[mplpost] Those CanCon lists

[Vic Bell]

Once again I'll respond to Richard's complaints, (thanks Lisa for 
referring to the Maplepost archives).

Richard, your cumudgeonly and stubborn refusal to "get it" continues 
to amaze me, particularly since your very business often has you 
promoting and presenting some "unknown" folkies.  Part of a Canadian 
folk musician's promotional arsenal is catching the ear of people who 
will play their music on the radio...folk dj's for example.  Are 
these shows on mainstream radio?  No, but they are on the radio, 
people do listen to these shows and they make concert ticket and CD 
purchases as a result.  Folk dj's post their playlists in the first 
place so, among other things, other folk dj's can get song and 
performer ideas for their own shows.

Richard writes:
>Vic's latest summary of the playing of Canadian music in the U.S. is 
>instructive - but utterly useless as any kind of reasonable guide to 
>airplay.

It is a reasonable guide to folk airplay as reported on folkdj-l and 
recorded by Harry Bryan.  No one has EVER made the claim on this list 
that the charts are representative of total U.S. airplay received by 
Canadian performers, folkie or otherwise.

>if one extrapolates from this that Enoch Kent gets more airplay in 
>the U.S. than Bruce Cockburn, Leonard Cohen, Fred Eaglesmith, (etc) 
>they must be nuts.

No intelligent Maplepost folkie (aren't most of us?) is likely to 
extrapolate that Enoch gets more TOTAL airplay in the U.S. than Bruce 
et al.  What Enoch did get was more airplay two months running on 
folkdj-l playlists and to me, that is significant.  Enoch's airplay 
has waved a flag that here is a Canadian musician whose work I should 
be aware of.  Until he showed up on the charts he was unknown to me.

>   Obviously, the folk who supply playlists to the folk-dj list serve 
>are anything but typical,

Yes, yes and yes, the FOLK who supply playlists to the folkdj-l 
listserve are anything but typical and THAT is the whole point! 
Folkdj-l playlists represent our ONLY source for information about 
folk airplay and where better to get it than from people who play our 
kind of music?  It certainly isn't available anywhere else.

>and this compilation of useless figures - which obviously takes 
>Harry Bryan all sorts of time to compile - means absolutely nothing 
>at all.

I always bless Harry and his eyes for taking the time and I'm sorry 
Richard but you are just plain wrong.

The last time Richard complained about these "useless" lists I 
responded in part (5/1/02):

>I regard folkdj-l disc jockys as folk peers who like the music I 
>like.  Their playlists represent airplay "votes".  When a new name 
>shows up a lot, U.S. or Canadian, I take notice.  Folkdj-l airplay 
>has directly led me to hire Lynn Miles, Fred Eaglesmith, J.P. 
>Cormier, April Verch, Aengus Finnan and Jory Nash among others. 
>Would I have picked up on those performers eventually anyhow? 
>Probably, but not as quickly.

(footnote: At the time I had hired Jory but we agreed to put his date 
off til next season.)

Richard has told us many times, with some exasperation, that in the 
context of total airplay, folk airplay is meaningless.  Richard, we 
know this, and though most of us wish it wasn't so, we know we work 
in a musical backwater so far as mainstream music and airplay is 
concerned.

Folk musician airplay is what I'm interested in, so where do we get 
the numbers?  Certainly not from any kind of mainstream airplay 
tallying if such a thing existed.  For total airplay gained by 
Canadian folk performers, the folkdj-l figures we have are incomplete 
but they're the best we've got.  Incomplete they may be but hundreds 
of Canadian folkies have shown up on folkdj-l playlists over the 
years.  Where else will we get that kind of coverage?

If there were 100% accurate lists that provided total U.S. (and 
Canadian) airplay figures received by the Canadian folkies on Harry's 
lists I would use them.
Obviously, on such a complete listing, performers like Cockburn, 
Mitchell and Young would dominate.  Performers like Keelaghan, the 
Rogers brothers and Fred would slip lower.  Performers like Enoch and 
Francey would be way, way down there.

Even on the folkdj-l lists it's the airplay being tallied by 
performers on the next rung down that I notice.  It's of passing 
interest to me that Stan hit the charts for 44 months running.  It's 
of much greater interest that Joy Norman, Nicky Mehta, Michael Jerome 
Browne, Enoch Kent and Terry Tufts made the top ten lists for the 
first time.  The message to me?  Listen to their CD's and catch a 
live show!  After that, who knows what may happen?

cheers,  Vic



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