Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / [EP 383] Don Pyle on Life, Loss & Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet

Transcript

[EP 383] Don Pyle on Life, Loss & Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The car rolled. It was a VW Beetle, and I
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: went out the back window. I don't remember that happening.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: I was knocked out, but I was told that afterwards.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: The car kept going. I was going in one direction,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: the car was going in another direction. Once I left
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: the car, when I opened my eyes, the guardrail was
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: like literally above my head and a very strange scene
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: of being in the grass. Their dog next to me,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: my brother's dog barking. You're young and you're just thinking
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: you're just going to live forever. We're totally booked rock
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: and Roll. I mean, I'll leave you. You're reading little hands,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: It's time to rock and roll, Rocking, roll Out, I
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: totally booked.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Welcome back to Booked on Rock the podcast for those
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: about to read and rock on Eric Senitch. Before we
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: get started, listeners and viewers, you can get fifteen percent
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: off classic rock merchandise at old Glory dot com with
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: the code Booked on Rock the link in the show notes,
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: or at Booked on Rock dot com under my Deals.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Now on to our guest. Don Pile is the author
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: of rough description, love Letters and ghost Stories from a
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Life in Music. This is a sharp, often hilarious look
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: at his life in music, from co founding Shadowy Men
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: on a Shadowy Planet to navigating the chaos and rewards
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: of touring. He shares behind the scenes stories involving figures
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: like Steve Albini and the comedy troupe The Kids in
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: the Hall, whose iconic theme his band created. Blending humor
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: and reflection, Pole traces a creative life shaped by punk rock,
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: personal struggles, and a relentless drive to make art across music, film,
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: and beyond. Don great to have you on the show.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna copy that and use it for my bio.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Now there you go, man, that's it cut. We can
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: finish it right there. So this is not a straight autobiography.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: You describe it almost like a collection of moments or impressions,
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: and you also structured the book like a setlist. Why
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: did that feel like the right way to tell your story?
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Well, I didn't want to do an autobiography, you know.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of like, you know, just like a million
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: other people in bands. There's no kind of reason for
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: me to do an autobiography. It's not really so much
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: like my life, but just some of the situations that
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: I've been in. Yeah, I think I've been in some
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: pretty unique and sometimes kooky situations from just doing this
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: for so long and just who you cross paths with,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: who you choose to cross paths with, and it kind
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: of felt like writing it, you know. Really. It initially
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: came out of one photograph, a photograph about of an
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: artist named Wendy Coburn, and I did this small book
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: called Shot in the Mirror that was photo portraits and
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: did talks about them. When I was doing the talks,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: I would talk kind of like more at length, like
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: I didn't put any captions in the photos, like no
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: description or anything, because it was just kind of too much.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to try and tell anybody's life story
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: or anything. But there were things about Wendy that really
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: kind of preoccupied me and made me think a lot.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: And then when I would talk to audiences about that,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: people responded really positively, and it happened every time I did.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: I did talks with my first book as well, and
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: you know, I realized that people are, you know, interested
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: in hearing some of these stories, and it's generally the
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff that I really like reading. It's kind
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: of like the context of it's not only like the
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: events themselves, but kind of like the social context about
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: what's going on around them, what's happening in the times,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: how different things came to be, and so it's a
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: lot of the stuff that just kind of preoccupies me.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: I did it sort of like a set list, because
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: I just like made a list, Okay, what what do
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: I have something to say? What do what subjects do
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: I have something to say about? And so kind of
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: like made that list and then thought, okay, I can
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: write a chapter on each of those things. So kind
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: of like breaking it down in that way, it kind
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: of felt like it was manageable and and it was
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: all things that I thought, you know, I could have
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: something interesting to.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: Say, very interesting. It feels like you're visiting with each
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: chapter just a part of your life, a section of
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: your life, and it flows nicely that way.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like you know, most autobiographies, I got to say, like,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: you know, I read a lot of autobiographies, and there
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: are very very few that I find like super compelling.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: And usually because the first third is like the sort
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: of growing up stuff, and a lot of that stuff
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: is sort of like pretty interchangeable, you know, there are
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: books that really deviate from that and I don't so
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: if I necessarily took inspiration from them. But like Geddy
