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Boy bands and teenage girl superstars rule the Top 40 roost, dominate the concert scene and account for billions of dollars in album sales. Rappers and hard rockers pick up the slackers turned off by the glitz of the prefab acts.
So, what portion of the music-listening audience is left for a good, old-fashioned post-punk dream-pop band?
Not much of one, but it's enough that Toronto's Wild Strawberries can eke out a living combining their musical aspirations with their professional vocations.
Comprised of the husband-wife duo of Ken and Roberta Carter Harrison, the Strawberries released five albums before being dropped by Nettwerk Records last year. Undaunted, they've put out their sixth album, Twist, as an indie act, forming their own label and recording the disc while Ken Harrison worked a few days a week as a psychiatrist at Toronto's Queen Street Mental Health Clinic and Roberta worked as a physiotherapist.
Roberta Harrison says she and Ken know the pop market is youth-oriented, but she retains hope it will change.
"If you think about it, people like Jann Arden or Sheryl Crow -- women who made it after they were 30 -- probably couldn't even get signed now," says the 33-year-old. "All we can do is hope maybe the pendulum will swing the other way, and maybe it will."
For the Harrisons, it seems that making music is a labour of love rather than one of commerce -- their very own cottage pop industry.
"I know that Ken will write songs and continue to write songs because he feels he just has to write," Roberta says. "If people don't care whether Wild Strawberries make records or not we'll just make them and put them out on the Internet."
Wild Strawberries may not sell like Limp Bizkit but the band does have a loyal following for its lovingly crafted, new-wavish tunes, marked by Ken Harrison's lush arrangements and Roberta Harrison's rich alto.
"Oh, we have some very loyal fans," Harrison says. "We've only done maybe 15 shows on this album but they're already talking about them on the Internet. That's one of the great things about releasing an album -- seeing people's reactions.