THE WATCH april 2012. Volume xxix. Issue vii
Table of Contents april 2012. Volume xxix. Issue vii
Editors’ Note Letters To The Editors The Bay Goes Silent Ben Harrison Budget, No Bursar Rachel Ward It’s Sink or Swim At Blue Canoes Charlotte Harrison Together in Tough Times Ben Harrison Gender Neutral Bathroom Challenge Siobhan Fleury TorontiFax? James Jenkinson TemperTemper Tantrum Ben Harrison Editors-In-Chief Ben Harrison Rachel Ward
Treasurer
Simcha Walfish
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 10 11
Production Manager Board of Publishers David Lewis
TBA
Publisher
Online Editor
Charlotte Harrison
Philippa Wolff
The University of King’s College. 6350 Coburg Road. Halifax NS. B3H 2A1. Watcheditors@gmail.com. Twitter: @KingsWatch. Cover Photo By David Lewis But if the watchman see the sword come, and sound not the trumpet, and the people not be warned; if the sword come and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman’s hand - Ezekiel 33:6
Editors’ Note
There’s No Such thing as a fresh start. You’re always going to bring the baggage along with you from your past experiences. So we’re not treating this year of The Watch as a clean slate. There’s a reason why two executive members from last year are back. We know we can do better. We have some cleaning up to do: of The Watch, and of the school. We want to show you what we’re made of, what quality journalism at King’s looks like, and what The Watch can accomplish. Our job is to tell the best stories at King’s. This means getting back to quality journalism. Simple fact-checking doesn’t cut it anymore. We need detailed, thorough research and collaboration, and the know-how to sort through it all. We need to ask the right questions of the right people, and hold accountable our administration, our councillors and ourselves. Quality journalism means bringing The Watch back to campus. We’ve opened an office in the Link, next door to the King’s Students’ Union. We now have a newsroom on campus where we can tell the best stories, do the best research and get the most important information to you. The moment you have a question, a concern or an ass to kick, you’ll know where to find us. Even last weekend, we had people dropping by. Please know, King’s, we’re accountable to you. Join us in our newsroom. We need you if we’re going to take a real stab at the stories that need telling. King’s is a community of storytellers, whether it’s through reading The Odyssey or acting in a KTS show. The Watch is your venue for storytelling on campus, and we hope you’re ready for the next volume of the best and most relevant stories you’ll read all year. We leave you for the next four months with the words that have been with The Watch for a very long time: “But if the watchman see the sword come, and sound not the trumpet, and the people not be warned; if the sword come and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman’s hand.” Ezekiel 33:6
We will always be the faithful watchman for you, the storytellers of King’s.
Ben Harrison and Rachel Ward Editors-in-Chief
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letters
Letters to the editors ON PROTESTS: It’s something that isn’t being given much attention in Canadian media, but I’d like to point out that a strike of the current magnitude being executed by Québécois students is the largest one in student history in North America, as well as the largest collective strike in recent Canadian history. In addition to not going to classes, students are doing various non-violent direct actions at centres of political and economic power throughout the province. Occupations of Education and Finance Ministers’ offices, as well as a recent turn to occupying banks, make it seem that this movement is shifting from the student sphere to encompass a more general social movement. It’s a logical next step – when you look critically at the university’s role in our country, it’s easy to connect the dots between increasing tuition and increasing the divide between middle and working class. Decreased government funding opens the floodgates to increased funding from private industry. There is a bigger question underlying the Quebec student strikes: should modern Canadian universities be valued and upheld as institutes of critical thinking and higher learning, or are we content with sitting by and watching as they become expensive training grounds for the next generation of corporate workers?
