Some reviews from the last three months of my column in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, a mainstream daily paper west of Toronto. Arranged alphabetically. I'll spare you my thoughts on the John Mellencamp or Korn Unplugged records.
Air – Pocket Symphony (EMI)
Easy listening is not supposed to be difficult. Yet that’s exactly the raison d’être for French band Air. On the surface, they’re all about rays of California sunshine and lattes on the Left Banke, portraits painted with shimmering synths, delicate acoustic guitars and muted pianos. Yet nearly every track on this, their fourth proper album (excluding soundtracks), is rife with suspension and tension underneath the blissful exterior. Even in the gentlest moments, there’s still a creeping paranoia underneath that suggests something is amiss.
Though most of Pocket Symphony features vocals, Air excel when the jettison the ESL and focus on instrumentals. Night Sight and Mayfair Song would both make excellent themes for a 70s dystopian sci-fi flick, while Lost Message sounds adrift in space, the loneliest place of all—Rocket Man has nothing on this track.
Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker makes a noteworthy cameo, mumbling through a song—One Hell of a Party—that sounds like he wrote and performed it during the worst hangover of his life. Mer du Japon is the only flashback we have here of the Saturday night preceding the Sunday morning coming down that the rest of Pocket Symphony exists in.
The only major disappointment here is that this material doesn’t live up to the even more haunting songs they coughed up for Charlotte Gainsbourg to coo over on her 2006 album, or betray the depth of influence they portrayed on their an eclectic chill-out DJ mix for the Late Night Tales series, also from last year. (K-W Record, March 22, 2007)
Apostle of Hustle – National Anthem of Nowhere (Arts and Crafts/EMI)
With its dense 2004 debut Folkloric Feel, Apostle of Hustle became the most underappreciated and misunderstood offshoot of Broken Social Scene. While other branches such as Jason Collett, Stars, and Metric were considerably more pop than the parent project, Apostle of Hustle existed in its own private world, carving out a unique sound through thick layers of rhythmic complexity, guitar atmospherics, and songwriting that rarely made it simple for the listener.
But if that album failed to find an audience, National Anthem of Nowhere manages to maintain all the mystery of the debut while simultaneously taking a more direct and visceral approach that pays off pop dividends without dumbing it down. The Latin influence is more pronounced, the melodies are brought to the forefront, and bandleader Andrew Whiteman’s inventiveness as a guitarist continues to inspire awe.
National Anthem of Nowhere is a richly rewarding sonic feast, the best thing to emerge from the Arts and Crafts camp since BSS’s breakthrough You Forgot It In People. Furthermore, Whiteman’s songwriting is superior to that band’s overreliance on sonic strengths, which puts him at the front of the pack. This time you can bet he won’t be left behind. (K-W Record, February 8, 2007)
Bloc Party – A Weekend in the City (Warner)
Unknown band makes it big overnight, tour the world for a year, release a remix record, come home and take a lot of drugs, and attempt to make a bold statement about the vapidity of modern life. How many times have we heard this before?
Bloc Party get ready to stumble right off the top, by proclaiming: “I’m trying to be heroic in an age of modernity.” From there, singer Kele Okereke tries in vain to make us feel his pain. Believe it or not, these are actual lyrics from the same opening track: “I order the foie gras and I eat it with complete disdain. Bubbles rise in champagne flutes, but when we kiss I feel nothing. Feasting on sleeping pills and Marlboro reds, self-pity won’t save you.”
I’ll say. Cry me a river, rock star! There are countless more examples, all of which can be summed up when Okereke sings, “I am a martyr, I just need a motive.” Sadly, that’s from Uniform, one of the better songs here. The rest are all written from the perspective of a repentant club kid who, in a moment of clarity, realised that there are far greater political concerns than consumerism. Call me back when you’ve read a few books.
Fortunately for all involved, Bloc Party as a band is better than Okereke as a wordsmith. They’re the rare stadium rock band who try to avoid guitar clichés, much like their obvious heroes in U2—whose recent producer Jacknife Lee mans the boards here. And arguably, Bloc Party are the better band these days. Okereke has a soaring, grandiose voice to match his earnesty, but it’s drummer Matt Tong who saves the day time and again, ensuring that every song has a furious backbeat, even the songs that threaten to sink into the treacly territory of Coldplay.
Let’s wait for the remix version of this album—an instrumental one. (K-W Record, February 15, 2007)
Holly Cole – s/t (Alert/Universal)
She’s been away so long, no wonder her new self-titled seems like a re-introduction.
After two criminally ignored pop albums in the late 90s, Cole returned to her jazz roots for another overlooked album, 2003’s Shade. This release once again features material more than 50 years old, but Cole remains a sly stylist who can make any song her own, including chestnuts by Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and Henry Mancini. And she gets more than just musical inspiration from these sources; on the sole original here, she manages the Porter-esque trick of rhyming “the falls of Niagara” with “the theorem of Pythagoras.”
Helping her out this time is returning producer/bassist Greg Cohen, who recorded Cole’s third album, 1993’s Don’t Smoke In Bed. Cohen has deep roots in New York City’s jazz scene—he gigs regularly with Tom Waits and John Zorn—and calls in plenty of small woodwind and brass ensemble help to flesh things out. This isn’t a big band sound contrived to compete with Cole’s vocals; instead, they help steam up the room and add some raunch to both the torchy numbers and zippity finger snappers.
Diana Krall it ain’t, and in an increasingly sterile atmosphere for loungey female vocalists, Cole manages to sound even more refreshing today than she did when she arrived 20 years ago. (K-W Record, March 22, 2007)
Ry Cooder – My Name is Buddy (Nonesuch/Warner)
If Howard Zinn had written The Incredible Journey, it might have read like the backstory included in this Ry Cooder record, which is ostensibly about the travels of Buddy Red Cat, Lefty Mouse and Reverend Tom Toad through dustbowl America with a copy of Marx’s Das Kapital in hand.
Despite the oddball animal narrative, Cooder pens plenty of potent and raw folk songs, like the soul stomper Sundown Town and Three Chords And The Truth, the latter an ode to Pete Seeger, Paul Robeson and Joe Hill. But because the bandleader doesn’t surrender vocal duties more often, it’s hard to stick with a 70-minute album when you don’t care for the narrator.
Much like Cooder’s most recent album Chavez Ravine, this is a dense narrative that relies more on concept than it does individual songs, and shines largely on the presence of guests: accordionist Flaco Jiménez, fiddler Mike Seeger, the Chieftains’ Paddy Moloney and Cooder’s favourite soul duo of Terry Evans and Bobby King. (K-W Record, March 22, 2007)
Deerhoof – Friend Opportunity (Kill Rock Stars)
If Yoko Ono had all the Beatles on her side and put them together with the The Who's rhythm section, she would likely twist and turn pop and rock conventions into barely recognizable fragments. Pieced back together, it would sound something like Deerhoof. This San Francisco trio have a deserved rep as musicians’ musicians—which is why they get opening slots for Wilco, Radiohead and the Flaming Lips—but their new material finds them getting simultaneously weirder and more accessible. They’re not interested in being difficult for its own sake—after all, this is Friend Opportunity.
Deerhoof are proof positive that experimental rock doesn’t have to be bloated and boring. It’s more than Satomi Matzusaki’s girlish voice that give this a sense of innocent play, though that certainly lends it a wistful naïveté. Instead, the entire band pushes and pulls the rhythm in obtuse directions while not being afraid of power chords or sing-song melodies. Blips, blurps and crazy keyboards frequently fight for space alongside the band’s rock instrumentation, and yet only a band like Deerhoof could make any sense of this. Hopefully plenty of new fans can, too. (K-W Record, February 1, 2007)
Endless Highway: The Music of The Band – Various Artists (429/Koch)
The Band remain one of the great enigmas of rock history. How did these out-of-time hosers—and their Arkansas drummer— channel the spirit of music from the Southern states into their own unique musical voice, a sound that has yet to be duplicated?
Plenty of musicians have looked to The Band for inspiration, so it’s a wonder that no has assembled a tribute before now; conversely, it’s small wonder that hardly anyone here manages to capture the mystique so central to The Band’s sound.
Part of the problem is that The Band are hard to cover, although it can certainly be done: witness Serena Ryder’s recent take on This Wheel’s On Fire, or Chicago chanteuse Kelly Hogan’s stunning take on Whispering Pines (neither versions appear here).
But My Morning Jacket should know better than to pummell the life out of It Makes No Difference; instead they rob this heartbreaking song of its frailty and beauty. Only the core of the song itself saves it from becoming a soulless modern rock ballad. They’re the worst offenders here, though the painfully pasty northerners in Death Cab for Cutie fail miserably when singing about “ol’ Virginie” on Rocking Chair.
The rest of the line-up is equally uninspiring: Jack Johnson, Gomez, Guster, Blues Traveler, Lee Ann Womack, all of whom merely run through the songs in faint homage to the originals. Others shine merely by paying proper reverance, such as Rosanne Cash on Unfaithful Servant, and the Roches on Acadian Driftwood.
Oddly enough, it’s the lone Canadian here—Vancouver’s Steve Reynolds—who chooses to put his own stamp on the material, by slowing down Stage Fright and making it an acoustic lament in tune with the lyric, rather than the carnivalesque rock of the original.
This was released to commemorate the 30th anniversary of The Last Waltz. Here in Canada, the CBC put together its own tribute with Colin Linden, Tom Wilson, Luke Doucet, Oh Susanna, Great Lake Swimmers and others, broadcast on the day of the actual anniversary, and it outclasses this affair in every aspect. Hopefully that will get its own CD release sooner than later. (K-W Record, February 1, 2007)
Friends in Bellwoods – Various Artists (Out of This Spark)
When people write about the Toronto music scene, names like Broken Social Scene, Final Fantasy, K-OS and others usually dominate the discussion. Of course, there’s plenty more going on underground, but perhaps the most shocking thing about this Friends of Bellwoods compilation—other than the fact that it’s overflowing with amazing music, spread over 36 tracks on two discs—is that so much of it is new to even the most dedicated follower of indie fashion.
Local showgoers will likely know Guelph’s D’Urbervilles and We’re Marching On, Ottawa’s The Acorn, Toronto’s Ohbijou and Brampton’s Meligrove Band. This will also introduce you to the plaintive country of Friday Morning’s Regret, the morning-after folk of Jonas Bonnetta, the electro gay dance party of Kids on TV, the 90s indie rock of Germans, the synth pop of Montreal’s Telefauna, and one-off projects like Water Colour and The Dinghies. Throw in relatively more established names like Snailhouse, Gentleman Reg, Barzin and the Constantines’ Bry Webb, and you have a perfect time capsule of Ontario music for 2007. (K-W Record, February 8, 2007)
Kyp Harness – Fugitives (maplemusic.com)
Kyp Harness is a Canadian writer whose work deserves a place in the nation’s official songbooks, even though most of his discography has flown underneath all radar. His latest is a limited-run, self-released collection once again produced by Dale Morningstar (of Gord Downie’s band) and full of dense wordplay illuminating corners of hope in a desert of desolation and moral corruption.
In the past, Harness would usually detail the woes of the world in a verse and find redemption in love by the time he hit the chorus. This time, Harness finds all his answers in God: a God, he says in the liner notes, that is “far from being a mascot for war, for stealing from the poor to give to the rich, for anti-choice and sexual discrimination.” This God is perfectly in line with Harness’s lyrical mission from the beginning: compassion, forgiveness, justice and truth.
Because of this, Fugitives doesn’t sound like Harness’s “Jesus record,” even if he doesn’t make any attempt to mask his inspiration. Instead, like Harness’s best work, it’s a rock album recorded live in a room, with subtle gospel overtones to match the lyrical message, and a singer set on exploring the moral sphere of his world—only this time with a guiding hand leading him out of the darkness. (K-W Record, March 1, 2007)
Peter, Bjorn and John – Writers’ Block (Red Ink/Sony BMG)
Their name suggests a Scandanavian coffee house folk trio; their acronym implies reliable comfort food. This PB&J use loping lo-fi hip-hop beats with whistling melodies to augment familiar elements of underground British 80s pop, such as jangly guitars, soft keyboards, and earnest portraits of romantic minutiae. At first glance, PB&J sound like a summit between the Housemartins and New Order, with ESL-accented vocals that conjure unlikely comparisons: early Costello, Sloan’s Chris Murphy, 54.40’s vocal harmonies.
Thankfully, PB&J have enough oddball tricks up their twee sleeves—dulcimers, flamenco guitars, clarinets, and choruses catchy enough to pass as nursery rhyme—to set them apart from their hodgepodge of influences. Songs like the jaunty break-up number Let’s Call It Off, the tourist jingle Amsterdam, and The Chills—the latter driven by tumbling percussion and hissing castanets—give their closest competitors The Shins a run for their money. (K-W Record, March 15, 2007)
The Stooges – The Weirdness (Virgin/EMI)
How can you go wrong? One of the greatest rock’n’roll bands ever, progenitors of punk rock, not only get back together to play ecstatically received live shows, but they recruit a powerhouse bassist from the generation after them (Mike Watt of the Minutemen) and the best raw rock’n’roll producer from the generation after that (Steve Albini of Nirvana and thousands of others). Guitarist Ron Asheton sounds like he hasn’t missed a beat since the band split up in the 70s, and even Fun House saxophonist Steve McKay is back in the fold.
Trouble is, the iconic Iggy Pop sounds like he wrote this entire album in about ten minutes and five beers. In between puerile push-button rants about ATMs and Greedy Awful People, the fleeting moment of wit is when Iggy manages to rhyme “Obama” with “baby mama” and “intifadah.”
In retrospect, anyone who had high hopes for this has likely not listened to an Iggy Pop album in decades. If they had, they’d realise that he’s an embarrassing old fart who’s only successful when he’s chest-deep in self-parody (see: Kick It, his duet with Peaches).
Weirdness, indeed. (K-W Record, March 22, 2007)
Lucinda Williams – West (Lost Highway/Universal)
Earlier in her career Lucinda Wiliams excelled at character narratives. This album, however, is either written about one severely heartbroken and messed up character, or the artist herself at a painfully emotional low. The narrator here is struggling to overcome loss, sinking deep into depression, and dissecting the dark dissolution of a relationship’s dying days.
And those are the happy songs. Williams’ southern drawl milks the material for every ounce of pathos—she sounds like she’s bleeding all over the microphone, which with material like this makes it all the more effective. The lyrics are much more than blubbering and blather, however. Williams’ eye for sharp poetic detail and her gift for phrasing make up for the fact that she’s wallowing in woe.
While her lyrics stand among her best, there are few musical moments here to match their power. Melody is often sacrificed for poetic cadence, and her backing band is content to leave gaping holes in her opiated, loping two-chord songs. Sometimes that works: Unsuffer Me is a few power chords short of becoming a Black Sabbath tune, where an ominous, heavy bass progression underscores Williams’ plea for someone to “undo my logic/ undo my fear.”
If your Valentine’s Day went swimmingly well, avoid this album at all costs. But if you need a good bawl, Lucinda Williams is your new best friend. (K-W Record, February 22, 2007)
Amy Winehouse – Back to Black (Island/Universal)
Winehouse became a platinum success in her native UK with her debut album of hip-hop inflected jazz pop, but here she comes out swinging with a sassy set of soul that draws equally from Motown and Phil Spector girl groups of the 60s. Producer Mark Ronson, who helmed some of Christina Aguilera’s recent comeback, gives her a punchy, vintage sound courtesy of a brassy horn section and members of Sharon Jones’s Daptones and Antibalas—you’d be hard to find two modern acts better at reproducing old school soul and funk. And the 22-year old Winehouse has the pipes to belt out bangers dedicated to dissing rehab and deadbeat dudes; her lyrics betray a bit too much of her bratty youth, but that barely matters when she’s got the sound down. (K-W Record, January 11 2007)
You Say Party! We Say Die! – Lose All the Time (Paper Bag/Universal)
Death and loss might be themes in this Vancouver band's moniker and album title, but you'd never infer that from the joyous racket they stir up on their first proper full-length.
This is more than just a racket, however. Vocalist Becky Ninkovic kick off the record by yelling "This is a test! This is a test!" Except that they already got their test out of the way, on 2005's debut EP, which landed them plenty of live dates across Canada and in Europe. The EP suggested a flash-in-the-pan one-trick-pony, not unlike Toronto's Controller Controller or Vancouver's The Organ, who also tapped the darker side of early 80s post-punk pop before hitting a creative glass ceiling and calling it quits.
What separates YSP!WSD! from a crowded field of compatriots is their versatility, amply displayed on these 12 tracks, an early contender for best Canadian debut of 2007. Ninkovic easily moves between yelping punk ingénue ala the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O, to a brooding crooner like late period PJ Harvey. Meanwhile, the band behind her don't depend on mere disco beats to ensure danceability, and have enough sense of dynamics to pull off a sparse piano ballad.
They close the album by advising, "Don't say goodbye: say, 'good journey.'" They have a long, promising and productive one ahead of them. (K-W Record, March 15, 2007)
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Messages on the People's Radio
"Ladies and gentlemen! We're going to have a good show today! We're going to have a big party ... The batteries on my show are falling off. We forgot to do balloons! Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to have a party today! But it's not going to be super good. It's going to be a little bit good, because we're just going to have a little bit of cake."
