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[applause]
Mary Rae Shantz: Good evening everyone and welcome to the library. My name is Mary Rae
Shantz, and I'm the Manager of Special Collections, Archives, and Digital Collections at the library.
So I want to welcome you here to the Bram & Bluma Appel Salon tonight for our Evening
of Coffee, Beer and Mosh Pits hosted by Toronto Star's Peter Howell.
[applause]
MS: Before we get started, I just want to let you know a little bit about our current
exhibit in the TD Gallery: Coffee, Beer and Mosh Pits. And it's an exhibit of original
posters and ephemera from the library's Special Collections, with photographs on loan from
the Toronto Star, and it follows the changes in music in Toronto from the 1960s to the
present day. So you are all welcome to join us after the talk for a guided tour of the
exhibit in the TD Gallery on the first floor. And hopefully, you'll be able to continue
some of the excitement that comes from our discussion this evening. As a reminder, today's
event is being taped and it will be posted on our website soon. And if you Twitter, we
want you to join the conversation with the #appelsalon. So now, let me turn things over
to our partner at the Toronto Star, Bob Hepburn, Director of Community Relations and Communications.
Thanks.
[applause]
Bob Hepburn: Thank you. And this is a great crowd on a cold night. We've been doing these
Star Talks events at the library for about four or five years now. We've had everywhere
from Rick Mercer, to Margaret Trudeau, to our guest tonight. It's been a great relationship
that we've had with the library over all these years. These Star Talk events are so successful
that we now take them to Stratford in the summertime, and this would be our third year
there. And we interview the actors on stage right after the events. So if you're in Stratford
this summer, take a look for us. Stratford loves it, they're the ones who actually approached
us about doing it. So my role here tonight is to introduce Peter Howell and his three
guests. And Peter has been a published journalist since 1976, and has covered the Toronto and
Canadian music scenes for well over 30 years. He's worked at the Star since 1991, and is
currently our acclaimed movie critic. And yes, he loves the Oscars. But before he switched
to reviewing films, Peter was our acclaimed music critic for many years. And he knows
the history of the Toronto music scene. He has interviewed the music stars of the '60s,
'70s, '80s, '90s, right up to today.
BH: Murray McLauchlan, he's been a star on the Toronto music scene since he was 17, when
he began playing in coffeehouses in the Yorkville area long before the fashionable shops moved
in. Over the decades, he has had success in the pop, adult contemporary, country, and
folk music fields, and is best known for his hits, "Farmer's Song" and "Down by the Henry
Moore," that statue sculpture at city hall. Murray is a multiple Juno Award winner. He's
a member of the Order of Canada, has written his own autobiography, and for fun, he is
a licensed pilot. Although, he just told me he stopped flying recently.
BH: Lorraine Segato. When I was preparing these notes, I took a look at some of her
biographical material and all I can say is, wow. She's a respected musician, songwriter,
filmmaker, event producer, artistic director, speech writer, narrator, music editor, lecturer,
and social justice activist. She's co-founder and lead singer of the The Parachute Club,
one of the most critically loved and commercially successful groups of the '80s. A group that
won five Juno Awards, countless other awards, and has been honoured with the Indie Hall
of Fame Award. And she remains active today in the artistic world working on stage and
in production, and continuing to educate and inspire Canadians as she has done for the
past three decades.
BH: Brendan Canning is one of the two founding members of the famous indie rock band, Broken
Social Scene, and has been a major figure on this city's music scene for some 20 years.
Founded in 2001, Broken Social Scene recorded gold records, was praised by music critics
around North America, won two Juno Awards, and was twice nominated for the Polaris Music
Prize for the best Canadian album. Besides Broken Social Scene, Brendan has been a member
of various notable other bands including his newest band, Cookie Duster. He's also been
featured in... I don't know where these people get all this time to do all these things.
He's been featured in documentary film, taken part in an interactive documentary series
about Toronto artists talking about their connection with the city, and he's been a
mentor and supporter for young musicians of all musical persuasions, not just alternative
rock. Please welcome, Murray McLauchlan, Lorraine Segato, Brendan Canning and Peter Howell.
Peter Howell: Hello, everybody. Can you hear me okay?
PH: Yes.
PH: It's a wonderful turnout. I'm really glad everybody came here. I thought I would start
by asking... It's funny. I thought I was at the Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' roll show, but
it's a Coffee, Beer and Mosh Pits. My three wonderful guests here, you all come from sort
of different eras. And I think definitions here will be an interesting part of this discussion
because people like me often imposed definitions on you folks, and you don't always appreciate
it, right? You came from a singer songwriter sort of background, right, Murray? That's
where you started, in the '60s?
Murray McLauchlan: Yeah. I started playing guitar when I was quite young. And also because
my brother told me not to touch the one that he had brought home, and he was playing one
of that. But yeah, I was in art school and suddenly got exposed to that amalgam of poetry,
modern poetry, and folk music that was coming. Principally, at the time, I'm was at New York
City. It was something really new, and it was something fresh, and I was beginning to
realize that my future coming out of art school was gonna be sharpening pencils in a studio
for Hallmark cards.
Lorraine Segato: Keep going. I can do this because I know him.
[laughter]
Brendan Canning: And Murray, you gotta turn that thing on. [laughter] Even though you
project really well.
MM: So, you didn't hear anything I said?
BC: I heard it.
LS: I did.
BC: I heard it. I heard it...
MM: Well, I think we're actually about to prove something fundamental to the Canadian
music industry that you cannot hear a *** thing that I say. [laughter] And it won't
really matter.
[laughter]
PH: Lorraine, you would come from the era of early '80s that we called New Wave or Punk.
Is that the term you were comfortable with?
LS: I wouldn't identify myself as New Wave, but I certainly came up in that era.
PH: Mama Quilla. Your first start was with Mama Quilla, right? Mama Quilla II.
LS: Mama Quilla II. And unlike Murray, I had a brief stint that lasted about two months
as a singer songwriter before I sort of was inducted in a band and then ended up forming
several bands after that. And I found myself most comfortable in the band setting, mostly,
so that I could hide and nobody would hear all of my imperfections. So that era of the
'80s was a great era for collaborative bands, and that's where I came from.
PH: And Brendon, you're from my era as a rock critic, what we called, grunge, right? And
he was a band called, hHead, which used to drive the Star typesetters crazy. Was that
your first band, hHead?
BC: That was my first band.
PH: The term "grunge" wasn't always popular, but it was the hot term back then.
BC: Yeah. I was 21, and there were a lot of great Seattle groups that I've tried to mimic
and did a so-so job, but it was a confusing time in the music business because there were
still lots of money floating around, so there were guys who would just like, "I think it
sounds like someone that's gonna be popular." So we got a little bit lucky. If we were better,
it might be gone better, but it got me in the music business and I had an okay ride
with that group. Yeah, but that's was in '91, I guess.
PH: That's right. And together, the three of you represent... I was thinking about as
close to 50 years of the Toronto music scene when you put it all together. Do you think
of yourself as part of the Toronto scene because, once again, that's the label we put on yo,
but did you feel that way?
LS: Well...
BC: I do.
PH: You do?
BC: I've lived a Draper Street for 25 years, so I've been going to clubs, and plan music,
and recording in the city since that time, so that's 23 years.
LS: We've all sort of travelled across the country many times to sort of have... For
me, Toronto certainly feels like, even though I wasn't even born in Toronto, I feel like
I am a Toronto-centric person because that's where it all happened for us and then went
out from there.
PH: You're from Hamilton originally, right?
LS: Originally. Which isn't far. It's an hour away. Now, Hamilton is this amazing, bubbling,
burbling scene that took awhile to... Yeah, we love Hamilton.
PH: Hamilton's represented.
LS: I'm very happy to see what's happening in Hamilton because the reason why I left
Hamilton was I just could not envision being a musician and being in Hamilton. I just couldn't
see where the future would go. And then now, you see it's all possible, right?
PH: And Murray, was it lonely at the beginning... Was there a Toronto music scene when you?
