Joel Plaskett offers us 'a foggy window' into his mind
Character Witness isn't a music documentary so much as a companion piece to my record, One Real Reveal and the accompanying tour where I shared memories, images and songs while seated in a red swivel chair.
Working on the video edit with Mike Hall felt a bit like using two mirrors to see the back of my head. Eventually I ended up seeing versions of myself into infinity while wondering, "Do I really look like that from behind?"
While I'm happy to put the producer's feather in my hat, there was no director on this. I like to think that everyone involved helped direct it subconsciously — like hands on a Ouija board.
I've been thinking a lot this past while on the writing of Marshall McLuhan, in part thanks to a reading course I've been taking from his grandson, Andrew. The overheated lighting in the interview with me is a not-so-subtle nod to the documentary, "This is Marshall McLuhan: The Medium is the Massage" from 1967.
Riffing on the effects and limitations of different technologies — from language to analog tape to projected images — it felt fitting to push the lighting, the faders and the stories into the red. Poetic license for harmonic distortion?
I'll admit to always feeling a little nervous about how much I want to share outside of the songs I write. I think out loud and I have to circle a point for a while before making it. While I'm less interested in stating things explicitly these days, my hope is Character Witness offers a foggy window into how my mind meanders, my music and methods and the places and people I care about.
I sure love hearing Bill Stevenson's keyboard playing, seeing Rebecca Kraatz's beautiful artwork and I'm pleased Jim Carrey could unwittingly make a cameo.
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CBC
12-04-2025
- CBC
Joel Plaskett offers us 'a foggy window' into his mind
Character Witness isn't a music documentary so much as a companion piece to my record, One Real Reveal and the accompanying tour where I shared memories, images and songs while seated in a red swivel chair. Working on the video edit with Mike Hall felt a bit like using two mirrors to see the back of my head. Eventually I ended up seeing versions of myself into infinity while wondering, "Do I really look like that from behind?" While I'm happy to put the producer's feather in my hat, there was no director on this. I like to think that everyone involved helped direct it subconsciously — like hands on a Ouija board. I've been thinking a lot this past while on the writing of Marshall McLuhan, in part thanks to a reading course I've been taking from his grandson, Andrew. The overheated lighting in the interview with me is a not-so-subtle nod to the documentary, "This is Marshall McLuhan: The Medium is the Massage" from 1967. Riffing on the effects and limitations of different technologies — from language to analog tape to projected images — it felt fitting to push the lighting, the faders and the stories into the red. Poetic license for harmonic distortion? I'll admit to always feeling a little nervous about how much I want to share outside of the songs I write. I think out loud and I have to circle a point for a while before making it. While I'm less interested in stating things explicitly these days, my hope is Character Witness offers a foggy window into how my mind meanders, my music and methods and the places and people I care about. I sure love hearing Bill Stevenson's keyboard playing, seeing Rebecca Kraatz's beautiful artwork and I'm pleased Jim Carrey could unwittingly make a cameo.
CBC
23-10-2024
- CBC
Flashback: Halloween and Céline
Dollars for dressing up Customers find Halloween costumes in 1996 7 days ago Duration 1:37 CBC Kids News has you covered if you want to know what's trendy in Halloween costumes this year. (Most adults are probably familiar with Donald Trump and Beetlejuice; Skibidi Toilet, not so much. Apparently, it's a TikTok thing.) When CBC reporter John Northcott was visiting a Toronto costume store the day before Halloween in 1996, an employee said that he'd seen customers spending $600 or $700 on a costume. Some even spent thousands, he added. "If they know that there's money to be made out there in costume contests, a lot of people will, like, spend a year getting their costume designed [so] that they can win a lot of money," he said. Understanding Céline Celine Dion determined to break through in English 7 days ago Duration 2:53 "While Céline [Dion]'s international stardom seems obvious now, it was all so unlikely," reads the synopsis of Céline: Understood, CBC's new podcast about the Quebec-born singer by creator Thomas Leblanc. Episode 2 drops this Tuesday. Part of Episode 1 covers Dion's breakthrough beyond the French language. For CBC's The National, reporter Paul Workman interviewed the 21-year-old Dion as she worked with producer David Foster on her debut English album Unison. "I want to be very, very popular. I want to be a star," the singer said in Workman's 1989 profile. "But I don't want to be a star here," she added, indicating her head. "I just want to be me." This is Robert Fulford Newspaper columnist, longtime editor of Saturday Night magazine and CBC broadcaster Robert Fulford died last week at 92, reported CBC News. Fulford, a frequent contributor and guest on various programs on CBC-TV in the 1960s, interviewed Marshall McLuhan on This Hour Has Seven Days in 1966 and was host of the eponymous radio program This Is Robert Fulford starting in 1967. In 1969, Fulford's guest was musician Neil Young, who, he said, had moved to Los Angeles and "achieved a certain fame" with the band Buffalo Springfield. In the interview, Young – whose solo debut had just been released – told Fulford in detail about the "involved personality problems" that led to the band's breakup. Bogus Norval Morrisseau paintings pop up in 2005 12 days ago Duration 2:57 Painter Norval Morrisseau designates a Toronto gallery as the only legitimate source of his work. Aired April 16, 2005 on CBC's The National. Unproven provenance Broadcast Dialogue has reported that CBC and ABC in Australia will be co-producing a podcast about artist Norval Morrisseau. In 2005, CBC News reported on an auction of works that looked like Morrisseau's, but probably weren't painted by him. Tips for the Halloween routine in 1984 6 days ago Duration 2:07 Shock warning Cautionary advice for trick-or-treaters and their parents, as seen on CBC News in Toronto in 1984, was aimed at keeping Halloween safe. Last year, warnings from CBC News involved a scary escalation in the price of candy. Nudists bare all for journalist June Callwood in 1961 63 years ago Duration 13:53 The owners of Ontario's Sun Valley Gardens nudist camp chat with Callwood on CBC-TV's Close-Up. Aired Nov. 5, 1961. Skin in the game A recent episode of the CBC podcast The Secret Life of Canada explored the history of nudism in this country. In 1961, CBC journalist June Callwood learned about the practice by visiting the owners of an Ontario resort. This thing he started
