LISTEN: Any Night of the Week: A Walking History of Toronto Music

 

Part civic history and part memoir from Wavelength co-founder Jonny Dovercourt, Any Night of the Week is a podcast series that takes the form of a “virtual walking tour” of the city’s musical neighbourhoods. Now in its second season, pop on your earbuds and go for a walk with new episodes covering Scarborough, the East End, and Dundas West

Any Night of the Week is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Libsyn.

Any Night of the Week podcast is co-produced by Jonny Dovercourt and was made with the support of the Toronto Festival of Authors and the City of Toronto’s Show Love T.O. program.

Listen to Season 2:

Listen to Season 1:

This podcast is based upon Jonny Dovercourt’s first book, Any Night of the Week: A D.I.Y. History of Toronto Music 1957- 2001, published by Coach House Books in March 2020. Though the book’s launch was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the volume garnered significant online and word of-mouth buzz.

About the book:
Part civic history and part memoir from this veteran scene-builder and co-founder of the acclaimed Wavelength concert series, Any Night of the Week charts the evolution of Toronto’s diverse independent music scene in the latter half of the twentieth century. From the Yorkville and Yonge Street scenes that spawned Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and The Band in the sixties, through to the hip-hop, indie rock, and electronica-laden nineties, which spawned acts like Broken Social Scene, Michie Mee, and Peaches, Dovercourt tells the story of how key venues, neighbourhoods, artists, and promoters laid the groundwork for this provincial outpost to grow into a music mecca. Unjustly forgotten or overlooked innovators, such as Syrinx, Martha & the Muffins, Fifth Column, Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, Phleg Camp, King Cobb Steelie, and Do Make Say Think are finally given the chance to tell their story in print.

Part civic history and part memoir from this veteran scene-builder and co-founder of the acclaimed Wavelength concert series, Any Night of the Week charts the evolution of Toronto’s diverse independent music scene in the latter half of the twentieth century. From the Yorkville and Yonge Street scenes that spawned Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and The Band in the sixties, through to the hip-hop, indie rock, and electronica-laden nineties, which spawned acts like Broken Social Scene, Michie Mee, and Peaches, Dovercourt tells the story of how key venues, neighbourhoods, artists, and promoters laid the groundwork for this provincial outpost to grow into a music mecca. Unjustly forgotten or overlooked innovators, such as Syrinx, Martha & the Muffins, Fifth Column, Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, Phleg Camp, King Cobb Steelie, and Do Make Say Think are finally given the chance to tell their story in print.

Buy the book: https://chbooks.com/Books/A/Any-Night-of-the-Week

 

To coincide with this immersive experience of Toronto’s DIY music history, listeners and readers can purchase poster maps of each neighbourhood, created by urban geographer and artist Daniel Rotsztain.