Tag Archives: Music

Music complaints in downtown Ottawa increased by 18% during summer months compared to last year

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There were dozens more music complaints made in wards in the downtown area this summer, compared to 2019. Summer 2020 music complaints in the downtown area were notably higher than every summer since 2016. [Photo © Yasmine Ghania]
It’s around 2 a.m. on a warm August Saturday night when Sally Dimachki is suddenly awakened by the thunderous sound of blaring music. The lounge a block away from her Sussex Drive apartment building was blasting music two weekends in a row. Dimachki had had enough.

Sally Dimachki is a downtown Ottawa resident who says she called the City of Ottawa bylaw to complain about a lounge that was playing music too loud for the second weekend in a row. [Photo supplied by Sally Dimachki]
“It felt like someone was down my window. That’s how loud it was. It scared me,” Dimachki says. 

She made her way down to the Moscow Tea Room, which had a speaker on its patio, and spoke to one of the waitresses.

Sally Dimachki recalls her encounter with a Moscow Tea Room waitress as the lounge was playing loud music late into the night. [Photo © Yasmine Ghania] 

“I was like, ‘you just woke up all the buildings around you … I’m going to call the police right now if you don’t shut it down,’’’ Dimachki recalls.

But as the music went on for longer, Dimachki’s patience grew shorter. 

She called the City of Ottawa bylaw and says an officer spoke to the owner of the establishment but isn’t sure if any tickets were issued. Moscow Tea Room was contacted to comment but didn’t provide a response.

Between May and August, there were 1,095 music complaints made in Ottawa wards in the downtown area, according to an analysis of the requests for service data reported by the city. The number has increased by 18 per cent compared to last year’s summer months.

A bar graph that visualizes the number of music complaints from May to August broken down by each of the wards in the downtown area. Rideau-Vanier has the highest number of music complaints. Visualization by Yasmine Ghania.

Rawlson King, city councillor for Rideau-Rockcliffe ward, which had the third-highest complaints among the downtown wards this past summer, says that while bars and private gatherings certainly contribute to the number of complaints, he believes the spike is largely due to the fact that people are spending more time at home. 

“In a sense their universe has become more hyper-local and so they’re going to be much more attune to issues in neighbourhoods,” King explains. “To me that’s more of the flavour versus people complaining because they’re worried too many people are having parties.” 

Rideau-Vanier and Somerset were the wards with the most music complaints in all of Ottawa, according to the city data. Notably, the number of music complaints in downtown wards this summer has been higher than any other summer since 2016.

A graph that illustrates the number of music complaints in the summer months of May to August from 2020 to 2016. Hover over each year to see the exact number of complaints. Visualization by Yasmine Ghania.

Frank Russo, a psychology professor at Ryerson University who specializes in auditory cognitive neuroscience, says he believes people have become more “hypersensitive” to loud music and other sounds since the pandemic began.

People can perceive noises to be louder than they actually are when they’re stressed, emotionally exhausted or facing challenging times, according to Russo.

He refers to a 2016 study conducted by the University Medical Center at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, which examined noise annoyance and found that the people most irritated by noise were also the ones who reported more mental health issues. 

But Russo explains music can also help people cope.

As the founding director of the SMART Lab, a research team at Ryerson University which studies music’s relationship with the human brain, Russo says music allows the brain to release dopamine, leading to an increased feeling of happiness and lower stress levels. 

“It can allow people to feel emotions they’re already feeling more deeply or even completely change people’s emotions,” Russo says.

While King notes the increase in music complaints isn’t alarming since he doesn’t think it’s dominantly related to private gatherings and COVID rule-breaking, he still has some worries for the coming months. 

“The key thing that we’re always concerned about is vigilance,” King says, urging Ottawa residents to continue physical distancing and wearing masks in order to contain the spread of infection. 

“When it’s a nice day or the holidays, for example, people want to slip in their old ways in a sense because of course we’re human beings,” King says. “That is the challenge; to continue reminding people that we’re not out of the woods yet.” 

