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FYI

Stan Klees Reflects On Planting The MAPL Seed

Record producer, co-founder of RPM magazine and one of the chief proponents of Pierre Juneau’s CanCon policy, Klees gives a rare interview to Julijana Capone as part of an NMC profile series.

Stan Klees Reflects On Planting The MAPL Seed

By External Source

(Walt) Grealis founded RPM Magazine in 1964, on the advice of (Stan) Klees, who was also a contributor. Devoted to reporting on Canadian record companies and Canadian radio charts, the weekly trade periodical was the only publication of its kind at the time, becoming the loudest defender of Canadian releases when their homegrown industry supporters were few.


“That was why I talked Walt into starting RPM,” says Klees. “We had a friend from Buffalo, NY come up—George “Hound Dog” Lorenz—who was a famous DJ, and he said ‘You need an East-West dialogue in Canada as opposed to a North-South dialogue, and what you need is a trade paper, like Mike Turntable,’ which was his publication. We walked away from that thinking, ‘Could we actually start something like that?’ So Walt started with a single sheet just to see what would happen, and it started to take off.”

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Grealis, a former Mountie with little interest in music, reluctantly entered the record business, years later to be joined by Klees, who, as a friend, taught him the ropes of the industry.

“He hated record people because all they talked about was the record business,” Klees says. “He wasn’t interested at all. When he started RPM all he had written were police reports, so those were his only skills in writing.”

But Grealis learned quickly and, in the early days, he often wrote the whole publication…

–Excerpted from the feature story, Stan Klees: The man behind CanCon and why it had to happen by Julijana Capone, NMC Amplify

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U.S. Girls
Colin Medley

U.S. Girls

FYI

New & Upcoming Album Releases: U.S. Girls Announces New Album 'Scratch It,' Bibi Club Drops New Music

This week's new releases include albums from Skydiggers and Men I Trust. Check out our full calendar of Canadian albums.

The Canadian music calendar is filling with spring and summer releases.

There are a number of new artists with anticipated albums out this week. Indie-pop duo and Polaris Prize longlisters Bibi Club have released a deluxe edition of their Feu de Garde, while prolific (over 20 albums and EPs) Toronto roots-rock veterans Skydiggers have released Dreams & Second Chancesand acclaimed folk-rocker Ryan Wayne has put out his second solo outing, Functioning Dysfunctionals.

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