And so began the final broadcast of Brave New Waves' last Friday night, with the sounds of Patti Schmidt's toddler nephew. Ten months after she recorded this concept show about radio, it was a fitting farewell to the program that had consumed her life for the past 17 years, and had captivated the rest of us since 1984. Friday's farewell was the show that it should have been: hosted by Patti Schmidt, opening with a proper acknowledgment of the end, and four hours of music that was both irreverent and deadly serious, high and low culture, avant-garde and amateur, with a concert in the middle from a new Canadian politically active punk band. The bookend bits were gold, featuring Patti's toddler nephew talking about a party that's going to be a little bit good, a little bit sad.
The fact that this episode was originally recorded and broadcast last May, without any acknowledgement of its significance at the time, still hurts a bit. For a show that always thrived on the new, it's slightly absurd that the last show was a repeat. But considering the excruciating state of limbo this show has existed in recently, the final show managed to sound dignified and proud. No nostalgia, no tears, just a final statement of purpose.
David Wisdom's final show on Sunday night was also lovely, though the show I heard him do a couple of weeks ago seemed to be more self-consciously about The End. (It included Sarah Harmer's "The Ring," about gratitude and the gift of song, which ranks among her most exquisite lyrics.) Along with "Tumbling Tumbleweeds," some Satie, and Sinatra singing "Let's Face the Music" (“A song I think of in uncertain times,” he said), Wisdom reprised a set from the final Night Lines broadcast that juxtaposed the Rheostatics' "Northern Wish" and The Band's "Whispering Pines" (which he talks about here). Hearing that while driving down the DVP into Toronto with a glorious sunset beyond the skyline was a radio moment I'll not soon forget, especially with the first of the final Rheostatics shows scheduled for seven short days later.
I'm slightly sad to say that I didn't hear the final Radio Sonic/ Radio Escapade/ Radio3-on-Radio2 show Saturday night, except for the last track just before midnight immediately after Grant Lawrence signed off. It was "The Singer" by Stompin' Tom Connors, which argues that "a land without song cannot stand very long," and still rings true as a rallying cry for the state of Canadian music. I first heard the song when it underscores an on-stage assassination in the Bruce McDonald film Roadkill; I later used these lyrics to close the book Have Not Been the Same, and I like to play it as an alternate national anthem every time I'm the organ player at a game in the Exclaim! Hockey League. Hats off to Mr. Lawrence, a huge Stompin' Tom fan, for making that his final selection on the democratic medium of old-fashioned terrestrial radio—the people's radio.
Why wasn't I listening to the whole show on Saturday night? Personally, it's been a rough winter all around, and this month in particular I'm tired of goodbyes. So instead, I spent it in the good company (and good cuisine) of other radio geeks, where we talked about everything but radio: equally cheery subjects like vanishing farmland, municipal politics, Katrina aftermath, and the cranes of Dubai.
But therein lies the problem that the Saturday night program—whatever they chose to call it—always suffered from. The audience for this program—broadly speaking, young people interested in new music—are not at home on Saturday night in so-called "prime time." I only ever listened to the show for the first two hours before I went out, if in fact I happened to be home alone for dinner. Or if I was too burnt out from Friday night and stayed home Saturday altogether—and furthermore if I eschewed television for a book, writing, or personal projects. That's a lot of ifs.
It's true that Brave New Waves had an equally problematic time slot, but there's something to be said for the late night radio listener, who is no doubt there for a reason and is a captive audience member. I would argue that very few people—Canadians, particularly—actively engage with their radios on Saturday nights, despite Mr. Lawrence's frequent pleas to turn the TV hockey game sound down, and your radio up.
I was a bit worried by some of the comments posted here following by Brave New Waves essay, the Brent Bambury interview and the David Wisdom interview, because I don't want to be pegged as a naysayer or a guy who pines for the same CBC Radio that he grew up with. The reason I posted or wrote all those things was to pay respect to the great tradition that these shows built at the CBC. In the case of BNW, I was worried that in the wake of all the new changes, that the fate of the show was going to be swept under the rug like a dirty little secret—which it had been for at least the last six months.
I don't think change at the CBC is bad, and I have no desire to sit around and talk about glory days. I like a lot of what they are doing with Radio 2, and I think their approach to mixing genre is going to work. De-classical-fying the network is also long overdue (27 years), but I'm glad they're not chucking that continuum entirely. I also think it's wise to have a more clear delineation between talkie Radio One and the music of Radio Two; the latter has always been the poor cousin that seemed like an afterthought to the main network.
Some of the hand-wringing around these changes has been a tad ridiculous. Rumour has it the McGill Students Union held a moment of silence for Radio 3, as if the Saturday night show was the only component of the ongoing operation. This only proves that much like the mourning of the Radio 3 webzine, most people actually have no idea what Radio 3 is and what it encompasses. And granted, it has never fit into a soundbite at any point in the past eight years. But at least it no longer elicits puzzled stares.
It pains me greatly to think that there's no room for Radio 3's rock'n'roll on the new Radio 2. Because Radio 3 was and is primarily about rock'n'roll--which for these purposes will also mean hip-hop and electronic music. Much of the new CBC Radio 2 is—rightly so—aimed at an adult audience, and by that I don't mean a geriatric one. People between 30 and 50 who aren't interested in classic rock, hit radio or 80s retro really have few other places to turn, and the new CBC Radio 2 sets out to address this. This demographic's tolerance for young, raw rock'n'roll is admittedly limited.
But, goes the eternal question, what of the youth? The assumption here is that they're all on the internet anyway, which, after a series of bumps and hurdles (that we won't get into here), Radio 3 has proven itself good at. And it's an assumption worth making: the Radio 3 podcast is exponentially more popular than the Saturday night program ever was, in any of its incarnations. The concept of podcasting in general represents a triumph of time-shifting radio, doing for radio what the VCR did for TV watching 25 years ago. So when you take a show that had such a terrible time slot and repackage it into a readily accessible hour-long format, it's little wonder that it took off.
(We also won't talk about the lack of will to consider Brave New Waves as a podcast-able program until after they formally announced its cancellation. I’m convinced that had that show become a podcast that it would have been a worldwide hit, finally convincing all naysayers that the show did indeed have currency beyond a handful of vocally loyal geeks in urban Canada, that it did fill a void not only in Canada but around the world.)
I realize that I'm a 35-year old fogie, but I do think something is lost by removing Radio 3 from terrestrial radio—as opposed to the economically elite model of satellite radio, which is another kettle of fish worthy of another essay.
Radio is a democratic medium by nature: the airwaves are free, belonging to everyone. Radios are ubiquitous and affordable; you can even build one yourself with little effort. (Or, as childhood myth had it, your orthodontist could install one for you.) It requires no effort or forethought to turn it on and experience it live, as Radio 3 thankfully was in recent years; the Saturday night show was the best it had ever been lately, largely due to its off-the-cuff nature. But there's no spontaneity in listening to a podcast, and if you're a youngster searching for something new, the chances of stumbling across a podcast accidentally are nil.
The web-based approach to radio offers infinite exciting possibilities. But at the end of the day it still requires more work (and more technology) on the part of the listener, both returning ones and potential new ones. Ideally, these two mediums can work in tandem. Sadly, it was decided that was not the case for Radio 3.
Though it kills me to admit it, Brave New Waves had to die. There were plenty of managerial misunderstandings about what the show was. For a show that produced 20 hours of radio a week, it was seriously understaffed. There was a lack of will on all sides to make it go forward. Without a serious examination of adapting it to new platforms and expanding the staff, the show was headed to obsolescence. Everyone, on both sides, was tired. The show had become an albatross.
That's not to say it didn't still have plenty of unparalleled purpose to offer the current Canadian musical landscape. I still think the show was valuable right up to this point last year. (And I say this in complete vanity, because that's when I left, in March 2006. I wasn't replaced, and the show was slowly dismantled between then and June. Please don't infer I'm cocky enough to infer that it had anything to do with my departure; I merely saw what was coming and jumped ship first. Well, second, actually.)
Last night I listened to the inaugural episode of the show that's billed as filling some of the gap left by BNW's departure, The Signal. Some of it was great, and it fills a long-ignored gap in CBC programming. Some of it had me literally screaming in frustration. There will be those who will think the show is the ideal way to illustrate that you can present challenging cross-genre material, without all those perversely petulant noisemakers stirring up shit. There will be those who will think it's a castrated, compromised version of BNW that's terrified of speaking above its audience. But many of the musical choices were genuinely inspired, I heard plenty of new music I didn't know about, and overall it would have made for an ideal show to lead into BNW's old time slot at midnight, a gateway drug to when the screaming and squawking could begin. But I've already said too much. You can't judge a show on its first episode.
I don’t fear for the future of CBC Radio Two. There are plenty of changes afoot. I hope the talented people there who have contributed so much to its strengths in recent years are recognized for their talents (what is Jowi Taylor doing exactly?). I hope the new programming manages to tap into the immense talent pool we have in this country, and the fact that our cultural industries are stronger than ever, even while other national threads are eroding. I hope the corporation doesn’t second-guess itself to death, which is what public institutions excel at (and with no shortage of peanut gallery posers like myself, can you blame them?). There’s so much work to be done. Let’s hope they get it right.
Nephew: "The show is over now. We're going to have a different show about, uh, er, um, about, um, uh, about lamps."
Patti: (laughter) "What are you going to say about lamps?" (laughter)
And so began the final broadcast of Brave New Waves' last Friday night, with the sounds of Patti Schmidt's toddler nephew. Ten months after she recorded this concept show about radio, it was a fitting farewell to the program that had consumed her life for the past 17 years, and had captivated the rest of us since 1984. Friday's farewell was the show that it should have been: hosted by Patti Schmidt, opening with a proper acknowledgment of the end, and four hours of music that was both irreverent and deadly serious, high and low culture, avant-garde and amateur, with a concert in the middle from a new Canadian politically active punk band. The bookend bits were gold, featuring Patti's toddler nephew talking about a party that's going to be a little bit good, a little bit sad.
The fact that this episode was originally recorded and broadcast last May, without any acknowledgement of its significance at the time, still hurts a bit. For a show that always thrived on the new, it's slightly absurd that the last show was a repeat. But considering the excruciating state of limbo this show has existed in recently, the final show managed to sound dignified and proud. No nostalgia, no tears, just a final statement of purpose.
David Wisdom's final show on Sunday night was also lovely, though the show I heard him do a couple of weeks ago seemed to be more self-consciously about The End. (It included Sarah Harmer's "The Ring," about gratitude and the gift of song, which ranks among her most exquisite lyrics.) Along with "Tumbling Tumbleweeds," some Satie, and Sinatra singing "Let's Face the Music" (“A song I think of in uncertain times,” he said), Wisdom reprised a set from the final Night Lines broadcast that juxtaposed the Rheostatics' "Northern Wish" and The Band's "Whispering Pines" (which he talks about here). Hearing that while driving down the DVP into Toronto with a glorious sunset beyond the skyline was a radio moment I'll not soon forget, especially with the first of the final Rheostatics shows scheduled for seven short days later.
I'm slightly sad to say that I didn't hear the final Radio Sonic/ Radio Escapade/ Radio3-on-Radio2 show Saturday night, except for the last track just before midnight immediately after Grant Lawrence signed off. It was "The Singer" by Stompin' Tom Connors, which argues that "a land without song cannot stand very long," and still rings true as a rallying cry for the state of Canadian music. I first heard the song when it underscores an on-stage assassination in the Bruce McDonald film Roadkill; I later used these lyrics to close the book Have Not Been the Same, and I like to play it as an alternate national anthem every time I'm the organ player at a game in the Exclaim! Hockey League. Hats off to Mr. Lawrence, a huge Stompin' Tom fan, for making that his final selection on the democratic medium of old-fashioned terrestrial radio—the people's radio.
Why wasn't I listening to the whole show on Saturday night? Personally, it's been a rough winter all around, and this month in particular I'm tired of goodbyes. So instead, I spent it in the good company (and good cuisine) of other radio geeks, where we talked about everything but radio: equally cheery subjects like vanishing farmland, municipal politics, Katrina aftermath, and the cranes of Dubai.
But therein lies the problem that the Saturday night program—whatever they chose to call it—always suffered from. The audience for this program—broadly speaking, young people interested in new music—are not at home on Saturday night in so-called "prime time." I only ever listened to the show for the first two hours before I went out, if in fact I happened to be home alone for dinner. Or if I was too burnt out from Friday night and stayed home Saturday altogether—and furthermore if I eschewed television for a book, writing, or personal projects. That's a lot of ifs.
It's true that Brave New Waves had an equally problematic time slot, but there's something to be said for the late night radio listener, who is no doubt there for a reason and is a captive audience member. I would argue that very few people—Canadians, particularly—actively engage with their radios on Saturday nights, despite Mr. Lawrence's frequent pleas to turn the TV hockey game sound down, and your radio up.
I was a bit worried by some of the comments posted here following by Brave New Waves essay, the Brent Bambury interview and the David Wisdom interview, because I don't want to be pegged as a naysayer or a guy who pines for the same CBC Radio that he grew up with. The reason I posted or wrote all those things was to pay respect to the great tradition that these shows built at the CBC. In the case of BNW, I was worried that in the wake of all the new changes, that the fate of the show was going to be swept under the rug like a dirty little secret—which it had been for at least the last six months.
I don't think change at the CBC is bad, and I have no desire to sit around and talk about glory days. I like a lot of what they are doing with Radio 2, and I think their approach to mixing genre is going to work. De-classical-fying the network is also long overdue (27 years), but I'm glad they're not chucking that continuum entirely. I also think it's wise to have a more clear delineation between talkie Radio One and the music of Radio Two; the latter has always been the poor cousin that seemed like an afterthought to the main network.
Some of the hand-wringing around these changes has been a tad ridiculous. Rumour has it the McGill Students Union held a moment of silence for Radio 3, as if the Saturday night show was the only component of the ongoing operation. This only proves that much like the mourning of the Radio 3 webzine, most people actually have no idea what Radio 3 is and what it encompasses. And granted, it has never fit into a soundbite at any point in the past eight years. But at least it no longer elicits puzzled stares.
It pains me greatly to think that there's no room for Radio 3's rock'n'roll on the new Radio 2. Because Radio 3 was and is primarily about rock'n'roll--which for these purposes will also mean hip-hop and electronic music. Much of the new CBC Radio 2 is—rightly so—aimed at an adult audience, and by that I don't mean a geriatric one. People between 30 and 50 who aren't interested in classic rock, hit radio or 80s retro really have few other places to turn, and the new CBC Radio 2 sets out to address this. This demographic's tolerance for young, raw rock'n'roll is admittedly limited.
But, goes the eternal question, what of the youth? The assumption here is that they're all on the internet anyway, which, after a series of bumps and hurdles (that we won't get into here), Radio 3 has proven itself good at. And it's an assumption worth making: the Radio 3 podcast is exponentially more popular than the Saturday night program ever was, in any of its incarnations. The concept of podcasting in general represents a triumph of time-shifting radio, doing for radio what the VCR did for TV watching 25 years ago. So when you take a show that had such a terrible time slot and repackage it into a readily accessible hour-long format, it's little wonder that it took off.
(We also won't talk about the lack of will to consider Brave New Waves as a podcast-able program until after they formally announced its cancellation. I’m convinced that had that show become a podcast that it would have been a worldwide hit, finally convincing all naysayers that the show did indeed have currency beyond a handful of vocally loyal geeks in urban Canada, that it did fill a void not only in Canada but around the world.)
I realize that I'm a 35-year old fogie, but I do think something is lost by removing Radio 3 from terrestrial radio—as opposed to the economically elite model of satellite radio, which is another kettle of fish worthy of another essay.
Radio is a democratic medium by nature: the airwaves are free, belonging to everyone. Radios are ubiquitous and affordable; you can even build one yourself with little effort. (Or, as childhood myth had it, your orthodontist could install one for you.) It requires no effort or forethought to turn it on and experience it live, as Radio 3 thankfully was in recent years; the Saturday night show was the best it had ever been lately, largely due to its off-the-cuff nature. But there's no spontaneity in listening to a podcast, and if you're a youngster searching for something new, the chances of stumbling across a podcast accidentally are nil.
The web-based approach to radio offers infinite exciting possibilities. But at the end of the day it still requires more work (and more technology) on the part of the listener, both returning ones and potential new ones. Ideally, these two mediums can work in tandem. Sadly, it was decided that was not the case for Radio 3.
Though it kills me to admit it, Brave New Waves had to die. There were plenty of managerial misunderstandings about what the show was. For a show that produced 20 hours of radio a week, it was seriously understaffed. There was a lack of will on all sides to make it go forward. Without a serious examination of adapting it to new platforms and expanding the staff, the show was headed to obsolescence. Everyone, on both sides, was tired. The show had become an albatross.
That's not to say it didn't still have plenty of unparalleled purpose to offer the current Canadian musical landscape. I still think the show was valuable right up to this point last year. (And I say this in complete vanity, because that's when I left, in March 2006. I wasn't replaced, and the show was slowly dismantled between then and June. Please don't infer I'm cocky enough to infer that it had anything to do with my departure; I merely saw what was coming and jumped ship first. Well, second, actually.)
