Canada is a nation with a queen right on the money. It's no wonder the rock 'n' roll royalty to whom we bow to should include a monarch in the LGBTQ community, where queens have their own district. Music is part of Canada's national religion (it sits in between hockey and comedy) and we are about to get a visit from the pope.
Carole Pope is an icon of gender politics and progressive music. She's 70 years old and sounds better now in concert than when she first set our antiquated social establishment on fire, bursting up the music charts, fronting fashion magazines, and slapping the smug face of heteromonopolis culture.
Schools were quick to ban the playing of her first hit, but that didn't keep High School Confidential from getting huge worldwide airplay and becoming perhaps the world's first homoerotic anthem. It was 1981. The world was on nuclear deathwatch. The Second World War, Vietnam, civil rights clashes, the Stonewall riots, the Wounded Knee standoff, and many other cultural wounds were still fresh. The song was written in a spirit of defiance. Why on earth should time be wasted on irrelevant nonsense like who turns you on?
Pope and multi-instrumentalist Kevan Staples went by the name Rough Trade at the time. The Toronto act was far from a one-hit wonder with tracks like All Touch, Crimes Of Passion, Soft Core, Birds Of A Feather (the latter covered famously by Tim Curry), Fashion Victim and more.
Pope became instantly recognizable on radio for her husky, molasses voice and instantly recognizable on rock television for her steely, androgynous look. Her fame grew thanks to events like a hit duet with the Payolas, substantial collaborations with the likes of Divine and David Bowie, Dusty Springfield's version of two Rough Trade songs, winning a Genie Award for the music they contributed to the film One Night Stand, winning three Juno Awards, and inclusion in the all-star chorus of Tears Are Not Enough, among many other touchstone moments.
And still she creates. Part of that is an innate artistic force, and part of that is the state of the world and her place as siren.
"I write political songs, and political songs I wrote years ago are still so sadly relevant," Pope said from her current home in California. (She admitted to being "a serial mover. I move back and forth between California and New York. I like to come and visit Canada and work in Canada. I would move to Montreal if I moved to Canada, but I don't like the winters.")
The election of Donald Trump as U.S. president has marked a new low point in modern culture, in her view.
"I'm not going to not be me and not say what I think, especially now," Pope said.
"It's so fucked up, there are so many issues, and the main issue, and you may be offended by this, everything is too penisy.
"That's my new expression."
Wasn't Western cultural already overtly dominated by the colonial male? Wasn't everything already too penisy?
"It's so much more penisy now. Now it's penisy in the White House. The last gasp of the white penises. I do think the election was fixed, but I think it is part of an Obama backlash. People are afraid; people are really, really stupid, racist. Trump just played on that."
She remembered a time when being a member of the Republican Party was just a difference of opinion. There was such a thing as quality Republican presidents but the turning point for her was the election of Ronald Reagan. "That's when American turned a corner," she said.
So she must sing on and compose on. She wrote High School Confidential as a comedic ode to her own lesbian urges, but she sang it and marketed it because it was an important message for cultural development, as society limps towards true equality. The fact it was hit meant people agreed and wanted to support the sentiment. Inclusion is under siege at the present time, she said, but that just means you don't give up the fight.
"You just can't take anything for granted," Pope said. "Our society is totally screwed up, and you absolutely have to be on your guard. I still believe there are more good people than bad people but this is a test for everybody. Society has totally been dumbed down and I think that's how this has happened."
She isn't confined to music, in her edutainment mission. She wrote a book. She is one of the creators of a new play in preproduction stages. The only thing preventing a biopic movie of her life being filmed is lack of a production team. She is involved in collaboration projects with Clara Venice and Kevin Hearn from Barenaked Ladies. She is frequently on stage and in studios (she was part of an LGBTQ celebrity extravaganza earlier this month at the National Arts Centre performing a number of her songs with the Queer Songbook Orchestra) with a new EP on the way.
She is part of an all-local collaboration this weekend. Pope will reunite with Victoria singer-writer Rae Spoon to perform an original conjoined mashup of their works at the ArtsWells Festival, as they did last year. But this year Vancouver rock band The Pack A.D. will join them, making for an epic remixing and retooling of tunes done by the artists themselves at 10:30 p.m. Sunday.
Pope will also perform a solo concert tonight at 9:50 p.m.
ArtsWells is a convening of all forms of art in one tight package of performances and events running tonight through Monday at the village at the end of the Barkerville Highway.
