "Echo Beach".

"Madonna - Express Yourself (The Girlie Show)" (Watch on YouTube)

I still like the song's New Wave freshness as much now as I did in the distant time of April 2005. It's such a Toronto song.

I appreciate The Spoons' 1984 Canadian hit "Romantic Traffic" on three levels.



1. The Spoons (official site, Wikipedia) were one of the biggest Canadian band of the early 1980s. Arguably aided by the Canadian content policies instituted in 1981 in the face of growing American domination of Canadian popular culture. The Spoons sprung up in 1979, a New Wave band in the distant GTA city of Burlington. "Romantic Traffic" was apparently uncharacteristic of their output--1982's "Nova Heart is apparently more characteristic of their output--but "Romantic Traffic" is the track that they're remembered for. After a relatively high profile that allowed them (according to Wikipedia) "to become the opening act for bands such as Culture Club, Simple Minds, and The Police," they dropped out of sight, but not before they left us this sweet and hummable pop song.

2. "Romantic Traffic" has a certain resonance among Torontonians. The writer of this June 2006 post at Torontoist, linking to the video for this song, tells readers to watch out for the random riders' singing of the "do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do" chorus at the 3 minute mark, while Matthew Blackett at Spacing has a similar post with commenters debating the technical minutiae of the TTC in 1984. A lot of the scenes in the video are still things I see: The Bloor-Yonge station is quite recognizable, though the refurbished Sheppard station is not, and I swear that at one point the lead singer passes by a landscape that includes the Humber Valley. Others, like the red subway trains, or the Toronto Dominion advertisement for its Green Machine ATM, announcing the novelty of a machine that can let people withdraw money from their account at a remarkable rate--$40 in 32 seconds!--are not. And then, as always, there is the hair.

3. I remembered the song from very early on thanks to the radio, and liked it from very early on, but I only saw the music video in the mid-1990s on Muchmusic. the sheer mobility and diversity that I saw there, and saw in it something that I wanted so badly. Almost desperately, increasingly so as time passed, I wanted to leave the Island and get there, to Toronto or to any place like it that had that kind of easy fluidity. I would have done anything to escape.

And I did.

"Rise" is the only song I've ever heard off of Public Image Ltd.'s 1986 Album/Compact Disc/Cassette, but despite this sad gap in my musical repertoire, I still feel secure is saying that "Rise" has to be one of the most impressively post-punk and grandiose songs out there.