“it’s the logical next step” There is a false dichotomy produced when we think of students AND workers, students AND taxpayers, students AND the rest of society. We are all a part of the struggle, and by creating divisions, we run the risk of overlooking the common underlying issue of public goods being chipped away in favour of corporate providers. The increasingly corporate university system is merely one part of the bigger picture. Having student representation eliminated from the two Board of Governor committees that will decide the cuts to be put in place to make sure King’s doesn’t go bankrupt (the Financial Sustainability Committee and the Budget Advisory Committee) shows that the corporate thinking that is the hallmark of larger universities is also present here at home. When students and faculty are thought of as “special-interest groups” by our administration and Board of Governors, it makes you wonder what those running our university really think of King’s. Last time I checked, students and faculty are the reason that a university exists. Having this top-down approach to our school’s governance, where students and faculty are merely side notes to the financial business of the university, undermines the core ideology of King’s. If we pride ourselves on the fact that King’s is about critical thinking and true learning, and more than a corporate knowledge factory, it’s time that we make this known to the ones making our school’s financial decisions and demand our rightful place at the table. Anna Bishop Vice-President, Communications 2011-2012 King’s Students’ Union
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The Bay goes Silent Campus radio station May be off the air for good
Story and Photo by Ben Harrison
The future of 97.3 The Bay is uncertain. The campus radio station, founded by first-year Axel Soos, had its final broadcast of the semester on March 31. Since then, the airwaves around campus have been silent, as Soos contemplates the future of the station. “It’s been in question all year. I mean, it’s a huge time commitment. At some points, we put out 25 hours a week of content. That we’ve been able to sustain this thing for the entire year is quite the accomplishment.” Soos says it comes down to the level of time commitment and not living on campus next year. “There was a bit of a drag in my school work this year. I had to put so much time into the station that next year, I’m definitely going to have to commit to my studies and workload a lot more than I did this year. I put so much aside to run the station as well as I could.” Living off campus will be an added strain on running a campus radio station, he said, as he won’t be able to access the station at a moment’s notice. The Bay began in his Middle Bay room in September, and moved downstairs later that autumn to comply with legal broadcasting standards. “I’m hoping we can have first years on campus involved next year, if it does move forward. If I were to continue with The Bay, I’d be facilitating in some sense, but I definitely can’t have the level of hands-on involvement like I did last year.”
What Soos will remember most about The Bay?
“Definitely the re-launch party we threw. It was just the cleanest, most fun party I’d ever been to. Being there with the community was great. I should say, I mean ‘clean’ by just a really, really good time. It wasn’t clean in a literal sense. There was chocolate sauce everywhere.”
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budget, No Bursar
Rachel Ward
Administration faces Budget season without Gerry Smith Budget prep at King’s may be more difficult now that bursar Gerry Smith has taken administrative leave. Smith has been charged with sexual assault, indecent assault and gross indecency for alleged incidents spanning five years in the early 1980s. Smith was not King’s staff at the time of the alleged incidents. He must abstain from communication with children under 16, unless accompanied by parent or guardian, avoid playgrounds, schoolyards and anywhere children may frequent and abstain from contact with five individuals related to the trial. Smith is scheduled for a preliminary hearing in December. President Anne Leavitt has confirmed Smith is on paid leave and “may be doing some work for us” from home. She says she cannot say whether Smith will take as active a role in the budget as he has in past years, or when he might return. “If we need some assistance, we’ll bring people in,” said Leavitt. “If I need somebody, I’ll figure out what kind of person that is, and I’ll bring them in.” Her budget team as of now consists of the vicepresident, the Board of Governors treasurer, and the bursar’s office. Unlike past years, the president is not meeting regularly with the Budget Advisory Committee, a committee formed of representatives from throughout the university. “It’s a bit misnamed,” said Leavitt. This is also the first year without King’s Student Union representatives on the committee. “I believe (past president) Bill Barker set up something called the Budget Advisory Committee about four years ago. It’s not something that’s been in existence at King’s as a matter of government,” she said. Barker said in an email that he restructured the BAC about five years ago. There previously had been a budget committee, he said, but “the current structure was put in place to give greater faculty, student, and staff response to the administration’s budget,” before it moved on to be finalized by executive budget committees and the Board.
