Taking Care of Authenticity on the CBC’s Randy’s Vinyl Tap

Abstract

This essay explores the radio program Randy’s Vinyl Tap, which is hosted by Randy Bachman and airs on CBC Radio 1 (2005-present). I argue that the show’s complex reception can be explained, in part, by the fact that it transgresses dominant conceptions of authenticity in both rock music and public broadcasting discourses. Drawing on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, I explore ways in which Bachman evokes a “carnivalesque” approach to public communication.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For broader treatments of authenticity in the disciplines of philosophy and literature, see also Guignon (2004); Taylor (1992); Trilling (2000).

2. For a rich development of the concept of discourse, to which I am indebted throughout this paper, see Foucault (1982).

3. This body of work extends and, in some cases, blends post-structuralist, postmodernist, and Marxist critiques of authenticity, the voice, and truth, such as Adorno (2003); Althusser (2005); Bourdieu (1984); Derrida (1976); Huyssen (1986).

4. In addition to Keightley, numerous scholars have since contributed to the critical analysis of authenticity in popular music culture. See, for example, Albrecht (2008); Auslander (2006); Coates (2003); Fox (1998); Meier (2011); Moore (2002); Wilson (2007). I have already sought to contribute to some of these discussions, too, in an essay about the rock group The Band, which explores the competing notions of authenticity articulated by the group (Svec, 2012).

5. For a recent journalistic account of “Canadian songwriting” that privileges the rock era, see Schneider (2009).

6. An additional example would be certain CBC studio’s record production efforts in the 1960s and 1970s, as revealed by the recent anthology Native North America, Vol. 1 (Howes, 2014). I acknowledge, however, that that which constitutes “Canadianness” is historical and discursively constructed (Edwardson, 2008; Pattinson, 2018).

7. As Edwardson (2008) also argues, the “Canadianness” of Canadian rock music is not so much inherent in the music as it also has to do with the institutions and gatekeepers through which music is discursively understood and produced (see also Edwardson, 2009).

8. According to Theodor Gracyk, Romantic hedonism is a crucial component of rock’s esthetic (Gracyk, 1996). From this angle, then, Bachman’s gesture of quitting the group is perhaps personally “authentic” but socially/institutionally conformist.

9. For a fascinating musicological analysis of The Guess Who’s sonic articulation of identity, see Dalby (2009).

10. In this respect, there are fascinating parallels between Bachman’s approach to broadcasting (and music) and the approach to communication developed by John Durham Peters (1999) in his book Speaking into the Air. Peters, drawing on Jesus in the Gospels, suggests that (“authentic”) dialogue often overshadows the ethical contributions of the disseminative model of communication, which places more emphasis on the agency of receivers.

11. Danger Mouse remixed instrumental sounds from The Beatles’s The White Album, which formed the foundation against which Jay-Z’s vocals from The Black Album were set on top.

12. In a Globe and Mail feature entitled “Finkleman’s 45s: An Escape from the Hype of Modernity,” Michael Posner (2001) puts his finger on Finkelman’s distinct ressentiment: “As rich and amusing a character as you will find on the air, Finkleman breaks up the 25 songs by venturing opinions, briefly, on whatever catches his fancy. Riffing off notes scribbled out on a yellow pad of paper, he opines on the modern world, the bad and the worse. He calls it being cranky. I call it being in the nostalgia business—a conviction that most things today (not just pop music) simply aren’t as good as they were when he was growing up in River Heights, middle-class south Winnipeg, circa 1955.”

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Henry Adam Svec

Henry Adam Svec (Ph.D., University of Western Ontario, 2013) is assistant professor in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo. His research interests include media history, critical theory, and performance.