The magic and chaos of the 90s captured in photos

Making new electoral maps is usually a pretty routine process, but not in Alberta. I'm Kathleen Petty, and this week on West of Centre, how a nonpartisan process exploded into political theater with accusations of American-style gerrymandering and threats of a court challenge. What does it all mean for democracy in Alberta and could it set a precedent for the rest of Canada? We'll get into it this week on West of Centre. Find and follow wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. I'm Elamin Abdelmahmoud, and this is Commotion. And look, lots of bands come and go, but Hole and Melissa Oftimar are forever. From 1988, that is Hole. That song is called Malibu. It's free-sharing Melissa Oftimar on bass. I mean, the story sounds like a fairy tale, right? It's 1994. Melissa Oftimar gets plucked from the indie scene in Montreal, gets thrown into Hole, one of the biggest and most volatile bands in the 90s. Then she moves on to play in another iconic band, the Smashing Pumpkins. And luckily, during this very wild time in her life, Melissa, had her camera with her. She took thousands of pictures. There's a gigantic exhibit showcasing all those photos of the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. That exhibit tells us an important story about how culture has changed. Emily Hanskamp is here. Charlene K. Lau is here. And Lisa LaDucer is here. Hello to all of you. Hello. Hello. It's nice to have you here. Listen, I think we need to start this chat by maybe jumping into, straight into, if you will, the eye of the storm. Have a listen. Get what they want. They never want it again. They get what they want. But they never want it again. Go on, take everything. Take everything. I don't feel good about interrupting this song. I don't want to stop playing this song. That is violent. That is Hole. From 1994, that's the same year that Melissa joins Hole. Lisa, take us back to that moment where Melissa sort of makes this gigantic leap from the Montreal indie scene into a gigantic band. What exactly was she stepping into? Yes, hello. I'm here from the 1990s. I bring you the 1990s perspective. So I remember this moment as both an alternative music fan and at the time I was running a magazine called Chart, which was a music magazine here in Canada. So we knew her band Tinker. I think we'd reviewed her cassette. And most bass players, I'm sorry, are not that noticeable. But she was a star in her own right. Even in those very early days. So we remember when you say plucked, she got plucked to join Hole. And this was obviously a great opportunity and a very cool story. But also, like, this was a band in chaos. This was like, she really got thrown in the deep end. When you say thrown into the deep end, what do you mean by that? Like a band in chaos? Paint us a picture a little bit. Yeah. So in the summer of 1994, Kurt Cobain had died in April. And then Kristen Pfaff from Hole had died in June. And these weren't like, oh, we need to replace a band member who left. Like, she died of a heroin overdose. Obviously, Kurt died of suicide. These were traumatic things. Courtney was a widow in the eye of this storm. And in comes Melissa Aftermar, who had originally not wanted, she talks about in her book, to join this band at all. She recognized that this was going to be crazy. Like a fraught time. Yeah. Absolutely. She's like, these are addicts. And, you know, Courtney's in mourning, and I don't want to be part of it. She eventually agrees, and has one week to prepare to play the Reading Festival, one of the biggest music festivals in the world. The idea of looking at a band in chaos and going, I don't know if I should be a part of that. And then having a week to prepare and then throwing yourself into all of this. You would go, what a period of time. I mean, anyone's life. Surely, I hope it's well documented. And luckily, it is. You know, Melissa took a lot of photos. Charlene, you spoke with Melissa for CBC Arts. How did this obsession for her with photography even develop? Like, why was it important for her to keep documenting all the things that were happening this period of her life? Yeah, I mean, she was an art student. So she would have done an MFA in photography had she not been plucked by hole. And it was a moment where, you know, crazy things are happening. And what better way to do it than to be a part of it? And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a way then to just ground yourself by putting a lens between you, who's a viewer, and that who's being viewed, but then it's blurry, right? And so it was a way for her to stay grounded. And just to say, like, oh, I'm going to take a step back and see a different perspective. So a moment where she could continue with her artistry, but then at the same time, be a part of the action. So yeah, we have being in and out at the same time. I was gonna say like her mother, Linda Gaboria, or her dad, Nick Oftemar, like journalists, well-known journalists at the time. So it's not like this documentarian instinct was entirely new to her, right? Like she kind of grew up in this stuff. Yeah, for sure. In fact, there's two amazing photos that her mom took of her as she was leaving Dorval Airport, I believe. And so that was being documented and that search for the truth and through journalism and having these really amazing values that both her parents had, like you see that she holds on to it. I want to play you guys some music that Melissa, I mean, in the 90s, but not with her famous