This year, Leavitt said, she, Smith and vice-president Kim Kierans have met with directly with department directors to review their budget proposals. Leavitt said she has met formally with the BAC once, for about two hours, but noted that the administration is looking for more than what the BAC has done in past years. “That committee did a lot of very good work in finding savings here and there in very small ways, but which added up to significant means for the university. We will not be looking at that kind of a process for next year because we’re not looking at adding up very tiny savings. There are not a lot of savings made that way,” she said. “Almost 80 per cent of our money is tied up in salaries. And so, if we want to settle some of our budget problems with $1,000 from the library, $15,000 from (the Foundation Year Programme), they’re not going to solve our budget problems going forward,” she said. “We need to look at something more dramatic. And I’m not sure what that’s going to be,” said Leavitt. Another complication added last month is the Dalhousie Faculty Association contract, which King’s follows to set the salaries for its non-unionized professors. “We also have to figure out the impact of the DFA settlement,” Leavitt said. At King’s, only the teaching fellows on yearly contracts are unionized. This is the first union on campus for professors of any kind, and it has been negotiating its first contract since last summer. The union recently has brought in a conciliator. Leavitt said she is running several scenarios for the operating budget with the treasurer of the King’s Board of Governors, Katrina Beach, a certified account with the local lawyers firm, Grant Thornton LLP. Beach directed questions about the budget and about Smith to the Board chair on Friday. Leavitt confirmed that the BAC discussed revenue-raising possibilities including adult-learner courses, university prep classes and summer school. “Those kinds of things have been talked about on campus for years,” she said, without saying if they are being considered by administration.“
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“They’re good ideas,” she said. “They might happen.” She has run summer schools at other universities “in a much larger capacity than what King’s could offer,” she said, and so is familiar with the idea. “I’ve never seen them make a lot of money, but they could be worth doing for their own sake. Whether King’s went down that road would depend very much upon faculty: whether they’re willing, interested to do it and whether it fits as part of their programs. It’s not something the administration can, or could or should command,” she said. “We haven’t found the plan yet but we’re working on it,” said Leavitt, confident the administrative team of the president, vice-president, bursar’s office and treasurer will have a budget ready for the board meeting in June, two months from now. As for missing Smith, an administrator who has historically been intricately involved in budget planning, Leavitt remains positive despite his charges. “That, as far as I understand, would have happened thirty years ago, and King’s takes the position, as should any Canadian citizen, that a person is innocent until formally found guilty in a court of law.” As for how they’ll do without Smith’s help? “Well, you know, we’ll cope.”
IT’s SINK OR SWIM AT BLUE CANOES
THe results are in at the annual kts awards
Charlotte Harrison
Whether you’re super sexy in drag, or a drag to be stuck with the next morning (read: post-cast party hangovers), the King’s Theatrical Society made sure to honour you. It was the Blue Canoes award night for the KTS on April 10, held, appropriately, in the Pit. Infamous for their unusual awards, the KTS executive did not disappoint this year, offering the following gems to King’s thespians: The “Family Issues Award for Pertinence in Recognizing that Families Have Issues” went to Classics in the Quad production of Hippolytos. The “Prop Master Award for Best Inanimate Object in a Leading Role” went to Art, a play about a white painting that is not, in fact, white.
The Penelopiad won the “Realistic Casting Situation Award for Actuality in All Female Casts.” [Title of Show] captured the “Meta-theatrical Award for Excellence in Performing Shows about Ourselves,” while Eric Cunningham was the recipient of the “Switcheroo Award for Most Sexually Arousing Drag” for his role as Mrs. Cheveley in An Ideal Husband. The entire cast of Mouthful of Birds, directed by Brendan Sangster, received the “This Shit Got Serious Award for Seriousness in Getting Serious About Shit.” Sangster, the superstar, won the “Mark DeWolf Award for Most Outstanding Graduating Member of the Society”, and the “Looking Good Girl Award for the Most Seductive Use of
Kate Howell in a Theatrical Production” went to Checkmates.