Last night I listened to the inaugural episode of the show that's billed as filling some of the gap left by BNW's departure, The Signal. Some of it was great, and it fills a long-ignored gap in CBC programming. Some of it had me literally screaming in frustration. There will be those who will think the show is the ideal way to illustrate that you can present challenging cross-genre material, without all those perversely petulant noisemakers stirring up shit. There will be those who will think it's a castrated, compromised version of BNW that's terrified of speaking above its audience. But many of the musical choices were genuinely inspired, I heard plenty of new music I didn't know about, and overall it would have made for an ideal show to lead into BNW's old time slot at midnight, a gateway drug to when the screaming and squawking could begin. But I've already said too much. You can't judge a show on its first episode.
I don’t fear for the future of CBC Radio Two. There are plenty of changes afoot. I hope the talented people there who have contributed so much to its strengths in recent years are recognized for their talents (what is Jowi Taylor doing exactly?). I hope the new programming manages to tap into the immense talent pool we have in this country, and the fact that our cultural industries are stronger than ever, even while other national threads are eroding. I hope the corporation doesn’t second-guess itself to death, which is what public institutions excel at (and with no shortage of peanut gallery posers like myself, can you blame them?). There’s so much work to be done. Let’s hope they get it right.
Nephew: "The show is over now. We're going to have a different show about, uh, er, um, about, um, uh, about lamps."
Patti: (laughter) "What are you going to say about lamps?" (laughter)
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
David Wisdom 2000
I've made much of the impending end of Brave New Waves this week, but there's another CBC icon going down for the count this week.
David Wisdom hosted the weekend overnight show Night Lines, BNW's sister program, between 1987 and 1997; he was then bounced to an awkward prime time slot hosting Radio Sonic, where he was audibly uncomfortable until management begrudgingly switched him back to late nights and moved Grant Lawrence to prime time Saturday night--a slot Mr. Lawrence is also surrendering this weekend.
In the meantime, Wisdom has been hosting a 90-minute disc show called Pearls of Wisdom, which is little more than an old-timey record geek show. Which is all it has to be. The first time I heard it, years ago, I was put off by its conservative nature: lots of old-timey jazz, swing and folk music, mixed in with some current Canadiana, primarily aimed at the nursing home crowd. Now that I'm deep into my middle age, I've grown to appreciate it in recent months, as a Sunday night wind-down while cooking dinner. Wisdom remains an unpretentious, amiable and congenial host with an encyclopaedic knowledge and a massive record collection: which, regardless of genre, is exactly the kind of radio I love the most.
Pearls of Wisdom also calls it quits this weekend (not by choice, I'm betting), which seemed like reason enough to resurrect this 2000 interview I conducted with Wisdom for the book Have Not Been the Same. In it he talks not only about Night Lines, but its predecessors, about Canadian music in the late 80s, and about his (and my) favourite Canadian band of all time, the Rheostatics--who, in this month of bloodletting, also call it quits at the end of the month.
Seriously, WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON??!!! March 2007: it's the CanCon apocalpyse, let me tell you. Next thing you know, both NoMeansNo and the Tragically Hip will announce their break-ups before the 31st.
Quick side note: anyone wondering what Patti Schmidt has been doing lately should go to the Ninja Tune website and download their podcast promoting the new Amon Tobin album. It's sort of in the style of a BNW profile, only without announcing track titles (grrrr). It's lovely to hear her voice and writing style alive again, and outside the weight of the BNW drama winding up this week. Hopefully she'll do more for them; frankly, I was hoping for an interview with Tobin, considering that she and he are close friends and video game junkies. She also helped him get busy with the bees on his new album.
I have no idea what Wisdom's next move is. But knowing what I know about CBC politics and his own reputation as a cantankerous curmudgeon off-mic, I'd be surprised if he's still on the air. It's a sad time for the veteran warhorses.
David Wisdom
August 30 2000
locale: phone interview from his office in Vancouver
How long have you been in Vancouver? I know you were born in England.
I’ve lived in Vancouver for most of my life. I moved here when I was a small boy. I went back and lived in England between 1969 and 1971, when I was still in university, and then went back at various times. I got my Canadian citizenship in 1992, partly inspired by the Rheostatics music, and that’s the truth.
Were you doing campus radio?
No, I’ve never done campus radio and I’ve never taken training in radio. I was working at CBC as a producer on the Vicki Gabereau show and doing stories for her. I had a huge record collection. I collected 45s mainly, in the early days in the 60s and 70s, but then I got heavily into it around the time of punk rock, between ‘77 and ‘80. I went and got a whole lot of records. When they wanted someone to do Night Lines, I was hired because I had the software more than the skills.
Rumour has it you do have the biggest record collection in Vancouver.
I once had. Last year I sold the bulk of my punk/new wave singles to Zulu Records, which in part financed a trip to Europe this year with my family.
When did you start at the CBC?
The day Elvis died in 1977; it was August of ‘77. I was working in the record library, they didn’t want to put stuff like the Sex Pistols in. I remember at one point them saying, ‘What’s the point in putting this Devo record in when nobody will be listening to it in two years’ time?’ Terry David Mulligan had the youth show on the CBC at that time, Gold Rush, I think it was called, and he refused to play the Buzzcocks as examples of good music in the ‘70s, and I went up against him on that one. I think the CBC saw things were changing.
Brave New Waves and Night Lines were my introduction to so-called “pop” music on the CBC; what came before them?
They’ve always tried to be a little bit ahead. They had this show called the Great Canadian Gold Rush hosted by Terry David Mulligan, and for the time it was playing whatever there was, like Lighthouse and such. Then they tried to get considerably hipper, and they got a guy named J.D. Shane and a show called Neon, which was considerably more...
Progressive?
Well, if you want to use that word. They were more interested in new stuff, and I was allowed to go on his show and do items on various things -- mostly English music, which was my all-consuming interest for many years.
Did you perform with or were you just on the recording for UJ3RK5 (I pronounced it 'you jerks')
It was pronounced 'you-jerk,' actually -- the 5 was silent. I was a full-time member, I was singing and wrote some of the songs. When they went to make the record, I was leaving the band, and therefore didn’t play keyboards on the record or sing lead. I was still a member, but I was getting out of the band.
Was that a fairly active band?
It was more active than we wanted it to be. Everybody had real jobs, and there were some famous artists in the band: Jeff Wall, Rodney Graham, and Ian Wallace, who were getting to be quite famous at the time. The music, we were inspired by the tenor of the time, just the fact that people were making music and doing it themselves. We played when we were asked to play, but it was really a secondary thing. Then we got signed by Polydor Records, who wanted us to tour. As soon as they put these kind of considerations before us, we basically fell apart, because we didn’t want to make it a full time deal at all. It was just for fun.
Was that unusual at the time, to be offered a deal for such a laid-back band?
It was pretty unusual. There weren’t that many bands in Vancouver who were being wooed by major labels at all.
The Payola$ and who else, really?
Yeah. To some degree the Pointed Sticks. Not really much else happening. We were quite surprised.
You took over the show in 1987. Do you recall the reaction around the CBC when those shows started in ‘84?
Both started fundamentally at the same time. Augusta LaPaix was the first Brave New Waves host and Ron Robinson was the host of Night Lines for the first one or two seasons, then it was Ralph Benmurgui. There was -- and still is -- resistance to the fact that there is such a thing as what they consider pop music on the CBC. There are still producers here who think it’s killing the CBC and don’t understand why it’s on. Brave New Waves and to a lesser degree Night Lines was considered just way, way out there. Brave New Waves got away with it earlier because they had a certain academic cachet to them. They played what was considered art music, electro-acoustic stuff. It had a more serious tone to it. With Night Lines, I wasn’t sure what to do at the beginning. I knew I had to play a lot of Canadian music, and I didn’t know a whole lot about Canadian music, so I went out and started listening to anything Canadian I could find. I tried for the first two or three seasons to please everyone, and then I figured to hell with them -- I’m just going to play the music I really like.
How long do you think it took you before you settled into that role?
I was sort of nervous at the beginning. I had a couple of guys who were campus radio guys telling me what I should be playing. I was being pushed into areas that I wasn’t at all comfortable with. It took me a year and a half to settle in and really feel that the show was my own, and really feel that people did appreciate what I was playing, and that there was an audience for the kind of ideas I had: non-elitist, and a wide-ranging variety of music.
Were you aware of the impact the show had before you took over? Was it widely listened-to in Vancouver?
I think so. Whenever you take over a show that has a following, there are always going to be people who are going to complain that it’s not the same, and those were the first things I heard. Obviously. Ralph Benmurgui was -- and is -- slicker than I could ever be on the radio. But I wasn’t too worried about that. I knew what I was talking about, I knew about the music, and I worried more about my presentation rather than my lack of knowledge; I had no concern about that.
Was it live back then?
Yes it was. We did it live for years and years. I’d be here until two in the morning. One night it was from 10PM to 5AM, and we did it three hours ahead of time so it would go live to the maritimes. I was sitting there for seven hours for years, doing shows straight through on the weekend.
When did that change?
It changed when real severe cuts were starting to come in, and I was not able to have a technician on the weekends. Then I had to take whatever time I could get in the studio, whenever technicians were available. So we started pre-taping on Thursday and Friday afternoons.
You mention that your knowledge of Cdn music was limited when you took the reins. Who were your favourites beforehand?
I was very Vancouver-centric. We always had an idea that Vancouver music was cooler than Toronto music. Toronto music had a certain kind of feeling that we thought was much more show biz, like Carole Pope. In the beginning of the early days of punk, when there were people like the Poles and the Viletones, we thought, ‘Oh, Toronto people have it wrong. We have DOA, Los Popularos, and a much better music scene going on in Vancouver. So I basically knew very little about music outside of Vancouver until I took over that show and made myself listen to everything I could.
Do you think the show became different when it moved to Vancouver, other than the obvious change in the hosts’ style?
Absolutely it changed. I was much more than an indie kind of guy than Ralph and Ross Porter, who was producing it. I’ve always liked a more rough and independent music rather than anything slick. I shy away from bands when they get too popular. I remember them playing a much slicker sound, and then I got into Og Records’ series of It Came From Canada. I can’t tell you how important that series was. Because on those compilations were early cuts from the likes of Ray Condo and Cowboy Junkies, to the weird bands like the Supreme Bagg Team and Chris Houston’s band. I became aware of a much wider range of music, and started to realize that there was a really interesting kind of music that was different -- everything was different from each other, but there was a similar sensibility to it. There was actually something of a Canadian sound, which had a sense of humour to it. Since the late ‘70s, it’s had a really good sense of humour. I’m thinking of people like the Dik Van Dykes, who were not a big favourite band of mine, but they were loose and didn’t take themselves too seriously. I’ve always enjoyed that kind of music.
Gerard and Tony [of Deja Voodoo and Og] have told me that they also sought out people with some kind of sense of tradition. Not necessarily Ray Condo tradition -- although that was certainly part of it, but just people who had roots in something. They always hated hardcore music for example. The early Asexuals didn’t show up on those compilations. Those comps also gave the illusion of a network of people across the country.
It wove around the record store people, too. Record stores are always really important in music scenes, and there were two here in Vancouver: Track Records and Quintessence, which later became Zulu. The guys who worked there were musicians and turned me on to a whole lot of stuff. I remember going into Track Records, and the guy behind the counter said, “Hey, we just got onto this Og compilation.” He was in the Zamboni Drivers, and this was just a guy down the street. I thought, ‘this is great, the guy down the street just got on this fabulous It Came From Canada, volume whatever.’
You mention the regionalism before and people turning their noses at other cities, and I was wondering about the effect of those comps out west.
It was an absolute real thing. There’s always this contempt, which is made a lot of in the media, about Vancouver dismissing Toronto. It is real, it’s certainly a real thing, although less so than it was years ago. We always thought we had a much better music scene than Toronto did. I certainly don’t agree with that anymore. It isn’t the case now. It may have had some measure of truth to it a while ago, but it hasn’t been that way for years.
I’m trying to picture you immersing yourself in Canadian music trying to fill your playlist in 1987. Who else did you discover that excited you?
I’m trying to remember too, because it was 13 years ago. When I started thinking about what I was going to talk to you about, I was trying to remember those early bands and that time. I was being pushed into this direction of industrial and really hardcore goth bands that I really never liked, like Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly. The young guys I had from campus radio were saying that this was all the rage, that this was the absolute thing right now, bands from the United States such as Ministry were really big time. But I could never warm up to that. What really opened my eyes to the regions across Canada was when I opened the phone lines up and took calls. I would ask the listeners to not just request something, but they had to answer a skill-testing question as well: recite a poem they just made up, tell a joke or answer a tough question or something. It was amusing, but I’d also learn a whole lot about what was going on in different cities by what they’d request. Then I’d go out and try to find it. For the most part, I’d think, well, this is pretty good, and then I’d fill out my playlists to that kind of stuff.
How many calls would you get a week?
It was so big that I had to shut it down after a few years because I just couldn’t keep up with it. I would put in a 90 minute tape, because this was done before any digital equipment, and it was just an answering machine with a cassette running around. I’d have to come down in the middle of the night to turn the tape over. It was always filled.
Or broken, I recall.
Yeah, it broke a lot. And sometimes it “broke” just because I couldn’t face listening to hours of phone calls! But it was great, and it was part of what made the show really interesting. Over the years there was a revolving cast of really interesting callers. Some one-time only, but more often some semi-regulars that people recognized.
They also often had testimonials. If people were phoning for the first time, they’d say things like, “I can’t tell you how many times this show saved my life.”
(Sighs). Whenever I’m somewhere where people talk to me and say, “Oh, I really like you on the radio,” they never talk to me about RadioSonic. They always go back to Night Lines. And I appreciate that. I think it was a real show and it had a real personality. I think when you’re broadcasting in the middle of the night, you get people who really do listen and really do care about music, other than casual listeners who might just have it on in the car. I think the time of the night is really important for that. I do think we played the best music available and found new stuff that other radio stations would never, never broadcast. I wish I could be more specific about the bands, but it’s somewhat of a blur. I keep trying to think ahead.
When did you first hear Rheostatics? Did someone send you Greatest Hits in the mail?
Somebody told me about a song about a hockey player. I went to a record store and said, ‘What’s this song about Wendel Clark?’ I think it was Track Records. I found Greatest Hits on LP, it had just come out. I thought every song was really, really good. I liked the sound right away. There was something funny about it, but at the core it was something serious. It wasn’t trivial. It sounded like people who really cared about what they were doing. It also sounded really Canadian to me. It sounded like the music came from where it came from, rather than aping any English or American sound. And despite the fact that the guys were pretty young, there was something a little older about them. They weren’t posers at all, there was nothing of that in them. I read that through the music before I ever talked to them. I dunno, I guess I got to know them over time and did little items on them whenever I could. I got to know Dave [Bidini] quite well.
They always did very well in Vancouver.
They have always had rabid fans here. The few gigs I’ve been to here, I was surprised by the variety of ages: young people as well as people in their 30s or early 40s who know all the words. I’d be guessing if I tried to figure out why they especially connected with audiences out here, I just don’t know. But it’s true, they certainly do have believers rather than just fans or people who really love them. The last time I saw them was an in-store at a Chapters bookstore, and everyone was just thrilled. The four of them sat on stools and played guitars, and it was like Crosby Stills Nash & Young. Only good!
Did you follow them through the breakup?
I did. I was kept abreast of what was going on. When I talk to Dave about this, the lowest time for the Rheostatics was when they were the most popular, when they were whisked off to the West Indies to make that album. And I think that’s their weakest, and I think they lost track of things a bit around that time. I’ve not been disappointed by anything since, though. I think Melville is one of the great Canadian albums. I put it up there with music by The Band and Neil Young, their very best work. That period of their output was great, with Whale Music. When I was being sworn in as a Canadian citizen, “Northern Wish” was the song running through my head. It still moves me deeply, that record.
I recall you playing that song next to “Whispering Pines” on the last Night Lines show.
I think I’ve done those two songs together more than once. It works really well.
I’m wondering about other bands from that period that affected you perhaps not that deeply, but closely.
I like rock’n’roll. I was quite turned on by that band, what’s their name, they made three albums -- my God! Sons of Freedom. I thought they were really great. I think there are some good strong bands who have lasted a long time. 54.40 have a lot of merit and have their own sound. I like the Doughboys -- even though they were called imitative. I thought there was quite a spate of good melodic, hard rockin’ Canadian music for quite a long time. I’m not sure that’s still the case. That might have peaked when the Halifax scene was still going. I thought there were tons of really good bands. I had no problem trying to find stuff to play.
There was a lot of indie product after 1990, for a lot of reasons.
Nowadays I see five times more records than I’ve ever seen in my life, because I’m sitting in an office with people who are working on these web sites [the nascent CBC Radio 3]. They’re soliciting every single CD that anyone has ever even thought of making. A lot of them, they shouldn’t be here at all. A lot of them are demos, they’re hardly work at all. I would need to step back; there’s so much music that I can’t put my finger on anything in particular to make me think hey, this is a really good period for music right now. It’s hard to see.
Were there certain bands that you felt Night Lines helped to break?
I know there were. We started doing our sessions about half way through, in ‘91. Some bands we really did give a leg up to. I’m thinking of a band like Cub. They became popular through touring and the novelty aspect of three women, but I think we played them a lot and recorded sessions with them when they were just getting their chops together. I don’t know if that had anything to do with them getting popular, but I think it did. We helped a lot of bands. I don’t know how many of them are around still or even involved in music, but I was really happy when we started doing sessions. Brave New Waves was doing sessions, and I really wanted to do that.
