Episode 3
Special Guest- Gord Deppe
Gord Deppe, founding member, lead singer and songwriter of the legendary Canadian band, The Spoons, joins us today to share some great insights into his musical journey, his career and the tracks that have shaped his life. From iconic 80s hits like "Nova Heart" and "Romantic Traffic" to his recent gigs with A Flock of Seagulls, Gord's got stories that'll make you feel all the feels! We’ll dive into how his early days in Burlington, Ontario, set the stage for a career that’s defined by creativity and an unwavering artistic commitment to not dwelling on the past and a refusal to be boxed in. Plus, he's got some surprising picks for the songs that resonate with him, proving that even rock legends have a few unexpected favorites. So grab your headphones, settle in and enjoy our conversation with Gord Deppe!
Supporting Episode Resources
Episode Playlists
Apple Music
Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7AxkUtBdOnl1mTYgWkg0Bb?si=b13ee4a209da498d
Link to Gord's Book
SpoonFed- My Life with The Spoons
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1897453434?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title
Credits
Intro Music written and performed by Jeff Moffatt
Instagram: @therealjeffmoffatt
https://music.apple.com/ca/artist/jeff-moffatt/1563362236
This podcast is presented by Astraltune
Takeaways:
- Gord Deppe shared how the Spoons defined the sound of the 1980s in Canada, creating timeless hits that still resonate today.
- He discusses the importance of finding a personal safe space for creativity, revealing how it influences his songwriting process.
- Gord emphasizes the organic nature of his songwriting, where music often comes before lyrics, creating a unique artistic flow.
- The conversation reveals that even successful artists like Gord grapple with self-doubt and the pressures of the music industry.
- Deppe's anecdote about shaking hands with George Martin highlights the serendipitous moments that shape an artist's journey.
- He reflects on the evolution of music tastes and the importance of authenticity in songwriting, especially in today's rapidly changing music scene.
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- the Spoons
- A Flock of Seagulls
- AIR Studios
- George Martin
- Roxy Music
- Duran Duran
- Queen
- The Prodigy
- Marilyn Manson
- The Verve
- Stone Roses
- Main Skin
- Wet Leg
Transcript
Welcome to Treasure Island Discs.
Speaker A:Get ready to set sail with your host, Jeff Moffat, as we dive deep into the stories behind the music, one Treasure island disc at a time.
Speaker B:Hi, I'm Jeff Moffatt and welcome to another edition of Treasure Island Discs.
Speaker B:We've got a great show lined up for you this week.
Speaker B:On this episode of the podcast, we welcome Gord Depp, lead singer, songwriter, guitarist, and founding member of the Canadian band the Spoons, and for the last number of years, also the guitarist with the legendary British band A Flock of Seagulls.
Speaker B: If you are anywhere in the: Speaker C:You'Re more than familiar with the music.
Speaker B:Of the Spoons and unforgettable songs like Nova Heart, Romantic Traffic, and Old Emotions.
Speaker C:Just to name a few.
Speaker B: elped define the music of the: Speaker B:From the band's early days when they formed in Burlington, Ontario, right out of high school, to the international success they enjoyed, they toured the world, they worked with some of the biggest name producers in the business, and they created a body of work that has more than stood the test of time.
Speaker B:In fact, the band continues to this day recording and releasing excellent new music and maintaining an active live performance schedule.
Speaker B:I think as a listener, you're really going to enjoy this conversation with Gord.
Speaker B:There's so many interesting topics that we cover, but what you're really going to find is that Gord is a charismatic, articulate, intelligent individual.
Speaker B:There's an undeniable positive energy to him that is truly inspiring, and you'll hear that clearly in our conversation.
Speaker B:His was a total joy to hang out with.
Speaker B:Now, the format of the show revolves around our guests selecting five songs or albums that they feel best define the soundtrack of their lives.
Speaker B:The selections you hear today from Gord, if you're a Spoons fan, will definitely surprise you.
Speaker B:And that's the cool thing about how we do this.
Speaker B:With the albums that Gord has chosen, you'll learn a lot more about Gord Depp, the artist, and also how he looks at his life in general on a more philosophical level, as a person who's never caught up in the past.
Speaker B:So I hope you enjoy the show.
Speaker B:And just before we jump into the interview, a reminder that we have a lot of great artists lined up for you in the coming weeks.
Speaker B:Hit the follow button to stay up to date on upcoming episodes.
Speaker B:You can also find us on Instagram treasureislanddiscs and we'd love to Hear your thoughts and comments on this show and any ideas for artists that you'd like to hear on upcoming episodes.
Speaker B:We've also included a link in the show Notes for where you can learn more about Gordep and his work with the Spoons and A Flock of Seagulls, including a link to Gord's book Spoon Fed My Life with the Spoons.
Speaker B: It was published in: Speaker B:It's a great read and it's also a great companion to this podcast and for your listening pleasure.
Speaker B:We have a complete playlist of the songs from today's show, as well as some highlights from Gord's extensive career.
Speaker B:Great to have you along with us as we talk with Gord Depp.
Speaker C:Thanks for changing it up.
Speaker C:I know like you're probably in your shorts and T shirt doing the pool.
Speaker A:I just.
Speaker A:We opened the pool yesterday, so I like puttering around, just cleaning and acting like I'm at a hotel or something.
Speaker A:All this stuff is like therapy between tours, between gigs.
Speaker A:It is really is, you know, especially gardening or that kind of thing.
Speaker A:No matter how much, you know, the allure of the road and the fun you have on stage that you always have that.
Speaker A:It sounds so silly, but that safe place to go back to where everything is the way you know it and nobody can break in.
Speaker A:It's just like your private little thing.
Speaker A:And that's.
Speaker A:And that.
Speaker A:And that's really conducive to writing too, if you don't have a place like that.
Speaker A:I can't imagine trying to put together the record.
Speaker A:But you know, on the, on the road, though, I did in the last tour, I had to do it in hotel room, just throw ideas on a little recorder.
Speaker A:I need that safe spot to just, you know, be able to sing without anybody hearing, you know.
Speaker C:There's something I was.
Speaker C:I wanted to talk to you about how you write and.
Speaker C:And how you find the muse and what kind of environment you like to have to write your best stuff.
Speaker C:What does that look like for you?
Speaker A:Well, first of all, the thing people are most surprised about is that the music comes first and lyrics.
Speaker A:Second, a lot of people work the other way around.
Speaker A:They have an idea of a subject or a person or something they want to get across.
Speaker A:And then they try to figure music where I find that music or the lyrics kind of come from the music.
Speaker A:You know, I just.
Speaker A:And there were times, not so much now, but in the early days where I would perform the songs without complete lyrics.
Speaker A:I would just go on stage at the edge or where, wherever we were playing in the Toronto.
Speaker A:And I had a framework, but I would just sort of had this sort of this gibberish language that sounded like English.
Speaker A:And I'm really good even today, if I lose my spot in a song, I could fill it in.
Speaker A:I never understood singers who stop singing when they forget the words.
Speaker A:No, no, I can.
Speaker A:I could sing about whatever the sky or the person on the front row or something.
Speaker A:But I had this, this make this sort of makeup, gibberish, half English sort of vowel sound thing I could do.
Speaker A:But out of that, it was really organic.
Speaker A:Suddenly sentences would come, you know, like I'd be doing like.
Speaker A:Remember I was working romantic traffic in the early days and I was going.
Speaker A:And I hear a car go by because we're playing a club, downtown Toronto.
Speaker A:Dude, dude.
Speaker A:Like a car going, honking.
Speaker A:Oh, you know that.
Speaker A:And I like that train of thought way of writing.
Speaker A:I could never be a staff writer for somebody or, you know, go to work every day and write songs.
Speaker A:I got.
Speaker A:It's all intuitive, it's all like vibes and I kind of like that.
Speaker A:You know, I'm lucky I can do that.
Speaker A:So it just comes from somewhere and I.
Speaker A:Then I write it out.
Speaker C:Gore, what about your studio setup?
Speaker C:Do you have a studio set up at home?
Speaker A:People are surprised.
Speaker A:I really don't like recording.
Speaker A:It really gets me kind of stressed out.
Speaker A:In the early days, when you're young, it's exciting, you know, you know, big studio and, and now it's like, it's like, it's like a filmmaker you got, you got your idea and they got a thousand people and weeks or months ahead of you where at the end of it, you, you hope that it's what you originally want to do, but you got all these people involved and the studio and the, you know, the sound of the studio that day and whatever platform that guy's using and auto tune and all these things, they can mess with what you're doing and that really gets me stressed out.