All in the Timing won the “Sound Wave Award for Best Attempt at THX Quality Sound Effects in Theatrical Production.” The “Gastronomically Theatrical Award for Best Use of Food as a Prop to Generate Serious Discussion and Contemplation on a Topic” winner was The Ivory Cage, written and directed by Lauren Walsh-Greene, and the “David Etherington Award for Frugality in Set Construction and Design” winner was The Terrible False Deception. The “Oral Administration Award for Trying Out the Best Foreign Tongues” went to Noises Off, and finally... The “Crazy Stupid Drunk Award for Best Individual to Have at a Cast Party” went to Alcohol.
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Together in tough times
a year of mental health advocacy
Ben Harrison
This year was a real bruiser. With heated yearlong funding debates, we all danced a little closer around the very real question of whether or not our school is going to exist in twenty years. All of this Heideggerian groundlessness was enough to make us feel bummed out. In such difficult times, King’s took a more active stance in mental health advocacy than ever before. Direct student engagement began with the King’s Mental Health Awareness Collective, a newly ratified society. Beginning in autumn, discussion about mental health began to flourish. It was noticeable all over the school, from Speaking Our Minds, a zine about mental health, to discussions with mental health advocates such as King’s alum Michael Kimber, to the King’s Theatrical Society’s production of The Ivory Cage, fourth-year Lauren WalshGreene’s play about the effects of an eating disorder. Mental health advocacy got its biggest push when it landed on the agendas of King’s Student Union council meetings. Councillor Stefanie Bliss, Member-At-Large Representative, came forward with her struggles with an eating disorder, and became a staunch supporter for union involvement in campus mental health issues “The mental health policy at King’s has been outdated for decades,” says Bliss. “I know it hasn’t been rewritten in the last ten years. This year, reviewing the importance of mental health advocacy, has been a good start, but we’ve still got a long way to go.” Bliss says that a lack of real policy and protocol regarding mental health leads to a type of stigmatization on the King’s campus. “I don’t think it’s a conscious stigmatization on campus, but ableism is really easy to fall into. When you find out that someone has an anxiety disorder, it can become quite easy to worry about their capacities and start to question their ability to get things done on ‘the King’s level’.” That ‘King’s level’ is one of the things that makes King’s unique: students get involved in multiple societies, take on leadership roles in many areas and balance 50 more things than we’re expected to. It’s what we like to brag about when we come home at Christmas, as we
polish our shiny K-Pin before a fancy party. That ‘King’s level’ is also the cause for countless all-nighters, missed meals and a great deal of stress. But usually we just brush it off. We can take it. Bliss says having a high standard of excellence and a constant can-do attitude has both pros and cons. She says this is something everyone faces, and comes out very prominently at King’s. “Being critical of yourself is important, but I was taking that to a very unhealthy level.” Bliss says she feels the stigma is not limited to students, and she says it prevents them from seeking help. “Professors who may be suffering from mental disorders often feel forced to stay quiet about that for fear of losing their jobs. That sort of thing is really not okay.
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The mental health policy is incredibly vague and limited. It doesn’t really encompass the King’s community in a functional way.” Bliss says this year was a good start, but we shouldn’t break out the champagne just yet. If this year was about advocacy, the next few years are going to focus on ground-level discussion, a shift in thinking that incorporates everything we’ve accomplished this year along with a change in thinking for students, professors and policy in general. “We’re pretty good about tackling the hard issues here, and mental health should be one that we’re talking about. It’s about getting the word out there and saying ‘Hey, there are people on campus with emotional disorders and mental disorders’, and we should recognize that and not look at it as detrimental, because there are so many wonderful people who are going through things like that.”