bands. So that song, that song is called And the Next Day. It's recorded by Melissa Oftemar in her apartment sometime in the 90s. It's a part of a collection of old demos that just came out. It's called Bass Womb Room. Then you got the new book, Even the Next Day. And the next day, it's called The Next Day. And the next day, it's recorded by Melissa Oftemar in her apartment sometime in the Good Girls Will Cry. That's her 90s sort of rock memoir. I'm going to go to you on this because obviously this is a reflective time on Melissa. We're thinking a lot about what Melissa means and also like the role that she's had. You've had a chance to speak with her earlier this year. What are the reasons for spending this time diving into this time period right now? I think that whenever we hear a rock star's story, we put that rock star narrative and identity first. But as we were just talking about, Melissa was actually a photographer and an artist first, and I would argue a historian first. This is someone who from when they were a teenager was journaling everything, keeping every ticket stub, every love letters sent between her and Dave Grohl, like pages and pages. She has always archived her life. And I think that there was a story she told that she'd always had this camera around in the 90s. Not a lot of people were carrying around cameras, certainly not in this scene. And Michael Stipe was like the one person who said, hey, couldn't help but notice you always have that camera around. Like, why? And she said, so if an alien was dropped on this planet, they'd have an idea of what it was like to be a woman in a rock band in the 90s. So she always had this idea of that this was going to be a story she was going to tell for future women, for herself as well. And I think having distance from it, I think that was a crucial thing that she did was to take a step back. I mean, she was still very much busy in her own life, you know, but and then now she has that distance and perspective and it makes all the sense in the world that now, you know, you walk into this exhibit and it's, it is a piece of history that she's been keeping since she was a teenager. I want to go to the exhibit in just a moment, but that thing that you just said about the idea of her being an archivist first, like that sort of primary identity as a documentarian. There is something to be said about documentarians who can, even as they're living through something, going, oh, I'm living through a moment. Live through this. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The thing that you're going through is being like, this is going to be worth reflecting on later because it's actually a confluence of a bunch of different factors. When you talk to her, like, did she have a clear sense of what she was living through even then, do you think? Oh, I think that's such a great point and question. She has a self-awareness. And when I was reading the memoir, as well as when I was speaking to her in person, but I just was struck by this level of self-awareness to your point, to document yourself, to know that what you're living through, even, you know, we were using the word plucked for, she was plucked into whole. She uses the word hijacked when you talk to her. I was hijacked into whole. And part of how she talks about that is like, I knew it was going to be important to document this. I wanted to be on the front lines of feminism in this way and also tell other people what it was like. Let's pluck people into the exhibit, if you will, because like that exhibit is on right now. Lisa, you're a 90s Gen Xer, what was it like for you to step back, you know, into this decade and look at all these photos? Once again, you're from the 90s. Tell us. It's a weird trip to be in a major cultural institution and look at history that you participated in. So I'm looking at flyers from her band Tinker and going, oh, I can remember seeing those flyers. I'm looking at photographs of whole on stage at Edfest in Alberta and going, oh, I can remember seeing those at those concerts. And I don't think I've experienced that before. So I'm still processing it. There's a lot of pictures of other people in the exhibition, fans in the crowd, other musicians backstage. And it is like a hot tub time machine. When they make the equivalent of like metric shows in 2005, nobody call me. I'm not going. Nobody call me. Like, listen, you said at the top that you've been following Melissa's career from at least. days back in Montreal, now that you get to see these photos framed, as you said, in a major sort of artistic institution, does that deepen your appreciation of her in a certain way? Or do you kind of go, no, we appreciated her back then. We already saw the greatness. We already saw that this was worth documenting then. Oh, we had no idea. Okay. I mean, I can only speak for myself, but I think, I don't think you can underestimate how much Courtney Love took the oxygen out of every room. So even though you could recognize Melissa's talent on the record and in interviews, like all eyes were on Courtney 24-7. So now I can see that period of history and that band and other bands through Melissa's point of view and realize how important she was in a way that I don't think was obvious at that time. Charlene, we're talking about a person who took more than 15,000 photos. You're talking about an exhibit where you're just looking at an overwhelming amount of pictures. What images stick around for you in your mind, do you think? There's two of them and they're