posted August 23, 2002 14:19
I was always curious about the famous Red Lake, so when I went to Jonquiere in July I took a couple of pictures out at the Alcan factory in Arvida. Arvida is a town that literally came to life because of Alcan. It was built in 1925 in order to make aluminum for the war and since then has been a major financial contributor and employer for the region. The lake is red because of bauxite residue. It's been reported that it doesn't pose any environmental dangers but I have to wonder about the water table and the lime that is added to the bauxite residue, and also the studies linking aluminum to Alzheimer's which have been 'inconclusive.' So who really knows, but the skeptic in me finds it hard to believe that there are no correlations between diseases like cancer and the disruption of the environment.
Here's a picture of the lake in the top left corner (this photo is circa 1927) :
posted August 27, 2002 00:47
Merci,Noitall for the visualization of the oft-talked about(in Voivod interviews) "Red Lake" Alcan aluminum factory! I asked Michel and Denis D about their hometown and they told me that more people were being put out of work in this town to make way for more automation-smaller, robotized machines..so much for progress! The band's real-life story is often as deep as the fiction story-think about it for a second. A young kid with strange ideas develops new ones after a traumatic incident when he creates a character to express a unique viewpoint-meets with a musical innovator of guitar/bass/violin along with another local. They find the fourth component who's a character and call themselves "anti-citizen" nicknames to reflect the corruption of factory-town alienation. They develop their musical abilities around this fictional character that is an abstract view to escape this factory-hell. From a small town in Northern Quebec to being known as a world-wide recording artist is no small feat! Along the way, creating an important evolution in musical approach/philosophy/scientific theory along with a conceptual leap...this would make a great movie if done right!
| IP: Logged
nia
VoivodFan
Member # 9
posted August 27, 2002 13:02
Well neutronboy, the displacement of factory workers is not unique to Arvida and Alcan, this is something that most of North America has been dealing with over the last 10-15 years, the auto industry is a good example.
Your fictionalized account of how Voivod came together is extremely romantic, lol. History is usually reconstructed in this way which is why I think it's so subjective (and fact and fiction are so easily interchanged). What's wrong with the story that Denis and Michel were jamming and were looking for a new bass player when Denis met Jean-Yves in a bar where he was a DJ and that they added Denis Belanger on vocals after seeing him do theatre sports at college? And that they chose to use nicknames because they thought it was cool?
posted August 30, 2002 00:34
Bon Soir,Noitall! There's nothing wrong with the real story of the band getting together..I was thinking about this in an abstract way and seeing both those pics of the factory/listening to Denis' solo instrumental stuff put me in an imaginative mood. Yes...Industrial decline has given way to a new kind of slavery-the service industry.Automation begins to displace human labor when usually mechanical means are supposed to become "obsolete", instead of the ones who create the machines for efficiency-old problems and primitive behaviors resurface as a result of the stress of becoming overwhelmed in a fast-moving hi-tech society.
| IP: Logged
posted August 23, 2002 14:19
posted August 23, 2002 16:57
posted August 23, 2002 21:52
Merci,Noitall for the visualization of the oft-talked about(in Voivod interviews) "Red Lake"
History is usually reconstructed in this way which is why I think it's so subjective (and fact and fiction are so easily interchanged). What's wrong with the story that Denis and Michel were jamming and were looking for a new bass player when Denis met Jean-Yves in a bar where he was a DJ and that they added Denis Belanger on vocals after seeing him do theatre sports at college? And that they chose to use nicknames because they thought it was cool? 
