Arts Roundtable

Paul Bogdan, Kyle Leitch, Ed Dodd, Dietrich Neu

1. Arcade Fire are selling the church they recorded Neon Bible and The Suburbs for an asking price of $325,000. What do you offer them, and what do you do with your new leaky-roofed church?
PB: I would say I’d buy it and record an album that will win me a Grammy and then get me hated on by my fans, but I feel like that’s been done before.
KL: Sell it back to Arcade Fire for three times what I paid when, in twenty-five years, they’re still touring and trying to recapture that “vintage Arcade Fire” sound.
ED: I offer them exactly what they are asking because that seems totally reasonable for an old church. Plus, wouldn't that make a great story? "Yeah, Arcade Fire recorded two of their best albums here, no big deal."
DN: They’re selling their church, eh? Obviously their heroin supply is running low.

2. Will Kim Dotcom's new filesharing service, Mega, suffer the same fate as its predecessor, Megaupload?
PB: Hopefully not, but I mean, someone somewhere is going to find a way to bring it down eventually.
KL: If history has taught us anything, you can’t drop the “Upload” from your filesharing domain name and expect it not to suffer the same fate as its predecessor…or maybe that’s never happened before.
ED: Admittedly, I suck at computer stuff, but this sounds stupid as all hell and another random service in a world saturated with stupid services. Does Apple need a maps app? Do we need another stupid browser thing like Mega? Is Mega a browser? Is it file sharing? Is it both? Is it illegal? The internet hasn't answered any of these stupid questions. What happened to Internet Explorer? It had like two buttons and did almost nothing special. God, I miss the 90s.
DN: Anyone who legally changes their surname to “Dotcom” should probably be removed from society. I don’t care if it is in “homage to the technology that … blah, blah.” Get the fuck out.

3. The release date for Metallica's upcoming 3D movie, Through the Never, has been set for August 9. How much more of their inane bullshit will we all have to deal with before these dinosaurs call it quits?
PB: Too long, apparently.
KL: Lars Ulrich will live to be 130 years old just to spite us all. And he’ll be releasing music, movies, and concept albums until he croaks his last, “like, you fucking know?”
ED: I fully expect a Metallica theme-park, Metallica board game (Metalic-opoly?) and eight new albums wherein they actually use the sounds of their joints creaking and the pained exclamations of standing up after sitting for a few hours. The next few years can be summed up with the phrase "Enter Sandman" – because this shit is going to put me to sleep really quickly.
DN: Did I fucking read that right? Metallica 3D!? Why? Does anyone really want an ultra-realistic view of Lars Ulrich’s dentures falling out of his mouth mid-show, or Kirk Hammett’s hip replacement failing during the encore?

4. Will the Myspace relaunch (seriously we better hope zombies don't have the resilience of Myspace) be enough to restore its place in online musician profiles alongside sites like Bandcamp, or will this thing just keep hobbling along until JT goes broke?
PB: Myspace has been dead for far too long for it to ever gain as much attention as it once had, no matter how great the revamp could possibly be.
KL: I’m sorry, I can’t move past the image of MySpace zombies. That smug prick Tom grinning like a moron as he begs you for your brains as Mark Zombieburg sleeps on beds made out of the soft, fleshy grey matter of his users…what was the question, again?
ED: Again, this is like fucking Mega. YOU LOST, MYSPACE! Get over yourself and just stop trying. It's this sort of shit that clogs up the internet with useless services and extra little buttons where I can share to Facebook, Google +, Twitter, MySpace, Digg, Tumblr, and all the other useless crap we have now. I don't want to have to scroll sideways on my screen to accommodate another useless little button. In closing, no, this is not the fucking rebirth of MySpace. It's going to be as fucking useless as it always was.
DN: I think there is a better chance that Facebook will simply become the whole of the internet.

5. Which Canadian musician is best suited for the job of Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada?
PB: Justin Bieber. The Liberals need to take back the centre of the Canadian political spectrum, and who better to lead a populist party of not taking a stand on anything than someone who everyone fucking loves. Justin Bieber will win you elections.
KL: Joni Mitchell, Alex Lifeson, the exhumed Glenn Gould, or possibly…Wolverine.
ED: I'm going to say Sarah Slean, because she is sassy enough to give back her Diamond Jubilee medal in solidarity with Idle No More. Such principles are what we should be expecting from the leaders of our political parties. Or maybe Celine Dion, because she has a French last name and might be related to Stephane Dion. And if either of them are not willing to lead the Liberals, then I guess they will have to settle for Bryan Adams because both the Liberals and Bryan Adams were last relevant in the 90s. They were made for each other.
DN: I like turtles! [Ed–Dietrich seriously just found out about this video during production night]

Photo by Tenielle Bogdan