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Please Don’t Forget The Daisies | The award-winning rock group Painting Daisies was one of the more egregious omissions from SEE’s “Edmonton Canon” article.

“Wow. A list compiled by a group of people comprised entirely of men, all of whom are the most preening and cliqueish 30something wasters who were never able to get the fuck out of the crappiest town in Canada. Can SEE Magazine go one single week without shining off Rollie Pemberton’s knob and plugging their friends’ crap? Can it?”

Ouch! But then again, when SEE invited readers to respond to our cover story two weeks ago in which we selected the so-called “Edmonton Canon” — the 20 albums from the ’60s to the present day that we felt defined local music — we knew a few insults would be hurled our way. That comment from “robito” on the SEE website was probably the most dismissive one we got. But he was far from the only reader to zero in on the fact that our Canon jury wasn’t exactly a model of diversity — all of us were men in our 30s and 40s, and the albums we wound up selecting didn’t feature a whole lot of women. We included a sidebar that listed some important female Edmonton musicians and tried to explain their absence from the main list, but some readers, understandably, felt it was still an unsatisfying gesture.

“An apologia for the male-centric list, but not the male-centric jury... interesting,” noted the SEE website gadfly known as “Anonymous.” “Also, funny that the only woman included on this list [k.d. lang] moved away from Edmonton before she was even a year old.”

“Having an all-male jury is baffling,” agreed fellow web commenter “AlsoAnonymous.” “Are there no critics/writers of the opposite gender in Edmonton?”

“I personally cannot argue with any of the titles on the list because I have not heard many of them,” wrote Marlon Wilson, from the local hip hop act Politic Live. “I will, however, say that for the list to end up with such a huge genre and gender bias is very concerning.”

For what it’s worth, the Canon jury tried to be as conscientious as possible about including a broad spectrum of genres and performers (and made a point of reserving a few spots for perennially neglected styles like jazz and classical). If the list still came out being less diverse than it could have been ... well, the Edmonton music scene isn’t as diverse as it could be, either.

But plenty of you made some great suggestions for albums and bands that we overlooked. “AlsoAnonymous,” for instance, felt we should have mentioned Les Tabernacles — they may not have put out a record as good as their live show, he notes, but their influence on the Edmonton music scene can’t be understated. “Citrus,” meanwhile, thinks Pal Joey’s Tennessee Angels is “one of the best albums to come out of Edmonton — and hell, all of Canada.” And “BrockSky” was apoplectic at our omission of one of Edmonton’s most venerable musical figures: “How can you even pretend to have an Edmonton music list without including the incredible Senator Thomas Benjamin ‘Tommy’ Banks? Seriously!”

But probably the most thorough catalogue of the Canon’s failings was assembled by local music fan and DJ Mick Sleeper on his Facebook page. He identified four albums that we should be ashamed to have overlooked. Painting Daisies’ 2000 album Fortissimo is the one we probably feel the worst about leaving off — especially since we inexcusably forgot to even mention the Daisies in our sidebar about Edmonton female rockers. Mick’s other choices: Road Gore: The Band That Drank Too Much, by Jerry Jerry and The Sons of Rhythm Orchestra, from 1985; Politic Live’s underrated 2006 album Adaptation; and Souljah Fyah’s self-titled album from 2002.

Fine, but how are we supposed to make room for four more albums on a list of 20? Well, Mick can suggest a good place to start: Procol Harum’s Live With the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. “Holy shit,” he says, choking back his bile. “Name me one Edmonton musician who felt compelled to pick up an instrument after hearing this overblown and ridiculous piece of nerd rock. In the words of the Monty Python colonel: stop that, it’s silly.”

But we won’t stop: in fact, we’ll be revisiting the Edmonton Canon in a year’s time and adding a few new titles. And you can be sure that your comments will play a role in our deliberations. Thanks to everyone who offered us feedback, positive and negative — without it, we wouldn’t know whose knob to shine next.