Knowledge Network series features Vancouver Island music icons
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What: 150 Stories that Shape British Columbia: Dancehalls, Deejays, & Distortion
Where: Knowledge Network
When: Thursday, 9 p.m. and Friday, 12 a.m.
Information: knowledge.ca/program/150-stories-shape-british-columbia
The Knowledge Network’s ongoing 150 Stories that Shape British Columbia initiative has added more offerings, including 10 mini-documentaries this week featuring several Vancouver Island music icons.
Dancehalls, Deejays & Distortion airs Thursday at 9 p.m. and Friday at 12 a.m. on Knowledge Network. Victoria-raised filmmaker Carmen Pollard wrote, directed, and produced the four-minute episodes, which spotlight everyone from Comox-born Red Robinson, the province’s first rock and roll DJ, to Metallica and Michael Bublé producer Bob Rock, who attended Belmont high school in the 197os.
The 150 Stories series is part of a larger Knowledge Network venture, the B.C. Documentary History Project. Following this week’s broadcasts, the films showcased in Dancehalls, Deejays & Distortion will move to knowledge.ca, where they will join previous profiles of Vancouver Islanders such as musician Nelly Furtado, writer Susan Musgrave and artist Roy Henry Vickers as free on-demand streaming options.
“B.C. has an eclectic music and entertainment past that few people know about,” said Pollard, who made Dancehalls, Deejays & Distortion with research and writing partner Brock Ellis, formerly of Victoria group the Vinaigrettes.
“It’s not just all Bryan Adams and Sarah McLachlan. We know those stories. But what about these lesser-known ones?”
The films are as much a celebration of Vancouver Island as they are the province as a whole. Central Saanich punk trio The Dishrags, Canada’s first all-female punk band, late New Age pioneer Paul Horn, formerly of Victoria, and jazz legend Fraser MacPherson, who was raised in Victoria, all feature in Dancehalls, Deejays & Distortion.
Jazz and rockabilly guitar great Paul Pigat also appears in one of the shorts, about the history of Vancouver’s now-defunct Railway Club. “Artists and venues that really influenced Canadian music but the international music, we wanted to dig into some of those,” Pollard said. “We don’t want to be Vancouver-centric all the time.”
mdevlin@timescolonist.com
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