What about Jr. Gone Wild?
Actually, Calgary really began to happen in the ‘90s as well. There were great bands coming out of Calgary for a while. Like the Primrods, those garage-y types. I’m thinking of the Von Zippers now, but they’re quite recent. Chixdiggit, Huevos Rancheros, and even a bit before that, I thought there was something really good about the Calgary music scene. It was really small, but everyone was really into helping each other, and I thought it was pretty vibrant and fun for a good long time. Edmonton used to be a music city, especially in the ‘70s it was quite a stop for blues and such, but I know less about Edmonton than Calgary these days. But Jr. Gone Wild were certainly a band that had Vancouver connections: Ford Pier and so forth. I knew a bit more about them.
What can you tell me about Herald Nix?
He’s a guy who’s considered -- in a way, sort of like Art Bergmann -- to be a talent, a real natural songwriter with -- in a similar vein to Art Bergmann -- personal problems that have prevented him from ever getting it together. But Herald Nix plays semi-regularly in Vancouver, and he has a very hardcore following of fans who think that this is a guy who really can write great songs. But that might be as far as it goes. The recordings have been dubious and few. He’s on a few local compilations, but there’s been very little. He’s one of those guys that plays locally, but rarely records successfully, if at all.
What was the impact of labels like Zulu and Mint? They were synonymous with Vancouver.
Zulu, which was Quintessence before, was very important. The recent three reissues that Zulu put out of Young Canadians, Pointed Sticks and the Modernettes, those were important. I think Zulu blew it by signing bands who refused to tour or couldn’t get it together to tour. They put out some pretty keen stuff, but couldn’t follow it up. Mint is a label run by true believers who do it for the love of it. It has that Nardwuar the Human Serviette aspect of it, a real indie...
That’s an adjective now, is it? The Nardwuar aspect?
Yes, like a funny middle finger to the rest of the world. They’ll never make any dough. Neko Case was a big deal for them, but she’s gone now. She got too popular. Zulu is still a centre of intense musical activity. They have instore performances. I don’t think they’re going to put out any more CDs for a while. I don’t think you can underestimate the importance of record stores and labels.
Did you follow the Slow saga at all?
I wish I could say I was at their performance at Expo 86 when they dropped trou, but I just heard about it the next day. But they were and still are legendary. The guys that are in Copyright, are still in a way local heroes. They captured something of the times, and they were great.
What about NoMeansNo? They always seemed to be outsiders.
They are outsiders.
Maybe that’s the reason for their longevity.
That absolutely may be the case. Because they don’t play very often. They play once every two years at the Commodore Ballroom, and they’ll fill it up. But the rest of the time they’re in Slovenia or Finland. If I can be delicate, those guys are difficult guys. The Wright Brothers, Tom Holliston, and Andy Kerr before. I get on well with them, but they are basically offended by everything they see in the world, and it’s hard to get along and function with that sense. But at the same time, that’s what spurs them into doing what they do. They’re pissed off. They’re older, curmudgeon-ly, pissed off guys. They don’t trust anyone, and I do think that’s part of their longevity. They don’t trust anyone to do anything for them. They got tied up with Jello Biafra’s label, and they had problems with that and Jello didn’t prove to be the saint that he seems to be. Just another guy who gets drunk and wants money sometimes. So they keep being disappointed. As the Hanson Brothers they were asked to sing at an all-star hockey game in Vancouver a couple of years ago, and they could have hung around and done the banquet thing with Wayne Gretsky, but they were totally offended by everything and left right away. I thought, you guys! You just gotta relax. But they do not, and I guess that’s their strength.
What about people who only appeared on your show, like the Maurice Pooby’s of the nation? How many were there?
The two big ones were Maurice Pooby and a woman from Winnipeg, Eve Rice, whose band is called Vav Jungle, a bizarre little outfit. She’s very out there and I think she creates pretty nifty music. She got into putting music on tape after I invited people to write theme music for the show. She wrote a terrific one, opening theme, and I just loved it and encouraged her. So she made tapes for me and eventually distributed them on her own label. She’d do stuff like team up with a 50-year old go-go dancer, just bizarre. I don’t think she’d be in music if it wasn’t for Night Lines. As for Pooby, I played some of his stuff for Dr. Demento, and I said, would you be interested if he sent you some of his stuff? He said, ‘Oh yeah, I’d play it all the time!’ I contacted Pooby and he said, ‘Ah, I don’t care.’ Interesting guy. He still sends me cassettes, far fewer now. Some pretty brilliant stuff.
The first time I heard Ween I thought it was him. When did he start sending you stuff?
It was very early. I’d say about ‘89 was when he started making music. He’s the genuine article. He lives by himself on a very secluded island off the coast, and he’s a doper.
When did you notice a lot of the east coast stuff coming in?
It got to me gradually, being on the other end of the country. I was really surprised. I didn’t know how popular Sloan were until they were really popular. That surprised me entirely. When their CD was picked as the #1 Cdn album ever on Chart I thought, woah, I missed this! I knew them and thought they were fine, but I had no idea. I’ve come to really enjoy their music, but that snuck up on me. But it was more people telling me how great the Halifax scene was; I didn’t have that much evidence of it. There was a band called NFA, garage punk guys who have been making music for years. Whenever a band goes through New Brunswick, they would stay on these guys’ floor. They would send me stuff. But I think Julie Doiron is great, I really liked those singles she did as Broken Girl. I thought there was some real raw music coming out of there that I liked.
Was it primarily you programming the entire show?
It was me. After six months. I was listening to these college guys, and they would have had me playing Skinny Puppy and Ministry far too much. It was just me and the audience, obviously. I was turned on to stuff through their requests. But I didn’t want anyone else to do it at all.
So the mandate was entirely in your hands.
I sort of slipped through the cracks for ten years. They knew I was there; they knew I was getting good response. Bascially nobody said a word to me for ten years. They just let me do it. It was the best job I ever had, and I’d do it again. In fact, I might do it again. [Shortly after this conversation, Wisdom had another brief stint hosting in the Night Lines slot, on a show called Radio On.]
After having been ignored for years, how did the show come to an end?
That was a case of a woman who came in to take over the head of Radio Two programming, and thought she should make changes just for the sake of making changes. Since that time she’s long gone, and her legacy was instrumental in destroying a lot of what was good about CBC Radio.
How did Brave New Waves survive?
Because it can, when it chooses to, be seen in that camp of academic, serious music. A guy named Alec Frame, who’s fundamentally the head of Radio Two now, has always thought it was a good show. Sometimes all it takes is that one guy who’s going to stick around and be an administrator for years who likes you and will support you. I think that’s happened with them. They’ve been on so long that they have a devoted audience.
And one that’s changed.
I preferred the show during Brent’s day only because I thought it was funnier.
I was wondering about the last show. Where did you broadcast that from?
It was outside the CBC building here on the plaza. It was the night that Princess Diana died, so there were a lot of distracted people. I did it in front of an audience; there weren’t that many of them there, but Maurice Pooby was there, and people flew in from Detroit, the Maritimes and Toronto. It was very nice. I got champagne and people clapped at the end. It was fun.
Did you know the Diana news when you were broadcasting?
My wife told me about a third of the way through. I made the decision not to mention it and not to even refer to it, because I didn’t know the facts. I think I was right to do that, but I know a lot of people buggered off to watch CNN.
I remember Grant Lawrence on that show talking about his phone-ins over the years. Were there other band people who would do those?
He was a good one, because he took it kind of professionally. He did it from Japan. But we had this thing going where he was always a bit over the line. He was quite foul, actually, and I always had to yell at him to cover up his foulness, but we enjoyed doing that together and still do.
The Rheostatics session on the last show...
I loved that.
How long before was it recorded?
They were the first ones I wanted to do a session with. But basically, they were in Toronto, and it was and still is very hard to get technicians at the CBC to record bands there. It’s almost impossible. I’d always have to go to Toronto and record bands at the Horseshoe before I’d even get to hear them live. But the Rheos one couldn’t have been better. They had “The Pooby Song” and everything. It made me think that the whole thing had a purpose to it and had been worthwhile and was a part of something going on in Canadian music. That’s what the Rheostatics doing that session accomplished.
-end-
David Wisdom hosted the weekend overnight show Night Lines, BNW's sister program, between 1987 and 1997; he was then bounced to an awkward prime time slot hosting Radio Sonic, where he was audibly uncomfortable until management begrudgingly switched him back to late nights and moved Grant Lawrence to prime time Saturday night--a slot Mr. Lawrence is also surrendering this weekend.
In the meantime, Wisdom has been hosting a 90-minute disc show called Pearls of Wisdom, which is little more than an old-timey record geek show. Which is all it has to be. The first time I heard it, years ago, I was put off by its conservative nature: lots of old-timey jazz, swing and folk music, mixed in with some current Canadiana, primarily aimed at the nursing home crowd. Now that I'm deep into my middle age, I've grown to appreciate it in recent months, as a Sunday night wind-down while cooking dinner. Wisdom remains an unpretentious, amiable and congenial host with an encyclopaedic knowledge and a massive record collection: which, regardless of genre, is exactly the kind of radio I love the most.
Pearls of Wisdom also calls it quits this weekend (not by choice, I'm betting), which seemed like reason enough to resurrect this 2000 interview I conducted with Wisdom for the book Have Not Been the Same. In it he talks not only about Night Lines, but its predecessors, about Canadian music in the late 80s, and about his (and my) favourite Canadian band of all time, the Rheostatics--who, in this month of bloodletting, also call it quits at the end of the month.
Seriously, WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON??!!! March 2007: it's the CanCon apocalpyse, let me tell you. Next thing you know, both NoMeansNo and the Tragically Hip will announce their break-ups before the 31st.
Quick side note: anyone wondering what Patti Schmidt has been doing lately should go to the Ninja Tune website and download their podcast promoting the new Amon Tobin album. It's sort of in the style of a BNW profile, only without announcing track titles (grrrr). It's lovely to hear her voice and writing style alive again, and outside the weight of the BNW drama winding up this week. Hopefully she'll do more for them; frankly, I was hoping for an interview with Tobin, considering that she and he are close friends and video game junkies. She also helped him get busy with the bees on his new album.
I have no idea what Wisdom's next move is. But knowing what I know about CBC politics and his own reputation as a cantankerous curmudgeon off-mic, I'd be surprised if he's still on the air. It's a sad time for the veteran warhorses.
David Wisdom
August 30 2000
locale: phone interview from his office in Vancouver
How long have you been in Vancouver? I know you were born in England.
I’ve lived in Vancouver for most of my life. I moved here when I was a small boy. I went back and lived in England between 1969 and 1971, when I was still in university, and then went back at various times. I got my Canadian citizenship in 1992, partly inspired by the Rheostatics music, and that’s the truth.
Were you doing campus radio?
No, I’ve never done campus radio and I’ve never taken training in radio. I was working at CBC as a producer on the Vicki Gabereau show and doing stories for her. I had a huge record collection. I collected 45s mainly, in the early days in the 60s and 70s, but then I got heavily into it around the time of punk rock, between ‘77 and ‘80. I went and got a whole lot of records. When they wanted someone to do Night Lines, I was hired because I had the software more than the skills.
Rumour has it you do have the biggest record collection in Vancouver.
I once had. Last year I sold the bulk of my punk/new wave singles to Zulu Records, which in part financed a trip to Europe this year with my family.
When did you start at the CBC?
The day Elvis died in 1977; it was August of ‘77. I was working in the record library, they didn’t want to put stuff like the Sex Pistols in. I remember at one point them saying, ‘What’s the point in putting this Devo record in when nobody will be listening to it in two years’ time?’ Terry David Mulligan had the youth show on the CBC at that time, Gold Rush, I think it was called, and he refused to play the Buzzcocks as examples of good music in the ‘70s, and I went up against him on that one. I think the CBC saw things were changing.
Brave New Waves and Night Lines were my introduction to so-called “pop” music on the CBC; what came before them?
They’ve always tried to be a little bit ahead. They had this show called the Great Canadian Gold Rush hosted by Terry David Mulligan, and for the time it was playing whatever there was, like Lighthouse and such. Then they tried to get considerably hipper, and they got a guy named J.D. Shane and a show called Neon, which was considerably more...
Progressive?
Well, if you want to use that word. They were more interested in new stuff, and I was allowed to go on his show and do items on various things -- mostly English music, which was my all-consuming interest for many years.
Did you perform with or were you just on the recording for UJ3RK5 (I pronounced it 'you jerks')
It was pronounced 'you-jerk,' actually -- the 5 was silent. I was a full-time member, I was singing and wrote some of the songs. When they went to make the record, I was leaving the band, and therefore didn’t play keyboards on the record or sing lead. I was still a member, but I was getting out of the band.
Was that a fairly active band?
It was more active than we wanted it to be. Everybody had real jobs, and there were some famous artists in the band: Jeff Wall, Rodney Graham, and Ian Wallace, who were getting to be quite famous at the time. The music, we were inspired by the tenor of the time, just the fact that people were making music and doing it themselves. We played when we were asked to play, but it was really a secondary thing. Then we got signed by Polydor Records, who wanted us to tour. As soon as they put these kind of considerations before us, we basically fell apart, because we didn’t want to make it a full time deal at all. It was just for fun.
Was that unusual at the time, to be offered a deal for such a laid-back band?
It was pretty unusual. There weren’t that many bands in Vancouver who were being wooed by major labels at all.
The Payola$ and who else, really?
Yeah. To some degree the Pointed Sticks. Not really much else happening. We were quite surprised.
You took over the show in 1987. Do you recall the reaction around the CBC when those shows started in ‘84?
Both started fundamentally at the same time. Augusta LaPaix was the first Brave New Waves host and Ron Robinson was the host of Night Lines for the first one or two seasons, then it was Ralph Benmurgui. There was -- and still is -- resistance to the fact that there is such a thing as what they consider pop music on the CBC. There are still producers here who think it’s killing the CBC and don’t understand why it’s on. Brave New Waves and to a lesser degree Night Lines was considered just way, way out there. Brave New Waves got away with it earlier because they had a certain academic cachet to them. They played what was considered art music, electro-acoustic stuff. It had a more serious tone to it. With Night Lines, I wasn’t sure what to do at the beginning. I knew I had to play a lot of Canadian music, and I didn’t know a whole lot about Canadian music, so I went out and started listening to anything Canadian I could find. I tried for the first two or three seasons to please everyone, and then I figured to hell with them -- I’m just going to play the music I really like.
How long do you think it took you before you settled into that role?
I was sort of nervous at the beginning. I had a couple of guys who were campus radio guys telling me what I should be playing. I was being pushed into areas that I wasn’t at all comfortable with. It took me a year and a half to settle in and really feel that the show was my own, and really feel that people did appreciate what I was playing, and that there was an audience for the kind of ideas I had: non-elitist, and a wide-ranging variety of music.
Were you aware of the impact the show had before you took over? Was it widely listened-to in Vancouver?
I think so. Whenever you take over a show that has a following, there are always going to be people who are going to complain that it’s not the same, and those were the first things I heard. Obviously. Ralph Benmurgui was -- and is -- slicker than I could ever be on the radio. But I wasn’t too worried about that. I knew what I was talking about, I knew about the music, and I worried more about my presentation rather than my lack of knowledge; I had no concern about that.
Was it live back then?
Yes it was. We did it live for years and years. I’d be here until two in the morning. One night it was from 10PM to 5AM, and we did it three hours ahead of time so it would go live to the maritimes. I was sitting there for seven hours for years, doing shows straight through on the weekend.
When did that change?
It changed when real severe cuts were starting to come in, and I was not able to have a technician on the weekends. Then I had to take whatever time I could get in the studio, whenever technicians were available. So we started pre-taping on Thursday and Friday afternoons.
You mention that your knowledge of Cdn music was limited when you took the reins. Who were your favourites beforehand?
I was very Vancouver-centric. We always had an idea that Vancouver music was cooler than Toronto music. Toronto music had a certain kind of feeling that we thought was much more show biz, like Carole Pope. In the beginning of the early days of punk, when there were people like the Poles and the Viletones, we thought, ‘Oh, Toronto people have it wrong. We have DOA, Los Popularos, and a much better music scene going on in Vancouver. So I basically knew very little about music outside of Vancouver until I took over that show and made myself listen to everything I could.
Do you think the show became different when it moved to Vancouver, other than the obvious change in the hosts’ style?
Absolutely it changed. I was much more than an indie kind of guy than Ralph and Ross Porter, who was producing it. I’ve always liked a more rough and independent music rather than anything slick. I shy away from bands when they get too popular. I remember them playing a much slicker sound, and then I got into Og Records’ series of It Came From Canada. I can’t tell you how important that series was. Because on those compilations were early cuts from the likes of Ray Condo and Cowboy Junkies, to the weird bands like the Supreme Bagg Team and Chris Houston’s band. I became aware of a much wider range of music, and started to realize that there was a really interesting kind of music that was different -- everything was different from each other, but there was a similar sensibility to it. There was actually something of a Canadian sound, which had a sense of humour to it. Since the late ‘70s, it’s had a really good sense of humour. I’m thinking of people like the Dik Van Dykes, who were not a big favourite band of mine, but they were loose and didn’t take themselves too seriously. I’ve always enjoyed that kind of music.