both of Courtney Love. So when you just said that she took the air out of the room. Also, I want to say it's not just photographs, but also her cameras and like ephemera, like an old Rolling Stone cover, like NME and all of these things. And a letter from Courtney also saying, you have not, yeah, you were, you've got more to give and that kind of thing, which I just, I was looking at that yesterday and I was like, wow. Talk about the photos. Yes. Yeah. But the photos, there's one where she's, Courtney is like on a bike between sound stages. So just getting around and she's just looking straight, barefoot, looking straight out of the camera, kind of eyes wide. And then another one much later with Courtney sitting on the tarmac and it's green and there's a private jet behind. Yeah. Yeah. And she has this Birkin bag and she's just sitting there. Right on the tarmac. Yeah. Yeah. And she reposted that a few days on Instagram, said, had a Birkin bag, but never got another one. The letter from Courtney stuck me, stuck with me also. Like you're taking a deep breath because if I remember correctly, the letter from Courtney said, hey, Melissa, you've been, you say you've been saving yourself, but you're not saving the stuff that you have for yourself. You're giving it too freely to some of these other fans. You're giving it to some of these other famous men who are sort of in your orbit. When you, when you read that letter in that exhibit, how did you react to it, Emily? I first read it in the memoir and I reread it so many times. And we're talking about earlier, like why now? Why all of the, you know, the book and the exhibit, you know, Melissa said like at the time she received that letter and it would have been a hard letter to receive because it was, I mean, you know, Courtney, Courtney Hall, I keep doing it, being blunt. And it was blunt. It was, it was real friend talk. And, but it was like, I am checking you right now and I want you to know how I see you and I do see you. And so when I saw that in the exhibit and in the book, I, you know, it speaks to how Melissa can portray and present Courtney love to us in a way that it never has before, which is someone who is a caring, honest, blunt person who didn't hold anything back for the love of others. I mean, talk about taking the air out of the room. Like you read that letter and go also at the same time, this is why she can do that. Because just having Courtney love as a friend, this is someone who's going to speak to you and go, Hey, what are you doing? What are you doing with your life? Totally. I mean. I got the letter. I go like, I'm never keeping this. This is too difficult to even look at in the face, you know? Right. I feel like the art, the book, the interviews she's doing now, Melissa is doing more to reform Courtney love than anyone else I've ever seen. Oh, okay. I want to actually like pivot entirely into that. I think that's a really interesting conversation, but first we are going to take a quick break. We'll be back in just a moment. In a world where the news feels bigger, louder, and harder to make sense of, Canadians need more than headlines. Hi. I'm Karen Siolin, news reporter and host of the Big Story podcast. From world-shaping events to the everyday stories that spark debate, my team and I will explain what matters and why it matters to you. We're here to help you make sense of the news and give you the context you need for those kitchen table conversations. Trusted, Canadian-focused, curious. Listen to the Big Story wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Alameen Abdul-Mahmood and this is Commotion. Charlene K. Lau is here. And Lisa Ledoux. And we are doing a deep dive on Melissa Oftemar, and it's given us some kind of opportunity to look back at a mercurial figure. Have a listen to this. Oh, make me over. I'm all I want to be. I'll walk and study. In demonology. The one and only Courtney Love. That is whole. That is 1998. That is celebrity skin. Emily, I'm going to pick up on the thing that Lisa just said, that idea that this exhibit and all of the conversations that Melissa is having are doing a lot to reform our idea of Courtney. Do you want to first of all talk about like maybe the version of Courtney that is solidified in the public's mind over the last 30 years or so? I'll take you to a show where, you know, this is a woman and a front woman who has a newborn baby and a partner who has taken his own life. And she's still alive. She's standing on stage and she has fans throwing gunshot shells at her feet. And this is just one night on many a night like that where they would rip the clothes off of her back, where they would accuse her in all sorts of scales. We might remember that Barbara Walters interview where she sat across from her coming for her motherhood, her addiction. I mean, it's just one of the most misaligned artists, certainly women of contemporary culture is Courtney Love. And I think that one of Melissa Oftemeyer's many contributions. Culturally is correcting that misalignment. And I remember her saying that one of the things she was most looking forward to is helping the world see the moral excellence of Courtney Love. And I think we see that in the book. And I think in the exhibit, we were talking about the photo of her on the bicycle. And when I looked in Courtney's eyes in that photo, I saw this like childlike wonderment because there was a softness there. There was a care there. And it was so much more softness and intelligence, deep intelligence than we gave her credit