GEnder neutral bathroom challenge Changing the way we do our business You’re sitting in class and you have to go. You cross your legs, side-step out of the room as quietly as possible, and sneak down the hall to the washroom. What happens if there isn’t a washroom for you? For transgendered people, male and female washrooms don’t work. Most washrooms are for cisgendered people, or people who identify with the same gender as their biological sex. This, says two Dalhousie University students, excludes transgendered people. Shay Enxuga and Jake Feldman are not cisgendered, and frequently face this issue. Enxuga says Feldman puts it well: “He was talking about how you have to go pee, just like everyone has to go pee, and you’re looking at these two options and neither one is made for you. There’s a sense that the world isn’t created for you, and a feeling of invisibility.” “Trans-people experience very real emotional and physical harm when it comes to gendered bathrooms. There are some assaults and violence, but also a lot of anxiety and fear,” said Enxuga. Exasperated and frustrated, the two started the Gender Neutral Bathroom Challenge, inviting people to use only gender-neutral bathrooms for the entire month of April. “We were just talking about feeling a sense of frustration and wanting our friends and people who identify as allies to think about their access to bathrooms as a privilege,” said Enxuga. “We thought that this would be a way for them to get some first-hand experience.”
Siobhan Fleury
Liz Fraser, a King’s grad living in Hamilton, Ont., took the challenge, and she’s caused change already. When at an art exhibit one night, she noticed a pair of single-stall gendered washrooms. Fraser asked if there was someone she could speak to about it. “Would it be possible to remove those signs in order to better include trans and genderqueer people in this space?” she asked the manager. Her request was met with a polite and willing response. The manager, who said that they had never thought of it, removed the signs immediately. In an interview with The Watch, Fraser said that she felt apprehensive about asking for the signs to be changed before taking action. “I felt like I would be perceived as confrontational, and I’m not a confrontational person. At first, I was feeling like maybe I should just leave it, because it didn’t affect me, but that isn’t really what the challenge is about.” Fraser is cisgendered, but she has long been involved in gay activism and feels it is important to be supportive of queer communities. Being cisgendered, she says, comes with a certain amount of power. “The fact that I was able to go ask about [the gendered washrooms] was an expression of privilege,” she said. “I also think that if I am hesitant to use that power, then I’m in a sense abusing it.” The creators of the challenge, however, were hoping for
such a response. “As with any system of oppression, it’s not the people who are oppressed who are making themselves oppressed,” said Enxuga. “The main purpose is just to create more gender neutral bathrooms. Often, it’s trans-people who do that work, but we want to have cis-people working in ally-ship with trans-people.” The challenge started as a Facebook event Feldman created, and now has the support of over 800 people from the Maritimes and beyond. “It spread like wildfire on the internet, and neither of us were expecting that. Jake thought that maybe 15 people would try it. I thought that maybe 100 people would,” said Enxuga. The two creators said they encourage people to talk the discrimination of gendered bathrooms and help change that. They say that’s happening. “I have heard people talk about being excited when they find gender neutral bathrooms,” said Enxuga. “I’m so happy. It’s been way more successful than I ever thought, which feels great. We’re getting a lot of people saying, ‘I’ve never thought of this before’.”
FROSH COORDINATORS GET TO WORK Newly appointed Frosh Coordinators Gabrielle “GooGooBerry” Rekai and Angus “I now live in a computer” Morgan gather for their first round of Interviews on Friday, April 13th. The two will be accompanied by Sir Aaron “Shankles” Shenkman.
Ben Harrison and David Lewis
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torontifax? no thanks.