Speaker A:I wish I could just cut, shut that out.
Speaker A:So I really don't like the recording process.
Speaker A:So the only thing I have at home is a tiny little pocket 4 channel zoom recorder which I can do multiple tracks and I take that with me everywhere and, you know, hotel rooms on the road and work out songs and then I bring them to the band and then we work them on in, you know, rehearsal studio.
Speaker A:But when it comes to recording, you know, we gave up the big studio thing quite a while ago and Sandy from the Spoons her husband is a producer and they have a nice little studio out in Guelph, out in the countryside.
Speaker A:Little house that's perfect, you know, no traffic, no parking, no stress of Toronto to deal with.
Speaker A:It's like.
Speaker A:It's like a drive into the countryside.
Speaker A:Like, a lot of people.
Speaker A:Like a lot of creative records were made at residential studios in Wales or whatever.
Speaker A:That's something about that, you know, just where you don't have to be stressed out.
Speaker C:You guys worked in some really iconic studios, like air.
Speaker C:Where else did you work?
Speaker A:AIR Studios in.
Speaker A:In London, England.
Speaker A:The original Edge George Martin from the Beatles, I think it might have been the original, but later on they had Monster Rod and some other places.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:But he.
Speaker A:He actually came into the room when standing out there as kids, you know, and shook our hand.
Speaker A:Hey, welcome to Sydney.
Speaker A:Because he was John Punter's boss at the time, who produced a record and we were just a bunch of kids.
Speaker A:It's one of those moments where at the time was whatever.
Speaker A:Then like 40, 50 years later, oh, my God, we shook George Martin's hand.
Speaker A:You know, it's a big deal that.
Speaker A:So, yeah, there.
Speaker A:And then we did the power station in New York City, which is, you know, notorious.
Speaker A:There's a Duran Duran pun there because NARA just worked with them as well.
Speaker A:There's.
Speaker A:And like I said all those things, like, now we're going to this little place in the countryside, but in a way, like New York City and London, when we recorded Ari's symphonies, the vibe of the city and the stresses, everything that goes with it all kind of creep into the music.
Speaker A:And I think it's kind of cool, you know, it makes every song kind of like a time capsule of that recording of that time in our lives.
Speaker C:You think about, like, you say Montserrat and you think about Rockfield in the UK and the music that came out of those places.
Speaker C:And like a story of Rush recording, I think it was Farewell to Kings they did at Rockfield and Alex Liveson recording guitars outside.
Speaker C:And the birds, you can hear the birds in the background.
Speaker C:Really informed the creative process.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Now we did our Vertigo Tango record at Rockfield and that studio is famous, I mean, for ole Led Zeppelin.
Speaker A:I think Tubular Bells was done there by Michael Oldfield.
Speaker A:Queen did Bohemian Rhapsody there.
Speaker A:They had the movie Bohemian Rhapsody.
Speaker A:I recognized the rooms.
Speaker A:They actually duplicated our little cottage bedroom just the way they were.
Speaker A:And the dining room hadn't changed in years.
Speaker A:And then subsequently, people like Oasis and a lot of bigger bands, you know, our generation were There.
Speaker A:But again, there were in the middle of like the countryside, Welsh countryside with.
Speaker A:With sheep and little castles and rolling hills and pubs and.
Speaker A:Yeah, that was.
Speaker A:That was a beautiful experience.
Speaker A:And that was supposed to be six weeks on.
Speaker A:The record companies dying because it's very expensive, you know, but we understand three months, we pretty well moved in.
Speaker A:That was something else.
Speaker A:And that record was made very.
Speaker A:I think a very good record at the end of the 80s.
Speaker A:But nobody saw the end coming.
Speaker A:You know, at that point we're probably gonna talk about this.
Speaker A:But if that record had been released in the mid-80s, it would have done a lot more.
Speaker A:But because of timing shift in music at the time, it was just too late.
Speaker C:So let's come back to that in a few minutes.
Speaker C:But what I'd like to talk about as we kind of build our conversation is talk to me about where you grew up and the environment that you grew up and how music first came into your life.
Speaker A:I mean, that's the whole story too, because that all creeps into as well.
Speaker A:I mean, I have a book out called Spoon Fed.
Speaker A:I'm not plugging the book because it came out like over 10 years ago.
Speaker A:No big deal.
Speaker A:I don't think you have any left to sell.
Speaker A:I kind of thought to take that angle exactly like that.
Speaker A:Instead of just talking about the part partying in the road, I talked about how a kid, almost like a Stephen King novel, was influenced by the silliest little things around the house.
Speaker A:My mom playing old on the.
Speaker A:On the 45 on.
Speaker A:On the turntable.
Speaker A:The theme from Dr.
Speaker A:Chilago or whatever was the Eurovision Song Contest winner at that time.
Speaker A:Because we lived in Germany at the time then.
Speaker A:Bands like the Beatles being in Hamburg at the time, I was there, you know, like in 64 and.
Speaker A:Yeah, so all those early things that influenced me and crept into my writing.
Speaker A:I think I started when I was like 10 years old.
Speaker A:You know, I used to make up songs when I was lying in bed.
Speaker A:And finally I got a little.
Speaker A:I got a guitar for my dad.
Speaker A:He went to a pawn shop or something.
Speaker A:I didn't even want it.
Speaker A:I think I let it sit there for weeks until I finally picked it up.
Speaker A:See what happens, you know.
Speaker C:So you were living in Germany at the time?
Speaker A:Germany, right.
Speaker A:And where I was, it was in Lubeck, which is kind of near Hamburg, nearby on the Baltic Sea.
Speaker A:And it's very beautiful.
Speaker A:They have beaches.
Speaker A:But that wasn't really the spot that influenced me as a kid.
Speaker A:There's a city called Kern, Cologne.
Speaker A:And it's a real medieval place.
Speaker A:I mean, they got the.
Speaker A:The cathedral there.
Speaker A:I think it's the third largest in the world.
Speaker A:It's like right on Hunchback or Notre Dame or something.
Speaker A:And that mysterious old city.
Speaker A:I remember going.
Speaker A:Anytime I went downtown, they'd be doing, you know, digging up the ground for a new building.
Speaker A:They had to stop because they found bones and ruins and.
Speaker A:And some of these Roman relics or whatever they just found.
Speaker A:It was just like living in a museum, you know, and the cobblestone streets and little pubs and like.
Speaker A:And that's bound to affect a kid, you know, like, growing up.
Speaker A:Love that place.
Speaker A:That's where my grandparents lived, and I would spend summers there and I think kind of set me on my course of writing lyrics.
Speaker A:I always had sort of a different angle or different or sometimes dark outlook on things, you know, especially when you get, like, the artist record.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Just I kind of look at things differently.
Speaker A:And I hadn't even discovered, like, the Twilight Zone yet moved to Canada and crazy stuff like that.
Speaker A:That really got me next.
Speaker C:You know, it's interesting because you had this influence of Europe before you got to Canada, which I think informed you probably really, really different.
Speaker C:Like, you say I was born.
Speaker A:I should say I was born in Canada, but only lived like a year in Vancouver or something like that.
Speaker A:Referred to a short stint.
Speaker A:But that was pre my memory, you know.
Speaker C:Really, those early years were very formative, I'm sure, in terms of who you were as a person.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:And being.
Speaker C:And being exposed to the architecture, the art in Europe probably really created a very different perspective of how you approach.
Speaker C:Create.
Speaker A:I didn't grow up on, like, at least on the early years, I didn't grow up on, like, Party Boys.
Speaker A:I was growing up, like, in the Brothers Grim, you know, Everything's kind of twisted and dark.
Speaker A:But then when I came to Canada, oh, my God, I absorbed all this.
Speaker A:I fell in love with, like, the Monkeys and the Brady Bunch and the Partridge Family.
Speaker A:And I wanted to be them, you know?
Speaker A:Know, this is even before I got into music.
Speaker A:There was something about, you know, picking up instruments.
Speaker A:And all of a sudden they started playing.
Speaker A:Those days, ever, if you ever watch one of the shows, it was hilarious.
Speaker A:Like the.
Speaker A:The Partis Family, they walk into the room and one of the guys would say, I've got this idea.
Speaker A:Just follow my lead.
