Today on the Scroll: A night of lurking at CBC Radio 3's live countdown broadcast from the city's chilliest skating surface, at least until it got too cold to hang around.

Coverage of a Zamboni resurfacing a public-skating rink might have even eluded the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation prior to last Saturday night (Jan. 26), when Radio 3’s countdown show was transmitted live, alongside the ice at Harbourfront Centre.

The song that came up on the chart was ideal for the Zamboni glide, too: Wendy McNeill's “Such A Common Bird," No. 25 on the list this week, is a chirpy German cabaret-style melody where the principal instrument is an accordion.

Like half the songs on Radio 3, production compensates for the absence of a chorus — while the tunes with the hookiest hooks tend to be sonically restrained.

There will be exceptions, of course — “The Night Starts Here” by Stars (this week’s No. 20) would hold its own at any skate venue, if preferably the rolling kind — but the R3-30’s indie-rock consensus is rarely prone to inspiring aerobic activity.

The streetcar ride to the Natrel Rink provides some eavesdropping insight into who might be listening to CBC Radio 3, though, especially now that it runs a full-time all-Canadian live webstream. One female undergrad type I encounter claims to have Radio 3 on all day, but only really likes the songs by Great Lake Swimmers and Portico, which she figures are played, like, 20 times a day.

Parent-scaring music this decidedly isn’t, as there’s very little aggression to go around, and grunge is now the subject of time-warp episodes of The Simpsons.

But according to Radio 3 host Craig Norris (pictured), who hosted the rinkside event, an audience is being cultivated through the conspicuous lack of indie-rock elitism.

“Nothing makes me more turned off than being told that I should like something,” says Norris. “I’m not approaching this music like it’s a delicate Fabrege egg, or telling people that if they don’t like something new, they’re a bunch of troglodytes.

“I take the approach that if you’ve never heard a song before, then let’s listen to it together, then decide if we actually like it.”  

Norris, who lives in Guelph and has played in a band called The Kramdens since 1990, was recruited for his Radio 3 role three years ago. The concept of a more youthfully musical CBC outlet was first floated through the late-'90s, after the late-night intellectual agitation of Brave New Waves and succession of more pop-oriented weekend evening shows on CBC Radio 2 remained stuck in their respective corners. There was limited wiggle room on a schedule designed to enlighten farmers with Eurocentric classical sounds.

Radio 3’s first online incarnation was a pretentious flash-heavy webzine, a showcase for different media arts, accompanied by an all-CanCon music stream. The approach morphed as CBC invested in a Canadian license for Sirius Satellite Radio, where R3 would be based 24/7 and presumably draw paying subscribers from both sides of the border. A weekly podcast, hosted by Vancouver Radio 3 voice Grant Lawrence, was introduced as part of that rollout.

What happened was the online platform, including a full-fledged weblog, proved more successful than selling R3 via satellite. A wider menu of podcasts is now offered, including the R3-30 — music supplied by acts that offer their consent after uploading their tracks to the New Music Canada site. The web-based hosted broadcast started with minimal fanfare last September.

Sirius still provides a platform, and that version of Radio 3 incorporates 15 per cent non-Canadian music (as per CRTC-approved wiggle room), and voicetracked introductions from the cast of DJs.

This evolution is pretty complicated — and, being the CBC, pretty political — but Norris is edified by the fact that they could announce a skating party broadcast on a frigid Toronto night and have 100 listeners turn out to watch him introduce tunes from this parallel music universe.

“With this job I’m immersed in this stuff all the time,” says Norris. “It’s gotten to the point that when I’m exposed to something popular that isn’t Canadian indie-rock, I don’t even know what it is anymore.

“The challenge comes in knowing that indie music is usually presented in a superior domain, deliberately seeking to alienate a lot of people. I’m not assuming the listeners hear the name Richard Reed Parry and automatically know he’s from the Arcade Fire. There’s never a point where I’ll dismissively backsell a song, saying, 'Of course, that was…'”

What does sound common amongst Radio 3 hosts is an earnest smarminess that might’ve been pioneered by one-time weekend Night Lines host Ralph Benmergui. It’s an ironic affectation that may well be an amalgam of dialects from all 10 provinces and three territories. The women on the air are a bit more aloof, but are afflicted with it, too. Like all self-respecting public radio, it seems, R3 has established its own code of comforting clichés.   

Norris doesn’t think he’s being anyone but himself, a 40-year-old communicating to his own generation, cunning enough to get away with describing the skating rink on-air as like a painting by Currier and Ives.

“I’m not sure what the brass at the CBC want our audience to be. Maybe they were thinking teenagers, but I wholeheartedly disagree with that. I’ve found they’re mostly post-university age, people who’ve gone through the meat grinder of commercial radio and want to go off the beaten path.

“At the same time, this is not like Brave New Waves, where they’d play an 11-minute track consisting of someone banging away on the head of an old Chevy.”

Keeping up on what more melodic noises are worth heeding attention to from this country can be no less challenging, though. As a state-sponsored filter, Radio 3 seemed to emerge at the right technological time.

Recreational skating, on the other hand, isn’t the most exhilarating experience from the sidelines when the soundtrack isn’t right. A skronky new song by Black Mountain, brought along by guest tastemaker Frank Yang from the Chromewaves, wasn’t designed to inspire pirouettes.

Feeling very much like someone’s dad then, it was time to head home in time to catch the week’s top five, leaving the theatre of the mind to interpret how one would skate to a ditty called “The Spinster’s Almanac.”

The remote was successful, however, helping affirm the idea that what was once termed “college radio” might finally be worth someone’s investment in this country — even if the investor happens to be the CBC — a quarter-century after the likes of R.E.M. helped shape it into a money-making industry stateside.

“If I was laying down my mask after a day on the job as an arc welder would I really care about what was going on in Canadian indie music?” wonders Norris. “I’m trying to put across some kind of exuberance and enthusiasm. But I’ll never try and tell someone why they should like a certain song.”

Send news, tips, links about arts, culture, media to scroll@eyeweekly.com.

Email us at: LETTERS@EYEWEEKLY.COM or send your questions to EYEWEEKLY.COM
625 Church St, 6th Floor, Toronto M4Y 2G1