James Jenkinson
Just as the waves of Lawrencetown beat against the Nova Scotia coastline, so the elitist Toronto snobbery clashes with Maritime values in Halifax. The Torontonian’s strange lingo can be forgiven – sometimes parties are best described in terms of how “live” they are. It’s OK that they’re unaware most people don’t know how hip Roncesvalles isn’t. It’s neither their uncontrollable Starbucks infatuation nor their commitment to button-downs, longer shopping hours and pea coats that gets to us. Their disinterest in stepping outside exclusive high-school cliques doesn’t bother Maritimers either. We think it’s probably for the best. And the exotic vacations they take over the breaks are really fun to hear about too. Who knew they had resorts in Muskoka? All such aspects of the Toronto elite character are right on. It’s really just the false sense of entitlement and their taking themselves so seriously that doesn’t sit well. During time spent in a Toronto private school, I became well aware of the spitefully superficial elements of the Toronto elitist attitude. Now, given the chance to observe such attitudes within Halifax, the appeal of Maritime amicability is all the more apparent and the Toronto elitism, incongruous. Toronto elitism is often anything but subtle. However, for those who haven’t left the house in years, it can be best understood when juxtaposed with the essence of Maritime spirit. At the core of what distinguishes Maritime character is the humor. The blend of playful offensives and severe self-deprecation are qualities less present in some of those central folk than is optimism in Hobbes. The ineptitude toward things like jolly Maritime banter often inhibits a friendship from the start. For Maritimers, nothing starts conversation like an oral Charley Horse and a clever one in return is something we value dearly. But the mind of the Toronto elitist has become intolerant of the informal: automati-
So the playful pitch to a couple of privileged Torontonians, lurking in a friend group’s periphery at some party, doesn’t go so well. For Maritimers, we presume the atmosphere is friendly until we’ve been convinced otherwise. However, such encounters prove the inverse true for this select group. Friendship for these farcical aristocrats demands some prior approval, some willingness of the inferiors to groom the high-horse from which they dare not descend. It’s difficult for us to understand how dire is the need to assert their bourgeoisie status, for we’re of a hardier culture which demands no pedestal. Maritimers enjoy being wrong. We ask so many questions about the weather because we’re in a constant state of doubt on all matters, open at all times to the input of others. Thus, we can’t help but be skeptical of the uncanny ability of Toronto elitists to always be so dreadfully composed. There is a certain paradox in the Toronto elite to be at once well-educated and soft-mannered while simultaneously presumptuous and crude. At a recent Kingsian party, a few of the affiliates were parading about branding anyone who wasn’t in their “crew” as “unfortunate”. Their surrender to dogma could not have been more blatant. Of course not all of the Toronto elite are so disagreeable. There is considerable variability in their degrees of delusion. However, to silence discussion on this matter would be an assumption of infallibility, an unspoken pacifism on the part of a majority. Indeed, the false pretensions among the Toronto elite may well only need to grow accustomed to Maritime norms. Perhaps, it’s all just a bit of culture shock for everybody. If this is the case, let’s hope that one day soon, we’ll invite them to kitchen parties.
cally aggravated by anything but the aloof.
April 2012|The Watch|10 David Lewis
Tempertemper tantrum “Halifax’s orgiest band” shakes off prog-rock accusations
Ben Harrison
King’s students like to start bands. It’s a well-documented tradition. Nothing brings a group of Kingsfolk together like the words “dude, we should totally jam.” The floor landings of the Bays are haunted by the ghostly presence of raspy-voiced, overly earnest plaid-clad folkies who have an entire record’s worth of songs they wrote while tree-planting: not-quite-there tunes, vaguely reminiscent of an early Neil Young (or worse, Eddie Vedder circa the Into the Wild soundtrack). In my first year, I was gently rocked to sleep by my Sonic Youth-adoring, shoegaze-worshipping neighbors through the wall, my slumbers gently being carried away by tiny looping pedals. We’re also notorious for buzzy King’s bands fizzling out. Blame it on an overabundance of ambition (‘we’re going to make a concept record about Charlemagne!’), a real-life schedule that involves school, societies and part-time jobs, or a lack of space to practice. We even did a feature on the breakup of the scrappy songbirds New Providence back in our February 2011 issue. It’s not uncommon to see King’s bands splinter off, and then find new roots in other groups, usually in different permutations of bands that came before them. King’s bands work because of flash-inthe-pan talent, constant interaction with the guys in the band, and regular gigs in our beloved Wardroom, the least judgmental venue in town. Every once in a while, though, a King’s band has to rise above the gentle camaraderie of beers shared amongst friends, of whispery mid-afternoon djembe drum jams on the library steps, or of Morrissey-aspiring wordplay that never quite reaches that level of conviction. Every once in a while, a King’s band has to rise to power-pop glory, where Queen-esque arpeggios and girl-group synths can share the same space. Every once in a while, a King’s band has to go from being some crappy band your friends play in to being something more.