Speaker A:And they go right into the recorded track.
Speaker A:Like, with the full production and everything.
Speaker A:Yeah, that'll work.
Speaker A:Yeah, that was great.
Speaker A:I was innocent and naive, but I loved it.
Speaker A:I want that.
Speaker A:I decided Then I think that's what I wanted to do.
Speaker A:You know, I went on.
Speaker A:Went through high school.
Speaker A:I even got a university degree.
Speaker A:But I always knew that this is what I was going to do one way or another.
Speaker A:Even though I was, like, the most shy kid on the planet, you know, I don't know how I was going to do it, but I was going to do it.
Speaker C:What did your first band look like?
Speaker A:It was just a couple of kids in school.
Speaker A:This is a keyboard player, a drummer and myself.
Speaker A:No bass player yet.
Speaker A:Cassani came along later.
Speaker A:Yeah, it was just a bunch of kids that met out of music class.
Speaker A:You know, you have music back then?
Speaker A:We have music.
Speaker A:It was a big part of our thing.
Speaker A:And I played saxophone, the high school band, you know.
Speaker C:Yep.
Speaker A:And out of that group, yeah, there was.
Speaker A:There's a drummer who played the timpani, but he'd also play rock drums and he liked the Beatles.
Speaker A:And there was a keyboard player really sang Elton John really well.
Speaker A:So he was the lead singer.
Speaker A:So we would do, you know, shows that I.
Speaker A:High school, you know, high school priest.
Speaker A:What do you call that?
Speaker A:Public school, you know, Christmas assembly and.
Speaker A:And talent shows and that kind of thing.
Speaker A:But right off the bat, we were always really good.
Speaker A:Even before I was writing my own songs or.
Speaker A:Or I was singing even.
Speaker A:There's something about the people that I was around.
Speaker A:We were always like, the thing.
Speaker A:And you know what that does to a kid's ego when all of a sudden music is like, you know, giving this shy kid a kick at the world.
Speaker A:Like, all of a sudden people notice you and you bring your Les Paul to school.
Speaker A:Just like, unheard of, you know.
Speaker A:I got that when I was, like, 16.
Speaker A:I think I bought it myself with, like, paper roof money and stuff.
Speaker A:That changed the world, you know.
Speaker A:I said, there's music, but there's this whole other world of, like, being seen.
Speaker A:All of a sudden you know, that I was pretty invisible.
Speaker B:You got that?
Speaker C:It was a Les Paul custom.
Speaker A:They still have it.
Speaker C:Yeah, no kidding.
Speaker A:I had some other ones before that.
Speaker A:I think I had an old Ovation electric I should have kept, because they're kind of collectible now.
Speaker A:I used to watch Hee Haw.
Speaker A:Remember Hee Haw with.
Speaker C:I do.
Speaker A:Glenn Campbell and some of those players.
Speaker C:Roy Clark.
Speaker A:Roy Clark.
Speaker A:Oh, geez.
Speaker C:Buck Owens was on that.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And there was a Canadian on that show, too.
Speaker A:And I ended up doing.
Speaker A:Honoring different people from Burlington, Ontario.
Speaker A:And he was from there.
Speaker A:He was the old gentleman with the mustache.
Speaker A:He wore overalls all the time.
Speaker A:I remember his name.
Speaker A:I think his name was Gordon, too.
Speaker A:Chord something.
Speaker A:You would know him.
Speaker A:You saw him.
Speaker A:But he was from Burlington.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's all that stuff.
Speaker A:I would watch Lawrence welcome my family because there was a guy in the band with an electric guitar and that was all they needed.
Speaker A:But I see electric guitars.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Just magical about that.
Speaker A:That drove me, drew me in.
Speaker A:I was never huge into, like, Elvis or, you know, stuff my mom was playing at the time.
Speaker A:Whoever the rock and roll heroes were at the time.
Speaker A:And the Beatles came along.
Speaker A:Yeah, they were cool.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:But I kind of like the Monkeys better.
Speaker A:They sound like they were more fun to hang out with, you know, I would want to be them.
Speaker C:Well, watching that show because you couldn't, like, turn on the TV and like, on.
Speaker C:On Demand.
Speaker C:Habit.
Speaker C:You had to wait a week.
Speaker C:And the show came on and the show was awesome.
Speaker C:It was really.
Speaker C:It was really well done.
Speaker C:And as you look back later in your life and you listen to the music, like songs like Pleasant Valley Sunday.
Speaker C:Those are great songs.
Speaker A:Great song.
Speaker B:This is the kind of.
Speaker C:The thing that's interesting about music is all of these different things kind of come at you and they form who you are.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker C:And we'll talk about some of the songs or the albums we're going to talk about later.
Speaker A:So different and.
Speaker A:And sometimes contrary to each other.
Speaker A:It's like.
Speaker A:But you put.
Speaker A:I used to.
Speaker A:When I put my book out, it ended up being pretty clean book.
Speaker A:I didn't talk about, you know, the shagging, the birds on in the road.
Speaker A:Like.
Speaker A:Like.
Speaker A:Like.
Speaker A:It was about looking at things from a weird angle.
Speaker A:Like, kid.
Speaker A:Like, how does this all come together?
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And it ended up being, you know, clean enough that I would do motivational sort of talks for kids in schools, you know, about following your dreams.
Speaker A:And it said exactly what you said.
Speaker A:Just take all the things that make you.
Speaker A:You put them in this crazy sort of blender.
Speaker A:Whatever comes out, that's it.
Speaker A:Like, don't try to be like the kid next to you who don't write the same paper that he's writing or take the same selfies, you know, just beat for me, like, normal is a dirty word.
Speaker A:You know, you got to be different, you know, be unique.
Speaker A:And that's the number one thing, you know, that's why I don't like shows like the Voice.
Speaker A:And granted, they're technically good singers, but they're all the same cookie cutter puppy mill thing that just like, not again.
Speaker A:I'd rather have somebody sing a little bit out of key and have their Have a real voice, you know.
Speaker C:But it's really cool what you said also that looking back when you were, say you were 14, 15 years old, you're playing in the band and you're finding as a.
Speaker C:Because I would say I'm the same kind of guy, music became like it did for you, my identity.
Speaker C:And it gave me the self confidence and it really elevated my whole experience.
Speaker C:And I think it did the same for you, right?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:You know what it does.
Speaker A:I just realized as you were saying that it does that to you.
Speaker A:And if you become successful because of it, it's not just the allure of making you like, feel like somebody, but I think what you started off in the beginning as that introverted, thoughtful person makes you that much greater later on, you know, I think although all the really talented people I've met in my life, they were not jerks.
Speaker A:They were.
Speaker A:They were self doubting, cool a little bit, you know, nothing's ever perfect.
Speaker A:I always find these people, like, you know, Sting even, or Nile Rogers and stuff, they're not boastful, you know, completely sure of themselves kind of people, they're like, kind of us, you know, like neurodege.
Speaker A:And so I think that's an advantage.
Speaker A:You know, all those, those things, those scars and those problems.
Speaker A:And if you're squeaky clean, it's pretty boring, you know, I think.
Speaker C:I don't know about you when you write, but sometimes when you are in your most kind of anguish sort of situations, the best things come out.
Speaker C:If you.
Speaker C:If you let the muse find you.
Speaker C:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker C:And I think that.
Speaker C:I think a lot of those artists that you talk about are those people.
Speaker C:You're probably the same thing.
Speaker C:You're probably.
Speaker A:Yeah, you have to be.
Speaker A:If you say.
Speaker A:I know how you put it in perspective and, and so you're always watching and I kind of hate that.
Speaker A:I'm always.
Speaker A:I wish I could just be a spectator and just be caught up like everybody else.
Speaker A:But I'm always looking at it and thinking about a lyric or watching a play or.
Speaker A:I just want to be, you know, like self absorbed, just jump on, you know, dive into the crowd.
Speaker A:I can't.
Speaker A:But that's part of being a writer, I guess I call it sort of the chronic observer, you know, like, obviously.
Speaker A:But sometimes, you know, those rare moments in a really amazing concert or a really amazing movie, we go, oh my God, I just didn't think about anything for the last hour.
Speaker A:And that's.
Speaker A:Oh my God, that's something else when that happens.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So there are little reprieves once in a while.
Speaker C:I think it's a gift, though.
Speaker C:I think it's a real gift to be able to look at the world that way and to absorb stuff and to process it and build your art out of your observations.
