I recall a recent conversation I had with my elder brother concerning an annual field trip the eighth grade class of our Cambridge middle school would take to downtown Toronto — a barely supervised cultural sightseeing tour of spurious education value. On this "big city" itinerary of tourist traps including the CN Tower and Rogers Centre (then known by the superior moniker of SkyDome), there was also a stop at the MuchMusic studios, a Gothic revival compound towering over the corner of Queen West and John Street where the nation's music station broadcast every hour of every week.
My brother was one of the lucky school groups who had the privilege of attending a taping of Intimate and Interactive (think MuchMusic's answer to MTV Unplugged) and witnessing Queens of the Stone Age perform their just-released song "Little Sister" in the cramped studio that looked out onto the bustling Toronto streets. Over the course of this conversation, we grew to realize we were speaking of this school-sanctioned journey to 299 Queen Street West in the venerated terms of a pilgrimage, as if this building represented the cultural mecca of Canada.
In Sean Menard's film named after this building — the first full-length documentary attempting to illuminate the cultural significance of MuchMusic to Canada's media history — it's clear that I'm not the only one who remembers Much with such reverence. Tracing the channel's history from its slipshod DIY origins as a homegrown alternative to MTV in the early 1980s to its cultural zenith in the 1990s and sudden decline in the 2000s, 299 Queen Street West is an exhaustive document of archival excavation.
Having unfettered access to the many thousands of hours of footage squirrelled away in Bell Media's tape library deep in the bowels of the titular building, Menard's découpage of classic MuchMusic interviews, performances and VJ (video jockey) segments plays like an enveloping late-night YouTube rabbit hole. Guided by an emotionally effective (if narratively scattershot) curation, the film serves as an aesthetically fitting elegy to the halcyon days of music journalism on television.
In the film's most auspicious stylistic decision, Menard relays the story of MuchMusic and its roughly 30 years of cultural significance exclusively through the assemblage of archival footage. Guided loosely by candid voiceover interviews with the VJs, producers, floor directors and other talent both behind and in front of the cameras, 299 Queen Street West primarily lets the footage speak for itself. (Some of these same VJs are participating in live Q&As as the film goes on tour across the country.) This leaves the film skating between anecdotes and observations from its interview subjects in a loose chronology that is both wistful and informative in its structure.
While this makes Menard's collage seemingly only accessible to those raised on MuchMusic, the passion for the subject is apparent and intoxicating even to those less familiar with the channel. Besides, the chosen style is more than appropriate given the channel's signature slapdash, fly-by-night aesthetic of low-budget spontaneity. Moreover, the physical condition of this excavated footage — weathered with scan lines, glitches and contrasting aspect ratios the further the film progresses — creates a powerful transportive effect to a recent past.
Where the film triumphs is in its ability to distill MuchMusic's significance and innovation to the concept of music television in a reverent yet enlightening way. While the unseen talking heads are highly entertaining in their self-effacing reminiscence over the artists they once awkwardly interviewed, they nevertheless underline why MuchMusic was so much more than just "Canada's MTV." Creating an inventive environment brokering a connection between fans and artists, the channel broke down the restrictive walls of gender and racial representation on music television at the time and displayed a willingness to experiment with the unpredictability of live television. Menard's film works as an epitaph for the ephemeral and abstract cool that once was music television, but still manages to convince audiences that the history of Canadian media would be woefully incomplete without it.
The film is, of course, not the entire story of MuchMusic. After revelling in the serene crudeness of the '80s and '90s in granular detail, the film hastily taps out around the mid-to-late 2000s with an obituary to MuchMusic's cultural influence. Despite the channel lurching forward until its rebranding as Much in 2013, a hurried conclusion on its waning influence and the shifting landscape of music television is drawn from Menard and his assembled VJ panel. In a way, the film glossing over this aspect allows the film not to dwell on the decline, and instead celebrate the nation's music station while we had it.