MM: No, no. Actually, it wasn't. Again, by the time I was still halfway through art school,
there were quite a number of burgeoning folk clubs, notably the Bohemian Embassy which
had existed for a while downtown. The Purple Onion Club, which was at corner of Yorkville
and Avenue Road, and the Village Corner Club, which was up at Avenue Road and Pears Avenue.
So there was really, there was a... Not exactly effete, but an artsy fartsy coffeehouse scene
peppered with these folk music clubs, and the rock thing really hadn't quite arrived
yet. So for me, the big excitement was to quite literally, sneak out of my bedroom window
and down the porch roof after everybody had gone to bed, and either hitchhike or take
the last bus down to see an act like Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, or Bob Gibson, or
somebody like that at the Purple Onion Club. I stole money out of my brother's pants [chuckle]
to pay for the coffee. It was like that. There was a scene and my buddy, Nick Apanovich and
I used to go and hang out quite regularly at the Bohemian Embassy where I met a lot
of people. People who taught me how to play the guitar, like Jimmy McCarthy and Amos Garrett,
not names that might be familiar to you. But, Amos for instance, was the guy who played
the famous solo on Maria Muldaur song, "Midnight at the Oasis."
BC: Yeah. That's great.
MM: He's an insanely good guitar player. So there was a... It was a small scene, but it
was really vibrant, and there was a lot of cross talk. There was a lot of people sitting
up all night going, "Okay. How do you do that? How do you do that?" Swapping licks, and it
was really fun. I got totally sucked into it. The original question was, did you feel
like you were part of a Toronto scene? Yeah, because what was here attracted me, a kid
from North York down, first of all, to art school because I was culturally starving up
there. From art school, it was pretty easy to make the jump to what was really an intellectual,
play chess, folk music revolution, lefty. It was exciting. So yeah. And that was Toronto,
and I just jumped in. I didn't really know about New York all that much.
PH: I remember one the perennial questions was whether Toronto had a distinctive sound
because San Fransisco had it's sort of acid rock, and Liverpool had the Mersey pop sound,
and Seattle in the '90s had the grunge sound. There was always this... I think it's a very
Canadian thing always wanted to define ourselves. But did any of you ever tie yourself up in
knots, wondering whether you had to have a distinctive Toronto sound?
LS: I... Sorry, did you...
BC: No, go, go.
LS: I sort of feel like with our group, we actually made a distinctive Toronto sound
for just this period of time because we happen to come... There was a confluence of energies
going on where everything on the street that was happening at the same time, and we happened
to be there. We were this mish-mash of immigrant influences from the islands, and African,
and Latin, and all of the people that were coming in, and what we were trying to do.
So I felt our sound was very distinctive, but I don't know whether that translated to
other groups.
PH: How about you Brendan?
BC: I was thinking of your... I can't think of another group that really sounded like
your group. So when you think of a Toronto sound during The Parachute Club's time. I
don't know if... Whereas for Broken Social Scene, it wasn't so much a Toronto sound,
but when I'd go tour, whatever, we got lucky and the record that did well for us, the most
well for us, travelled globally. So, there was always the question of the Canadian sound
or sometimes the Toronto sound or the Montreal sound. They'd be like, "So what's it like
being in amongst all these great bands like Feist, or The Dears, or Hidden Cameras," or
all these bands. So, I think there were definitely, maybe a Canadian sound that was coming out
early 2000s that... And Arcade Fire, of course. You can't ignore that. So yeah. Maybe not
necessarily Toronto itself, but there's definitely, there's heaps of bands in Toronto. I think
some that we influenced because I'd go show up at clubs, I'm like, "Another fiddle player.
Thank God!" [laughter] Damn. Fiddle player's in the back.
PH: There's a very famous saying, which I didn't say it, but I've repeated it many times,
and I'm sure you've all heard of it. Is that, "Being a Canadian musician means you can't
afford to drive a car, but you're too famous to ride the subway." You all heard of that?
LS: That's Kim... You're quoting Kim Mitchell.
PH: Is that Kim Mitchell? Okay. I wondered... I was wondering who that was. Alright.
LS: Kim Mitchell, who said... Who had that big hit "Patio Lanterns." And he said that,
"Yeah. Only in Canada could you be really famous and still have to ride the subway."
Something like that.
MM: Well, the upside to that is only in Canada can you still have to work to keep yourself
vibrant, and relevant, and stuff for a really, really, long time because you've never got
so screwed up because you had too much money.
[laughter]
LS: True enough.
MM: I don't... Seriously, I don't know anybody other than the people who reach that critical,
orbital mass and escape to the United States or some other fantasy land. But anybody who's
really had a career here, and I don't know this for a fact, but I would expect that most
major figures in most Canadian bands who never got out of Canada, if they were canny with
their money, they're okay now. But they probably didn't make anymore than a class one firefighter
with some degree of seniority. That's what your take-home pay is, 80 to 100,000 bucks
a year. You're making the same as a good metro constable and having more fun.
LS: And no rate of inflation, either, but it's not like your stuff keeps going up.
BC: Right. I'm gonna become a cop.
[laughter]
MM: You know what...
BC: What are you smoking son?
MM: The first moment I laid eyes on you, I thought that.
BC: Yeah, yeah. Good. I got it. [laughter] I got "narc" written all over me.
MM: You got hash in your flashlight.
BC: Oh yeah. Hash in your flash. There's a good song title.
LS: I think you should do a '70s thing with a big peace sign, and keep the hair and then
nobody will know that you're...
BC: We're riffing now.
MM: It's funny, though. You're talking about the sort of a Canadian sound. It's not recognizable
here perhaps. Although, people go, "Oh yeah. Gordon Lightfoot, that's a Canadian sound,"
or they go, "Blue Rodeo," or they pick something out of the hat. But the first time I noticed
that there actually was one was when I toured in Japan with Bruce Cockburn. We went over
there and we did about a month-and-a-half playing all of these towns, including four
concerts in Tokyo. And the first thing I really noticed was you talk to the Japanese people,
they're all big fans. They knew all kinds of obscure Canadian writers. They knew guys
like Bruce Murdoch from Montreal. People you know nobody's ever heard of, one song they
got right. But these Japanese clubs, they would know all about Canadian music, and they'll
go, "Canadian music is very, very different from American music." And I go, "Really? Why?"
And they go, "It's like the wind is blowing through you."
[laughter]
MM: And I went, "What? Exactly how do you mean that?" [laughter] And then they get very
red.
[laughter]
LS: That's funny.
PH: We had the same talk about Canadian film, about this constant striving for identity
seems to be our identity.
LS: It truly is. I remember being in film school in the mid-70's, and it was... Every
day, it was part of our curriculum that we had to ask ourselves the question, "What is
our cultural identity?" And interestingly enough, it really stayed with me because I've
been fascinated over these years. I have a deep obsession with cultural history and our
cultural history. As an Italian who has a whole long history of, sort of knowing a lot
of details around the history of European culture and everything, one of the things
I find the biggest differences between us is that there is an insecurity here that doesn't
exist in parts of Europe because the culture is heralded as, it's integrated within the
day-to-day life of it, whereas here you're a musician, but it's separated in some ways
from our...
MM: That's actually...
LS: You want to argue on that?
MM: No, no. Actually, I'm thinking. I almost have what amounts to laboratory proof of that
phenomenon. This is not gonna take long. I swear to God, it won't. But in the early days...
PH: We've got all the time in the world for you, Murray.
MM: No, seriously. In the early days, when broadcasting companies bought FM frequency
bands or they paid a big pile of money in like broadcasters do. They pay for those frequencies.
And they didn't really know quite what to do with them, there's no money in there. It
wasn't AM, they couldn't sell a lot of advertising. They didn't really know what to do with it.
So they had to put something on the air, and they basically put these dope smoking guys,
like Reiner Schwartz on the air, and let them play whatever the hell they wanted, they were
completely unsupervised. So they'd sit up all night, and they'd play album sides, whatever
it was they wanted. And they would play the new Bruce Cockburn back-to-back, with the
new Jethro Tull album. And the weird thing is, that the people who were staying up and
listening to this, it was kind of like college radio. The people who were listening to this
didn't create silos between the two bunches of music. To them, hearing a Bruce Cockburn
record was exactly the same as hearing a Jethro Tull one. So they didn't draw any lines between
the two. Ergo, they thought Bruce Cockburn was just as good, or great, or better and
went to see a show. And I think that's a...