for. And it's 2026. When are we going to all get it? When are we going to all get in line on this misalignment of Courtney Love and understand the impact that she has and had on our culture and all that we did wrong to make her life hell? The number of people who owe Courtney Love apologies is in the hundreds, right? Like I do think like there's just so many people who spoke about her in really vicious ways that like now you kind of look back and go, what a horrific thing for a person to go through. But to just bring us back to this exhibit, all of the photos that Melissa's kind of curated as you go through this. And you. Yes, you experience the fact that she got hijacked into the hurricane hole, right? Like she's totally living this entire life. But Charlene, what is the image that emerges for you of Courtney as a friend, as a band mate, as a person that you sort of experience regularly as you look at those photos? That's a really great question because there are so, so many of them. And I think actually there are a number of just the group shots. Yeah. And one of them is with her like just looking off to the side, just kind of. Dazed and everyone else is like mugging for the camera. And so it's just like, that's what happens. There's like one person who's just like, whatever, doing my thing over here. But yeah, the humanity and all of that, too, because it's like not everything is perfect. And I think that's also like a huge thing. Talking about analog photography, which this show is, of course, like all analog. And Melissa is really just going hard on that for this tour as well. Yeah. Is like you find those moments where you're like, you can't select one photo of 20. Yeah. You took maybe one or two. And maybe somebody is like one eyelid is like still stuck down, you know, or something like that. So it's like, yeah, they're raw. Like that's a word that keeps coming back to me. Is they're real and they're raw in a way that I don't know if we can shoot like that anymore because everything goes online. Yeah. I was going to say, Lisa, you talked earlier about the sort of emotional response that you have walking to this exhibit and watch, look at all of these photos. What's the does it make you miss that time period? And if so, like what's what's the thing that you end up missing about this time period? Oh, probably three. Things. One, women with guitars on the world's biggest stages, you know, women who are weirdos breaking through the fashion. But thankfully, that's back. Yeah. So you can have that. But the main thing is pre digital cameras, pre phones, pre social media that Melissa talks about was just the end of analog, you know, this era. Everyone's eyes are on the band and you see it in the photos because she's shooting from the stage so you can see everyone and they're not holding up. Cameras are not holding up phones and they're they're free with abandoned, not worried about what they're going to look like on Facebook in the photo album the next day. I miss that. Yeah. I will say I was I was at the Phoebe Berger show last week in Toronto and then there were no phones and in all the small emotional moments of the show, which were there's so many of them. Oh, we're all just having like a dozen little mini cries on the show because there are no phone lights. They got people. Actually brought lighters with them. And that was something like, right. Like, it really felt like, oh, we really can just have that again. We just have to have the actual intention to do that. Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There's something to me that sort of feels like felt very reminiscent of that time period. Charlene, obviously, there's a strong sort of nostalgia factor that drives people for an exhibit like this. Right. But what makes it more than just a bunch of photos of Melissa and a bunch of famous friends? Like, what's what's the bigger story being told? through the curation of this exhibit, you think? The Biggers? story is yeah just going back to what you were saying earlier emily and it was just like this like it's an archive and she knew she was making it and she didn't know it was going to go into an exhibition but it's a perspective that we don't normally get from and this is what the carriers were saying too yeah uh from from somebody in a band who's taking photos there's something else about it because a lot of it is about self-portraiture too and not in this weird um sort of like conceited way but in this like very curious way of like experimentation that an artist would do like here I am in my hotel room I'm in a bathtub my nose is bleeding or something like that where you're like yeah documenting that and just being like this is what's happening I'm still me as an artist and all this stuff is also happening around me. It did make me think that like you know as much as people have Instagram now that instinct to document has actually like really been reduced because it feels all of it's kind of been has kind of been made too curated whereas I'm looking at some of these photos being like oh someone Melissa just thought this is a moment worth capturing because it's much more real as opposed to like the pose sort of really practiced moments so much more people are taking photos and yet it feels less documentary. I think it's the distinction of like being perceived versus perceiving and why are we capturing moments are we capturing them for the betterment of like everyone or are we capturing so that we can be perceived in a certain way and I think that's what we're