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TemperTemper is the band we need right now. “I’d like to address that whole ‘proggiest band’ thing,” says Thomas Hoy, singer, lead songwriter and bassist for TemperTemper. He’s talking about a bit The Coast ran last month, calling TemperTemper ‘Halifax’s proggiest band’. Prog rock gets dealt a bad hand these days. It’s tough to be a Phish-head in today’s music climate and forty minute jams about futurism can’t really cut it in an age of hashtag-rap (#FreeEarl). “When I think of prog-rock, I don’t know about you, but I think of Godspeed or Do Make, probably going back to King Crimson. I don’t think we sound like those bands, because those songs are all about really long, epic slow builds, and we’re about really crisp, tight changes. So far as the word ‘progressive’ goes, I’d say we’re less about prog-rock and more about progressive pop. We’re taking the pop format in a new direction, compared to prog-rock which has sort of been done for years.” “It’s cool that they’re using ‘progressive’ to define us,” chimes in Leah CL. The whole band is crammed together on the steps as the Wardy-bound kids are abuzz about the show upstairs. CL’s the bead-strewn, neon-scrunchied synth player and other singer in the band, a stage presence that’s equal parts Stevie Nicks and 80’s mall-pop staple Tiffany.
“Mozart-electro-pop.” “It’s a much better word than, say, ‘indie’ or ‘alternative’.” “Alternative’ has to be the stupidest word to define music,” says Hoy. “I mean, it’s supposed to be alternative to what?” It’s clear the band is comfortable at this point in their career, and they talk with a short hand of friends: a bevy of inside jokes, knowing glances at each other and pop culture references that span anywhere from the pompousness of Bono to how totally rad the chapel choir Bach Mass in B Minor is going to be. It’s all a part of a joyful sound Hoy likes to call “Mozart-electro-pop”. “Man, if anything, I’d say we should be called ‘Halifax’s orgiest band’,” says drummer Jeremy Dutcher. He’s a big presence behind the drum kit, wagging his tongue out during fills. Dutcher’s perhaps the most rock-leaning member of TemperTemper, with a four-on-the-floor sound that is one part Meg White and two parts Keith Moon. TemperTemper’s actually gotten a lot better as a band lately. A handful of early shows at the Wardy and Gus’ showed promise, and these guys play their hearts out at every gig, but stumbled a little bit when it came to the tricky chord progressions or complicated rhythm schemes. We loved them anyway because they were ours. Since then, TemperTemper has gone from being a scrappy band with a big heart to being a bunch of musicians who kick ass. At the LP release party for their debut album at the Bus Stop Theatre, their sound had markedly improved, and this carried over to their most recent show at the Wardy. Hoy and the gang let the songs breathe and were more comfortable with extended jams in the set. “That’s the plan for the next little while, and the next batch of recordings,” says Hoy. “We’re just going to play music in our living room, really focus on jamming and playing together as a band. Then, I’m going to listen to those recordings, transcribe the interesting parts that stick out to me, and sort of blend them together.” Everyone in the band plans to stick around Halifax for the foreseeable future, avoiding the upcoming 4-month dry spell a lot of King’s bands experience when bandmates go home for the summer. “We’ve got an upcoming 2013 world tour,” says Dutcher. “Bono’s going to be opening for us.”
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