Speaker C:I agree with you.
Speaker C:Like, you'll see something.
Speaker C:It'll.
Speaker C:You'll read something, you'll watch a movie and it'll inspire you and you'll see things that other people will not see.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker C:After a curse, I don't know.
Speaker A:And you do meet musicians who just write, like, as they see it.
Speaker A:There's no.
Speaker A:It's just A, from point A to B they're not going to see.
Speaker A:Or D, or you have to.
Speaker A:And that's cool too.
Speaker A:You know, it's very in your face and straight ahead.
Speaker A:And I kind of started to like some of that stuff now, too.
Speaker A:When you see my list of albums, I'm starting to like bands.
Speaker A:I love this when a new band comes out and I really hate them at the beginning and then they win me over.
Speaker A:I love that because I'm starting to understand the simplicity of it.
Speaker C:I was going to ask you after the teen years and then you.
Speaker C:You form the spoons, were you ready for what was coming at you over the next 10 years?
Speaker A:I didn't expect it, no.
Speaker A:Because we were a little prog rock band before that.
Speaker A:When new wave came, I thought, oh, some of this darker stuff sounds kind of praggy, especially old, like Ultravox or, you know, Two Way army or Some of the Dark.
Speaker A:I was never really poppy 80s stuff.
Speaker A:Still not really like, oh, this is the quirky stuff, I know.
Speaker A:But I never thought in a million years that anything we would do ever would matter to anybody, really.
Speaker A:A song like Nova Heart as our first single when there was nothing really like it.
Speaker A:Nothing.
Speaker A:Only other thing else that I knew that was mainstream with Drum Machine was like Tainted Love, you know, that kind of thing.
Speaker A:I mean, there was other stuff, you know, I was listening to lots of drum machines that I love, like old OMD and whatever else there was.
Speaker A:But no, it's still.
Speaker A:I mean, I look at the chart with no heart on it for back then, like the Chum Charge or the cqrc, you know, AM chart.
Speaker A:We're up in there with Led Zeppelin and the who and Queen.
Speaker A:Like, how does this sound?
Speaker A:Like Nova Heart even.
Speaker A:Like that even worked, you know.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:But there's something, I guess listeners, ears were ready for something a little different, you know.
Speaker A:But even then I never thought, well, this is nice.
Speaker A:You know, I didn't think it would keep to the building.
Speaker A:There was a year or two there where just things just happened back to back.
Speaker A:Like it was like dominoes, you know.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's.
Speaker A:That's what everybody hopes for at some point in their career.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:And then you coast for a while, you know, but then y.
Speaker A:Things happen again.
Speaker A:And it was just the right timing, you know.
Speaker A:It was a song that was perfect for the change in music.
Speaker A:And then the video age coming, you know, all of a sudden Nova Hart was on.
Speaker A:Pretty much music would have been the new music.
Speaker A:I guess with Jenny back and J.D.
Speaker A:roberts overnight, everybody knew who we were.
Speaker A:You know, it's like that all helped, you know, being young, having a girl in the band, being stylish.
Speaker A:A lot of things that just work in our advantage.
Speaker A:And yeah, right from the beginning, we had great people who wanted to work with us.
Speaker A:Not because we were virtuosos or, you know, same like, you know, it was like the.
Speaker A:The non normal thing I was talking about earlier, it was, what.
Speaker A:What are these guys doing?
Speaker A:Because we were from Burlington, we were going out and hanging out with bands of Toronto.
Speaker A:We're stuck in our own little cocoon listening to the Flying Lizards and Lena Lov.
Speaker A:Quirky thing that we could find, you know, we usually heard on CF and yfm, you know, the Edge.
Speaker A:So when we came to Toronto, the other bands are going like, what?
Speaker A:What is this?
Speaker A:We didn't know.
Speaker A:And that was a good thing.
Speaker A:We just get back in our cars, go home and do some more crazy music.
Speaker C:Maybe that worked to your advantage also, being outside of Toronto at that time.
Speaker A:Oh yeah.
Speaker A:We had our own little bunch of cool people that we hung out with.
Speaker A:Our first keyword player, Brett Wickens, before Rob Proust, he was British and he's the guy turned me on to a lot of great music I would never have found before, you know, even whatever latest thing was coming from England and that was my mainstream.
Speaker A:I was listening to like, you know, whatever was on the radio at the time of the Beach Boys or the Eagles or something.
Speaker A:I was listening to this quirky little crazy fat gadget and you know, I don't know, whatever strange band that came out.
Speaker A:Yeah, I was like, this is what I want to do, you know, and episode said, we'll give it a shot.
Speaker A:But we never thought Burlington, you know, like kind of thing.
Speaker A:Yeah, it always the right people.
Speaker A:First record we did before, the one with Noble Heart, ended up doing with Daniel Lamois, you know, became a big producer and then Judd Punter who did like Roxy Music and.
Speaker A:And these are all people that heard our stuff and they, and they saw this young band and same with Nile Rogers.
Speaker A:Great story.
Speaker A:He went to see a Culture Club opening or playing in New York City and we're opening that whole tour and the record company at Santa Seat Culture Club and he knocks at the door and Sam's thing.
Speaker A:I probably know the story, I've told him a million times out later on that Steve Winwood was there with him too and they all liked us.
Speaker A:And I said, yeah, Culture cup was okay, but just this is one of the best again I've said this before, one of the best compliments of my career.
Speaker A:N.
Speaker A:Rogers.
Speaker A:But us, this little white band from Burlington Spoons came on and they were the.
Speaker A:Yeah, you know, they were this not.
Speaker A:Yeah, they had something going.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:He didn't know what it was.
Speaker A:He didn't know our music.
Speaker A:Yeah, he wanted to work with us and he did two albums with us and we're still the only Canadian band he's ever worked with.
Speaker A:You know, he's worked with since the boy record.
Speaker A:But you know, before that he was pretty R and B and soul and stuff and funk.
Speaker A:But then you work with, you know, Durant Duran and Blondie and of course, you know, Ran Duran is the big one and even Mick Jagger I think a lot of interesting things.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And all these people that work with us, you know, just because maybe they're just sick and tired of really great bands that just kind of the same.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:We were just a little bit different, you know and I think people all need that.
Speaker C:But you were in some really, really great company at that time, right?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:You can learn something from all those people.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker A:And it's like for a for instance working with Nile Rogers in the Power station.
Speaker A:Not only is he a cool guitar player and he always, he all plays on everything, everything ever does.
Speaker A:You always hear his signature thing he does.
Speaker A:And I learned a little bit from that.
Speaker A:I was really into that style of playing.
Speaker A:But Sandy, for instance, she.
Speaker A:Bernard Edwards, his right hand man, was still alive at the time.
Speaker A:One of the greatest bass players.
Speaker A:You know stuff.
Speaker A:He sat down with Sandy a few times and really helped her find her voice, you know, on the bait.
Speaker A:Yes, you learned something from all those.
Speaker C:You through that period of time, it was really prolific.
Speaker C:The songs you come out with, there's so many great songs and those songs have really stood the test of time.
Speaker C:There's no question knowing that you and I were going to talk today.
Speaker C:I go back And I revisit the spoons and I've got like Nova Hart in my head.
Speaker C:Or I've got Romantic Traffic rolling through on my head.
Speaker C:These things have these songs.
Speaker C:For whatever reason, they're great songs.
Speaker C:They have stood the test of time.
Speaker C:Has that surprised you?
Speaker A:Yeah, every, every song we took, I was.
Speaker A:I don't know, is this right?
Speaker A:Because it was always kind of the wrong for the time like when Nova Hart was like.
Speaker A:I said, look at the other bands were on the radio, said, what are we doing?
Speaker A:And I remember taking Old Emotions because that was the follow up.
Speaker A:Yeah, single things off the next record, you know, no Arts is kind of cool.
Speaker A:Then we got those bouncy little thing.
Speaker A:I was seriously embarrassed to go to the record at the radio stations because in those days you would take the 45, you'd visit the radio station and you'd be on the air and they would play it.
Speaker A:And I remember walking in there going like, what are we doing?
Speaker A:And I remember the same day we walked in, they were doing.
Speaker A:They were playing on the Waterfront, something by Simple Minds and some new release by YouTube.
Speaker A:And I think like, I just want to go home.
Speaker A:But you know what?
Speaker A:It ended up being a big single anyway.
Speaker A:That's the problem too, of being like a writer, observer.
