The Juno Awards

First given out as the Gold Leaf Awards in 1970 and a year later as the Juno Awards, Canada's music award was created to promote Canadian Music, a logical step after the Canadian Content laws. The 2001 awards were the 30th anniversary of the Juno Awards. I watched back then (4th of March), and I was sort of disappointed with the show.

It seems to me that they should broadcast the most important categories on TV if they aren't going to do them all, missed were Best Rock Album, Best Pop Album, Best Country Male Artist, Best New Group, Best Instrumental Album, Best Male Artist and Best Selling Francophone Album. Some of these might have been presented but I don't remember, some were shown as clips and some were just mentioned here and there during the broadcast.

Three things were worth watching: The Guess Who's performance which was really cool, the tribute to Bruce Cockburn and the third is based on my musical tastes, Treble Charger's performance.

The Guess Who is Canada's Beatles, the ones who oppened up the market for Canadians just like the Beatles had for the UK. The Guess Who had to pretend to be not Canadian to get played on the Canadian radio. Times have changed; their performance included a couple of their big hits although at this point the titles escape my memory.

The 2001 inductee to the Music Hall of fame was Bruce Cockburn, the great folk artists. His speech was the best (especially compared to the many redundant speeches by Nelly Furtado). A Clip was shown where great Canadian musicians talked about his achievements and his influence on Canadian music. To add to the tribute bands such as the Barenaked Ladies (who were in BC) sang some of his songs.

I mentioned Treble Charger's performance. Others who sang were the Barenaked Ladies, Moffatts, Nelly Furtado, Lara Fabien and a tribute to urban sound: the hip hop and R&B artists.

The Big winner at this night was Nelly Furtado who won Best Single, Best New Solo Artist, Best Songwriter, Best Producer. The Barenaked Ladies won a few Junos: for Best Group, Best Album and Best Pop Album. Ginette Reno won the Francophone Award, Jann Arden was Best Female Artist and Neil Young was Best Male Artist. Jesse Cook won for Best Instrumental Album.

Nickelback won for Best New Group which as the said in their acceptance speech, is the "kiss of death". The awards feature groups such as Sky (2000), Johnny Favourite Swing Orchestra (1999), Leahy (1998) and the The Killjoys (1997). Whats happened to them today... In fact the only bands I've heard of that won this award (and its predecessor Most Promising Group of the Year) are Rush ('75), The Tragically Hip ('90), The Waltons ('94), Moist ('95) and Philosopher Kings ('96) which is 5 for 27 years....

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