Where's the music?

After two days of RiFF-ing, I've come to the conclusion that despite there being 5 million people in this city, good music is as hard to find as knocking door-to-door. I've been to the Silver Dollar Room, I've been to the Free Times Cafe (twice), I fee like I've been, to quote Johnny Cash, everywhere, man. And all I've heard is music that you couldn't pick out of a pile of pop songs.

Catchy hooks are great; they keep your toes tapping and head bopping. A tight guitar rhythm-strumming its way through a song is highly underrated; other than the drums, it provides the heartbeat to pop music. And a voice doesn't have to be far-reaching like Judy Garland's. Just look at what Cash, Leonard Cohen, Bing Crosby and Peggy Lee did with their vocal ranges, with none of them reaching two octaves. They had character in their timbres, nuances that gave people the shivers.

But where is that in Toronto? Why are 'musicians' so concerned with filling a niche instead of creating one? I remember the first time I saw Freeman Dre and the Kitchen Party, and I was blown away. These guys weren't highly technical bands like Blue Rodeo or the Dave Matthews Band, but they were original and unabashedly so. It was fun listening to them, if only because there wasn't anything else like it in the city.

But with RiFF, everything that I've heard so far (except for the chorus of one song of one band, and the two female fronters of another) has been so bland, it makes buttered toast look like a gourmet breakfast.