Monday, September 19, 2005

The Toronto Independent Music Awards (I much prefer TIMA) will be held at The Phoenix on Wed. Oct. 5. There will be perfomances by 13 acts and awards handed out in 21 categories. But I must ask why, as a person who's pretty in tune with the Toronto music scene, haven't I heard of the vast majority of the performers and nominees? The event is being run by a British-born Californian named Martin Brown who has no roots in the Toronto indie music community in partnership with a company called The Pandemonium Project -- which was founded by Daniela Oliva, is based in Woodbridge, Ont., and which I've never heard of. Potential nominees had to submit a $25 entry fee to be considered, and tickets cost $10. Those numbers are by no means exorbitant, but I still smell a cash grab at work here. Perhaps the event wasn't publicized well enough, and a lot of worthy acts didn't enter because they weren't aware of it. Or perhaps these acts shared my skepticism of the whole thing and didn't get involved. I'm all for promoting Toronto talent, and hope that the night is a success for all involved, but there's just nothing about the show for me to be enthusiastic about and a bit to raise my suspicions about the motivation behind it.

np The Rasmus - Hide From The Sun (further proof that Laika & The Cosmonauts remain Finland's best band)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have to say I agree with you here Steve. I got notification about this event a while back and was very sceptical of the whole thing. Indie events building from the ground up are great, but if there is some opportunism driving the event I think a lot of indie artists will be sceptical. It seems there are a lot of events, song contests, "festivals" etc. cropping up everywhere all being more than happy to relieve indie artists of their scarce money supplies.

In fact it seems the only people not making money off indie artists are the indie artists themselves.

Anonymous said...

I'm disgusted that I wasn't invited to the TIMAs.

Anonymous said...

I had the chance to attend the TIMA in both the first and second year. I think that the efforts of Daniela Oliva and Martin Brown are genuine and that what they are able to put together with zero budget is outstanding. Props to them. I think it is a pretty common Toronto attitude to be skeptical of things without giving them a chance.