A slightly modified excerpt from e-mail to Donna of Sirens:
London seems to have an inferiority complex of sorts, which I find at odds with the city’s ultra-conservative reputation—nothing local is good enough, and we have to beg to get anyone to come here. I’m reminded of Chester, the yippy little terrier from a couple of Warner Brothers cartoons who tries to be best buddies with bulldog Spike: the powers that be keep saying look at us, approve of us
until it comes across as desperation. The exception is things that have toughed it out long enough to become familiar—the Grand Theatre and the Home County festival seem to be doing well in spite of the environment.
[There’s a new arena… er, entertainment and sports centre
… opening in a few months. So far there have been two acts publicized by the local newspaper as not coming for various reasons.] Interesting that the arena promoters started with an American (ok, Elton John is technically British, but made his name while based in the U.S.), then fell back to a Canadian group (at least they’re from Kingston and not Toronto). I imagine they’ll do anything to avoid settling
with local acts.
One of the more interesting (read: depressing) tidbits I’ve picked up recently is that the local theatre audience in London is about 500 (which means that the Boneyard Man picks up at least half of the audience each weekend it’s on). That’s about .16% of the population. I suspect there are similar numbers for local music, given the turnout I’ve seen at festivals like Fiddles, Strings & Jazz (a very sparse crowd until the Toronto-based groups came on) and other performances (I got what was essentially a private concert from Jennifer Thorpe and Ben Heywood at CopperField’s a couple of weeks ago).
I’m as guilty of contributing to this as anyone—I go to a lot of stuff outside the city and don’t go to a lot of local activities—but I’m getting better. (I actually discovered
London bassist Andrew Downing at a gig in Toronto, and have seen him every time he’s been here since.) The StudiOK concert series [6 concerts by local artists in a wonderful space near the Grand Theatre] was a great eye-opener, not least of all because it introduced me to the Sirens!
