Captain Tractor

Jun 11 02:08 UTC 2000

My newest music obsession is an extremely cool Canadian band called
Captain Tractor.  I first heard them on an episode and then soundtrack
of due South (also wonderfully Canadian). Then, on a whim, I looked them
up on Napster and found several dozen songs by them, this surprised me
so I downloaded mp3s, got hooked, found their website, www.captaintractor.com,
and will be ordering CDs in a week when my paycheck gets to me.
Has anyone else heard/heard of this goofy, fun, talented band?

response 2 of 30:

Jun 11 05:24 UTC 2000

Yeah! The pirates from Saskatchewan. I love that song.

response 4 of 30:

Jun 11 18:42 UTC 2000

Wow, other peopel have heard of them :)
East of Edson has The Last Saskatchewan Pirate :)
one of my favorite songs of theirs and in general.
The Arrogant Worms, hmm? I'll look into them.
geez, i like a lot of Canadian bands...
Crash Test Dummies, anyone? (their early stuff...)

response 6 of 30:

Jun 11 22:29 UTC 2000

i know that Figgy Duff had a song on the first due South soundtrack,
which is an excellent place to look for songs by Canadian bands.
I am fairly certain that every band on the 2 CDs was Canadian.

"my love is a pastry, covered in gunk..."

response 8 of 30:

Jun 12 18:41 UTC 2000

  One of the interesting things about my travels through eastern Canada
  a couple of years ago was that traditional local music was very high
  profile in the more distant parts of the maritimes (specifically on
  Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, and in all of Newfoundland..  I didn't
  travel through mainland Labrador, though in Newfoundland I was picking
  up a station that was broadcast out of Happy Valley.)  To illustrate
  what I mean:  when I was in Newfoundland the band Great Big Sea had
  apparently recently released something and I don't remember hearing
  much on the radio that week besides Great Big Sea, CBC news, and the
  obligatory buoy reports.

  I imagine this has a lot to do with government-funded radio stations in
  a market which wouldn't otherwise be able to support much commercial
  radio, but after passing through the Bryan Adams & Celine Dion zones
  in the more densely populated regions of Ontario and Quebec, I was more
  than ready for some local flavor, or any flavor at all for that matter..

  It was more than just a radio thing, though..  Driving around Cape Breton
  island, I saw signs for fiddle schools and announcement boards telling of
  upcoming caelidhs (sp?)  And in the ferry lounge on the way back from
  Port aux Basques, the small combo playing the ferry lounge had a pretty
  large crowd squeezed into the lounge who were really enjoying their
  traditional maritime numbers..

  Anyone care to venture an informed opinion on the following question?
  Does the Canadian folk scene owe most of its existence to government
  subsidy, or do you think it would exist even without official support?

response 10 of 30:

Jun 12 22:24 UTC 2000

  It's probably not fair to blame the D.I.A.'s dark years on Engler.
  It was suffering substantially well before he was governor.

response 12 of 30:

Jun 13 17:23 UTC 2000

I really don't know how much of the Canadian folk 
scene owes its existence to subsidy.  Certainly a lot of it does:
Canada subsidizes and protects cultural ventures pretty heavily, in part
because they try to keep alive a national identity rather than get swept
up completely in the American cultural machine.

I do remember that the La Galvaude CD which mcnally brought back from 
Quebec for me bore a label indicating that its production was supported 
by some agency of the provincial government.  And then there is the 
nationally-funded CBC Radio and TV operations, and the CanCon (Canadian
Content) broadcast rules which require that a certain minimum percentage
of the material broadcast on commercial stations be of Canadian
origin.  Canadian CDs which qualify under the CanCon rules bear a 
code MAPL, which I think stands for Music, Artist, Producer, Label,
four categories which can qualify as Canadian... I'm meandering.
 
In the Maritimes, some of what's happening is that the people there are 
trying to build up the folk music as part of a tourist industry in a fairly
concerted effort to find an economic replacement for fisheries.

Great Big Sea would be an example of success for cultural policies, 
I think.

response 14 of 30:

Jun 14 23:37 UTC 2000

The CanCon law seems not to be terribly unpopular within Canada, at least
among those I've talked to.  Most of the Canadian music that gets played on
the radio up there is <gasp> pretty popular.  

Which makes sense.  What People Like has a lot to do with What Gets Airplay.
You hear a lot of U2 on the radio in Canada, but nobody's complaining, because
there seem to be a whole lot more U2 fans in Canada than there are in the
U.S.  I haven't heard any Canadians complaining that they don't hear enough
Matchbox 20, the same way I haven't heard any Americans complaining that they
don't hear enough I Mother Earth.  

(If anything, I'd say Canadian radio listeners are better off, because
most of them have at least heard of Matchbox 20, and few of us have heard
of I Mother Earth.  Maybe that's why people don't mind CanCon: it doesn't
limit what they hear, it means they hear more varied things.  Come to
think of it, most of my conversations about music with Canadians have been
"holy shit, you don't listen to ______ in the States?  They rock!")

response 16 of 30:

Jun 15 08:04 UTC 2000

The Arrogant Worms version of "The Last Saskatchewan Pirate" sounds
almost exactly the same as the Captain Tractor version. That is weird!

response 18 of 30:

Jun 16 15:45 UTC 2000

Hi everyone! Does anyone here like Natalie Imbruglia?

response 20 of 30:

Jun 17 01:52 UTC 2000

re 14:
hear hear.  Ive started listening to Candian radio at work because 
there is just a different set of songs that get play... Ive discovered 
Matthew Goode Band, I Mother Earth, Our Lady Peace, Travis, J. 
Englishman and a few others just by listening to a Canadian rock 
station... I dunno if its just cause I havent heard them beat into the 
ground, but they all beat the hell out of Match Box 20 and all the ilk.

response 22 of 30:

Jun 19 04:52 UTC 2000

I bet it's a webcast, just because kewy has really been into web radio.

response 24 of 30:

Jul 17 06:12 UTC 2000

Coming up at the Ark in Ann Arbor: Canadian folk-pop bands The Paperboys
and Great Big Sea.  I don't remember the dates, check 
http://www.a2ark.org