BC: I'd take Bruce Cockburn over Jethro Tull, is all I think.
MM: It answers your... It is what it is. It's what you're talking about.
BC: Yeah.
PH: Yeah. I recommend you all see the exhibit downstairs. I was looking at it before I came
up. I was, I got very nostalgic for all the tangible stuff because it's not just listening
to the music. I used to love having vinyl albums, and this really dates me obviously,
but I used to like looking at the pictures and holding it in my hands as I listen in
to it. And an exhibit like this brings that back. And I was thinking about some postering
that, I don't know. Brendan, you can tell us whether or not a date here, but is there
still a postering thing where?
BC: There's still... My last album, which came out on vinyl as every band puts out a
record. It always comes out on vinyl because CDs sell less, so you buy your vinyl if you're
a music... A real hard core music fan, and then you get your download cards, so you can
put it on your computer. But yeah, I did a street postering campaign. Street postering,
I'm not going out there with my staple gun on cold February nights any more, but I did
an awful lot of that.
PH: You used to. You used to.
BC: I sure I used to, yeah. But at a certain point, you gotta draw the line and say, "I'm
not gonna go out tonight and put up street posters." I'm hoping that people come to the
gig without that, but it helps...
PH: But the cops give that to you now, right, Lorraine?
LS: Yeah. And also, it used to be you'd go out there and you'd be this espionage thing.
You're putting up your stuff making sure nobody comes after you. I just wanna make a comment
about your thing about vinyl and postering, and all of these things. And we always say,
"I date myself when I say this." You have to stop saying that. Not just because...
PH: Because we're the same age?
LS: Because you date. No, no. It's not... I don't mean... Because it also implies I
date myself, which means I'm out of touch. The thing that's so beautiful about vinyl,
about posters, about liner notes, about all of these things, was the interactive quality
that we have and have had as humans. We're looking at the liner notes, and we're like,
"Oh my god. Look at that beautiful picture. Look at that beautiful design." The smell
of the vinyl. The experience of putting the... All of this is part of the music experience.
BC: But it still goes on.
LS: And it still goes on.
BC: Bands make records, and Broken Social Scene has made every record on vinyl. So has
every other band. Everyone puts out vinyl. It's not like it's getting more popular, plus
all the reissues. You're talking about Brownie McGheen's or Brownie Terry and... What are
those guys? Sonny and Brownie?
LS: Sonny and Brownie.
BC: Yeah. I got a couple of their records. But then all the reissue labels that happen.
There's so many re-issue labels that are re-issuing all the music from the past, which is furthering
a whole other record buying thing. Because when I got to buy records, it's like, "Let's
see what Honest Jon's Records re-issued this month," or "Let's see what Soul Jazz Records
re-issued," which is keeping music going into the archives of, whatever, the past 50 years
of music. So it's alive and well in a niche market.
PH: So you've all been around long enough to remember the world before digital when
you did have to go buy it, like a physical thing. The other day, I bought this album,
totally on impulse. I bought it at Starbucks. It's a Dusty Springfield Collection, and my
son said, "Why did you buy that?" And I said, "Because I like it." And he says, "Well, I
could've burned that for you." And I said, "I don't want you to burn it for me. I wanna
buy the damn thing and play it in my car." But there's this new mindset now. How much
of a shift has it been for you, for your own music, and for just your mental view of it
all?
BC: I just had this image of you sitting with a Scotch in your hand, tears rolling down
your face, singing, "You don't have to say you love me... "
PH: So are you the guy that looked into my window the other night?
[laughter]
LS: That's so funny.
BC: I've been there.
LS: I had to practically beg Sony BMG to actually turn our product into digital product because
nobody could find us because we used to be on, I guess, vinyl and then cassette, and
it was only The Greatest Hits package that was on CD, not the earlier stuff. So there
was this whole period of time where people kept... I'd get these requests from people
all over the world going, "How do I find your music?" And they couldn't find it. So when
I was thinking about the lesser of evils, I was like, "Sure." I was begging Sony to,
at least, get it up on digital so people could access it. That was...
BC: It's definitely more difficult to sell records if you're not a marquee artist. My
solo record, for instance, is not gonna sell as well as a Broken Social Scene record. The
digital age has definitely changed buying habits, but at the same time, because my band
is way more popular, my main, Broken Social Scene is way more popular than what everybody
did in the past. So I sold heaps more records. But, let's say, for instance, my band in the
'90s... Because a store like HMV used to have an independent music section, so back then,
it was the Barenaked Ladies, Moxxy Fruit, Lowest of the Low, The Waltons and all these
bands would be front racked, the cassettes and the CDs. So early '90s, I was able to
sell 15,000 copies of our band that got a little local radio play. We weren't amazing,
definitely not amazing, but hey, what can I say? I wouldn't wanna go out and play those
songs these days. That's just the truth.
LS: Are you Mr. Glass Half Empty?
BC: No. I'm very real.
LS: Because 50,000 sounds really...
BH: No. One five. One five. Fifteen thousand. Back then, that's decent.
LS: That's great.
BC: Yeah. But if I were to be able to sell 15,000 of my latest solo. I guess the one
prior to this maybe sold worldwide 18,000, which is not bad. But at the same time, if
you're only making as much as... Whatever.
MM: As a cop.
BC: As a cop. A cop is not a bad living if you wanna be a cop. But yeah, you just. You
gotta, whatever. You gotta bust your ***. That's basically what it comes down to.
LS: I find that people of a particular age group, and I would count all of us in here,
still value the experience of buying music that they listened to when they were younger.
I have friends who have every single Rolling Stone record on vinyl and then soon as it
came out on digital, they went out and bought all the CD to replace it. That's very honourable.
I think that that is a true music fan who wants to replicate it in any medium.
PH: I've got a friend who would buy any Rolling Stones album whenever it came out, whatever
format. He buys those multi-hundred dollar packages where you get the guitar pick from
Ron Wood or something put in.
MM: I like the way things are. It's really a smorgasbord. And not the best example, I
have a 22-year-old son. And back when I was driving him to Rosedale Heights School of
the Arts, I'd put on '40s on 4 and the Sirius Satellite Radio, and it'd be... He was playing
trombone, first year at the time. I'd be listening to Benny Goodman, and he'd be going like,
"Holy ***! Can those guys ever play. It's amazing." I go, "Yeah. Well, they're working
300 dates a night playing at dances, and they were the cream of the crop to start with.
So yeah, check it out". So we got into all of the stuff and then we started listening
to... I turned him on to Django Reinhardt. One day, fast forward. I'm sitting, he goes,
"Hey, you should check this out," and he turns me on to this Parisian band called Caravan
Palace, which is kinda merged Django Reinhardt/gypsy/jazz with world beat/dance beat, and it's this
dance craze that's sweeping all over the clubs in Europe. It's a sort of really leggy version
of the Charleston merged with swing dancing. And I went, "Holy ***! That's absolutely
amazing. That's great!" It's really great music.
MM: But the deal is, I've got all my vinyl at the cottage, too, and vinyl's great. Who
doesn't love... And band distortion, bass rumble, pops and crackles? In fact, you can
wear the sleeve for a hat. It's a beautiful thing. I know that modern vinyl is much better
quality, it's a boutique thing and all. I love listening to vinyl. The Rolling Stones
were meant to be listened to on your Seabreeze. But I like the fact it could also...
BC: It's not really better quality, I got to say. The records...
MM: I'm just told that it is.
BC: Because I deejay. I deejayed on Saturday night, and I still haul in my records. It's
still... I've gone through a whole myriad of stages of being a DJ, but it's my way of...
It was a corporate thing for a T-S-O-R-B-C. At least, me showing up there with my records
is my way of saying, "Hey, music still exists. And you can go out and buy it if you want".
It's still a thing.
PH: I still have Murray's Hard Rock Town from 1977 on 8-track.
LS: Wow.
MM: Yeah. I had a bunch of records out on 8-track. Which actually, it should... It's
the technology that should have won, except it was crappy. [laughter] Because people just
couldn't go... And get the song they wanted. They had to deal with all of this...