A video taken in early November showing people enjoying the last few sunny days of the year in Ottawa’s Byward Market. Rideau-Rockcliffe councillor Rawlson King is concerned that people might not follow COVID-19 protocols under special circumstances such as the holidays. [Video © Yasmine Ghania]

Nevermind the Seattle sound: Twenty-five years after Nirvana’s breakout album

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Left to right: drummer Dave Grohl, singer Kurt Cobain, and bassist Krist Novoselic.

Years before hipster cafes, the Super Bowl and the trailblazing rap of Macklemore, Seattle was an untamed haven for underground talent. The expansive grunge scene was born from teenage angst — a sound unique to the Northwest and relatively unknown to other parts of the country.

Then it was murdered.

Nirvana released their second studio album Nevermind on Sept. 24, 1991, and to some Seattle sound purists, it was the day the music died. It was an album that ignited the powder keg of the 80s new-wave punk rock scene in the Northwest.

An album of scratchy and screaming vocals; hard and fast drumming; and unforgettable riffs.

Nevermind dominated the airwaves and was the album that broke the Seattle music scene to the world. Kurt Cobain was lead vocalist and lead guitar; Dave Grohl, now Foo Fighters frontman, hammered the drums; and Krist Novoselic slapped the bass.

They were garage-band heroes turned international rockstars — frontmen in charge of a world they knew nothing about.

Lisa Nichols, a writer and editor from Portland, Oregon, says “you can’t overemphasize how much grunge changed everything that was happening at the time. Hair metal bands had to be due for their last gasp anyway but Nirvana and the rest of the Seattle bands firmly closed the coffin.”

Disenchanted, displaced youth were captured by Cobain’s raw lyrics and tempered soul, and American businesses wanted in on the subterranean subculture.

This was a scene that was born in the underworld. Was made to live and die in dive bars and dark basements. For purists like musician and journalist Mark Goldberg, “Nevermind killed grunge.”

Throughout the rest of the 1990s, particularly after Cobain’s death in 1994, and into the 2000s, grunge lived on as a fad; and like all fads, it was due for a funeral.

“Grunge became such a mainstream fad that the scene around it had no choice but give up,” Goldberg said.

“Labels started signing bands left right and centre who were barely ‘grunge.’ And a lot of bands just adopted grunge to cash in,” Goldberg said. “Many other bands got major label deals and the pressure to sell by the label ended up causing them to make repetitive, dull records.”

In an interview with CNN, Chris Cornell, lead vocalist and songwriter for Soundgarden and Audioslave, says the Seattle music scene was traditionally “anti-commercial” and “anti-every-institution-that-supported-commercial-music.” And the rise of corporate investments and major labels, in essence, tainted what once was.

On Grohl’s 2014 music documentary Sonic Highways, Cornell added that after Nirvana’s success “the scene was no longer there.”

“Everyone that I knew was out making records and touring,” Cornell said. His quote followed quickly by Seattle music producer, Jack Endino, saying “Pre-money, pre-drugs, pre-business … there was a lot of fun that happened.”

By the turn of the century, Goldberg says, grunge lost it’s soul, is deceased and “irrelevant in the 21st century.”

“Seattle still has a scene but it’s as diverse as any other normal city’s now,” Goldberg added. But for grunge, Goldberg says once the public wanted a piece, they got it and what was special about that unique sound is gone.

For grunge historians and rockers, though, there’s always optimists like Grohl.

Grohl believes the spirit of grunge is still going strong. In 2013, when asked if grunge ‘would make a comeback’ he told a redditor: “If you mean loud ass guitars, loud ass drums, and screaming ass vocals? That never went away ding dong.”

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Document Questions:

1) Youtube Clip: Nirvana 100 Greatest albums of Rock and Roll. I found this by searching through Youtube clips about Nirvana’s Nevermind album and trying to place sound within the article so the listener can get an idea of how the music sounded and add to the impact of the article. I think it’s quite helpful in providing the reader with the chance to listen in the story.

2) Youtube Clip: Chris Cornell on Seattle’s grunge era. I knew I wanted to get the voice of Cornell in the story, and I did so through interviews he’s done with Grohl and CNN. Though, I thought it would be neat for the reader to check in and see at least one of those interviews. I believe it’s helpful as a visual element to accompany the source text.