Gerard and Tony [of Deja Voodoo and Og] have told me that they also sought out people with some kind of sense of tradition. Not necessarily Ray Condo tradition -- although that was certainly part of it, but just people who had roots in something. They always hated hardcore music for example. The early Asexuals didn’t show up on those compilations. Those comps also gave the illusion of a network of people across the country.
It wove around the record store people, too. Record stores are always really important in music scenes, and there were two here in Vancouver: Track Records and Quintessence, which later became Zulu. The guys who worked there were musicians and turned me on to a whole lot of stuff. I remember going into Track Records, and the guy behind the counter said, “Hey, we just got onto this Og compilation.” He was in the Zamboni Drivers, and this was just a guy down the street. I thought, ‘this is great, the guy down the street just got on this fabulous It Came From Canada, volume whatever.’
You mention the regionalism before and people turning their noses at other cities, and I was wondering about the effect of those comps out west.
It was an absolute real thing. There’s always this contempt, which is made a lot of in the media, about Vancouver dismissing Toronto. It is real, it’s certainly a real thing, although less so than it was years ago. We always thought we had a much better music scene than Toronto did. I certainly don’t agree with that anymore. It isn’t the case now. It may have had some measure of truth to it a while ago, but it hasn’t been that way for years.
I’m trying to picture you immersing yourself in Canadian music trying to fill your playlist in 1987. Who else did you discover that excited you?
I’m trying to remember too, because it was 13 years ago. When I started thinking about what I was going to talk to you about, I was trying to remember those early bands and that time. I was being pushed into this direction of industrial and really hardcore goth bands that I really never liked, like Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly. The young guys I had from campus radio were saying that this was all the rage, that this was the absolute thing right now, bands from the United States such as Ministry were really big time. But I could never warm up to that. What really opened my eyes to the regions across Canada was when I opened the phone lines up and took calls. I would ask the listeners to not just request something, but they had to answer a skill-testing question as well: recite a poem they just made up, tell a joke or answer a tough question or something. It was amusing, but I’d also learn a whole lot about what was going on in different cities by what they’d request. Then I’d go out and try to find it. For the most part, I’d think, well, this is pretty good, and then I’d fill out my playlists to that kind of stuff.
How many calls would you get a week?
It was so big that I had to shut it down after a few years because I just couldn’t keep up with it. I would put in a 90 minute tape, because this was done before any digital equipment, and it was just an answering machine with a cassette running around. I’d have to come down in the middle of the night to turn the tape over. It was always filled.
Or broken, I recall.
Yeah, it broke a lot. And sometimes it “broke” just because I couldn’t face listening to hours of phone calls! But it was great, and it was part of what made the show really interesting. Over the years there was a revolving cast of really interesting callers. Some one-time only, but more often some semi-regulars that people recognized.
They also often had testimonials. If people were phoning for the first time, they’d say things like, “I can’t tell you how many times this show saved my life.”
(Sighs). Whenever I’m somewhere where people talk to me and say, “Oh, I really like you on the radio,” they never talk to me about RadioSonic. They always go back to Night Lines. And I appreciate that. I think it was a real show and it had a real personality. I think when you’re broadcasting in the middle of the night, you get people who really do listen and really do care about music, other than casual listeners who might just have it on in the car. I think the time of the night is really important for that. I do think we played the best music available and found new stuff that other radio stations would never, never broadcast. I wish I could be more specific about the bands, but it’s somewhat of a blur. I keep trying to think ahead.
When did you first hear Rheostatics? Did someone send you Greatest Hits in the mail?
Somebody told me about a song about a hockey player. I went to a record store and said, ‘What’s this song about Wendel Clark?’ I think it was Track Records. I found Greatest Hits on LP, it had just come out. I thought every song was really, really good. I liked the sound right away. There was something funny about it, but at the core it was something serious. It wasn’t trivial. It sounded like people who really cared about what they were doing. It also sounded really Canadian to me. It sounded like the music came from where it came from, rather than aping any English or American sound. And despite the fact that the guys were pretty young, there was something a little older about them. They weren’t posers at all, there was nothing of that in them. I read that through the music before I ever talked to them. I dunno, I guess I got to know them over time and did little items on them whenever I could. I got to know Dave [Bidini] quite well.
They always did very well in Vancouver.
They have always had rabid fans here. The few gigs I’ve been to here, I was surprised by the variety of ages: young people as well as people in their 30s or early 40s who know all the words. I’d be guessing if I tried to figure out why they especially connected with audiences out here, I just don’t know. But it’s true, they certainly do have believers rather than just fans or people who really love them. The last time I saw them was an in-store at a Chapters bookstore, and everyone was just thrilled. The four of them sat on stools and played guitars, and it was like Crosby Stills Nash & Young. Only good!
Did you follow them through the breakup?
I did. I was kept abreast of what was going on. When I talk to Dave about this, the lowest time for the Rheostatics was when they were the most popular, when they were whisked off to the West Indies to make that album. And I think that’s their weakest, and I think they lost track of things a bit around that time. I’ve not been disappointed by anything since, though. I think Melville is one of the great Canadian albums. I put it up there with music by The Band and Neil Young, their very best work. That period of their output was great, with Whale Music. When I was being sworn in as a Canadian citizen, “Northern Wish” was the song running through my head. It still moves me deeply, that record.
I recall you playing that song next to “Whispering Pines” on the last Night Lines show.
I think I’ve done those two songs together more than once. It works really well.
I’m wondering about other bands from that period that affected you perhaps not that deeply, but closely.
I like rock’n’roll. I was quite turned on by that band, what’s their name, they made three albums -- my God! Sons of Freedom. I thought they were really great. I think there are some good strong bands who have lasted a long time. 54.40 have a lot of merit and have their own sound. I like the Doughboys -- even though they were called imitative. I thought there was quite a spate of good melodic, hard rockin’ Canadian music for quite a long time. I’m not sure that’s still the case. That might have peaked when the Halifax scene was still going. I thought there were tons of really good bands. I had no problem trying to find stuff to play.
There was a lot of indie product after 1990, for a lot of reasons.
Nowadays I see five times more records than I’ve ever seen in my life, because I’m sitting in an office with people who are working on these web sites [the nascent CBC Radio 3]. They’re soliciting every single CD that anyone has ever even thought of making. A lot of them, they shouldn’t be here at all. A lot of them are demos, they’re hardly work at all. I would need to step back; there’s so much music that I can’t put my finger on anything in particular to make me think hey, this is a really good period for music right now. It’s hard to see.
Were there certain bands that you felt Night Lines helped to break?
I know there were. We started doing our sessions about half way through, in ‘91. Some bands we really did give a leg up to. I’m thinking of a band like Cub. They became popular through touring and the novelty aspect of three women, but I think we played them a lot and recorded sessions with them when they were just getting their chops together. I don’t know if that had anything to do with them getting popular, but I think it did. We helped a lot of bands. I don’t know how many of them are around still or even involved in music, but I was really happy when we started doing sessions. Brave New Waves was doing sessions, and I really wanted to do that.
What about Jr. Gone Wild?
Actually, Calgary really began to happen in the ‘90s as well. There were great bands coming out of Calgary for a while. Like the Primrods, those garage-y types. I’m thinking of the Von Zippers now, but they’re quite recent. Chixdiggit, Huevos Rancheros, and even a bit before that, I thought there was something really good about the Calgary music scene. It was really small, but everyone was really into helping each other, and I thought it was pretty vibrant and fun for a good long time. Edmonton used to be a music city, especially in the ‘70s it was quite a stop for blues and such, but I know less about Edmonton than Calgary these days. But Jr. Gone Wild were certainly a band that had Vancouver connections: Ford Pier and so forth. I knew a bit more about them.
What can you tell me about Herald Nix?
He’s a guy who’s considered -- in a way, sort of like Art Bergmann -- to be a talent, a real natural songwriter with -- in a similar vein to Art Bergmann -- personal problems that have prevented him from ever getting it together. But Herald Nix plays semi-regularly in Vancouver, and he has a very hardcore following of fans who think that this is a guy who really can write great songs. But that might be as far as it goes. The recordings have been dubious and few. He’s on a few local compilations, but there’s been very little. He’s one of those guys that plays locally, but rarely records successfully, if at all.
What was the impact of labels like Zulu and Mint? They were synonymous with Vancouver.
Zulu, which was Quintessence before, was very important. The recent three reissues that Zulu put out of Young Canadians, Pointed Sticks and the Modernettes, those were important. I think Zulu blew it by signing bands who refused to tour or couldn’t get it together to tour. They put out some pretty keen stuff, but couldn’t follow it up. Mint is a label run by true believers who do it for the love of it. It has that Nardwuar the Human Serviette aspect of it, a real indie...
That’s an adjective now, is it? The Nardwuar aspect?
Yes, like a funny middle finger to the rest of the world. They’ll never make any dough. Neko Case was a big deal for them, but she’s gone now. She got too popular. Zulu is still a centre of intense musical activity. They have instore performances. I don’t think they’re going to put out any more CDs for a while. I don’t think you can underestimate the importance of record stores and labels.
Did you follow the Slow saga at all?
I wish I could say I was at their performance at Expo 86 when they dropped trou, but I just heard about it the next day. But they were and still are legendary. The guys that are in Copyright, are still in a way local heroes. They captured something of the times, and they were great.
What about NoMeansNo? They always seemed to be outsiders.
They are outsiders.
Maybe that’s the reason for their longevity.
That absolutely may be the case. Because they don’t play very often. They play once every two years at the Commodore Ballroom, and they’ll fill it up. But the rest of the time they’re in Slovenia or Finland. If I can be delicate, those guys are difficult guys. The Wright Brothers, Tom Holliston, and Andy Kerr before. I get on well with them, but they are basically offended by everything they see in the world, and it’s hard to get along and function with that sense. But at the same time, that’s what spurs them into doing what they do. They’re pissed off. They’re older, curmudgeon-ly, pissed off guys. They don’t trust anyone, and I do think that’s part of their longevity. They don’t trust anyone to do anything for them. They got tied up with Jello Biafra’s label, and they had problems with that and Jello didn’t prove to be the saint that he seems to be. Just another guy who gets drunk and wants money sometimes. So they keep being disappointed. As the Hanson Brothers they were asked to sing at an all-star hockey game in Vancouver a couple of years ago, and they could have hung around and done the banquet thing with Wayne Gretsky, but they were totally offended by everything and left right away. I thought, you guys! You just gotta relax. But they do not, and I guess that’s their strength.
What about people who only appeared on your show, like the Maurice Pooby’s of the nation? How many were there?
The two big ones were Maurice Pooby and a woman from Winnipeg, Eve Rice, whose band is called Vav Jungle, a bizarre little outfit. She’s very out there and I think she creates pretty nifty music. She got into putting music on tape after I invited people to write theme music for the show. She wrote a terrific one, opening theme, and I just loved it and encouraged her. So she made tapes for me and eventually distributed them on her own label. She’d do stuff like team up with a 50-year old go-go dancer, just bizarre. I don’t think she’d be in music if it wasn’t for Night Lines. As for Pooby, I played some of his stuff for Dr. Demento, and I said, would you be interested if he sent you some of his stuff? He said, ‘Oh yeah, I’d play it all the time!’ I contacted Pooby and he said, ‘Ah, I don’t care.’ Interesting guy. He still sends me cassettes, far fewer now. Some pretty brilliant stuff.
The first time I heard Ween I thought it was him. When did he start sending you stuff?
It was very early. I’d say about ‘89 was when he started making music. He’s the genuine article. He lives by himself on a very secluded island off the coast, and he’s a doper.
When did you notice a lot of the east coast stuff coming in?
It got to me gradually, being on the other end of the country. I was really surprised. I didn’t know how popular Sloan were until they were really popular. That surprised me entirely. When their CD was picked as the #1 Cdn album ever on Chart I thought, woah, I missed this! I knew them and thought they were fine, but I had no idea. I’ve come to really enjoy their music, but that snuck up on me. But it was more people telling me how great the Halifax scene was; I didn’t have that much evidence of it. There was a band called NFA, garage punk guys who have been making music for years. Whenever a band goes through New Brunswick, they would stay on these guys’ floor. They would send me stuff. But I think Julie Doiron is great, I really liked those singles she did as Broken Girl. I thought there was some real raw music coming out of there that I liked.
Was it primarily you programming the entire show?
It was me. After six months. I was listening to these college guys, and they would have had me playing Skinny Puppy and Ministry far too much. It was just me and the audience, obviously. I was turned on to stuff through their requests. But I didn’t want anyone else to do it at all.
So the mandate was entirely in your hands.
I sort of slipped through the cracks for ten years. They knew I was there; they knew I was getting good response. Bascially nobody said a word to me for ten years. They just let me do it. It was the best job I ever had, and I’d do it again. In fact, I might do it again. [Shortly after this conversation, Wisdom had another brief stint hosting in the Night Lines slot, on a show called Radio On.]
After having been ignored for years, how did the show come to an end?
That was a case of a woman who came in to take over the head of Radio Two programming, and thought she should make changes just for the sake of making changes. Since that time she’s long gone, and her legacy was instrumental in destroying a lot of what was good about CBC Radio.
How did Brave New Waves survive?
Because it can, when it chooses to, be seen in that camp of academic, serious music. A guy named Alec Frame, who’s fundamentally the head of Radio Two now, has always thought it was a good show. Sometimes all it takes is that one guy who’s going to stick around and be an administrator for years who likes you and will support you. I think that’s happened with them. They’ve been on so long that they have a devoted audience.
And one that’s changed.
I preferred the show during Brent’s day only because I thought it was funnier.
I was wondering about the last show. Where did you broadcast that from?
It was outside the CBC building here on the plaza. It was the night that Princess Diana died, so there were a lot of distracted people. I did it in front of an audience; there weren’t that many of them there, but Maurice Pooby was there, and people flew in from Detroit, the Maritimes and Toronto. It was very nice. I got champagne and people clapped at the end. It was fun.
Did you know the Diana news when you were broadcasting?
My wife told me about a third of the way through. I made the decision not to mention it and not to even refer to it, because I didn’t know the facts. I think I was right to do that, but I know a lot of people buggered off to watch CNN.
I remember Grant Lawrence on that show talking about his phone-ins over the years. Were there other band people who would do those?
He was a good one, because he took it kind of professionally. He did it from Japan. But we had this thing going where he was always a bit over the line. He was quite foul, actually, and I always had to yell at him to cover up his foulness, but we enjoyed doing that together and still do.
The Rheostatics session on the last show...
I loved that.
How long before was it recorded?
They were the first ones I wanted to do a session with. But basically, they were in Toronto, and it was and still is very hard to get technicians at the CBC to record bands there. It’s almost impossible. I’d always have to go to Toronto and record bands at the Horseshoe before I’d even get to hear them live. But the Rheos one couldn’t have been better. They had “The Pooby Song” and everything. It made me think that the whole thing had a purpose to it and had been worthwhile and was a part of something going on in Canadian music. That’s what the Rheostatics doing that session accomplished.
-end-
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Arcade Fire
Two of the longest months of my professional life--for a multitude of reasons, high and low--culminate with my Arcade Fire article, which runs today on AOL Canada here. Enjoy!
I spent a week with the band in Montreal during the week of their secret warm-up shows in January: hanging out at rehearsals at the church, going to the shows, and even stalking them at their earplug-fitting appointments, because interview time that week was so scarce that even their personal assistant suggested such an ambush. Three hours of interviews with Win, Regine, Tim, Jeremy and Richie may well eventually appear somewhere else, in some form, but in the meantime the AOL piece is timed (obviously) with today's release date of Neon Bible. A few of the more hyperbolic adjectives were editorial insertions.
I spent a week with the band in Montreal during the week of their secret warm-up shows in January: hanging out at rehearsals at the church, going to the shows, and even stalking them at their earplug-fitting appointments, because interview time that week was so scarce that even their personal assistant suggested such an ambush. Three hours of interviews with Win, Regine, Tim, Jeremy and Richie may well eventually appear somewhere else, in some form, but in the meantime the AOL piece is timed (obviously) with today's release date of Neon Bible. A few of the more hyperbolic adjectives were editorial insertions.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Long Waves Goodbye
The CBC Radio changes take effect soon, which means there's only a few weeks left of Brave New Waves, or what's left of it. If you can't stay up past 1am to hear the archived shows that ex-host/producer Patti Schmidt has been curating since September, then be sure to check out this page with links to streamed interviews from the archives, though mostly focused on the years 2001-2005.
There you'll find one element that absolutely does not have any place in the new CBC schedule: in-depth, up-to-an-hour-long interviews. No one else on the network does them regularly anymore, other than the incomparable Eleanor Wachtel, and it's something that Brave New Waves and Ms. Schmidt, never, ever got credit for in recent years--no doubt because they always started at 1am. But what better time to immerse yourself in a deep, fascinating conversation with the counter-culture? These chats were the antidote to everything else in mainstream media today, and not just for their content--they're a slap in the face to 30-second soundbites and a media world where a 15-minute conversation is an eternity. When it was part of my job to book these interviews and explain to publicists and/or artists what we needed to happen, it was often hard to convince people that yes, we really needed them for a full hour, and that the conversation would air relatively unedited.