CBC
16-10-2024
- CBC
Distinguished Canadian journalist Robert Fulford dead at 92
Social Sharing Robert Fulford, a prominent figure in Canadian journalism for seven decades, has died at age 92. Fulford died Tuesday afternoon "peacefully and surrounded by family," according to Sarah Fulford, editor for Maclean's. In a career that began in the 1950s, Fulford would go on to work or contribute to: the Canadian Press, magazines Maclean's and Toronto Life and newspapers Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail and National Post. He also hosted the CBC Radio program This Is Robert Fulford for several years beginning in 1967. He was arguably most closely associated with Saturday Night, the magazine where he would enjoy a two-decade run as editor. In 1984, Fulford was invested as an Officer of the Order of Canada, praised as "a man of critical integrity and a sage in his field" and for solidifying Saturday Night's "position as a major organ of Canadian opinion and ideas." WATCH l Fulford interviews Canadian theorist Marshall McLuhan in 1966: "Oracle of the Electric Age" 58 years ago Duration 6:57 The list of topics Fulford took on his writing in columns and longform pieces was much longer than the number of outlets he worked for, and included Canada's national identify, English-French relations, Canada's relationship with the United States, his hometown in the book Accidental City:The Transformation of Toronto, and on all manner of culture, especially after becoming the Star's literary editor and daily arts columnist in 1959. "I began reading Robert Fulford when I came to Toronto to go to [University of Toronto]. I learned so much about the city, the arts, writers, politics, you name it," Bob Rae, Canada's ambassador to the United Nations, said on social media on Tuesday. "When I got to know him he was such a presence — shy, within himself, but funny, even mordant. I was in awe of him. Still am." Inauspicious beginnings Fulford was born in Ottawa in 1932 but grew up in Toronto, as his father A. E. Fulford was based there as a Canadian Press journalist. In 1988's Best Seat in the House: Memoirs of a Lucky Man, Fulford recounted growing up with friend and future legendary musician Glenn Gould in Toronto's Beaches neighbourhood, and he recounted some early journalism jobs that were not prestigious or rigorous. "I once wrote a profile of Foster Hewitt, whom I never met, for a magazine that an oil company gave away free to truck drivers," he wrote in Best Seat in the House. "I wrote most of a travel magazine that never appeared, about places I had never been." Fulford became editor in 1968 of Saturday Night, by then a periodical whose origins were nearly a century old. "It is not for everyone, but it is not just for the high-brow elite. You might term them the middle brows," Fulford told the Globe two years later. Fulford steered the magazine as it struggled to remain above water as a business entity, in an expanding newsstand filled with U.S. and European titles. "The directness, the simplicity, the lack of affectation in his writing: he could have taught [George] Orwell," Globe and Mail columnist and CBC At Issu e panelist Andrew Coyne said on social media on Tuesday. "And my God the sting. When Fulford took you to the woodshed, in his even-tempered, understated way, you felt it for days." In one such example, Fulford assailed the Canadian Film Development Corporation, the predecessor of Telefilm Canada, for providing about $75,000 to help produce director David Cronenberg's early film Shivers, also known as Parasite Murders. The film, Fulford wrote in 1976, was "an atrocity, a disgrace to everyone concerned with it — including the taxpayers." "If using public money to produce films like The Parasite Murders is the only way that English Canada can have a film industry, then perhaps English Canada should not have a film industry," he wrote. Back to Black In 1987, Hollinger Inc. purchased Saturday Night from its previous owner, an investment company. Fulford resigned, expressing concern about Hollinger owner Conrad Black's desire for a hands-on approach to the editorial content, according to a Globe and Mail report at the time. Saturday Night would cease publication in 2005. Fulford found himself a Black employee late in his career, writing for the National Post, which he described in a 2000 column as having "burst from the gate like a thoroughbred" and was "much better than I had expected." "The editors of the National Post, under Mr. Black's corporate umbrella, have created an editorial culture that is generous, creative, and encouraging," he said. "To write for the Post is a pleasure." Former Post editor Kenneth Whyte said in a 2020 tribute upon Fulford's retirement that he had endless curiosity. "Bob was always writing in the spirit of 'I can't wait to share this,'" Whyte wrote. Fulford wrote several books of nonfiction, including The Triumph of Narrative: Storytelling in the Age of Mass Culture, an outgrowth of his appointment as the CBC Massey lecturer for 1999. Fulford's examination touched on the role of gossip, journalism, and unreliable narrators. "If we ignore the technology for a moment and consider the stories and themes, mass culture appears to circle endlessly around the same trail, meeting on its path again and again the same characters in roughly the same stories," he wrote. "It is a good general rule that the more successful a work of mass culture, the more it will conform to a pattern with which our grandparents were on intimate terms." Fulford's last published work was Life in Paragraphs: Essays in 2020.
