But of course Canadian Music Week conference keynoters Gene Simmons and Bob Lefsetz were hurling online insults at one another on Thursday afternoon. What else were they going to do? Watch panels gnawing over the beyond-broken state of the industry that both claim to know how to fix? And, when no one is entirely sure where their respective economies are headed, who better to induct into a Broadcast Industry Hall of Fame than original mulletheaded MuchMusic VJ-turned-CNN morning anchor John Roberts.

The annual CMW event — suddenly not to be confused with the public nightlife portion separately branded as the Canadian Music Festival — remains a by-product of the government-mandated relationship between radio and record companies, regardless of how much the game changed.

At times like these, however, China offers a big talking point for the 2009 itinerary — and both the provincial and federal governments ponied up funds to fly in delegates to discuss how culture produced here can be exported there. Which explains the suburban Chinese buffet backdrop at the Fairmont Royal York ballroom stage taken yesterday morning by Gene Simmons, showing just how much he meant that was going to revive his own record label in a partnership with Belinda Stronach first announced in November, just as her family’s fortune-making car part business Magna was eliminating 850 jobs. This month, the entertainment division started by her dad Frank filed for bankruptcy protection. But running a few racetracks can’t be easily bankrolled by reality TV.

The star of Gene Simmons Family Jewels, once a succinct interview subject, has clearly gotten accustomed to the habit of rambling all he wants — because they can always get to the point in the editing suite. And, predictably, the tongued one made a passing reference to the inevitable fact that his Canadian talent-scouting stunts are feeding into a homegrown series for recently downsized MuchMoreMusic. (The Twitter stream of Much MTV programming chief Brad Schwartz wouldn’t lie.)

For those unwitting extras in the audience, however  — including a couple dozen KISS fans who parted with $52.50 to fill the front rows for the hour — the presentation was as pointless as Lefsetz painted it to be. Motivational speeches about how Toronto can be “the centre of pop culture on Planet Earth” are better left to Richard Florida, whose misleadingly packaged $6.99 cover story in the current issue of The Atlantic can at least be read online for free.

Money remains Gene’s bag, of course — he trademarked the image 28 years ago, slapping it on a few lame hair-band records he executive produced while Paul Stanley pranced about in search of a way to remain on the stage. The decade-and-a- half after the initial fire-breathing tween-scene celebrity found the group flouncing from disco to goth to metal to power-balladry to grunge — farces chronicled in C.K. Lendt’s book Kiss and Sell: The Making of a Supergroup — a kitschy series of comeback attempts never clever enough to be effectively monetized without accompanying makeup.

Instead, those first six KISS discs from between 1973 and 1977 became the core of what Simmons has to sell. The ballroom was reminded as much via an ear-splitting four- year-old promo film detailing all the ventures related to the never- ending reunion tour — even though Ace Frehley and Peter Criss ended up lost again along the way. Yet the real point of the video appeared to be that when a contract involves more ingenuity than the finished product, it really doesn’t matter if you follow through: e.g., KISS Babies, a cartoon coming (in 2006!) to the (now-defunct!) WB Television Network.



Trading on the dreams of gullible Canadians who want to follow in the footsteps of Gene’s non-wife Shannon Tweed — whose initial posing for Playboy was facilitated in 1981 by the CTV proto-reality show Thrill of a Lifetime — goes beyond cannibalizing your own concept. And that’s where Belinda Stronach apparently comes in. “She almost became the head of your government,” notes Simmons in a just slightly incorrect interpretation of recent House of Commons history.

A member of local band Four Pistols was lured to the stage, strip-club style, for a crash coaching about how to promote themselves according to the self- described “drill sergeant from hell” who cites the un-KISS-like examples of U2, the Grateful Dead and Sub Pop Records as the kind of footsteps he will encourage three Canadian discoveries to follow in. More delegates then lined up to try impressing Gene with their potential contributions to his think-tank. Staged or not, these were presumably auditions for plotlines in the forthcoming reality show.

Playing right into the performance art is perennial conference gadfly Lefsetz, who then ambles up to his Royal York hotel room and bangs out his appraisal of the Simmons performance. Naturally, this missive gets instantly read via the hand-held devices of the legion of local Lefsetz Letter subscribers: “Listening to him is like watching a bad version of Glengarry Glen Ross.”  

Those looking for a better approximation of David Mamet needn’t have strayed from the premises, though. An afternoon panel concerning “The Digital Evolution of the Music Business” — part of a conference within the conference — featured a gang of new-model executives who’ve clearly spent so many years on conference stages that their rapid- fire platitudes are delivered without a stutter. Their well-funded uncertainty is certainly more assertive than the impoverished existentialism practiced around the clock by budding “social-media experts” — even if, for the audience, the effect is not unlike listening to six concurrent quadrophonic streams of Jim Cramer.
 
Most adults never really bothered with buying CDs in the first place, goes the overall party line, and therefore any digital outlet capable of generating money is potentially a greater boost to artist fortunes than whatever was happening before. The biggest problem is that the transformation has only just begun. What to do in the meantime? Keep the venture capitalists happy by giving well-rehearsed tirades about how culture as we have come to know it is on the cusp of falling apart.

Broadcasters never used to consider this their problem. And, based on the sentiments expressed at a “Radio Executive Super Session” in the mid-afternoon, they are still of the view that they don’t need to care. Because, should the hits stop coming, there will always be oldies. The chiefs from the five companies dominating the AM/FM dial across Canada can be more than cautiously optimistic — because at least their business has made money before, and theoretically will again, even if the content model involves spinning tunes between John Tesh voicetracks for folks too intimidated to buy a computer. The low-budget hyperlocal radio angle is also regarded as most adaptable in the twilight of daily newspapers and/or network affiliate newscasts.

Denise Donlon, executive director of CBC Radio — and the only female in the batch — was the panelist with the more intriguing position, given how her appointment to the role six months ago immediately became more about crisis management as programming expertise. CBC can’t borrow money from the bank to stay solvent, after all — leaving them at the mercy of government implications that commercial airtime might be sold. Donlon’s solution to this involves some conspicuously unspecified monetization of the programming content beyond the Canadian public airwaves. Does she even have a real idea yet?

Lastly, it was back to the ballroom for live Lefsetz, who took the podium alone to deliver one basic message: “Don’t give me your fucking CD.”

Relating the well-trod and well-groomed theories of Malcolm Gladwell and Seth Godin to the waning rock ‘n’ roll business in his own scrappy sputtering style was benign enough — the amount of data Lefsetz has set himself up to collect in a day as part of his rather mysterious freelance music consultant lifestyle makes him tune out everything that isn’t good enough to bubble up.

Lefsetz would have rather been at his computer, of course, monitoring reaction around the web to Gene Simmons’ ALL- CAPS rebuttal — promptly forwarded to the entire Lefsetz list. (Closing salvo: “AND WE HOPE YOU GET OUT OF MOM’S BASEMENT SOON.”) And, in a city where regular discussions about the future of media increasingly take the form of free “un-conferences” like the recent PodCamp, such a scrap between big egos breathes new life into the tired way of booking a few marquee names from out-of-town just to give CMW delegates something to do besides drink their sorrows away while reminiscing about the glory days.

No surprise, then, that Canadian Music Week president Neill Dixon floated the idea of a live face-off between Lefsetz and Simmons for Friday afternoon (since confirmed for 4pm today). Cable news figured this out long enough ago — even if information wants to be free, you can still make a few bucks by facilitating a hysterical argument. Too bad J.D. Roberts didn’t hang around to moderate.

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