Speaker A:Never, you know, really participating.
Speaker A:See, it's your worst critic all the time.
Speaker A:You know, I wish I could just believe everything I did was great, but I can't.
Speaker C:Did you ever have like, like it's an interesting comment you make because when you, when you create it and you throw it out to the world, you're sensitive to how people are going to react.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:As opposed to like having this sort of Teflon perspective where you don't care.
Speaker C:This is what I'm doing.
Speaker C:I like it or not.
Speaker C:And there are artists, there are artists that are like that.
Speaker C:They just throw it out there and they don't really care if you like it or not.
Speaker C:But there are some people that are really sensitive to that.
Speaker A:Oh, geez.
Speaker A:If I know people who seem like the most confident people in the world, they read one bad review or one person makes one little comment.
Speaker A:I mean, they're, they're, they're done for the day at least.
Speaker A:They're just like, yeah, you know, it's like the kind of people as crazy musicians are, you know, it's not.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:You got to take the good and the bad that comes with it for sure.
Speaker C:So as you rolled through the 80s, you were non stop pretty much.
Speaker C:And then did you find it easy to write at that time, where things just come into you.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:It became harder, I think, near the end, because it became a cycle, especially near the end.
Speaker A:We were with Anthem Records, which is like Rush's label, and Ray Dan is their manager, and it was like a machine.
Speaker A:You're part of a factory almost.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So you write for a year, make videos, and then you do it for a year, and then you expect to do it again.
Speaker A:And near the end, I was going into studio, where in the old days, it just came right at the end.
Speaker A:Like on the Vertical Tango record that we did at Rockfield.
Speaker A:I remember flying to.
Speaker A:To Wales, and I hadn't even written all the lyrics yet.
Speaker A:But I've heard that in the meantime about a lot of people.
Speaker A:I mean, even Gabriel not having all the lyrics.
Speaker A:That Lamb Lives on Broadway, which is one of my favorite albums of all time, I did include it on my list, but it was the masterpiece, right.
Speaker A:And him making stuff up in the studio, I was kind of counting on that.
Speaker A:Another thing, you know, I mentioned about how different places like New York or London, they kind of.
Speaker A:You kind of absorb things from your surroundings.
Speaker A:I'm kind of hoping that would happen in Wales.
Speaker A:Maybe I'll go there and I don't.
Speaker A:I'm not going to write about sheep or castles and old Welch, you know, pubs.
Speaker A:But yeah, something was going to happen, you know, and it did, but not.
Speaker A:Not, you know, 100 to my liking, you know.
Speaker A:Yeah, so it did become trickier.
Speaker A:That's why now it's a.
Speaker A:It's a little better.
Speaker A:We kind of wait until it happens.
Speaker A:Lived enough life, you know, it doesn't have to be every year.
Speaker A:Three or four or five years go by.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:There's enough life, new life experiences to have new lyrics for and.
Speaker A:Or something, you know, so it's become easier, you know.
Speaker C:Do you still feel the joy of creating?
Speaker A:I forget, you know, I.
Speaker A:I've got like months go by or even longer.
Speaker A:Well, I don't create and I kind of forget how good it feels.
Speaker A:And all of a sudden, when I get back into it.
Speaker A:Oh, my God.
Speaker A:This is what I was missing, though.
Speaker A:Just because I'm constantly working on the songs in my head, walking around, humming or whatever, just all the time.
Speaker A:I mean, the rest of the band doesn't even understand that.
Speaker A:That it's absorbed me like 24 hours a day, or I'll wake up, you know, first thing in the morning, around the guitar, do something.
Speaker A:That's why I always have my iPhone with me.
Speaker A:Most of my ideas just Go on my iPhone.
Speaker A:You know, I'm gonna record or write them down really quick.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's.
Speaker A:It's a real, like, endorphin brush thing.
Speaker A:You know, when you struggle, it's hard, but when it starts pouring out, like a tap, you open the tap, you just let it go as long as you can.
Speaker C:There's no.
Speaker A:There's no pee breaks.
Speaker A:There's no lunch break.
Speaker C:Don't you find that if you don't capture it, it's gone.
Speaker A:It seems brilliant.
Speaker A:It's like, you know when you dream, like you're flying or something, it's the most amazing thing.
Speaker A:Of course, next day it's like it's gone.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:That's what these ideas are like.
Speaker A:It was the best.
Speaker A:It was.
Speaker A:This is going to be a hit.
Speaker A:But what the hell am I singing?
Speaker C:So listen, let's.
Speaker C:Let's talk about.
Speaker C:Your song selections are awesome.
Speaker C:Your album selections, rather, are awesome.
Speaker C:Some of them that actually really surprised me that you chose them, and I'm super curious to get to them.
Speaker C:But let's talk about number one, which.
Speaker A:First of all, there's a reason, because I've done these things before, you know, and in the past, there's always albums I grew up on, people would expect, but I'm one of these guys.
Speaker A:I hate to look back.
Speaker A:I really can't listen to a lot of these stuff.
Speaker A:I can't.
Speaker A:I found.
Speaker A:I listen to albums that I grew up on.
Speaker A:I was huge Genesis fan.
Speaker A:Now I can't get through them.
Speaker A:It's like watching a really old movie I thought was the best movie in the world.
Speaker A:I have a hard time.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:Look, I love moving forward.
Speaker A:I get excited about new things.
Speaker A:So some of these things you'd expect, but some are not because they're newer.
Speaker A:There's a couple I put on there which are from, like, the 90s, which for me have that innocent quality that makes them timeless for me.
Speaker A:And we'll get into those where they weren't really the greatest records, but there's something about them that they're so fresh every time I listen to them because they're so pure, you know, like, they're not really.
Speaker A:At a certain time or.
Speaker A:Let's go on.
Speaker A:Let's.
Speaker A:Let's start.
Speaker C:Yeah, let's go to number one.
Speaker C:Let's go to number one.
Speaker C:I'll let you introduce it.
Speaker C:It's a great.
Speaker C:It's a great album.
Speaker C:It's a great band, probably.
Speaker A:I had to pick one record from my 80s years, and to me, this was like the Bible this is like the masterpiece, which is Vienna by Ultravox, which is really the number one influence on the Aries of Symphony's record.
Speaker A:Even the album cover, the.
Speaker A:The theme, you know, the whole vibe.
Speaker A:I was so.
Speaker A:I mean, I even tried to write a song in the style of the song Diana, which is blow away at the end of the record.
Speaker A:There's something about that disconnected with me so much.
Speaker A:Oh, my God.
Speaker A:That sort of semi symphony, classical, dark, brooding, soundscape thing.
Speaker A:You know, a lot of great songs on there.
Speaker A:I love even some of the.
Speaker A:More upbeats of like Sleepwalk and Today, maybe.
Speaker A:You did it with this show a couple weeks ago with.
Speaker A:With Major.
Speaker A:And we're still touring, doing all that stuff.
Speaker A:And they still stand up.
Speaker A:Those songs are timeless.
Speaker A:Oh, my God, the power of those songs.
Speaker A:So that was an early one that, you know, before that I was in other things.
Speaker A:Like, I said prog rock and I could have said land.
Speaker A:Last night on Broadway, I mentioned that, which I think is one of the greatest records of all time.
Speaker A:Now, that doesn't linger like some of these other things.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A:If you hear barking, it's a great day.
Speaker C:Yeah, because like you were saying, like, you're very influenced by, like, by the prog rock thing, probably by yes and Genesis and ELP and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker C:But then to your left behind that.
Speaker A:It doesn't.
Speaker A:It doesn't really interest me anymore.
Speaker A:You know, I tried a few times, but that's any classic rock, really, I can't listen to anymore.
Speaker A:And that's really sad.
Speaker A:You know, a lot of people live on that, but I find it kind of sad for me as a writer.
Speaker A:I want to go forward and see new things, exciting things.
Speaker A:That's why I say I love when I find new bands that I usually hate at first, and all of a sudden I get it and I go, oh, yeah, it's like driving a new car or something.
Speaker A:Even though you love your old jalopy.
Speaker A:Yeah, now I get it.
Speaker A:That makes you feel better about everything.
Speaker A:It makes you think different, makes you write differently, even.
Speaker C:But I can also see, like, by your choice of Ultravox and that particular album, how that influenced your work with the spoons.
Speaker C:100%.
Speaker C:That makes that.