LS: It was a sexy thing to go...
MM: I actually have an 8-track tape player in my kitchen with a Patsy Cline 8-track cartridge
on just so I can peel the onions and play "I Fall To Pieces." [laughter] We should get
together, actually.
PH: Yeah, we should. We've obviously got a lot... If you don't know, by the way, Murray's
son was born right in the middle of a Cowboy Junkies concert, basically. I was at the show.
MM: He began to be born.
PH: Yeah, began to be born.
MM: Yeah. My wife Denise, she was at the time doing these big things. They were called "Intimate
and Interactives," they were concert at... Much music, and it was the Cowboy Junkies'
night to be intimate and interactive. She broke the waters during the show while she
was hosting it. She was out-to-there at the time.
PH: Didn't that little baby just slide out?
MM: She was sweating like crazy. The makeup gal came up, "Honey, you're really sweating
a lot." She said, "Well, my water just broke." "Oh, you're kidding!" Well, she was timing
her contractions to the length of the various Cowboy Junkies song because she knew what
the cues were. So yeah, we got to the hospital and it was like standing on a tube of toothpaste.
It all happened pretty fast. [laughter]
PH: I wanted to ask you, what if you could talk about band dynamics? I'm always fascinated
by bands and how they hold together, because there's so many egos involved and it's just
a really tough thing, right? You've all been in and out of bands at various times. You
were in The Silver Tractors, which I saw in the '70s at the National Arts Center in Ottawa.
MM: I didn't mean to interrupt, to step on your foot.
PH: Yes, go ahead.
MM: There's a big difference between being in a band and hiring one. I've always been...
It's not exactly how I would want to characterize it, but I've always been... The guys used
to always refer to me as "Exalted Signer of the Checks." So I'm just saying it's a very
different dynamic if you're working with people that you've hired.
PH: There's a reason why they call Bruce Springsteen "The Boss," right?
MM: Yeah, I guess. Yeah. But obviously, it's different from my friends here, I think.
PH: Did you prefer to be in bands?
LS: I preferred to be in a band. The interesting thing was, in an effort to disclose, our band
was interesting because it was seen as a collaborative experience, but in fact, it was myself and
Billy Brian's, the drummer, who were the legal partners in the group.
PH: You wrote all the songs. You two wrote the songs.
LS: We started the group, and the concept of the group came out of Mama Quilla and V,
the band that we were in before. So, we were sort of seen as benevolent dictators in a
really kind way. In a lefty, ideal way. We were seen as good to be... But in essence,
we made the decisions, but we kept it as equal as we possibly could.
MM: They used to actually call her Komesaru Segato. [laughter]
LS: It's only because I know him.
PH: Brendan, you've always called... I've always thought it interesting you call it
a collective Broken Social Scene, a collective. I think you're the only band that uses that
term, and you don't want to be called a band, right?
BC: It was just a thing. It would be, you have a band, but then the next time you play,
you would be a different line-up because different people would go out of town. So you just get
together, write some songs for your show next week, and then the next show you'd play, there
would be a different line-up. I guess in that way it just became a collective because after
so many years of playing with all these people, it's like, "Yeah, well." It was just a bunch
of people who were buds, or some dated, as you do, many women playing music together.
I guess it just got called a collective. I never called it a collective, but I guess
it is.
BC: But it's still, it's very much when you're travelling in a tour bus or flying at the
airport, it's very much band dynamics. It's not so much this big collective party and
everyone's getting along great, far from it. Let's be realistic. You're travelling in very
close quarters for a number of years and trying to get your voice heard in some way. Yeah,
you don't always shine with the best side of your personality when you're in all these
things versus say, if you're a band leader and hiring your band, well. I think someone
told me recently, "bands just shouldn't even talk to one another", which I thought was
a neat concept because bands are always so dysfunctional, whether it's Pink Floyd or
The Brian Jonestown Massacre or... There's just countless... I don't know.
LS: There's all these jokes all the time. "Drummers are always this, and bass players
are always that." It's so true that in some way, there are certain personalities that
are drawn to certain instruments, and that that really comes out in the dynamic. In our
case, we had seven people and often, if we played large venues like Ontario Place or
Expo, or whatever, we would expand sometimes to 11 people. No matter how you cut it, you
cannot help but bring your own personal family dynamic into it. There's always the disgruntled
sister or brother, there's the person that doesn't feel honoured enough, there's a person
who's bossy, there's a person... It's just the family dynamic, just plays itself out
in a band.
BC: It is pretty classic. It's always... You always know it's gonna be a roll of the dice
sometimes with whoever drinks too much or whoever...
LS: Therapy helps. I find therapy really helps.
[laughter]
BC: Yeah. If you ever watch that Metallica documentary, it's pretty hilarious. Because
theirs is a band who's been together, world famous. But yet, at this stage in their career,
their psychiatrist is in the studio writing lyrics and handing the sheets...
LS: No. Hey! Listen, in Mama Quilla, we actually had a therapist in Mama Quilla. There were
seven woman in that band, and those were the early days of the feminist movement, or the
womans movement, or whatever. I was very naïve. I came into this band not sort of knowing
what to do, how to be. But there was an actual social worker/therapist person who would help
us all process, because there was a lot of finger pointing stuff that was going. You're
young and you don't know how to articulate, or you don't realize that you don't have to
say everything that's on your mind, that comes like way later.
BC: Could you instruct me?
PH: There's a great new Eagles documentary called "The History of The Eagles Volume One"
and...
BC: Speaking of bands who hate each other.
PH: And they have a scene, actually, have footage of them breaking up on stage.
LS: Yeah, I saw that. That's unbelievable.
PH: I think they broke up after the Long Road, at the early '80s. They were apart for 16
years. Murray, you mostly solo, you call yourself? Lately, you've been in a band called, Lunch
At Allens, right?
MM: Yeah. Well, I was gonna mention... There's that thing you just talked about cause I toured
with The Everly Brothers in the early '70s. That big skizzum was pretty fresh at the time.
They wouldn't stay in the same hotel room, they wouldn't talk to each other. The band
was actually great because the band hung together in order to defuse the tension of being on
the road with The Everly Brothers with the situation going on. So Don was the social
guy and everybody hung out with him, including me. It was a pick-up band, but it bonded really
quickly. It was Warren Zevon on piano. Waddy Wachtel, who went on to produce Jackson Browne
stuff, on guitar. Rusty Young on steel. I think it was Russ Kunkel on drums. It was
a really *** band.
[laughter]
PH: Did you ever have any insight in to why The Everly Brothers were warring for the 20
years?
MM: The dark rumours were that it was the usual thing. It was mutual interest in the
same person of the opposite sex, which is... If it's gonna be a couple of brothers break
up, it's usually something like that. It's not, "Did you use my towel?" It's not usually
that. But my bands, they happen two ways, and yes, I'm in a band now. Which I actually
really love.
PH: Sort of a super group? A Toronto super group.
MM: They're the most super people I've ever worked with and they have huge song writing
credentials. It's a band called Lunch At Allens, and the members are Ian Thomas. Ian's... Bette
Midler, Santana, blah, blah, blah, just a huge track record. Marc Jordan's got hits
by Rod Stewart and all kinds of different people. And Cindy Church who is fantastic,
she's with Quartette and a bunch of other bands besides us. It's a dream band, because
we're all grown ups, and everybody really respects each others abilities, and everybody
really enjoys the fact that, when you are not actually fronting the song, you get to
play. Which as a front artist, you often find yourself playing in a rhythm role, or you
have to tone down your playing to fit within a structure, or to be on an accompanist mode.
But when you're actually playing in a band, you can actually really play. You can be inventive
and play soloist, because you're concentrating on that, and that was a blast for me. It was
like I always wanted to be in a band.
PH: You don't marvel at the fact that the Stones have been together for 50 years, now
51 years?
BC: Totally. Having read Keith's book, yeah. [laughter]
LS: I have to say as an addendum to the conversation. Even though it's true that there are often
tensions and strange things that come up that you have to deal with, when I think back on
my experience with Parachute Club, I feel really lucky because each and every one of
those folks were really extraordinary people. And given what I saw lots of other bands go
through where they just literally imploded, self-destructed, just... We had, we were pretty
normal. There were tensions at times, but we had this bigger picture, in mind, and we
tried to plod our way through it.