Menard captures the cultural force of MuchMusic and gives it the respect and admiration it rightfully deserves. To walk past that titular address today, Torontonians and tourists are greeted with blacked out glass; what once was a window connecting the artists to their fans is now just another barrier. With that in mind, 299 Queen Street West admires a bygone era of our television landscape while avoiding the reductive worshipping a film like this could have easily fallen into.
(Sean Menard Productions)My brother was one of the lucky school groups who had the privilege of attending a taping of Intimate and Interactive (think MuchMusic's answer to MTV Unplugged) and witnessing Queens of the Stone Age perform their just-released song "Little Sister" in the cramped studio that looked out onto the bustling Toronto streets. Over the course of this conversation, we grew to realize we were speaking of this school-sanctioned journey to 299 Queen Street West in the venerated terms of a pilgrimage, as if this building represented the cultural mecca of Canada.
In Sean Menard's film named after this building — the first full-length documentary attempting to illuminate the cultural significance of MuchMusic to Canada's media history — it's clear that I'm not the only one who remembers Much with such reverence. Tracing the channel's history from its slipshod DIY origins as a homegrown alternative to MTV in the early 1980s to its cultural zenith in the 1990s and sudden decline in the 2000s, 299 Queen Street West is an exhaustive document of archival excavation.
Having unfettered access to the many thousands of hours of footage squirrelled away in Bell Media's tape library deep in the bowels of the titular building, Menard's découpage of classic MuchMusic interviews, performances and VJ (video jockey) segments plays like an enveloping late-night YouTube rabbit hole. Guided by an emotionally effective (if narratively scattershot) curation, the film serves as an aesthetically fitting elegy to the halcyon days of music journalism on television.
In the film's most auspicious stylistic decision, Menard relays the story of MuchMusic and its roughly 30 years of cultural significance exclusively through the assemblage of archival footage. Guided loosely by candid voiceover interviews with the VJs, producers, floor directors and other talent both behind and in front of the cameras, 299 Queen Street West primarily lets the footage speak for itself. (Some of these same VJs are participating in live Q&As as the film goes on tour across the country.) This leaves the film skating between anecdotes and observations from its interview subjects in a loose chronology that is both wistful and informative in its structure.
While this makes Menard's collage seemingly only accessible to those raised on MuchMusic, the passion for the subject is apparent and intoxicating even to those less familiar with the channel. Besides, the chosen style is more than appropriate given the channel's signature slapdash, fly-by-night aesthetic of low-budget spontaneity. Moreover, the physical condition of this excavated footage — weathered with scan lines, glitches and contrasting aspect ratios the further the film progresses — creates a powerful transportive effect to a recent past.
Where the film triumphs is in its ability to distill MuchMusic's significance and innovation to the concept of music television in a reverent yet enlightening way. While the unseen talking heads are highly entertaining in their self-effacing reminiscence over the artists they once awkwardly interviewed, they nevertheless underline why MuchMusic was so much more than just "Canada's MTV." Creating an inventive environment brokering a connection between fans and artists, the channel broke down the restrictive walls of gender and racial representation on music television at the time and displayed a willingness to experiment with the unpredictability of live television. Menard's film works as an epitaph for the ephemeral and abstract cool that once was music television, but still manages to convince audiences that the history of Canadian media would be woefully incomplete without it.
The film is, of course, not the entire story of MuchMusic. After revelling in the serene crudeness of the '80s and '90s in granular detail, the film hastily taps out around the mid-to-late 2000s with an obituary to MuchMusic's cultural influence. Despite the channel lurching forward until its rebranding as Much in 2013, a hurried conclusion on its waning influence and the shifting landscape of music television is drawn from Menard and his assembled VJ panel. In a way, the film glossing over this aspect allows the film not to dwell on the decline, and instead celebrate the nation's music station while we had it.
Menard captures the cultural force of MuchMusic and gives it the respect and admiration it rightfully deserves. To walk past that titular address today, Torontonians and tourists are greeted with blacked out glass; what once was a window connecting the artists to their fans is now just another barrier. With that in mind, 299 Queen Street West admires a bygone era of our television landscape while avoiding the reductive worshipping a film like this could have easily fallen into.