Speaker C:There's a total, total direct line you can see.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:Number two is a little bit.
Speaker C:Now number two, we're getting into some different area here.
Speaker C:Let's talk about that one.
Speaker A:Well, you know what?
Speaker A:The 80s, you know, like, a lot of people from the 80s kind of put their head in the ground for they're kind of sad and depressed, especially keyboard players and, you know, that kind of thing.
Speaker A:But as a guitar player, I started liking other things.
Speaker A:And I was always drawn to the British side of things, what was coming out of Manchester and.
Speaker A:And that kind of thing way more than what was happening in America on the west coast and the whole grunge thing or whatever.
Speaker A:So I gravitated.
Speaker A:And the Verve was a game changer.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I put Iron Hymns.
Speaker A:When there's Urban Hymns in the other one.
Speaker A:I forget the other one that they both had those I played back to back.
Speaker A:And I learned a lot from those.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I kind of like the more brooding, groovy songs on those records.
Speaker A:And the obvious one, people are saying Bittersweet.
Speaker A:That was.
Speaker A:No, that was just a big pop song.
Speaker A:There's a lot of other stuff there, like the Drugs Don't Work or Sonnets.
Speaker A:But I learned a lot.
Speaker A:Richard Ashcroft is a writer.
Speaker A:How to stretch things out.
Speaker A:He builds stuff like.
Speaker A:And I started incorporating that into spoon songs.
Speaker A:I started writing a little bit Shorts in a four minute song where he just works it and builds it.
Speaker A:And this.
Speaker A:I can't remember the name of it.
Speaker A:There's a song on there.
Speaker A:I think it's third or fourth.
Speaker A:It's more like a.
Speaker A:An instrumental, like groove thing.
Speaker A:Something People or the Rolling People.
Speaker A:The Rolling People.
Speaker A:I love that.
Speaker A:That stuff that they do.
Speaker A:There's another band that I called the Music.
Speaker A:It's very similar.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker A:To that.
Speaker A:And the Stone Roses.
Speaker A:You know, Stone Rose is another one.
Speaker A:That great dark groove and building and.
Speaker A:Which is so Ice Spoons because we wrote these little verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge song.
Speaker A:This is more like a vibe.
Speaker A:I started appreciating that in music, you know.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I love the Verve.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:It's also like you say Gord on the Ultra Box album and on the Verve album, the songs that people know, like you say Bittersweet Symphony, everybody knows that song.
Speaker C:But the deeper tracks on that album, like the Drugs Don't Work is a phenomenal song.
Speaker C:And it's like that in a lot of cases where there's these gems that are there and Stone Roses that you can listen to that whole record.
Speaker C:And there's not a bad song on their first album.
Speaker A:Stonewalls is another obvious one.
Speaker A:That's why I didn't put it, because that was something else.
Speaker A:That's the, you know, that goes Same for the Spoons.
Speaker A:I mean, people only know the pop songs.
Speaker A:And a lot of cases I was a little embarrassed about.
Speaker A:I was I kind of want to do a Spoon show.
Speaker A:I might just play the songs that I think you should know.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think were the really good songs.
Speaker A:But I don't know if you know, if you can hold an audience for that too long to do that.
Speaker C:But that sounds like a project.
Speaker A:And I think a lot of people maybe weren't Spoons fans.
Speaker A:This is my fear that there were people because we went for the Poppy, Happy Traffic and all the Motions thing.
Speaker C:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:We were writing all these more serious songs where there's a whole other crowd.
Speaker A:Oh my God, I didn't know that side of those guys.
Speaker A:You know, we're not a one trick pony that does just that.
Speaker A:You know, we have these other songs that were a lot like we get requests for off our first record we did with Danny and I want.
Speaker A:Which is quirky anyway, but this song called Red Light on There, which is.
Speaker A:Nobody would ever expect that.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's pre Bauhaus.
Speaker A:It's that same kind of vibe, bit of craft work vibe and stuff.
Speaker A:And so there was a kind of a cult crowd that enjoyed those things, you know, instead of real poppy stuff that the record company wanted to put out.
Speaker C:And probably as you went through your career in the 80s that you felt the pressure to do what the record company was telling you.
Speaker A:Yeah, we.
Speaker A:When we did the concert club tour in 82 or 83 North America with them for their first tour and us, we did together great tour.
Speaker A:And we were just on the.
Speaker A:On the strength of Nova Hart at that point.
Speaker A:And I remember the record company in our last show in Los Angeles, we were signed to A M on Los Angeles.
Speaker A:They loved the band.
Speaker A:They like kind of took me for a loop because the head guy pulled me aside.
Speaker A:Great tour guys.
Speaker A:You always amazing.
Speaker A:But you know, on the next record, can you.
Speaker A:Can you try to write something more radio friendly?
Speaker A:And I said, what?
Speaker A:Oh.
Speaker A:And I really set me back for a little while.
Speaker A:But then I embraced that and really went for it and wrote like all the Motions, There are Many Traffic.
Speaker A:But it wasn't really where I thought we were going.
Speaker A:I was ready to write another Noble Heart record kind of record, Aries and Symphony.
Speaker A:But in America that wasn't quite working like it was here.
Speaker A:But I found out in the meantime that goes for a lot of bands.
Speaker A:I thought Simple Minds was huge everywhere.
Speaker A:No, they were huge in Canada.
Speaker A:Nowhere is big in America.
Speaker A:You know, they're doing shows on the second stage at Cruel World Festival.
Speaker A:Yeah, people are catching on now because all they know is don't you Forget About Me or what it's called.
Speaker C:Exactly.
Speaker A:Which is which?
Speaker A:I hated when it came out.
Speaker A:And I've talked to guys from the band.
Speaker A:They didn't like it either because they didn't write it.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:I like it now because the movie and stuff, but that was not.
Speaker A:This is not Simple Minds.
Speaker A:What is this?
Speaker C:Simple Minds was On the Waterfront and all that stuff.
Speaker C:New Gold Dream, right?
Speaker C:To me, that was Simple Minds.
Speaker A:I just want to say Derek Forbes is their bass player.
Speaker A:He's touring and he did.
Speaker A:He sings.
Speaker A:He doesn't sing as well as Jim, but he gets it across.
Speaker A:But he's got the music.
Speaker A:Oh, my.
Speaker A:That song came on.
Speaker A:I was like levitating that my body was like buzzing vibe.
Speaker A:And we ended up playing with them a few times.
Speaker A:And it was magic as well.
Speaker A:We learned a lot just watching those guys.
Speaker C:Number three.
Speaker A:I don't know if I remember this order of things, but.
Speaker A:What was the next one?
Speaker C:Red Hot People are surprised.
Speaker A:I love the Chili Peppers.
Speaker A:And you know what really bothers me?
Speaker A:I've got some friends who are singers and they say, what a terrible singer.
Speaker A:But you're not getting it.
Speaker A:To me, they represent sort of this.
Speaker A:This purity thing.
Speaker A:To me, that the ultimate California band, especially being Canadian, that was always the dream.
Speaker A:California born yet.
Speaker A:So they're always be like this, I don't know, allure to them.
Speaker A:And to me, they just.
Speaker A:They're always fresh.
Speaker A:I mean, when I hear that, it doesn't age either.
Speaker A:It has this innocence.
Speaker A:And these guys kind of look, you know, like gang guys, like, sort of rough.
Speaker A:They're on the edges.
Speaker A:But they write some of the most beautiful melodies, you know.
Speaker A:And he's not trying to sing like Michael Bolton, you know, he's just kind of.
Speaker A:But I like that, you know.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:Yeah, I learned from that as well.
Speaker A:You know, they just.
Speaker A:And they have great stories.
Speaker A:My.
Speaker A:So their lyrics are brilliant.
Speaker A:The California.
Speaker A:They're very.
Speaker A:They're a lot more.
Speaker A:And I was like that too.
Speaker A:That when there's a lot more, you see, there's a lot more art and poetry coming out of those guys that look like they live on the street than some, you know, prog rock bands that I grew up on, you know, it's like, what?
Speaker A:So, yeah.
Speaker A:And I like to prescribe his guitar playing.
Speaker A:The simplicity of little melodies.
Speaker A:He didn't have to be one of these noodlers, like just doing all kinds of crazy stuff.
Speaker A:You could play a couple of notes and.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's.
Speaker A:That's it.
Speaker C:That's all You Need Scar Tissue Again is another great song in that record as well.