PH: Check to see if we have time, I think we're still pretty good. I wanted to ask all
you... I asked them all, ahead of time, if they could tell me if they had any good road
stories? Because they're not just Toronto musicians, they travel, as well, right, all
through the years, and I was hoping each of you might have a great untold road story you
might wanna share with us. Do you want to start, Lorraine?
LS: I do because mine will be quick. I have actually two very quick... So we were in Germany,
and we were... The first time we appeared in Germany, and they have this big... You
appear in in a sort of television show that reaches all of Germany, so it's just huge.
It's Top of the Pops, but German style. And then you're along with... It's not just a
music show. They show sharks in a tank, and it's a marketplace thing. It's just crazy.
Anyways, we arrived there the very first time we're on our... We go to the rehearsal and
they have this very elaborate set and there's a lot of bubbles. Bubbles in the air blowing
and the bubbles. And we're slipping and sliding on the bubbles because the bubbles hit the
ground and then... So I, promptly do a 'whoop-puff' in the middle of rehearsal, and I'm terrified.
And Lauri, the keyboard player, is so proud of herself. She's been trying to learn all
these German phrases, so she goes up to one of the tech guys, and she says, "Ich bin habing
eine problemm mit the blassen". And the guy looks at her. And then Dave, who's our guitar
player who understands German really well, he says, "You just told him that you're having
wind. You're passing wind!" [laughter] And so they're all looking at us, and we're trying
to figure out how to...
LS: Another just very quick one, is just that we were playing at Dawson City, up in the...
And it was so beautiful up there, right? It's the time of the year where there's... The
like is happening all the time. Anyways, we were playing in this festival, and we were
also playing workshops, and we were running from here to there. And there was three of
us, three of the women, Julie Masi, Lauri Conger, and myself, had a group called the
Pillow Sisters. And we would do acapella stuff and we would wear the elaborate really silly
pillows on our heads. We did these funny acapella things.
LS: So anyway, we are on our way to the main, one of the stages when we see a fight break
out. We see a bouncer basically trying to pin down a First Nations person on the ground.
Lauri Conger and myself, we get all like, "You can't!" So we run and we jump on this
guy. We're beating on this guy, right. And I'm a scrapper from Hamilton, so I'm like,
"You can't do that!" And Lauri's like, "That's not very nice!" [laughter] And all of this
is..., And these guys are huge. And I look up and I see all the guys from the band looking
at us and they're like, "The guy was kinda causing trouble. He was kinda drunk, and they're
trying to get them away from people because he was picking fights." So then we're like,
"Oh, okay. That's fine," and then we skulk away. And then they come to our show, and
their like, "Those are the girls that were beating up the bouncer!"
[laughter]
PH: That's great. Brendan, can give us your best road story?
BC: There's a lot of road stories. But... Because this Lou Reed tribute concert just
happened...
PH: Couple nights, ago.
BC: Yeah. And we did this Neil Young tribute concert at the Olympics in 2010. And we were
collaborating on one... It was a song from Dead Man, that Neil Young score for the...
PH: Jim Jarvis.
BC: Yeah, the Jim Jarvis/Johnny Depp movie. I just smoked a joint and then I realized,
"Hey, you're doing that song with Lou in five minutes." I just realized, "I haven't got
around to learning it yet". [laughter] So I quickly got on the headphones. I was like,
"Oh man. I shouldn't have smoked that joint." [laughter] But then the next minute, I'm on
stage with Lou Reed and sort of... It's sort of, "Okay. This is a B minor," and then he'd
be lookin' at me. And his guitar tech would say to him, "Okay, B minor," and then the
next part. And then a C, and his guitar tech would sort of say, "Okay, C." And then we're
going back to the B minor again. And this went back and forth., there was only two chords.
It was a B minor to C. Back...
PH: That was Lou Reed. Yeah.
BC: It's a pretty modal sort of piece. And then Kevin, my band mate, jumped in and he
said, "Okay. Let's figure this out." I think that was maybe... At least a moment, for me,
where I thought, "Oh wow. On stage with Lou Reed. That's pretty cool," and you were talking
about Maria Muldaur. Her daughter was singing at this show, Jenni Muldaur. And we were playing
"Only Love Will Tear Us Apart," and bopping around on my bass guitar. I look over and
it's like, "Oh. That's Elvis Costello rocking out over on that side." Yeah. I don't know
if that's my best tour story, but that's was pretty memorable.
PH: That's good. I like it. How about you, Murray? Murray, what do you got for us?
MM: Well, I have to pick one I can actually tell.
[laughter]
PH: Your secret's safe with us. No one's gonna repeat anything. Nobody is tweeting or anything.
MM: I was on the Tonight's the Night tour with Neil, which was an education.
BH: Wow, like '73?
MM: Toured with the Everly Brothers twice. But probably, I think, the most surreal night
I ever had was on that before-mentioned tour of Japan that Bruce and I did years ago. Our
tour promoter was a guy named Hiroshi Asada, and Hiroshi ran a company called Tom's Cabin
Productions, named after his little boy. And he brought specialty acts and toured them
all through Japan. So we were on his tour. It was an amazing, really amazing tour because
all of our tech people, and our minders, and such, were all the children of high-ranking
executives for huge Japanese electronics companies. So they were incredibly good, incredibly knowledgeable,
and they just really wanted to show us a time. We ended up going up alleys to dinner in six
different places, and then coffee, and then thing, and then more stuff. It was just amazing.
MM: So we wound up one night, in this little town over on the Korean Sea called Kanazawa.
And after the show was over, we were gonna go out and have dinner. So the techies took
Bruce and Bernie Finkelstein, my manager at the time, and our bass player, Dennis Pendrith
who was with us and some other people. The first place we went to was a club; it was
a bar, and this was supposed to be our kick-off place, it was a club. Then the name above
the door, it said, "As Time Goes By." So we all troop in the front door and the owner
of the place is, he's all excited, and obsequious, and fabulous. And there was a baby grand piano
in the corner of the room. So I just walked over and sat down at the piano and I went,
"You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh." So I played
the movie version of the song. Well, the owner at this place just went completely somewhere
else. He was in tears. He was weeping. He was so grateful. Well, we couldn't buy a drink
and a lot of them started to flow. [laughter] So, within the not too distant time, we were
all paralytic drunk. [laughter]
MM: At this point, Hiroshi decides... There is a guitar in the corner. Hiroshi decides
that he is gonna get up and he's gonna sing a song. I didn't even know he played the guitar.
So Hiroshi gets up, and there's this bar full of Japanese people and everybody's just drunk,
drunk, drunk, drunk, pixelated drunk. And he sits down on the stool and he starts playing
the "Ballad of Ira Hayes." So we are drunk in the bar in Kanazawa, listening to a Japanese
guy singing, "Was he just a drunken Indian or the Marine who went to war."
[laughter]
MM: And of course, Bernie weighed 325 pounds at the time and he was 5 foot 7, so. It got
really rowdy, so we had to go into the alley outside the bar. It was getting rowdy like
Lorraine's gig. [laughter] And all of these drunk Japanese guys started looking at Bernie,
and going, "Sumo, Sumo, Sumo!" [laughter] And Bernie went, "Sumo!" So then they all
just ran at him like rhinoceroses with their heads down, and Bernie would go, "Boom," and
bounce them on to that. So it became this ridiculous melee. The net result was that
as we went back to the hotel we were staying in, Bernie was, all... We were all whistling
the theme from the A&W Root Beer song because Bernie bought one. I had Hiroshi Asada over
my shoulder in a fireman's lift because he was pretty well unconscious. The last thing
I actually remember of the evening was Hiroshi just mumbling, "A Marine who went to the war...
" And then he threw up down my back. That was a terrific night on the road.
PH: I love these stories.
MM: Great night on the road.
[applause]
PH: I'm being selfish here. I'm hogging these great people, but it is your turn to ask some
questions now if you want to come to the mic in the middle there and ask some. Do we have
anybody?
BC: So much pressure.
MM: Here comes one...