Admittedly, some of them are too long. But many aren't long enough, like the one with Matmos, which remains one of my favourite interviews ever: both the subject and the interviewer are completely simpatico, able to communicate avant-garde ideas with offhand dry wit and a delicious sense of discovery.
Who knows how long the BNW website will be up after the show is kaput, so I'd highly advise you to schedule some quality web radio time in the next week and a half.
Here's a partial list of interviews on the site:
Aesop Rock
Ellen Allien
Anticon (Dose One and Sole, I think)
Jello Biafra (right before the FTAA summit in Quebec)
The Books (who sampled Schmidt on one of their albums)
Boom Bip
Coil
Rhys Chatham
Billy Childish
Deadbeat
Matthew Dear
Jim DeRogatis (talking about his Lester Bangs biography)
Jason Forrest/Donna Summer
Warren Ellis (Dirty Three)
El-P
Evolution Control Committee
The Ex
Frog Eyes
G7 Welcoming Committee
Diamanda Galas
Bruce Gilbert (of Wire)
Michael Gira
John S. Hall (King Missile—this one’s hilarious)
Hrvatski
Kid606
Kid Koala (circa his graphic novel)
Felix Kubin (very funny)
Mike Ladd (Infesticons, etc)
The Locust
Ian MacKaye (Dischord anniversary compilation)
Manitoba (very early)
Matmos (one of my favourite interviews ever)
Ben McOsker (Load Records)
Mountain Goats (he plays a few songs)
Mr. Lif
The Need
Alexis O’Hara
Old Time Relijun
Prince Paul
Pole
Polmo Polpo
Sage Francis (great one)
Solvent and Lowfish (Suction Records)
Chris Ware (graphic novelist)
Wolf Eyes (pre-Sub Pop)
Xiu Xiu
There you'll find one element that absolutely does not have any place in the new CBC schedule: in-depth, up-to-an-hour-long interviews. No one else on the network does them regularly anymore, other than the incomparable Eleanor Wachtel, and it's something that Brave New Waves and Ms. Schmidt, never, ever got credit for in recent years--no doubt because they always started at 1am. But what better time to immerse yourself in a deep, fascinating conversation with the counter-culture? These chats were the antidote to everything else in mainstream media today, and not just for their content--they're a slap in the face to 30-second soundbites and a media world where a 15-minute conversation is an eternity. When it was part of my job to book these interviews and explain to publicists and/or artists what we needed to happen, it was often hard to convince people that yes, we really needed them for a full hour, and that the conversation would air relatively unedited.
Admittedly, some of them are too long. But many aren't long enough, like the one with Matmos, which remains one of my favourite interviews ever: both the subject and the interviewer are completely simpatico, able to communicate avant-garde ideas with offhand dry wit and a delicious sense of discovery.
Who knows how long the BNW website will be up after the show is kaput, so I'd highly advise you to schedule some quality web radio time in the next week and a half.
Here's a partial list of interviews on the site:
Aesop Rock
Ellen Allien
Anticon (Dose One and Sole, I think)
Jello Biafra (right before the FTAA summit in Quebec)
The Books (who sampled Schmidt on one of their albums)
Boom Bip
Coil
Rhys Chatham
Billy Childish
Deadbeat
Matthew Dear
Jim DeRogatis (talking about his Lester Bangs biography)
Jason Forrest/Donna Summer
Warren Ellis (Dirty Three)
El-P
Evolution Control Committee
The Ex
Frog Eyes
G7 Welcoming Committee
Diamanda Galas
Bruce Gilbert (of Wire)
Michael Gira
John S. Hall (King Missile—this one’s hilarious)
Hrvatski
Kid606
Kid Koala (circa his graphic novel)
Felix Kubin (very funny)
Mike Ladd (Infesticons, etc)
The Locust
Ian MacKaye (Dischord anniversary compilation)
Manitoba (very early)
Matmos (one of my favourite interviews ever)
Ben McOsker (Load Records)
Mountain Goats (he plays a few songs)
Mr. Lif
The Need
Alexis O’Hara
Old Time Relijun
Prince Paul
Pole
Polmo Polpo
Sage Francis (great one)
Solvent and Lowfish (Suction Records)
Chris Ware (graphic novelist)
Wolf Eyes (pre-Sub Pop)
Xiu Xiu
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Neon Bible
My week with the Arcade Fire last January will be touched on in an article for AOL next week. In the meantime, here's a review of an album I've had the immense pleasure of immersing myself in for two months now.
Cheeseball ending, I know.
Arcade Fire – Neon Bible (Merge)
When your first album sells half a million copies—independently, no less—there’s an acute danger of everything changing for the worse by the time you finish the follow-up. For most bands, this means a variety of potential pitfalls. At the top of the list would be a capitulation to expectation rather than furthering your original vision.
Arcade Fire are not ‘most bands.’ For starters, they’ve stayed independent and produced the album themselves: two decisions that tie in directly with the fact that Neon Bible maintains the mystique that was so central to the sonic success of 2004’s Funeral.
There’s obviously a bigger budget in play, and they’ve upped the fidelity while still managing to break all the rules of modern hit radio, While still very much a rock record, the world of Neon Bible is one where all the lines bleed into each other, alien sounds hover in the background, traditional instruments sound otherworldly, and you never can tell if what you’re hearing is a human voice, an orchestra, a guitar or a synth. Hell, it might even be a hurdy-gurdy or a treated mandolin.
When it comes to certain sounds, however, there’s no mistaking that they’re playing a massive pipe organ on “Intervention” and “My Body is a Cage,” or that they’ve employed an old-world orchestra (from Budapest, no less) to add to the grandeur of “No Cars Go” and “Ocean of Noise.”
Other big bands would use these tools simply because they can, and then compress these sounds in the mix, making them indistinguishable from any non-descript synth patch. Here, however, the physicality of the acoustics is profoundly evident—which, for a band whose principle strength has always been their live show, makes the bombast more intimate and undeniably more powerful.
There are good reasons why Bruce Springsteen and U2 are outspoken Arcade Fire fans, and on this album’s finest moments, these Montrealers easily manage to match the majestic grandeur of their musical forefathers, likely teaching them a few youthful lessons in the process.
But knowing what kind of stadium-size expectations are being heaped upon Neon Bible, it’s almost as if the Arcade Fire wanted to subvert those by placing their weakest three songs off the top of the disc. “Black Mirror” sounds like a b-side of “Rebellion;” a similar pulsing beat is awash with bended guitar notes and ghostly backward backing vocals that substitute for a serious hook; it’s not until the orchestra comes in two thirds of the way through, playing scales, that the song offers a remotely memorable moment. “Keep the Car Running” doesn’t fare much better, and the hushed title track evaporates after a fleeting two minutes. Intentional or not, those three tracks do a brilliant job of deflating the crushing hype the Arcade Fire never asked for in the first place.
But as soon as the pipe organ announces “Intervention,” a hymn-like wartime folk song, the curtain finally rises and the show truly begins. From that point on, Neon Bible is a gripping thriller, right up to the point that the same pipe organ ends the whole affair on a terrifying suspended chord, at the conclusion of “My Body is a Cage.” In that song, Win Butler asks repeatedly to be set free, but the way that chord lingers and decays, his fate sounds less than optimistic, frozen in a state of uncertainty and questioning.
It’s a mood that is underscored by the lyrics throughout, which paint a portrait of a volatile, uncertain world, ruled by delusion and deception, framed by security cameras and pyramid schemes. Forgiving and forgetting isn’t an option. Families and countries are left behind. Illusions and greed determine our fates. Names are unspoken. Bombs are falling. Black waves are rising. It’s too bad their labelmate M. Ward already used the album title Post-War.
It’s a marked contrast to the neighbourhood portraits and familial self-reflection of Funeral. If that album was about coming to terms with concepts of family and home, Neon Bible is about leaving home and trying to make sense of what the world reflects back to you (“Black Mirror”)—which, more often than not, is a world of twisted theology, crooked politics, and disasters both natural and man-made folly. An “Ocean of Noise,” indeed.
Even if that doom and gloom colours nearly every lyric, thankfully it isn’t the predominant musical mood here. The revamped “No Cars Go” proves exactly what the addition of dextrous drummer Jeremy Gara has done for the band, by taking a tricky, relentless rhythm and upping the tempo and intensity. It’s the one track where optimism reigns, a promise of sanctuary away from the horrors waiting at the windowsill. Tellingly, it’s also the oldest song on the album. The closing, wordless vocal chorus builds to a rapturous climax as the orchestra circles around it, the kind of transcendent musical moment most artists can only fantasize about “between the click of a light and the start of a dream.”
Equally joyous is “The Well and the Lighthouse,” which inverts the structure of Funeral’s “Crown of Love.” That song started as a stately three-step and erupted into a disco closer; this one begins as a thumping, insistent rock number before collapsing into a woozy waltz.
All the stops are pulled out for “(Antichrist Television Blues),” which loads up a 12-bar blues progression with the following: a gospel choir, tap dancing, an omnichord, an insane guitar solo that sounds more like Régine Chassagne screaming through an effects pedal, massive handclaps, violins that swirl and swell into the stratosphere, and a piano that sounds like it was lifted from ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.”
On top of all this Spectoresque splendour, Butler loses his breath and buries his voice under reverb while snarling through the album’s longest set of lyrics, about a Faustian father praying for a progeny whose stardom will liberate him from his humdrum suburban existence. For a band that spent the last year trying to avoid the public eye, this is the one time the perils of fame surfaces as lyrical material—another sophomore cliché successfully sidestepped here. Fortunately for all of us, Butler is simply not vain enough to use his second album to vent about his own celebrity (see: Bloc Party).
Comparisons to Funeral are inevitable, and one knock against the new material is that it largely lacks the singalong melodic lines that defined earlier triumphs like “Rebellion,” “Tunnels,” “Haiti” and “Power Out”—the eight-bar hooks that are entirely independent of the verse or chorus melodies, the ones that curiously become soccer chants in the hands of a hungry live audience, who continue to sing them long after the band’s actually concluded the song.
Other than “No Cars Go,” the only time that happens here is at the end of the ominous “Black Wave/ Bad Vibrations,” which begins as a buoyant new wave ditty about escape, and collapses into a fearful coda with descending glockenspiels, crashing guitar chords and thundering drums. Weaving its way around this is a captivating chorus that could be a choir from a Morricone soundtrack—perhaps a cross between The Mission and one of his Italian horrors.
Just like any other kind of bible, this one is a lot to absorb: sometimes too literal, sometimes too opaque, and hard to grasp at first. Most importantly, it’s certainly not another version of Funeral or even an extension of it. It has its own story to tell, its own mysteries to be discovered. Their lightning blots are still aglow, no fear of being drowned out by the radio.
Cheeseball ending, I know.
Arcade Fire – Neon Bible (Merge)
When your first album sells half a million copies—independently, no less—there’s an acute danger of everything changing for the worse by the time you finish the follow-up. For most bands, this means a variety of potential pitfalls. At the top of the list would be a capitulation to expectation rather than furthering your original vision.
Arcade Fire are not ‘most bands.’ For starters, they’ve stayed independent and produced the album themselves: two decisions that tie in directly with the fact that Neon Bible maintains the mystique that was so central to the sonic success of 2004’s Funeral.
There’s obviously a bigger budget in play, and they’ve upped the fidelity while still managing to break all the rules of modern hit radio, While still very much a rock record, the world of Neon Bible is one where all the lines bleed into each other, alien sounds hover in the background, traditional instruments sound otherworldly, and you never can tell if what you’re hearing is a human voice, an orchestra, a guitar or a synth. Hell, it might even be a hurdy-gurdy or a treated mandolin.
When it comes to certain sounds, however, there’s no mistaking that they’re playing a massive pipe organ on “Intervention” and “My Body is a Cage,” or that they’ve employed an old-world orchestra (from Budapest, no less) to add to the grandeur of “No Cars Go” and “Ocean of Noise.”
Other big bands would use these tools simply because they can, and then compress these sounds in the mix, making them indistinguishable from any non-descript synth patch. Here, however, the physicality of the acoustics is profoundly evident—which, for a band whose principle strength has always been their live show, makes the bombast more intimate and undeniably more powerful.
There are good reasons why Bruce Springsteen and U2 are outspoken Arcade Fire fans, and on this album’s finest moments, these Montrealers easily manage to match the majestic grandeur of their musical forefathers, likely teaching them a few youthful lessons in the process.
But knowing what kind of stadium-size expectations are being heaped upon Neon Bible, it’s almost as if the Arcade Fire wanted to subvert those by placing their weakest three songs off the top of the disc. “Black Mirror” sounds like a b-side of “Rebellion;” a similar pulsing beat is awash with bended guitar notes and ghostly backward backing vocals that substitute for a serious hook; it’s not until the orchestra comes in two thirds of the way through, playing scales, that the song offers a remotely memorable moment. “Keep the Car Running” doesn’t fare much better, and the hushed title track evaporates after a fleeting two minutes. Intentional or not, those three tracks do a brilliant job of deflating the crushing hype the Arcade Fire never asked for in the first place.
But as soon as the pipe organ announces “Intervention,” a hymn-like wartime folk song, the curtain finally rises and the show truly begins. From that point on, Neon Bible is a gripping thriller, right up to the point that the same pipe organ ends the whole affair on a terrifying suspended chord, at the conclusion of “My Body is a Cage.” In that song, Win Butler asks repeatedly to be set free, but the way that chord lingers and decays, his fate sounds less than optimistic, frozen in a state of uncertainty and questioning.
It’s a mood that is underscored by the lyrics throughout, which paint a portrait of a volatile, uncertain world, ruled by delusion and deception, framed by security cameras and pyramid schemes. Forgiving and forgetting isn’t an option. Families and countries are left behind. Illusions and greed determine our fates. Names are unspoken. Bombs are falling. Black waves are rising. It’s too bad their labelmate M. Ward already used the album title Post-War.
It’s a marked contrast to the neighbourhood portraits and familial self-reflection of Funeral. If that album was about coming to terms with concepts of family and home, Neon Bible is about leaving home and trying to make sense of what the world reflects back to you (“Black Mirror”)—which, more often than not, is a world of twisted theology, crooked politics, and disasters both natural and man-made folly. An “Ocean of Noise,” indeed.
Even if that doom and gloom colours nearly every lyric, thankfully it isn’t the predominant musical mood here. The revamped “No Cars Go” proves exactly what the addition of dextrous drummer Jeremy Gara has done for the band, by taking a tricky, relentless rhythm and upping the tempo and intensity. It’s the one track where optimism reigns, a promise of sanctuary away from the horrors waiting at the windowsill. Tellingly, it’s also the oldest song on the album. The closing, wordless vocal chorus builds to a rapturous climax as the orchestra circles around it, the kind of transcendent musical moment most artists can only fantasize about “between the click of a light and the start of a dream.”
Equally joyous is “The Well and the Lighthouse,” which inverts the structure of Funeral’s “Crown of Love.” That song started as a stately three-step and erupted into a disco closer; this one begins as a thumping, insistent rock number before collapsing into a woozy waltz.
All the stops are pulled out for “(Antichrist Television Blues),” which loads up a 12-bar blues progression with the following: a gospel choir, tap dancing, an omnichord, an insane guitar solo that sounds more like Régine Chassagne screaming through an effects pedal, massive handclaps, violins that swirl and swell into the stratosphere, and a piano that sounds like it was lifted from ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.”
On top of all this Spectoresque splendour, Butler loses his breath and buries his voice under reverb while snarling through the album’s longest set of lyrics, about a Faustian father praying for a progeny whose stardom will liberate him from his humdrum suburban existence. For a band that spent the last year trying to avoid the public eye, this is the one time the perils of fame surfaces as lyrical material—another sophomore cliché successfully sidestepped here. Fortunately for all of us, Butler is simply not vain enough to use his second album to vent about his own celebrity (see: Bloc Party).
Comparisons to Funeral are inevitable, and one knock against the new material is that it largely lacks the singalong melodic lines that defined earlier triumphs like “Rebellion,” “Tunnels,” “Haiti” and “Power Out”—the eight-bar hooks that are entirely independent of the verse or chorus melodies, the ones that curiously become soccer chants in the hands of a hungry live audience, who continue to sing them long after the band’s actually concluded the song.
Other than “No Cars Go,” the only time that happens here is at the end of the ominous “Black Wave/ Bad Vibrations,” which begins as a buoyant new wave ditty about escape, and collapses into a fearful coda with descending glockenspiels, crashing guitar chords and thundering drums. Weaving its way around this is a captivating chorus that could be a choir from a Morricone soundtrack—perhaps a cross between The Mission and one of his Italian horrors.
Just like any other kind of bible, this one is a lot to absorb: sometimes too literal, sometimes too opaque, and hard to grasp at first. Most importantly, it’s certainly not another version of Funeral or even an extension of it. It has its own story to tell, its own mysteries to be discovered. Their lightning blots are still aglow, no fear of being drowned out by the radio.
Germans
Just a quick note to link to this article I wrote on the Toronto band Germans in last week's Eye.
Being a self-loathing Kraut (my mother's maiden name is Kuntz, which might have something to do with it), my suspicions of a band called Germans were successfully allayed by this absolutely brilliant video. Even if you don't read the rest of this post, watch it now!
