August 29, 2005

CDs, Lactose and Canadian Artists

I was going over my CD collection last night. I think my Christian pile is about 2/3 as high as my secular pile now. Going over my collection made me realize how much money I've spent on music. It also made me realize that music is a big part of my life..

My brother is town now, btw. He's going to be attending the University of Toronto.

Anyway, he bought around 15 chocolate bars and other kinds of treats for us to share -- anything that he could find that he knew we didn't have here in Canada. Americans have some pretty yummy goodies. And they're dirt cheap. The average chocolate bar costs around $1 here. He was getting 3 for a US dollar in Vegas. That comes out to 45 cents. No wonder Americans are so fat.

Anyway, I had 3 chocolate bars without having any stomach problems.

I was giving my radio idea more thought. According to the CRTC, radio stations are required to include 35% Canadian-content. This concept is puzzling to me because if you listen to say 96.3 (Classical music) -- all that stuff is coming from Europe. How in the world do they manage to maintain that 35% status quo?

Similarly we'd have the same problem if we had a Christian radio station here. There aren't a whole lot of Christian artists available to choose from. And if you want to maintain an all-hits theme, it becomes even more difficult. Starfield and Brian Doerksen? Thousand Foot Krutch? The Kry? ...

1 comment:

GY said...

As for classical, I think most of the Canadian content is because of Charles Dutoit, who is a world reknowned conductor and also the head of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (MSO) from 1977 until 2002. With the MSO, Dutoit headed up numerous records, and the MSO actually now has 88 recordings. Other than MSO, there are still a number of (historically) reknowned Canadian classical performers, notably Glenn Gould, Canadian Brass, Ben Heppner... and I'm sure there are more, but yes, nothing compared to Europe, but still, enough to satisfy the 35% content!