LS: Pressure. The pressure.
S?: I came here to hear your wonderful stories, but also about mosh pits. And maybe Murray
just told us the original mosh pit. But I was wondering if you could explain that to
me, what a mosh pit is. I don't understand it.
PH: Well, it's funny. It's more of a '90s thing, isn't it? Mosh pits?
BC: I would say more of an '80s into '90s thing. Well, now it's still... Whatever. You
run around in a circle, bump people, or bounce up and down, and...
MM: We could probably get 25 or 30 people to demonstrate for you.
[laughter]
BC: And then you get crowd surfing, and you jump off the stage and everyone carries you
up. It's fun.
MM: We jump and crash into each other.
PH: Yeah. There's a great... Mike Meyers movie, Wayne's World, there's a great scene where
somebody's passing a refrigerator, and then there's a live... [laughter] There's a live
steer going by, and they sort of...
MM: Sea of 500.
BC: Yeah. It was more of a punk thing. But then I remember going to a show at the Concert
Hall in '86, I went to see Slayer, my favourite band at the time. But yeah. Now it's the crossover.
It's hardcore and heavy metal crossover. I don't know if anyone cares about that particular
moment in rock 'n' roll history, but I certainly did. It was...
LS: I would be terrified...
PH: And interesting... Here's a little interesting little Toronto fact is, when they built the
Molson Amphitheatre at the Harbour Front, it was the first amphitheater in North America
that had actually a mosh pit built in. It was so Canadian, it was safe, right? It was...
[laughter] It was all nicely padded and everything. They had cotton.
LS: They have orange vests.
PH: Yeah. The mosh pit with seat belts and hall monitors. [laughter] Another question?
S?: Yeah. My question's a little more, I guess, political, but I think, especially for Murray,
I guess, there was a time when CanCon was helping a lot of musicians and, I'm wondering
if there's any place for that today to help the situation that you have with...
0:55:19 MM: Well. Yeah, it is helping. It still exists. And the fact is, there's been
a lot of people who've had strong opinions to the contrary that it was a good idea. But
personally, I think it was a good idea, that it was really necessary to help create some
sort of an infrastructure, so that people who made music in Canada could survive. Because
the media was, at the time, completely uncooperative. They would not play Canadian records. And
for the most part of the... After the advent of Can-Con, and to some degree, they still
do meet the requirements by playing them at off hours. They play their quota between midnight
and six AM.
LS: I actually have to say that I think a lot of what happened for us had so much to
do with Can-Con because we were also, at the time when music videos, there were... It was
just the very beginning of the music video time and they had to find Canadian content
that was different that they would play, and they ended up playing us. And part of the
reason, I'd like to hope that some of it was talent, but part of it was just being at the
right place at the right time, too, where radio was really playing us quite a bit. And
there were times in our career when we would release singles and the radio programmers
would actually say to our manager and such, "We really love this song, but we've fulfilled
our Canadian content quota." So our songs would just die on the vine. We had also those
kinds of experiences that I'm sure you have, too.
MM: Just a little side note to that. When video, when MuchMusic first came to the fore
under the directorship of a guy named John Martin, there were constraints on radio as
to what content they could play, but there weren't really any constraints, at the time,
on video. It was more a matter of there being a certain amount of cheerleading within the
organization itself. And one of the best examples I can think of, of that working for the good,
was the band Blue Rodeo with which I'm sure you're all familiar. They had a record out.
I won't say the label. They had a song out, I think it was called "Try", I think. And
it wasn't doing anything on radio, and the record company's going... "Later. We're not
gonna work the record anymore." Blah blah blah. John Martin said, the video guy, said,
"I don't give a ***. I'm gonna play this thing. I'm gonna put it on heavy rotation
because I like the video and I like the song." So he did. And the band went... And took off.
LS: Yeah, that's true.
MM: So a lot of people come along and they get very fortunate to be in the right place
when an emergent phenomena is happening, surfing the first wave of the video phenomenology
or in my case, surfing the first wave of the FM radio phenomena. So, there.
PH: Another question?
S?: Hi. I'd like to ask a question about what you consider your musical influences? Where
you got started loving music and wanting to perform. I remember, Murray, in your house
on Hazleton Avenue where you had this great jukebox, a great Wurlitzer jukebox, with all
these '40s country, and R&B, and black music, and blues, and... Fantastic. I remember sitting
there listening to that stuff. And so, for the three of you, where did you get started?
What turned you on to music? What was the kind of music you first listened to and made
you want to go ahead being a musician?
BC: I grew up listening to AM radio, like CFDR, basically on my transistor radio. And
then when Fleetwood Mac or whatever, Steve Miller Band, and then I guess KISS was pretty
exciting because for a nine-year-old, lots of makeup. [laughter] And then, further on
from there, it's more satanic music, I guess, was very, very appealing for a kid in the
suburbs who grew up Roman Catholic. [laughter] So groups like Black Sabbath, I guess, and
Iron Maiden that were sort of singing devil-type songs. So that was really what... And so,
I'd be in church and looking up on the altar, and just thinking, "Whoa, this would be a
great place for a gig." [laughter] Just flip that cross upside down, get some purple smoke
there, and a couple of Stonehenges, maybe, and yeah. Anyway. That's... Yeah. And the
suburbs, it was a good breeding ground for anything that made you just wanna rebel against
what was going on.
LS: In Hamilton, we caught the waves coming over from the Detroit border, so I grew up
listening to a lot of Supremes, soul music, R&B music which I really, really like. But
it's really interesting, the band always makes fun of me. The music that most... I listen
to the most oddly were singer/songwriters like James Taylor, and Tom Rush, and folks
like that. I never wrote music like that. In fact, the music that I listened to when
I was younger that really inspired me to wanna be a musician was not music that I ever ended
up doing ever in my career, but music to this day, that I still sort of always go back and
reference for different reasons. And there are also bands like Grand Funk Railroad and
that, just crazy... I listened to as much stuff as I could when I was younger. But as
I got into making music, then the music that really actually caught the passion that was
in me was really sort of World music, African music, Latin music, group music.
PH: How about you Murray? I read a story in Rolling Stone once. Tell me if this is true?
Is it true that you were at a party with Bob Dylan once, and you just sat down at a piano
and just played a little song for him?
MM: I was at a party, and Dylan was there along with most of the other members of the
band. It was at Gordon Lightfoot's house. I don't remember playing the piano, but that's
not necessarily... That doesn't necessarily mean that I didn't. I think that was the night
that Bobby Neuwirth burned his jacket in Gordon's fireplace [laughter] There was a hell of a
smell in the house for days. How many people would actually... Put up your hands if you
would actually come to see Lorraine sing a review called, "I've seen fire, and I've seen
James?" [laughter] See, there you go.
LS: We were talking about. That's so funny.
MM: Surprised you. Should I answer the question?
PH: Yeah, answer the question.
MM: Briefly, three things... When I was a little young teenaged fellow 12, 13, 14, I
was addicted to late night radio. And there was a program on run by a guy named Randy
Ferris. It was a folk music show, but uncharacteristically, at a time when folk music was like Hootenanny
and the Brothers Four, Randy Ferris was playing Library of Congress recordings. He was playing,
*** Guthrie, he was playing old Delta Blues people. He was playing all kinds of stuff,
and I got really hooked to listen to it. So my early experience of folk traditional, old,
old folk music were on that show. Probably the next major thing didn't... That got me
into music didn't really have to do with music at all... It was a friend of mine and a mentor,
who recently died at 100 years old, called Doris McCarthy.
MM: Doris was my painting instructor in school. And what she got into my head was that, "It
is the visual image that holds the power, because the visual image is the key to creating
an emotion in a person." That you could tell them things all day, you can say things, you
can say what's happening, you can narrate till you're blue in the face. But if you can
create some sort of tableau where they experience that emotion, it will stay with them. So that
really informed my future as a writer. That's why I was able to write things very early
like "Child Song", which is... It's a simple narrative. It's a series of just images of
stuff happening. The third thing was just really I love playing music. I would do it
whether I was making a living at it or not. The big influence of actually mastering an
instrument or coming on to the point where you can actually work an instrument well enough
to do something with it was a huge thrill for me, and it still is. At this point, I've
been working like a dog for six months now, mastering these things called shell voicings,
which allow me to sit there and comp along with Freddy Green and the Basie Band. So it
never stops. You do it because you love to do it. You don't do it because there's a living
in it. Otherwise, you'd be a police officer.
