by JOHNSON CUMMINS

Attention tourists, Plateau condo dwellers and hipster transplants: big news this week. Word has just come in that the Montreal music explosion is now officially over. An anonymous e-mail tipped me off that the scene is not "all that and a bag of chips" and is indeed all hype. This may very well come as a shock to the hordes of Ontarians flooding the Main recently, clutching their Spin map of Montreal in hand. "What do you mean, the scene is dead? My parents just bought me a condo on Saint Lawrence Street!" Oh, the humanity! (As an aside, due to the map's inaccuracies, a group of Kingston teenagers were recently found loitering in a dépanneur on Prince-Arthur, thinking they were at the Electric Tractor, and repeatedly asking the owner if Dreamcatcher was playing that night.)

Just when you thought you couldn't swing a cat without hitting a reporter asking about the influence of gy!be, they've wiped off on the bedsheet, put their pants on in the stairwell and moved on to other hotbeds of hipness (damn you, Brampton!). I tried talking to cutting-edge culture specialists to get an outside perspective on this devastating news, but unfortunately Ben Mulroney from E Talk Daily would not return my calls. New York and Toronto A&R people have spent their last weekend here and are on the redeye out, and UPI and New York Times have moved out their belongings while we were at work and didn't even leave a note. Sales of horned-rimmed glasses and knapsacks are expected to plummet, while venues like Sala, Casa and El Salon are readying themselves to turn into lounge bars and internet cafés with Moby's entire discography patiently waiting by the CD player.

Probably the hardest hit with the news of the Montreal music implosion were former Montreal playas and scenesters now left picking up the pieces of their shattered lives. Members of Wolf Parade were last seen marching in the Mile-End area with placards reading, "Ask me about the Arcade Fire." Pop Montreal organizer Dan Seligman was rendered catatonic and could only mutter "Hello, welcome to Wal-Mart" repeatedly, and, probably saddest of all, oud player and psychedelic warlord Sam Shalabi was reduced to a crushing state of denial, and could only respond with, "There was a Montreal music explosion?" Oh Sam, you're such a delicate flower.

As for me, I guess I'll go back to reviewing Frank Marino records (the last live one was the dog's bollocks, btw), and to all of the watered-down Arcade-Fire-manqué bands who are thinking about moving here and "making it," Vice-reading trust-fund brats driving up the Mile-End rents, hippies from Victoria hoping to break into the Montreal musique actuelle scene by hammering on paint cans, Ipod DJs, ponytailed A&R guys grasping at straws etc. - don't bother moving here, as the fat lady has sung.

JIM HENSON IS DEAD! jonathan.cummins@gmail.com

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