No more Mozart in the morning... but we do have Burton Cummings for you
by Tony Wilson

I’m partial to any law firm that puts me “on hold” with CBC Radio 2 playing in the background when I phone. There are a lot of law firms using very bad radio to entertain callers on hold, and more often than not, they’re stations where DJ’s tell penis and fart jokes and provide the latest Paris Hilton Celebrity Gossip. So when I hear CBC Radio 2 on the phone, I say to myself, “this Law Firm has some class.” I wake up to Radio 2 in the morning and often have it on in my office while I draft complicated documents because there’s statistical evidence that classical music causes the human brain to work better and dairy cows to give more milk.

But now the CBC wants to throw the milk out with the cow and get rid of my early morning and late afternoon classical music. They want to play more “Popular Music,” forcing me to listen to Feist or Jann Arden instead of Mozart or Faure (presumably because Mozart and Faure aren’t Canadians). Although the CBC will claim Radio 2 doesn’t belong to any “genre,” the switch to “Canadian Top 40” (or whatever their spin doctors will call it) is another example of the great “dumbing down” of our media. Classical music isn’t hip, sexy or in People Magazine, so let’s give them Burton Cummings and Celine Dion! Regrettably, the moment I hear Anne Murray or Feist on Radio 2 in the hours I should be hearing Ravel or Jordi Saval, I will vote with my Canadian feet and look for a Classical Music station in the US. Sorry CBC, I just refuse to have Feist feisted on me. I can hear her anywhere.

If you think the CBC is dumbing you down in a world gone culturally cuckoo, have a listen to two websites that admittedly don’t deal in Classical Music. They deal in Ideas! In Our Time is a BBC Radio 4 show where host Melvin Bragg interviews experts about everything from the Peloponnesian War to the Origin of the Social Contract to Quantum Physics. It’s smart without being snobby. It’s popular without being patronizing. Admittedly, it’s not breakfast music, but at least there aren’t any penis or Paris Hilton jokes to suffer through.

The other great site is TED.com. Focusing more on revolutionary ideas that will shape the future, TED’s Tagline is “Ideas worth Spreading.” You can pick from hundreds of 18-minute downloadable lectures like a brain specialist analysing her own stroke; Richard Dawkins’ call to arms for militant atheism; the trend toward the collaborative economics that gave us Wikipedia; the Darwinian basis for romantic love; how law stifles artistic creativity; and the end of the (law) office as we know it. Their “Not Business as Usual” theme is indispensable to understanding technological and sociological trends that our clients haven’t even thought of yet. It’s the New Yorker on Steroids, its jaw droppingly good and if you download this on your iPod instead of Survivor, I guarantee you won’t go stupid!

Appealing to the lowest common denominator may be fine for commercial broadcasters pandering to the Hat Backwards crowd, but I would have hoped our CBC would shoot a little higher. Surely there is something to be said about saving one station on the public airwaves to promote the greatest music of our culture, which over my morning toast and coffee, is still classical.

If all our modern culture is remembered for is money, Survivor and People Magazine, no-one will be listening to our great ideas or our great music in 200 years. There just won’t be any.

Vancouver Franchise lawyer Tony Wilson isn’t a total pompous ass. He has plenty of Pat Metheny, Peter Gabriel and even Led Zeppelin on his iPod, and always enjoys listening to Larry and Willy… if he’s in someone else’s car.

Vancouver Franchise Lawyer Tony Wilson practices at Boughton Law Corporation in Vancouver, and has written for the Globe and Mail, Macleans Magazine and Canadian Lawyer. twilson@boughton.ca | www.boughton.ca/people/lawyers/tony_wilson

This article was published in the June 2008 issue of BarTalk. © 2008 The Canadian Bar Association. All rights reserved.