But these Germans have a lot more going for them, namely the fact that it's led by two fascinating local heroes. Leon Taheny is Final Fantasy's right hand man in the studio, and was also behind the boards for some of Ohbijou's lovely debut album. His latest gig is drumming for Sebastien Grainger (Death From Above 1979) in his new solo project, which is opening for Bloc Party this month. The other kaiser in Germans is Aidan Koper, who is not only a celebrated contortionist, but the chaotic keyboardist behind Oh No the Modulator, who were big favourites around the Brave New Waves office. Also involved are two members of We're Marching On and Michael Rozenberg of Better Than Everyone.
To my initial chagrin, all of them showed up for the interview. As a general rule, I try to never interview more than three people at once. Anything else descends into chaos, snippets of overlapping sentences, and very little I can use in an article.
Because they're affable, entertaining and intelligent men, the beer-soaked conversation went far better than I expected. That said, it's not worth transcribing for you here. All the best quotes are in the article.
Being a self-loathing Kraut (my mother's maiden name is Kuntz, which might have something to do with it), my suspicions of a band called Germans were successfully allayed by this absolutely brilliant video. Even if you don't read the rest of this post, watch it now!
But these Germans have a lot more going for them, namely the fact that it's led by two fascinating local heroes. Leon Taheny is Final Fantasy's right hand man in the studio, and was also behind the boards for some of Ohbijou's lovely debut album. His latest gig is drumming for Sebastien Grainger (Death From Above 1979) in his new solo project, which is opening for Bloc Party this month. The other kaiser in Germans is Aidan Koper, who is not only a celebrated contortionist, but the chaotic keyboardist behind Oh No the Modulator, who were big favourites around the Brave New Waves office. Also involved are two members of We're Marching On and Michael Rozenberg of Better Than Everyone.
To my initial chagrin, all of them showed up for the interview. As a general rule, I try to never interview more than three people at once. Anything else descends into chaos, snippets of overlapping sentences, and very little I can use in an article.
Because they're affable, entertaining and intelligent men, the beer-soaked conversation went far better than I expected. That said, it's not worth transcribing for you here. All the best quotes are in the article.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Brampton Indie Arts Festival
I once played in a rock band that insisted on practicing in Brampton. Partially because of that, I quit the band and haven't been back to Brampton since. That was 14 years ago.
Thanks to the wonderfully charismatic Friendly Rich and his Brampton Indie Arts Festival, I found myself there five days in the past week covering the event for CBC Radio 3. Nothing much has changed, other than the fact that this fabulous event gives me great joy by nurturing non-conformity in the surrounding suburbs of Toronto.
My four-part report--including reviews of Marc Ribot, Trevor Dunn & Shelley Burgon, Final Fantasy, Andy Kim, Geoff Berner, Polmo Polpo, Kids on TV, Jon Rae and the River, Ohbijou, The Acorn and Istvan Kantor--can be found here: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Thanks to the wonderfully charismatic Friendly Rich and his Brampton Indie Arts Festival, I found myself there five days in the past week covering the event for CBC Radio 3. Nothing much has changed, other than the fact that this fabulous event gives me great joy by nurturing non-conformity in the surrounding suburbs of Toronto.
My four-part report--including reviews of Marc Ribot, Trevor Dunn & Shelley Burgon, Final Fantasy, Andy Kim, Geoff Berner, Polmo Polpo, Kids on TV, Jon Rae and the River, Ohbijou, The Acorn and Istvan Kantor--can be found here: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Evalyn Parry
First, a tangent: My report on the Brampton Indie Arts Festival this week starts with today's CBC Radio 3 blog entry here. I'll be posting a review there after every night of this event, which is well worth the drive to Brampton--and how often do you get to say that? Tonight's line-up includes Final Fantasy, Marc Ribot, Polmo Polpo and others.
Today's Eye Weekly has a brief Q&A I conducted with Toronto singer/spoken word artist/ playwright/ actor Evalyn Parry. Space consideration only allowed for two brief questions; here is the full text of our lengthy conversation, which was one of my favourites in a while. Not because I'm the biggest fan of her music--I much prefer the sound art she uses to accompany her Meryn Cadell-ish spoken word pieces--but because she's thoughtful, funny and sharp, with her writing offering plenty of food for conversation. She's also the sister of Richard Reed Parry, one of my favourite people from my time in Montreal, who shares all the same qualities.
Evalyn Parry's new album, her third, is called Small Theatres. Her Toronto release show is this Sunday, February 18 at the Gladstone. Other dates can be found here.
Evalyn Parry
February 11, 2007
locale: phone interview from her home in Toronto
Which came first—were you performing songs before theatre?
I went to Concordia in Montreal for theatre school. When I graduated I moved to Toronto, and I had just barely started doing spoken word and songs. It was the kind of thing I’d do occasionally at a cabaret. When I moved to Toronto I started looking for acting work and figured out that I didn’t really want to audition for people, that I wanted to make my own work.
I started some theatre projects with people I’d gone to school with who were interested in similar stuff. That original project involved Anna Chatterton, and now we have a company together. We were working with poetry as our text, and doing unconventional physical theatre stuff. At the same time, I was starting to play out more on open stages.
The spoken word and the music started simultaneously, and I still feel they are these parallel forms. My live shows are always a mix of the two. Even when I’m doing a spoken word festival, I manage to throw in a few songs. And vice-versa, at a music show. Both forms allow different ways of expressing.
You separate the “songs” from the “spoken word” pieces on two discs here, but there are pieces on each disc that could go either way. There are some that are predominantly spoken and then break into a chorus at the end, and there are some that are more developed and arranged musically which have a spoken cadence to them.
It’s true.
Did you always want to separate the two?
On my previous two albums, I’ve mixed in a couple of spoken word tracks with the music. When it comes to other artists, I feel like I listen to music and spoken word quite differently. Even my own recordings, I feel like the spoken word tracks are the ones I want to skip over when listening to the whole record. I wanted to be able to make one record that you would listen to over and over, and have a musical experience, though there are obviously elements of storytelling that cross over there. I wanted to be able to approach the spoken word parts however I wanted, to make each piece work in their own way. It turned out many of them turned out quite musical. Some of the pieces are more novelty pieces that you might only want to hear a couple of times, not over and over again.
Do the spoken word pieces allow you to write more directly? There are certainly direct lyrics in the “songs,” but how do you balance the abstract and the direct?
Spoken word as a form allows you to be more direct, in a way that it would make me cringe if I tried to put it into a song. Which is not to say I don’t stand behind the words of the spoken word pieces, but that form allows a different kind of political expression.
Normally directly political writing doesn’t do it for me, but the topics you focus on here are often topics that I don’t feel are being discussed, are not part of a larger discourse. It’s not like: here’s the headline, here’s the song. With a song like “Bottle This,” I’m appalled that I don’t really read about the politics of bottled water and the larger ramifications of that anywhere in the media.
That’s kind of it. Partly it’s the rage—or outrage—about certain things that there’s a directness to how I feel about it, or how I’m relating to the information, and to my sense of urgency. That piece is a case in point: if I tried to make that into a song, it would be terrible. I think. Maybe it wouldn’t. To rap it out is way more palatable somehow.
It’s interesting performing that piece—it’s relatively new—and it gets a big audience reaction. I don’t know whether I can articulate yet what it is about the form of spoken word, but I guess it translates some of my passion for the subject, and allows me a way of addressing the audience where there’s very little between me and the audience and the subject. It feels like a very potent way to talk about something—and better than giving a lecture.
I have heard it done well before. I’m thinking of Sarah Jones—do you know that woman?
Yeah, she’s great.
There’s the piece she did with DJ Vadim, “This Revolution,” which was not rapping so much as it was a spoken word poem set to music. There were other touchstones I thought of when listening to this. I was a huge fan of Meryn Cadell’s work in the 90s.
She was definitely a big influence from an early age on me.
You grew up in Toronto, at least partially, didn’t you?
Yep.
Did you ever see her?
No, never! I’ve never seen her—or him, now—live. But definitely the early albums, the first two, were in constant rotation in my cassette player.
You take a very similar approach to sound art as a backdrop for the piece, which is something she did very well. And John Switzer produces here, and there are other moments here that remind me of his work with Jane Siberry.
I definitely had a really fun time approaching the spoken word pieces. There was a real freedom and excitement over the production, thinking, ‘How will we do this?’
Was his work with Siberry any influence on why you hired him to do this?
Not directly. I do love Siberry’s early work and the stuff he produced with her. I was looking for the right producer, and kept asking people who they would recommend. I was originally going to work with [her younger brother] Richard [Reed Parry of Arcade Fire and Bell Orchestre], actually, but his life got a bit too crazy. John’s name kept coming up over and over, so I figured we should meet. I was familiar with a bunch of his work, including his more recent stuff like Nathan, this band from Winnipeg that I really love. We met and it was a sympatico situation. It was a long process of recording, partly because we were making two separate things, and partly because all my theatre stuff was happening at the same time. We’d work in chunks and then take time off and come back to it. It was probably the most patient project I’ve ever worked on. It required patience to allow it to take the time it needed to take.
How long are we talking, from inception to conclusion?
About a year. Maybe a little more.
Compared to…
Oh, my last one I did in two weeks. It was a much faster job.
One of the most striking pieces here is the December 6 song [about the 1989 anti-feminist Montreal massacre]. When I first heard it, admittedly my first thought was, wow, wasn’t that, what, 17 years ago? One the one hand, it seemed like an old historic topic, yet as you point out in the piece, so little has changed. The song is self-explanatory from that standpoint, but what I’m wondering is what reaction do you get from younger audiences who might not even remember the actual event? I don’t know, outside my political circle, how commemorated or remembered the event is.
That was in fact part of my reason for recording it. In younger circles, it is something that is relatively forgotten. I had this experience last year of going in to Guelph University to be a speaker in Sky Gilbert’s first year theatre class. Anna Chatterton and I were there to talk about feminist theatre. We asked the class—of about 40 people, and mostly women, maybe 30—how many of them identified as feminists. One girl slowly, sheepishly raised her hand.
One?!
Both of us were so taken aback. I don’t know how representative that is, but it made me think that I don’t know what university would have been for my own experience without a really deep analysis around gender politics and queer studies and women’s studies and all that stuff. That’s just one example of encountering a different generational approach to some of those issues. I originally wrote it for a December 6 ceremony at Ryerson University, where I was invited to do something.
For what year?
It was two years ago. I wrote it for that and then re-wrote it significantly for the album. In a way, my primary motivation for working on the piece is how personally affected I was by that event, and continue to be, and continue to feel this connection to the reality of gender politics in the world. There was a secondary sense of wanting to keep some awareness alive about how that event is a very significant date in Canadian history, and so controversial. People don’t want to touch it with a ten foot pole. The reaction around it is very polarized. It was a scary piece to put out. I’m still intrigued to see what the response will be. It’s not a piece I perform very often. I performed it at a bunch of December 6 events. And unlike a lot of my work, it was a piece that I couldn’t approach with humour. That’s kind of a scary thing.
You don’t have that defense.
You can’t be sly and sarcastic about it.
When it happened in 1989, it was such a different time culturally. I can’t help but think what would happen today, what kind of reaction there would be to the language of that event—especially when only one woman in a theatre class at the University of Guelph, of all places, will call herself a feminist.
It was interesting while we were recording that piece—we were mixing it the week of the Dawson College shooting. It was wild to suddenly have more attention placed on that date again, because there were all these parallels with what the police response had been, and how they based it on what had happened at Ecole Polytechnique. It was obviously a different context, but I too wonder what would happen if it was the same.
One of the lines I quite enjoy here is, “ignoring the facts doesn’t make them less true.” Which I think a lot of people would take issue with.
(laughs)
We live in a time rife with revisionist history, and several administrations have proven that if you ignore the facts that that actually does make them less true. What were thinking when you wrote that line?
I guess it goes along with the sense for me that is often connected to writing more impassioned political spoken word pieces. The outrage of what the facts are. As you say, the administration has proven that—or have they just made fools of everybody for buying into it?
But do people care anymore if they’ve been played for a fool?
I think a lot of people care. In the United States, I perform there a fair bit. I’m mostly preaching to the converted, but the sense of people’s shame and wanting to distance themselves from what the other half of that country’s politics is, is pretty intense. It’s weird times we live in! (laughs)
I’m curious about the differences on either side of the border. I grew up proud of the country I live in, but the older I get I find that we as a country are incredibly smug about who we think we are. I find that when you go the States and you talk to activist people there, they’re far more vigilant about it—because they have to be.
They’re living it, they are the empire and have this sense of responsibility. Whereas Canadians find it easier to distance themselves from it.
We’re happy to shuffle off responsibility.
Absolutely, I agree.
We’ll never have to defend ourselves…
Yeah, except we might—for our water!
True. How do you see the political culture of both countries in your audiences?
People tend to react in equal measure to the more out-there political pieces. Those tend to elicit a response in kind in both countries. It’s interesting—I have a piece that’s not on the CD about the war in Iraq and the colour coding system of alerts, that I wrote while I was travelling in the south a couple of years ago. I started the piece when I was down there, and first performed it in Canada when I got home. It got a really great response, but I was really nervous about playing it in the States. I thought it was too risky, too critical of the whole country. But people looooove it there! It gets an even bigger response there. It was insane, and much more intense.
You might suspect that even if they were sympathetic, there would still be this sense of, ‘Well, who does she think she is, walking in here and telling us what to do?’
In that piece I do acknowledge my own position in it, as I tend to do in a lot of the pieces I write. Especially the more overt pieces where I’m making an opinionated statement. I think it’s part of my post-modern whatever that I do try and position myself outside as both an observer and the writer acknowledging the perspective I’m coming from, like in the “Blue Moon” piece. Maybe I’m doing that as a defense, maybe it’s a way to build a bridge between me and the audience.
I suspect the latter.
I do too. Erase that first comment!
In “Once In a Blue Moon,” it’s a very frank portrayal of a writer’s relationship to her artistic inspiration. Which is rare. Most singer-songwriters with guitars don’t write about Bob Dylan. Most cock rockers don’t write about Led Zeppelin. It’s taboo—“don’t tell them that’s what made you pick up a guitar. Put a lid on it!” What went into writing that piece? Is it partially a way of addressing the albatross that Ani DiFranco can be for women doing spoken word with acoustic guitars?
In a way, I think. It’s unavoidable for my generation of girls with guitars.
Of 90s post-modern feminist queer…
University educated, etc., yeah! (laughs) That piece is not a fictional narrative; it unfolded as I wrote it. There was such an irony to me, reflecting on that albatross as you call it. I don’t know if I’d call it an albatross, though. That might be going a bit far. But there is the phenomenon that Ani DiFranco is and she kind of coined a new genre in a way.
Yet as you say, “Everybody’s hoping not to be compared.” I know a lot of people—in any genre—if there’s one name at the top of influences on a certain genre, then they really don’t want to talk about it. It comes up in every single article, because that’s how music journalism works—let’s relate it to something people already know.
It’s funny because I definitely acknowledge Ani as a major inspiration as an 18-year old discovering her. And, as that piece alludes to, I haven’t really followed her career in recent years. I don’t own any albums after Little Plastic Castle.
That’s probably a good place to drop off anyway. But that coincides with you picking up a guitar yourself, doesn’t it? That’s quite telling.
Sure. Absolutely. The way she mingles the personal and the political—I don’t feel my music is all that derivative of her muscial style, but there’s definitely something in the identity politic and the independence that undoubtedly have been pretty influential on me and many of my colleagues…
The Girls With Glasses? [a touring songwriters' revue Parry takes part in]
Sure, but all of us of this age that grew up… I don’t know, post-Ani?
There’s a scene in your piece where you’re eavesdropping on “Ms. Orange Hair and Ms. Blue Hair,” and it’s a very funny moment for any thirtysomething person: sitting in a university coffee shop and listening to the next generation discover the same debates and believe they’re the first person to make bold statements like “gender is a fluid thing.” I also wanted to talk about the song “Radio,” and the line, “Losing another hero to love.” If I’m reading the lyrics correctly, it’s about hearing a once-favourite political singer sell out with love songs to get on the radio.
Beautiful!
Are love songs not in your future?
I’m in a really great, happy relationship, so I don’t tend to write love songs. It’s not where my anxiety is. It’s around other things that motivate me to write. I’m not going to mention who that song is about… [off the record reveals all. Contrary to my assumption, it’s not about Kinnie Starr.]
I have to tell you that I, like most music nerds, was obsessed with love songs while my personal life was in turmoil, but ever since being in a solid relationship, that’s kind of disappeared.
Interesting, eh?
My relationship with all those Magnetic Fields songs just vanished. I still like them, but they certainly don’t ache like they used to. But, uh, tell me about the song “The Stars.”
I was on a little tour out west on Vancouver Island, when the Arcade Fire played in New York and David Bowie came. I think it was also around the same time as the Time Magazine article and all the craziness. I was talking with my brother and hearing about all this. I went for a walk one day when I had a day off and wrote that little song. The refrain came to me as this sweet little double entendre. There’s that strange connect/disconnect of being far apart from the people that you love, and then the added layer of the surreal world that my brother and his band found themselves in.
Knowing your history and your family, do you think it was inevitable that you’d both end up on the stage?
I guess so. I don’t know. Our parents didn’t push us to be on the stage.
What about the Parry family Christmas shows at the Tranzac?