Speaker C:So they have their own aesthetic.
Speaker A:These guys, I just find really attractive about that whole.
Speaker A:The vibe they put off, even though it's got nothing to do with spoons.
Speaker A:His spoons are where I'm coming from.
Speaker A:I find that in different kinds of music.
Speaker A:Where, I mean, not from, like, what's a contemporary of them?
Speaker A:Like, I'm trying to think of.
Speaker A:I don't know, I'm just trying to think who else is doing that kind of thing.
Speaker A:And I didn't think they were doing it as well, you know, but yeah, yeah, people are surprised at that one number.
Speaker C:Number four is really where I think people will be most surprised, which is the Prodigy.
Speaker A:Oh, my God, yes.
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker A:What?
Speaker A:I've got a secret side of me that wants to be in a band like that, clearly.
Speaker A:Oh, my God.
Speaker A:When I see that, it's like an adrenaline rush when I watch those concerts.
Speaker A:And a friend of mine plays with them, which makes it doubly hard.
Speaker A:There's a Rob Holiday who plays bass with them.
Speaker A:He also played with Marilyn Manson and Gary Newman.
Speaker A:This guy came a long way.
Speaker A:He was originally from England.
Speaker A:He lived in Canada for a while in the 80s, and he used to do spoon songs, his cover band.
Speaker A:That's how I got to know him.
Speaker A:And we put.
Speaker A:We put out an album called Echo a couple years ago, other artists doing our songs, and he did a remake of Bridges over borders in the 3mo.
Speaker A:Prodigy kind of way.
Speaker A:But I know people don't expect that from me either.
Speaker A:I want to be in that band that's like crowd surfing and stacks of amps, and instead of just doing a happy little song, that's the side of me.
Speaker A:I just want to be loud.
Speaker A:And those guys, that cockiness, you know, that.
Speaker A:That in your face kind of.
Speaker A:There's fire started.
Speaker A:But that the night is our enemy or the day is our enemy.
Speaker A:Sorry.
Speaker A:Album.
Speaker A:Have a listen to that.
Speaker A:That's like just so much aggression and energy in that, and it's hard to match, you know?
Speaker C:And, you know, when we.
Speaker C:When we put this podcast out, we're going to link all this stuff so everybody who's listening, all our listeners can.
Speaker C:Can go to the playlist.
Speaker C:They can hear these songs and they'll see exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker A:I mean, you see the crowds.
Speaker A:They play to stuff.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's.
Speaker A:That's my secret side of me.
Speaker A:I want to be in a band like that.
Speaker C:It's almost.
Speaker C:I would say it's almost your Alter ego maybe.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:I would be in in a second if they invited me.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:But then number five is.
Speaker C:It makes sense to me also having what you just said because it's.
Speaker C:It's main skin, right?
Speaker C:Is that how you say it?
Speaker A:Main skin, Maneskin, Italian.
Speaker A:But I think it, I think it's like Norwegian or some Norwegians, like For Midnight or something.
Speaker A:Their names.
Speaker A:One of these bands that I hated at the beginning, I tell you, I was like, what gimmick is this?
Speaker A:You know.
Speaker A:But that girl can actually play bass.
Speaker A:Victoria is a good bass player and they're a real band.
Speaker A:I think they're going to make kids want to buy guitars and dramas again because music, music tours are going on business and people aren't wanted to be in bands anymore.
Speaker A:They want to work on their laptop or create, you know, loops of things.
Speaker A:And people like Mick Jagger said same thing.
Speaker A:These guys have saved rock and roll and they're from Italy and.
Speaker A:And don't laugh because the first single that came out, something about slamming beer slave or something, I didn't know whatever.
Speaker A:But this new record, the first song I've listened to that, it's called honey, are you coming or something, these guys can play and you watch their live footage.
Speaker A:They're real good players.
Speaker A:As a guitar player, riff rock, really good.
Speaker A:That's a surprise to a lot of people.
Speaker A:Like I said I didn't like them and I didn't get it at first, but when I saw the quality what they do live and the energy, you know, it's like, you know, it's like I mentioned Wet Leg, that's my latest one.
Speaker A:Another band I did not like at all.
Speaker A:I didn't get it.
Speaker A:But now I'm like obsessed because they take me back to when we started out.
Speaker A:I didn't know much at all, you know, like very pure and raw and quirky.
Speaker A:You know that, that band that was writing song Red Light, State Figure, Neighborhood record before the record company put us down a different path.
Speaker A:You know, it's like, right, just do whatever you feel like.
Speaker A:I don't care if you have a hit, just, you know, write a song about Shay's lounger and your.
Speaker A:Yeah, so I really like that.
Speaker A:You know, that's like I said, I'm not stuck in the past where I think Dark side of the moon is the best record ever.
Speaker A:You know, that kind of thing.
Speaker A:Or landmarks on Broadway in my case.
Speaker A:I get excited about silly little two chord songs.
Speaker A:Furniture or whatever.
Speaker C:How do you find new music?
Speaker A:Not, I think it just sometimes just it pops up on Facebook or Instagram or I see this little clip or something.
Speaker A:It just catch.
Speaker A:Yeah, something catch my attention in a couple of seconds, like.
Speaker A:And there's a lot that doesn't.
Speaker A:You know, there are a lot of things that other people rave about, but I was always that way.
Speaker A:You know, I remember a kid beat me up in school because I.
Speaker A:I didn't like Rush as much as they did, you know, because that was what everybody liked.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:I was kind of always the opposite, you know, like, I had to like the bands.
Speaker A:My secret pleasure that nobody else knew about.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Same with, like, television, you know, when I discovered the Avengers or the Prisoner From England, that was like my own little secret world that nobody else knew about.
Speaker A:And then.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker A:I've always looked at music as that, too.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's so.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I mean, rarely do we hear these songs on the radio.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:I mean, they don't.
Speaker A:Yeah, they weren't playing anymore on the radio.
Speaker A:Maybe once in a while I heard one, but they obviously haven't have a crowd because these people are huge.
Speaker A:You know, around the World and Wet Lake, for instance.
Speaker A:They're huge.
Speaker A:That you see them playing giant festivals.
Speaker A:And so there.
Speaker A:There's a market for them.
Speaker A:And I really hope it's going to change the perspective, like, of kids.
Speaker A:Like, I was getting worried about band.
Speaker A:Like, when was the last saw now when you watched the Grammys, there was a band playing for a while.
Speaker A:There was none in the last couple days.
Speaker A:You know, they got guitar plugged in on stage, they got real drums again.
Speaker A:It's like what was happening there for a while was really serious.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:It's really interesting the way.
Speaker C:It's not that it comes full circle, but it kind of does, you know, where you.
Speaker C:I think we're in a period of time right now where I feel there is a backlash against stuff like the voice and just this fabricated music where real people playing real instruments are actually a thing now, thankfully.
Speaker A:Oh, thank God.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:That's what the beginning of the 80s was like.
Speaker A:It didn't matter how good a singer you were or how good you were.
Speaker A:The guitar, it was more like what crazy sound you could get out of your guitar.
Speaker A:Like, whether it was Adrian Blue or.
Speaker A:Or somebody, but.
Speaker A:Or your voice, you know, you cannot mistake, you know, some of those voice.
Speaker A:Butler from Psychedelic first or Jim Kerr from the Simple Minds or what's another one.
Speaker A:Robert Smith from the Cure.
Speaker A:You cannot mistake those voices.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker A:Yeah, they have their voice, right?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:And it was.
Speaker A:And I noticed it as early as like when the 90s thing hit, like, why is everybody trying to sound like any better?
Speaker A:Like, everybody try to copy and be getting on the formula or something.
Speaker A:And that's when it started happening, you know?
Speaker A:So I'm not saying these guys weren't great singers, but everybody want to be the same person there for a while.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:When I look back at the spoons and how, you know, the early, early days of the Spoons, you didn't follow the pack.
Speaker C:You were doing your own thing.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And sometimes I was upset about it at the time because we recorded these records and we didn't have the big budgets like some of these other bands, like they like Blast Tiger or Plan the Blonde, they got big.
Speaker A:We had very little to work with.
Speaker A:Lucky.
Speaker A:We had great people like, like, great producers like Danny.
Speaker A:And I want looking back now I'm saying, oh, my.
Speaker A:Thank God we weren't.
Speaker A:Because, yes, we couldn't afford that.