doing these days is like how do I look not how does this experience feel. It's so curated now and it was so messy then. Yeah. Like how could you possibly curate those backstage photos to look like perfect. I don't think you could have. In fact there's the joy and the delight is in capturing the messiness. That's sort of the point of the thing. Yeah. Emily I'm also curious to get your take because you were not around when all of this was happening pal. This is not some sort of like Gen X nostalgia trip for you. You're not being invited to somewhere that you've already been. When you look at all of these images. What are the lessons that sort of resonate for you as you look at like where the music industry is now? You know when I was looking through the exhibit I mean I found Hole and I found Courtney and Melissa in my own way in my own timeline. I'm so grateful for that but I saw myself in an unexpected person and that was the baby in their arms. That was Frances Bean Cobain who is my age and I thought you're capturing these moments you're living these moments and now Frances is my age we're that age we're the next age or generation of women who can learn from you. And learn from your time and learn from what you've documented and that is really valuable to me of like this exhibit to me is a lesson and what do we want to keep and what do we want to hold on to and what do we want to let go of from the 90s both in how we experience live music and culture how we experience each other and I'm so grateful for this historian and archivist and artist for doing that for the Frances Bean Cobains and the Me's and the Gen Z's and on and on of the world you know. At least it was not lost on me as I was looking at these photos that the place I do see some of this imagery. I kind of recurring now is in some of the work that Olivia Rodrigo is doing right. I mean like I'm sort of being deliberately calling back to Courtney Love deliberately calling back to whole when you look at the moment right now and like do you see anybody who's kind of carries on that that sort of documenting instinct in the same way that Melissa did or is in conversation do you think with what Courtney Love was trying to do at the time? I don't know. Yeah. I do know there's only one Courtney Love and there's only one Melissa Aftermar. And so other people might be doing similar things but I don't I don't see exactly the connection. Yeah. What about you? I was just at a Slater show three nights ago. Slater, the whole was huge for Slater and Slater is now dominating the world and directly and you know who I ran into at that show? Peaches. It's all connected. These women, these forces of culture are everything and the web is so clear and woven so strongly and as someone who gets to benefit from like that from that thank you women thank you so much. But also it's interesting you say peaches because I think Melissa said this at her AGO opening you know it's not just oh the next generation of women are taking over those generation of women are still doing the work now. Oh yeah. They've not gone anywhere. Yeah. I think like when you look at the reaction I think that we've had to this exhibit to the book to the ways that Melissa is being talked about now that's the thing that I sort of carry with me is all like there's actually a desperation to go what was it like when you did that because we actually want to know more. To me like there is like a direct relevance to how we're doing things now. Is that what you were sort of getting at now? Yeah I think a little bit like it's like whenever I also look at like feminist art practices of like second wave in the 70s and they never stopped making work it didn't matter if people weren't looking or if they weren't showing in galleries they just kept doing it and I think that is that's for me a kernel that you just persevere because one day somebody will look and they will see and they will understand immediately they won't need to be convinced and I think that's what's so amazing here. Yeah you keep taking the photos you know you keep documenting you also keep making the music and then eventually people come back and go oh the reason I have what I have now is entirely because of the work that you did. Like is that a little bit what you were saying? And that you are a reliable narrator your story is worth telling in your own time in your own way. I think that is a huge bliss of tomorrow lesson that I learn I keep learning every day. I think that is a perfect place to leave it. You guys this has been so wonderful I wish I was documenting this in other ways like I don't know I wish I had one of those tiny little cameras an analog camera. Emily Hanskamp is literally taking a picture of me as we're saying goodbye on the show. Thank you guys so much for doing this I really appreciate your time. Thank you guys. Thank you. This has been really wonderful. Lisa Leducer and Emily Hanskamp are freelance music journalists. Charlene K. Lauer is an arts critic for CBC. They were all right here with me in our Toronto studio. Melissa Oftemar My 90s Rock Photographs is on now at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto until June of next year. That's it for the show. My name is Elamin Abdel-Bahmoud. This show is called Commotion. I hope you have a delightful and happy Thanksgiving and I'm really happy to tell you that if you're around tomorrow we're going to be doing this again. I wish you'd join us. See you then. Have a good day. For more CBC Podcasts go to cbc.ca slash bcpodcasts Podcasts.