[laughter]
PH: Another question?
S?: First, I want to thank all three of you for being here and doing this. Second thing,
I remember your... Murray, your show, Swinging On a Star on CBC. And I remember the interview
with Lorraine on it, as well. I was going to say the CBC... Did you find that it has
helped expose a lot of Canadian music that you would normally wouldn't hear?
MM: Oh God, yes! Absolutely. It's been the well and the go-to place for music and also
recording music festivals, and it's... For some of the more marginal artists that play
music festivals, CBC actually paid them union scale when they broadcast them and recorded
them. It's 350 bucks at a critical time when you're trying to buy lunch. That's very, very
important to a lot of people. CBC's been... Don't get me on my soapbox about the value
of CBC because I think if we let that go, we're out of our *** minds.
[applause]
MM: Pardon my language, but I'm a bit passionate about it.
LS: So am I. Because when I was in New Brunswick, that was my lifeblood to what was happening
in the rest of Canada.
MM: Sure.
LS: But I was in Hamilton 1979, and I went to The Clam Chowder when you had your Whispering
Rain Concert, and I found my tickets stub about three or four days ago. I was wondering
if you'd autograph it a little bit later on sometime?
MM: Sure, no worries.
LS: Thank you. You're ever so kind.
[applause]
LS: I just want... That's amazing. I wanna comment on what Murray said. I remember sort
of even... It was back in the '90s, I remember this ANR guy from a record company saying
to me...
BC: What's his name?
LS: Yeah. Well, we know... I don't even think he's there anymore, but...
BC: What label?
LS: The labour was Warner's. And I remember him saying, "Well, you don't wanna have a
record that's played only on the CBC because that's not real radio." And I went, "I do,"
because I remember thinking to my... And we when you at what's happening with the CBC
now and the kind of music that they're playing, they're the only one's that are actually playing
a playlist of a wide variety of different music where all three of us could be played
on that. We don't have to have hit radio or AM radio, whatever that looked like back then,
to actually get played on the CBC. The CBC is the single most important radio stream
for people with any genre and any age to actually get played on. And so I find it really amazing
that this guy said this back in the '90s, I remember thinking to myself, "You're gonna
end up eating those words."
BC: I will say, that's also something that should be adhered to, and you don't wanna
make a record, that's all it'll gonna make it on CBC to play devil's advocate.
LS: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but...
BC: Because I just sent an email out last night. It's like, sounds like it might...
The song is okay, it might make it on the drive home show, its 3:30... Because it's
a particular sound. You tune in not every song, but there's a particular sound, it's
a softness and an earnestness, and this is no offence to anyone who gets played on that
show. But there's a certain lack of danger. I just happen to like music that's maybe a
little bit weirder than might get played and maybe have to wait. At last... The show Brave
New Waves used to be midnight to 5:00 AM. And that whether we play a lot more cutting
edge music, so CBC is definitely... That's before Brent Bambury became such a wacky guy
and hosts some funny show. But I remember those days growing up and I think CBC for
me back then... But then of course, if you wanna hear more cutting edge music there's
the Internet, that whole thing. And there is also satellite radio where you get to discover
a lot. So even though I will say across the board, CBC is a great station and I definitely
I'm into it, and thankful for whenever that $350 cheque came in because I did some session
that, whatever they...
LS: That was another glass half empty moment, I've...
BC: I maintain realism with my career, and I'm just constantly trying to strive for...
LS: I get what you're talking about because it would have been that the music that you're
talking about would've been played on 102.1 or 107 or...
BC: Now definitely not 107 because they don't play anything after 1985.
LS: Right.
BC: Back to the Canadian... Come back to the Canadian Content, that's why bands like Haywire
can still get cheques because there's a certain... No offence to Haywire, I don't if anyone played
in that band here, but I think Ralph James is doing okay as the base man, was he in Haywire?
Ralph James?
LS: I don't know, I don't remember.
BC: No. Not in Haywire, he was... No. He was in Harlequin, sorry. Anyway, I could talk
a...
LS: Are you talking about 102.1 is where you would've been played like the poeple...
BC: 102.1, I would get played in the '90s, but because of the advent of Live Nation and
Clear Channel, those parameters of what radio stations get played, it's good for a certain
market.
LS: Well, the point is... The point, I think, is that radio has changed so radically it
feels like any one of us could be hoping to be played somewhere, but you don't know where
it is you're gonna land 'cause there's no way that you can know who's gonna accept your
music in a way, unless you're gearing your music towards 99.9 or whatever, and none of
us played that kind of music, so...
PH: K10 Zepplin?
LS: Pardon?
BC: Yeah. K10 Floyd, never mind.
LS: Zepplin all the time.
MM: Well, as long as we're talking specifics I would like to make two points. I'm sorry
your standing there, sir, but...
S?: It's quite all right. I forgot what I was gonna say now.
[laughter]
MM: Well, maybe it'll refresh your memory. I think it's important to plan out that there
is... When we talk about CBC here, e're... All we've mentioned, all we talked
about is radio.
LS: Right.
MM: Right? And I think that that's really an interesting point because everybody loves
radio, everybody loves CBC Radio. I don't think there's anybody who doesn't whether
you're soft or cold about what it is. They have a lot of services on podcasts, they have
a lot of ones, twos, threes, they've a lot of places doing different kinds of music,
but I think everybody basically finds something of interest, whether it's conversational,
intelligent, literary or whatever on CBC Radio and that's a huge and valuable asset. But
the way the organization is structured, radio has to basically share the same funding from
the government as the television side, but radio isn't allowed to make revenue from advertising.
So when people scream and yell from the private sector about CBC, and go, "They're competing
with government money in the private sector," just be sure to be understanding that they're
actually talking about television. And I think they have a case to make. I'm not a huge fan
of CBC Television, I think it's redundant. But if we let radio go, we're out of out minds,
period.
LS: Hear, hear.
BC: I like the Passionate Eye. That's a good show.
PH: Hey guys, another have a question for you here.
LS: You were talking earlier about the Toronto musical influence or Canadian musical influence.
One question I'd like to ask you. I was lucky and came here and hung around Yorkville in
the mid-'60s. The influence of live music upon you all... Because this is something
which, sadly over the years in Toronto, is less and less. In those days, I grew up with
the Stones and the Beatles, that didn't impress me too much. But to be able to go down to
the Colonial Tavern or the Town Tavern, and for the price of a beer to hear McCoy Tyner,
Roland Kirk, all of these guys that I'd only seen on a big stage far away in the UK, was
a huge influence on my musical life. Perhaps you could address that question yourselves
in terms of what was the influence of live music upon what you've become as musicians?
LS: A huge influence. Yeah. You go.
MM: For me, again, the cross-pollination, the jamming, the... Because you knew everybody,
everybody sat, everybody hung out, everybody went to... I had a loft down in Queen Street,
people would come over, we would party, we'd play, we'd write, we'd... But it was just
a scene, it was more of a scene. It was also a instructional... You mentioned a certain
little period in time in the '60s, and one of my favourite memories is just walking up
Avenue Road towards Webster's Restaurant and seeing David Clayton-Thomas sitting on the
steps of the church there, playing really good blues, and singing like David Clayton-Thomas
and everybody just walking by and going... Because he was nobody, right? But he'd been
a huge rock star in Canada, he'd been like David Clayton-Thomas and The Shays. There
was all these bands, Bobby Kris & The Imperials. There were always amazing blues, R&B bands,
they were great. They were super bands, they were terrific. But David was down on his luck.
So a couple of years later, I ran into him again, he was riding around in his limousine
in New York as he'd gotten a gig with Blood, Sweat & Tears. Well, that's the way the world
works, isn't it?
PH: So David Clayton-Thomas started like Justin Bieber, is that what you're saying?
MM: No. I wouldn't draw that parallel, no.
[laughter]
BC: I don't see where that parallel came from, Peter, I gotta say.