Speaker A:All those, like, you know, Nancy studios.
Speaker A:And why couldn't we get that great gated snare that was big back then.
Speaker A:Or this or this or that keyboard sound on the Clavier.
Speaker A:That was out of our reach.
Speaker A:We just used cheap little rolling keyboards.
Speaker A:But, you know, why don't I go back.
Speaker A:Oh, my God, Thank God.
Speaker A:Because we didn't sound like all these other guys.
Speaker A:We had our own little thing going on.
Speaker A:It worked to our advantage.
Speaker A:So there you go.
Speaker C:So listen, in the interest of your time, what's coming up this summer for you?
Speaker C:What.
Speaker C:What do you got?
Speaker C:What's.
Speaker C:What's ahead for you?
Speaker A:Well, we didn't talk about.
Speaker A:Most people know this now, but I've been with Flock Seagulls now for eight years.
Speaker A:Yeah, big guitar with the Flock Eagles, which is a crazy story all but.
Speaker A:But I do like 90% of my work with those guys.
Speaker A:I'm touring every, like, all the time.
Speaker A:We did a tour of England last year where we did 19.
Speaker A:No, 18 shows in 20 days like that.
Speaker A:And Mike, the singer is like.
Speaker A:He's like his early 70s now.
Speaker A:He's not laying low on the.
Speaker A:This August, we're doing a Scare Tour of America.
Speaker A:20 dates in August, 20.
Speaker A:20 shows in one month.
Speaker A:Playing all the time.
Speaker A:He has a new album out.
Speaker A:He actually has a really good album.
Speaker A:I'm super critical and I'm listening to some of the other bands from sad.
Speaker A:And this one's like balls to the Wall.
Speaker A:A kid making a new record to check out the new Flock of Seagulls records called Some Dreams.
Speaker A:We're on that video.
Speaker A:But as soon as we're in the process of making new record.
Speaker A:Oh, my God, am I excited.
Speaker A:You're talking about the creative process and how it feels.
Speaker A:I haven't felt this good in a long time.
Speaker A:I can't wait for people to hear this new music.
Speaker A:The main song everybody seems to like.
Speaker A:Well, the title, I think is going to be Push Pause and Repeat.
Speaker A:But that song that I think will be the single.
Speaker A:First single that everybody's reacting to is called Take the World.
Speaker A:That's kind of a good theme for all things we're talking about in a way.
Speaker C:So you got a full agenda the rest of the year?
Speaker A:Yeah, I'm so fortunate.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:Like the peak years and Mike and the Seagulls, the same thing.
Speaker A:They were much bigger than we were touring that you said something about, especially in America.
Speaker A:The 80s thing is golden.
Speaker A:It's like, right, you can take that out.
Speaker A:It'll never end, you know.
Speaker A:And you're doing big places.
Speaker A:We're doing like the Greek theater and the mountain, like big amphitheaters and big, you know, shows.
Speaker A:It's not like a novelty thing.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's mainstream, big, you know, concerts.
Speaker C:It's just amazing also, Gord, that you, you know, you've had a long career, right.
Speaker C:You've had a really great long career and just different chapters of your career.
Speaker C:But I talk to you and I look at you and I.
Speaker C:I can see that, like, the joy is still there.
Speaker C:You still love what you do.
Speaker C:You still get a lot of gratification for what you do.
Speaker C:You can totally see it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I.
Speaker A:I hope that for everybody, because I.
Speaker A:I wake up every morning.
Speaker A:I tend to be.
Speaker A:Ever since COVID I get up really early, like 6:37, because I'm excited and I can't wait to play the guitar.
Speaker A:First thing I do in the morning, make the coffee, put the news on, and I'm already working on something.
Speaker A:Then.
Speaker A:Then later on, you know, I let it go.
Speaker A:But first thing in the morning, I still got that same excitement, that sort of Christmas feeling, you know, the kid waking up in the morning.
Speaker A:And I still get that, like.
Speaker A:And how lucky am I to have that?
Speaker A:And I hope other people have it, whether it's through golf or crocheting or writing stories or something.
Speaker A:It's like, without it, I don't know.
Speaker A:But, you know, it's a big gap to film.
Speaker C:I understand what you're saying fully.
Speaker C:The Beautiful thing is that this gift of music that started when you were a really little kid has been a soundtrack for your whole life.
Speaker C:Kind of what we talk about this whole time.
Speaker C:And it's still.
Speaker C:It's still there.
Speaker C:Like, the love of music is still there.
Speaker C:The love of creating is still there.
Speaker C:And it's almost.
Speaker C:I'm not sure if you would agree with this, but it's almost better now because you have so much Runway behind you that you, you know, you've got so much more to draw on.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Like I say, it's.
Speaker A:Sometimes I wish I could shut everything off and have that innocence, but I figured out how to do that on my own as well.
Speaker A:And then.
Speaker A:And that's when it really feels good when you.
Speaker A:You hit those moments.
Speaker A:Like those start writing.
Speaker A:Like.
Speaker A:You know, I think he just used to call it automatic writing back in the.
Speaker A:The early days, like hypnotism and.
Speaker A:And that kind of thing.
Speaker A:Like we could just write without thinking.
Speaker A:And I get those moments.
Speaker A:It's like, holy crap.
Speaker A:That's like.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's like sitting down with a, you know, the therapist or something.
Speaker A:Because the words just sort of happen.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And then, Then you start writing from places that you don't know where it comes from.
Speaker A:And then you avoid all the, The.
Speaker A:The pitfalls of like rhyming night with late and love.
Speaker A:And, you know, you start writing quirky, nonsensical, fun things.
Speaker A:Those are great.
Speaker A:Even rip apart some lyrics by great artists.
Speaker A:On paper they look weird, but you hear them come out on.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:You know, in a song or.
Speaker A:It's like there's something going on there that is beyond just writing.
Speaker A:You know, it's like true the way words fit together sounds.
Speaker A:I know weird stuff there.
Speaker A:But it's the automatic thing that becomes better.
Speaker A:It's the unexpected that I record every album now without being finished.
Speaker A:Because the best up at the end, when you didn't plan it, where you just comes in from side stage somewhere, so.
Speaker A:And, oh, there it is.
Speaker C:But you've become confident enough as a writer that you understand that part of how you write and you just let it flow.
Speaker A:I tell people like, that you like the song.
Speaker A:Like the band is getting the song, finally learning, that's not what I have my head yet.
Speaker A:But when you would get there, you'll see what I'm talking about.
Speaker A:And then that happens.
Speaker A:They go, whoa, okay.
Speaker A:And I say, no, there's more.
Speaker A:There's got to be something.
Speaker A:This part is fine.
Speaker A:But there's something else going to happen here.
Speaker A:I Don't know what it is yet.
Speaker A:It could be.
Speaker A:Might be somebody else, like the keyboard player.
Speaker A:So I got this little keyboard, like, oh, my God.
Speaker A:That's exactly what I was thinking.
Speaker A:I just didn't know what it was yet, you know?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So don't hire me as your writer unless you want to go on a strange journey, but the end of it will be amazing.
Speaker C:I'm sure.
Speaker C:I'm sure.
Speaker C:I'm sure.
Speaker C:Listen, I really appreciate the time today.
Speaker C:It's been an awesome conversation.
Speaker A:I understand we're both kind of on the same wavelength.
Speaker C:It's.
Speaker C:It's really.
Speaker C:It's.
Speaker C:It's a really easy conversation with you.
Speaker C:I could talk to you for hours, and there's so much music that we could talk about.
Speaker C:I know it's hard to knock this down to five selections because there's probably 500.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:But you did a beautiful.
Speaker C:Yeah, I'd love to.
Speaker C:Yeah, we'll do it for sure.
Speaker C:Let's do it again for sure.
Speaker C:There's so much more.
Speaker A:Thank you so much.
Speaker C:You're the best.
Speaker C:Thanks, Gord.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker C:Take care.
Speaker C:Bye.
Speaker B:And that brings us to the end of this episode of Treasure Island Discs.
Speaker B:A huge thank you to Gore Depp for taking the time to talk about his music, his stories, and so many deeply personal reflections on his life and creativity.
Speaker B:If you enjoyed the episode, be sure to follow Treasure Island Discs on your social channels and wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker B:You can grab the playlist and links from today's episode in the show notes as well.
Speaker B:Thanks for listening.
Speaker B:I'm Jeff Moffat, and we'll see you next time.