(laughs) Yeah, okay, there was that! That was once a year and it was always a stressful event. Nice, but stressful. We were encouraged there, for sure. I think both of us liked performing from a pretty early age. Maybe it was inevitable. I don’t know, how do you know these things?
How close were you to really being Anne of Green Gables? [one piece on the album mentions that she auditioned for the 1985 television adaptation, losing out to my high school crush, Megan Follows]
Not close enough! (laughs) But that’s a true story. I did audition, but they auditioned a lot of people. In my heart, I was very close. I did get a call-back!
What brought you to the Yukon a few weeks ago?
That was the theatre show I co-wrote with my theatre colleague Anna Chatterton. We have an independent company together called Independent Aunties, and the show is Clean Irene and Dirty Maxine. It’s been touring for a couple of years. We had a big production of it at Buddies in Bad Times last spring. We went up to a comedy festival in Whitehorse, and got to do it in Dawson as well.
Is that show three or four years old now?
About that. The new incarnation—which keeps changing—has been at least three years.
How many of those theatre projects do you have on the go at any given time? Do you have several pieces in repertoire?
That’s the main one that’s toured. We have a couple of things in the works that we hope will be more of a repertoire that will tour. At the moment we have two different projects in progress. One will be produced in 2008 at the Theatre Centre, and one of which is a small-scale family theatre piece that will run in the Dufferin Grove park in the summer, at a festival there. Those are new projects in development. Clean Irene is going off to London… Ontario, in March. In between I’m doing some more shows with Girls With Glasses, which is a songwriters-in-the-round travelling show. And I’m going out to the Calgary Spoken Word Festival in April. I don’t usually try to wear all my hats at once, but I am right now.
You express a fear in “Once in a Blue Moon” of returning to waitressing, but it doesn’t sound like that’s going to happen any time soon.
No, I guess not. I wrote it a couple of years ago and I feel I have a bit more of a foothold at this point.
-end-
Today's Eye Weekly has a brief Q&A I conducted with Toronto singer/spoken word artist/ playwright/ actor Evalyn Parry. Space consideration only allowed for two brief questions; here is the full text of our lengthy conversation, which was one of my favourites in a while. Not because I'm the biggest fan of her music--I much prefer the sound art she uses to accompany her Meryn Cadell-ish spoken word pieces--but because she's thoughtful, funny and sharp, with her writing offering plenty of food for conversation. She's also the sister of Richard Reed Parry, one of my favourite people from my time in Montreal, who shares all the same qualities.
Evalyn Parry's new album, her third, is called Small Theatres. Her Toronto release show is this Sunday, February 18 at the Gladstone. Other dates can be found here.
Evalyn Parry
February 11, 2007
locale: phone interview from her home in Toronto
Which came first—were you performing songs before theatre?
I went to Concordia in Montreal for theatre school. When I graduated I moved to Toronto, and I had just barely started doing spoken word and songs. It was the kind of thing I’d do occasionally at a cabaret. When I moved to Toronto I started looking for acting work and figured out that I didn’t really want to audition for people, that I wanted to make my own work.
I started some theatre projects with people I’d gone to school with who were interested in similar stuff. That original project involved Anna Chatterton, and now we have a company together. We were working with poetry as our text, and doing unconventional physical theatre stuff. At the same time, I was starting to play out more on open stages.
The spoken word and the music started simultaneously, and I still feel they are these parallel forms. My live shows are always a mix of the two. Even when I’m doing a spoken word festival, I manage to throw in a few songs. And vice-versa, at a music show. Both forms allow different ways of expressing.
You separate the “songs” from the “spoken word” pieces on two discs here, but there are pieces on each disc that could go either way. There are some that are predominantly spoken and then break into a chorus at the end, and there are some that are more developed and arranged musically which have a spoken cadence to them.
It’s true.
Did you always want to separate the two?
On my previous two albums, I’ve mixed in a couple of spoken word tracks with the music. When it comes to other artists, I feel like I listen to music and spoken word quite differently. Even my own recordings, I feel like the spoken word tracks are the ones I want to skip over when listening to the whole record. I wanted to be able to make one record that you would listen to over and over, and have a musical experience, though there are obviously elements of storytelling that cross over there. I wanted to be able to approach the spoken word parts however I wanted, to make each piece work in their own way. It turned out many of them turned out quite musical. Some of the pieces are more novelty pieces that you might only want to hear a couple of times, not over and over again.
Do the spoken word pieces allow you to write more directly? There are certainly direct lyrics in the “songs,” but how do you balance the abstract and the direct?
Spoken word as a form allows you to be more direct, in a way that it would make me cringe if I tried to put it into a song. Which is not to say I don’t stand behind the words of the spoken word pieces, but that form allows a different kind of political expression.
Normally directly political writing doesn’t do it for me, but the topics you focus on here are often topics that I don’t feel are being discussed, are not part of a larger discourse. It’s not like: here’s the headline, here’s the song. With a song like “Bottle This,” I’m appalled that I don’t really read about the politics of bottled water and the larger ramifications of that anywhere in the media.
That’s kind of it. Partly it’s the rage—or outrage—about certain things that there’s a directness to how I feel about it, or how I’m relating to the information, and to my sense of urgency. That piece is a case in point: if I tried to make that into a song, it would be terrible. I think. Maybe it wouldn’t. To rap it out is way more palatable somehow.
It’s interesting performing that piece—it’s relatively new—and it gets a big audience reaction. I don’t know whether I can articulate yet what it is about the form of spoken word, but I guess it translates some of my passion for the subject, and allows me a way of addressing the audience where there’s very little between me and the audience and the subject. It feels like a very potent way to talk about something—and better than giving a lecture.
I have heard it done well before. I’m thinking of Sarah Jones—do you know that woman?
Yeah, she’s great.
There’s the piece she did with DJ Vadim, “This Revolution,” which was not rapping so much as it was a spoken word poem set to music. There were other touchstones I thought of when listening to this. I was a huge fan of Meryn Cadell’s work in the 90s.
She was definitely a big influence from an early age on me.
You grew up in Toronto, at least partially, didn’t you?
Yep.
Did you ever see her?
No, never! I’ve never seen her—or him, now—live. But definitely the early albums, the first two, were in constant rotation in my cassette player.
You take a very similar approach to sound art as a backdrop for the piece, which is something she did very well. And John Switzer produces here, and there are other moments here that remind me of his work with Jane Siberry.
I definitely had a really fun time approaching the spoken word pieces. There was a real freedom and excitement over the production, thinking, ‘How will we do this?’
Was his work with Siberry any influence on why you hired him to do this?
Not directly. I do love Siberry’s early work and the stuff he produced with her. I was looking for the right producer, and kept asking people who they would recommend. I was originally going to work with [her younger brother] Richard [Reed Parry of Arcade Fire and Bell Orchestre], actually, but his life got a bit too crazy. John’s name kept coming up over and over, so I figured we should meet. I was familiar with a bunch of his work, including his more recent stuff like Nathan, this band from Winnipeg that I really love. We met and it was a sympatico situation. It was a long process of recording, partly because we were making two separate things, and partly because all my theatre stuff was happening at the same time. We’d work in chunks and then take time off and come back to it. It was probably the most patient project I’ve ever worked on. It required patience to allow it to take the time it needed to take.
How long are we talking, from inception to conclusion?
About a year. Maybe a little more.
Compared to…
Oh, my last one I did in two weeks. It was a much faster job.
One of the most striking pieces here is the December 6 song [about the 1989 anti-feminist Montreal massacre]. When I first heard it, admittedly my first thought was, wow, wasn’t that, what, 17 years ago? One the one hand, it seemed like an old historic topic, yet as you point out in the piece, so little has changed. The song is self-explanatory from that standpoint, but what I’m wondering is what reaction do you get from younger audiences who might not even remember the actual event? I don’t know, outside my political circle, how commemorated or remembered the event is.
That was in fact part of my reason for recording it. In younger circles, it is something that is relatively forgotten. I had this experience last year of going in to Guelph University to be a speaker in Sky Gilbert’s first year theatre class. Anna Chatterton and I were there to talk about feminist theatre. We asked the class—of about 40 people, and mostly women, maybe 30—how many of them identified as feminists. One girl slowly, sheepishly raised her hand.
One?!
Both of us were so taken aback. I don’t know how representative that is, but it made me think that I don’t know what university would have been for my own experience without a really deep analysis around gender politics and queer studies and women’s studies and all that stuff. That’s just one example of encountering a different generational approach to some of those issues. I originally wrote it for a December 6 ceremony at Ryerson University, where I was invited to do something.
For what year?
It was two years ago. I wrote it for that and then re-wrote it significantly for the album. In a way, my primary motivation for working on the piece is how personally affected I was by that event, and continue to be, and continue to feel this connection to the reality of gender politics in the world. There was a secondary sense of wanting to keep some awareness alive about how that event is a very significant date in Canadian history, and so controversial. People don’t want to touch it with a ten foot pole. The reaction around it is very polarized. It was a scary piece to put out. I’m still intrigued to see what the response will be. It’s not a piece I perform very often. I performed it at a bunch of December 6 events. And unlike a lot of my work, it was a piece that I couldn’t approach with humour. That’s kind of a scary thing.
You don’t have that defense.
You can’t be sly and sarcastic about it.
When it happened in 1989, it was such a different time culturally. I can’t help but think what would happen today, what kind of reaction there would be to the language of that event—especially when only one woman in a theatre class at the University of Guelph, of all places, will call herself a feminist.
It was interesting while we were recording that piece—we were mixing it the week of the Dawson College shooting. It was wild to suddenly have more attention placed on that date again, because there were all these parallels with what the police response had been, and how they based it on what had happened at Ecole Polytechnique. It was obviously a different context, but I too wonder what would happen if it was the same.
One of the lines I quite enjoy here is, “ignoring the facts doesn’t make them less true.” Which I think a lot of people would take issue with.
(laughs)
We live in a time rife with revisionist history, and several administrations have proven that if you ignore the facts that that actually does make them less true. What were thinking when you wrote that line?
I guess it goes along with the sense for me that is often connected to writing more impassioned political spoken word pieces. The outrage of what the facts are. As you say, the administration has proven that—or have they just made fools of everybody for buying into it?
But do people care anymore if they’ve been played for a fool?
I think a lot of people care. In the United States, I perform there a fair bit. I’m mostly preaching to the converted, but the sense of people’s shame and wanting to distance themselves from what the other half of that country’s politics is, is pretty intense. It’s weird times we live in! (laughs)
I’m curious about the differences on either side of the border. I grew up proud of the country I live in, but the older I get I find that we as a country are incredibly smug about who we think we are. I find that when you go the States and you talk to activist people there, they’re far more vigilant about it—because they have to be.
They’re living it, they are the empire and have this sense of responsibility. Whereas Canadians find it easier to distance themselves from it.
We’re happy to shuffle off responsibility.
Absolutely, I agree.
We’ll never have to defend ourselves…
Yeah, except we might—for our water!
True. How do you see the political culture of both countries in your audiences?
People tend to react in equal measure to the more out-there political pieces. Those tend to elicit a response in kind in both countries. It’s interesting—I have a piece that’s not on the CD about the war in Iraq and the colour coding system of alerts, that I wrote while I was travelling in the south a couple of years ago. I started the piece when I was down there, and first performed it in Canada when I got home. It got a really great response, but I was really nervous about playing it in the States. I thought it was too risky, too critical of the whole country. But people looooove it there! It gets an even bigger response there. It was insane, and much more intense.
You might suspect that even if they were sympathetic, there would still be this sense of, ‘Well, who does she think she is, walking in here and telling us what to do?’
In that piece I do acknowledge my own position in it, as I tend to do in a lot of the pieces I write. Especially the more overt pieces where I’m making an opinionated statement. I think it’s part of my post-modern whatever that I do try and position myself outside as both an observer and the writer acknowledging the perspective I’m coming from, like in the “Blue Moon” piece. Maybe I’m doing that as a defense, maybe it’s a way to build a bridge between me and the audience.
I suspect the latter.
I do too. Erase that first comment!
In “Once In a Blue Moon,” it’s a very frank portrayal of a writer’s relationship to her artistic inspiration. Which is rare. Most singer-songwriters with guitars don’t write about Bob Dylan. Most cock rockers don’t write about Led Zeppelin. It’s taboo—“don’t tell them that’s what made you pick up a guitar. Put a lid on it!” What went into writing that piece? Is it partially a way of addressing the albatross that Ani DiFranco can be for women doing spoken word with acoustic guitars?
In a way, I think. It’s unavoidable for my generation of girls with guitars.
Of 90s post-modern feminist queer…
University educated, etc., yeah! (laughs) That piece is not a fictional narrative; it unfolded as I wrote it. There was such an irony to me, reflecting on that albatross as you call it. I don’t know if I’d call it an albatross, though. That might be going a bit far. But there is the phenomenon that Ani DiFranco is and she kind of coined a new genre in a way.
Yet as you say, “Everybody’s hoping not to be compared.” I know a lot of people—in any genre—if there’s one name at the top of influences on a certain genre, then they really don’t want to talk about it. It comes up in every single article, because that’s how music journalism works—let’s relate it to something people already know.
It’s funny because I definitely acknowledge Ani as a major inspiration as an 18-year old discovering her. And, as that piece alludes to, I haven’t really followed her career in recent years. I don’t own any albums after Little Plastic Castle.
That’s probably a good place to drop off anyway. But that coincides with you picking up a guitar yourself, doesn’t it? That’s quite telling.
Sure. Absolutely. The way she mingles the personal and the political—I don’t feel my music is all that derivative of her muscial style, but there’s definitely something in the identity politic and the independence that undoubtedly have been pretty influential on me and many of my colleagues…
The Girls With Glasses? [a touring songwriters' revue Parry takes part in]
Sure, but all of us of this age that grew up… I don’t know, post-Ani?
There’s a scene in your piece where you’re eavesdropping on “Ms. Orange Hair and Ms. Blue Hair,” and it’s a very funny moment for any thirtysomething person: sitting in a university coffee shop and listening to the next generation discover the same debates and believe they’re the first person to make bold statements like “gender is a fluid thing.” I also wanted to talk about the song “Radio,” and the line, “Losing another hero to love.” If I’m reading the lyrics correctly, it’s about hearing a once-favourite political singer sell out with love songs to get on the radio.
Beautiful!
Are love songs not in your future?
I’m in a really great, happy relationship, so I don’t tend to write love songs. It’s not where my anxiety is. It’s around other things that motivate me to write. I’m not going to mention who that song is about… [off the record reveals all. Contrary to my assumption, it’s not about Kinnie Starr.]
I have to tell you that I, like most music nerds, was obsessed with love songs while my personal life was in turmoil, but ever since being in a solid relationship, that’s kind of disappeared.
Interesting, eh?
My relationship with all those Magnetic Fields songs just vanished. I still like them, but they certainly don’t ache like they used to. But, uh, tell me about the song “The Stars.”
I was on a little tour out west on Vancouver Island, when the Arcade Fire played in New York and David Bowie came. I think it was also around the same time as the Time Magazine article and all the craziness. I was talking with my brother and hearing about all this. I went for a walk one day when I had a day off and wrote that little song. The refrain came to me as this sweet little double entendre. There’s that strange connect/disconnect of being far apart from the people that you love, and then the added layer of the surreal world that my brother and his band found themselves in.
Knowing your history and your family, do you think it was inevitable that you’d both end up on the stage?
I guess so. I don’t know. Our parents didn’t push us to be on the stage.
What about the Parry family Christmas shows at the Tranzac?
(laughs) Yeah, okay, there was that! That was once a year and it was always a stressful event. Nice, but stressful. We were encouraged there, for sure. I think both of us liked performing from a pretty early age. Maybe it was inevitable. I don’t know, how do you know these things?
How close were you to really being Anne of Green Gables? [one piece on the album mentions that she auditioned for the 1985 television adaptation, losing out to my high school crush, Megan Follows]
Not close enough! (laughs) But that’s a true story. I did audition, but they auditioned a lot of people. In my heart, I was very close. I did get a call-back!
What brought you to the Yukon a few weeks ago?
That was the theatre show I co-wrote with my theatre colleague Anna Chatterton. We have an independent company together called Independent Aunties, and the show is Clean Irene and Dirty Maxine. It’s been touring for a couple of years. We had a big production of it at Buddies in Bad Times last spring. We went up to a comedy festival in Whitehorse, and got to do it in Dawson as well.
Is that show three or four years old now?
About that. The new incarnation—which keeps changing—has been at least three years.
How many of those theatre projects do you have on the go at any given time? Do you have several pieces in repertoire?
That’s the main one that’s toured. We have a couple of things in the works that we hope will be more of a repertoire that will tour. At the moment we have two different projects in progress. One will be produced in 2008 at the Theatre Centre, and one of which is a small-scale family theatre piece that will run in the Dufferin Grove park in the summer, at a festival there. Those are new projects in development. Clean Irene is going off to London… Ontario, in March. In between I’m doing some more shows with Girls With Glasses, which is a songwriters-in-the-round travelling show. And I’m going out to the Calgary Spoken Word Festival in April. I don’t usually try to wear all my hats at once, but I am right now.
You express a fear in “Once in a Blue Moon” of returning to waitressing, but it doesn’t sound like that’s going to happen any time soon.
No, I guess not. I wrote it a couple of years ago and I feel I have a bit more of a foothold at this point.
-end-
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