PH: Justin Bieber was a busker in Stratford.
BC: Oh, right and he's got a lot... He's got the white man's blues...
MM: David Clayton-Thomas can hardly open his hands anymore because he's been in so many
fights. [chuckle] I could just imagine somebody going like, "Yeah, you're just like Justin
Bieber." Pow!
[laughter]
LS: Queen Street in the late '70s, early '80s, was all about the music. Down at the Horseshoe
there, we'd see Talking Heads, David Byrne. All the bands coming up from New York would
end up somehow on the strip. And because it was a small community that was growing larger
and larger because of the influx of people that were moving down there, we basically
all supported each other by going to each other's gigs in between our own gigs. And
then after that, there was the *** cans and we'd finish a gig and we'd then go and
play at a *** can and we'd go and see our friends play at a *** can. It really felt
like a incredible community. A lot of times, people would come up, and say "Oh I miss those
days." And I don't think it's a nostalgia moment because you wanna go back to the '80s,
but it's this moment where you really remember feeling like you were part of a community
and you were all supporting each other and seeing each other come up, and also helping
to grow the music to a larger and larger place.
MM: The backstairs of the Riverboat Cafe on Yorkville was probably one of the most important
places in the musical history of Toronto. From my personal experience, I spent a lot
of time sitting down there. Bernie Fiedler, who ran the club, was a great guy. He never
charged an artist admission to get in the place, especially, obviously, if you played
there but he never would charge anybody who actually slung a guitar to get in the place.
So as a result, over a very short period of time, I saw James Taylor before he was James
Taylor. I saw Phil Ochs before he was Phil Ochs. I saw James Taylor show up with Carole
King, while she was still writing in the Brill Building. It was an amazing place, but probably
most importantly of all, I met Tom Rush there. A friend of mine was playing guitar with him,
sitting in the back steps. Tom comes up after a set, "Hi. How are you doing? You got any
songs?" So I took him up in the dressing room, I played him "Child's Song" and "Old Man's
Song" song, and he recorded them. And that was basically the beginning of my career,
in that spot on that moment, just in that context. So the live connection, the sitting
around, hanging out with people, just being in the scene was immensely important.
PH: Do we have time for one more question? Yeah? One more? Yeah. Sorry?
[background conversation]
LS: Brendan's answer.
BC: My answer? Oh with live music? What else do I do except go to clubs and check out bands
for the past 23 years. So Queen Street, whether it was 1979 or 1980, you still have the Horseshoe,
like Rivoli maybe to a lesser degree, and there's no Beverley Tavern anymore, but you
still have the Cameron House, which is still my favourite bar. This Friday night, you'll
hear a pretty *** hot country band good picking, good classic country. And if the bar's packed,
you go to The Rex Hotel and, whether it's Saturday afternoon, or Saturday night, or
Wednesday night, or whatever. And you go further along, you go to The Drake Hotel, whether
it's in the early '90s, when I would play there in the '90s, where it was a grubby hotel
to now where it's a slicker hotel. There's still an underground where bands play. You
go further west, there's the Wrongbar. You go up to Dundas, the Dakota Tavern is a really
hot spot. It's all within, you don't have to go east of Spadina. You don't have to go
too far west of Dufferin, and you really don't have to travel much past Bloor Street, and
it's as I always call it the Quadrant.
BC: No one's going out to Greek Town, really, except for my buddy Brody West who plays saxophone
at a Ethiopian place. But one of my band, my newer band mates who talks about going
out on the Danforth. I'm like, "You just keep your Danforth there." [laughter] I never need
it. What, am I gonna go to taste the Danforth Festival? No offence but, it's not a great
festival.
PH: One last, a last question.
BC: It's just not, it's just not.
S?: Yeah. You mentioned David Clayton-Thomas. I was in North Bay a couple of years ago,
and he was playing there with Rita Chiarelli from Hamilton. And he had his orthopaedic
shoes on, and he was 73 at that point. The music that they play, I can understand. There's
so many bands that are coming out now. I don't know how you follow them or even try to make
sense of any of the new music that's coming out. I hear all the other older people...
We went to see Chubby Checker at the casino, and this music I understand. How do you make
sense of all the new music that's coming out?
BC: Just...
PH: You better answer that.
[laughter]
BC: You just got to be interested. I'm interested. Whether it's Bassnectar or whether it's some
new artist heard on JagJaguwar, some indie label out of Indiana that's one of the hottest
indie labels in North America. You just got to be interested. If you do music for a living
and you're trying to be current and you want 20-year-olds to come to your gigs, you should
just be aware. But I'm really interested and I DJ, so I'm always listening to whether it's
house music, hip-hip, indie rock, old rock, some Nigerian funk compilation from the '70s
or whether it's an Ethiopian compilation from the '60s. There's just... There's so much
music, you just have to be really interested and be passionate about it. So, it's all there,
it's all one click away.
LS: There's always something that surfaces that sort of can catch your eye, too. I find
right now, I'm sort of living in the East End, and I find the scene that's going on
at Regent Park right now really inspirational. All these young kids who are making really
relevant, really interesting music. Very different. I think if you love music and you're... You
can love everything you always loved, but there's always something new that or a new
take on something, even. As Murray said, his son's reference point there that was The Caravan.
BC: Caravan to Hell.
LS: I love them. They're so much interesting, and it's all the different genres morphing
together these days, too. So, it's cool.
PH: We have to wrap this up, but I wanted to just briefly ask everybody to get us up-to-date
on what you're doing now. Lorraine, you got a new solo album coming out?
LS: I do have a new solo album coming out in May and I have a one-woman show coming
out in the fall of next year called... This year, called, "Get Off My Dress."
PH: How about you Brendan? What you got?
BC: I released an album, a solo record last year, and...
PH: You Gots 2 Chill.
BC: You Gots 2 Chill. Yep, and I'm scheming to make another one or... I'm just trying
to figure things out, basically.
PH: And Broken Social Scene. I know they got at least one more gig.
BC: Broken Social Scene, we're gonna play once. We play once a year now, 'ecause after
being an... It keeps it nice. So you don't have to be around each other all the time,
but you got... It's a family reunion. So we'll play this June, we did play last June, and
we'll probably play June of 2015 and keep it going like that.
PH: Keep it up, keep it up. And Murray, Lunch with Allen is gonna become Dinner with Allen
or?
[laughter]
MM: Well, I'm still lingering over that gentleman's question. I just... May I?
PH: Sure, yeah absolutely.
MM: Because to me there's only really two kinds of music. There's good music and then
there's music where you go, "Well I appreciate and understand what it was you're trying for,
but it's not really what I like." So to understand any kind of music... People railed on about
The Walls. People went "Bartok. Oh my God what a noise. I like Tchaikovsky." People
go, "I like this or I like that." But it's always good to ask yourself whether your curiosity
is failing or whether you're just sort of mad because you don't understand it. That's
sort of a different mindset. So, I think there is something out there for everybody, and
if you don't like what's coming along then there's plenty of music in the past that you
can cleave to and enjoy. That's not an invalid thing. I do a lot of that myself. I'm an addict,
40s on 4. And that was before my time.
[laughter]
MM: Yes, Lunch at Allen's. We're still touring, and we will be. We have two concerts at the
end of March. I do not myself perform in public anymore. I don't do concerts anymore as myself.
I retired from that, 50 years was enough, thank you. What else can you show me? And
those who yelled at me for doing that said, "Why? You're at your peak?" And I said, "That's
when you should stop." So I am doing a lot of other stuff on boards. I've joined the
Room 217 Foundation which seeks to ally music and palliative care. Still active with SOCAN
Foundation. Still a lot of stuff on the upper side, trying to give back a little bit. I'm
doing a lot of painting, which I really quite enjoy.
PH: That's always a good thing. It's great to see all of you. I really enjoyed this.
I think our host now has a couple of words to say.
MS: And thank you to our panel. And thank you to everyone who came out this evening.
Please, we do extend an invitation to come down to see Coffee, Beer and Mosh Pits on
the first floor. And we do have a tour guide with us, and I'm sure that we have tons of
knowledge just in this room that you can share together. So thank you very much.
[applause]