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Lee's book My f and Life, I loved that book.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: I really loved how much he talked about his family
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: history and that and kind of his exploration of you know,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: his mother and different members of his family being involved
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: in the Holocaust and just the situation of how he
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: got to where he was. So that was a book
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: where I thought that the childhood and kind of the
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: story where it wasn't just about his childhood, it was
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: like a broader context that really kind of informed who
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: he is. Bobby Gillespie's book Tenement Kid, I thought was
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: similar Nico Case's book, which is very much about her childhood.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: That book was also, you.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: Know, really excellent that part of the title love Letters
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: and ghost Stories from a Life in Music. At what
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: point did you realize that that phrase capture the essence
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: of the book, The.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Love letters thing is specifically about like some of the chapters.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: One thing that was like pretty obvious to me at
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: some point as like, oh boy, like I'm writing about
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: all these dead people, all these people who've died, you know,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: and so it was they were appreciations for them and
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: some of them. Some of those chapters like Steve Albini,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Dallas Good, Albert Chayat my big brother, I wrote those
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: like almost immediately after they died, and not thinking that
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: they would be chapters in a book one day. It
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: was really kind of to capture kind of the really
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: heightened emotional thing that was going on for me at
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: the time of their passing and really wanting to both
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: remember and kind of memorialize them. So that was sort
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: of like the love letters part of it, the ghost
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: stories part. I kind of feel like that, I mean,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: anything from the past that you're talking about, you know,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: music stuff, stupid band stories, business dealings, all that stuff.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of that stuff is kind of
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: like ghost stories. It's like scary stories from from situations
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: that many of my friends have also been in. But
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: then also I like literally thought about it in terms
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: of the chapter about Dallas Good, my friend and bandmate,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: where I had this kind of like supernatural experience that
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of felt like it was like a
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: connection with the uh, the beyond. You know, really I
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: felt like that one was like really a ghost story.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you feel like he was in the room with
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: you while you were writing.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Uh no, oh no. I you know, I'm kind of
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: one of those people who thinks that like when you're
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: when you're gone, you're you're sort of God, but not
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: feeling like he was there, but really really super aware
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: of his presence. Like some of the writing Dallas and
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: my mother, those two were the hardest ones to write
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: about because you know, it really brings them very presently.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: You know, it's kind of like what you are saying,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: So I guess they were kind of like in the
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: room sort of figuratively, but you know, I really really
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: felt their presence, and some of those things were hard
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: to write because of you know, kind of just refeeling
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: sure some of the emotional things kind of in a
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: deeper way than than you know, we normally do when
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: we walk around with the memory of our you know,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: best friend dying or other dyeing, those kinds of things.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and for you, fortunately you are still here to
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: tell your story because there was a car accident and
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: there's a chapter on this. Yeah, that man, that was
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: serious and you were just a kid in fifth grade
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: nineteen seventy two. Take us back to that summer day.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: What happened and how did that experience shape your outlook
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: in life after that.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: It's funny. I've known a few kids close to me
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: who've gone through like really sort of like serious medical
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: things that were kind of like potentially life threatening, and
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: something that I said to both of them was like,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: you know, I know this is really awful now, but
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: this is going to be such a formative experience for you,
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: because this is going to be like a landmark thing
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: in your life that you know, there's lots of kind
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: of like before and after. I think, you know, at
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: the time, I didn't know that. I was like, you know,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: on borderline of whether I was going to live or not.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: So I it wasn't till many years later that my
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: sister or my mother mentioned that to me, like, you know,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: we thought you were going to die, and I was like, oh,
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: that hadn't even occurred to me, Like I just you know,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: you're young, and you just think you're just going to
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: live forever. So I think that that particularly hearing it
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: when I was older, and along with just having people
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: close to you die or become sick has starts to
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: happen a lot when when you get to my age,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: that it was part of kind of building a sort
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: of source of empathy and appreciation for life, the living
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: world and just being here and being able to see,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: you know, the leaves coming out in spring. Those things,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: they are really super meaningful to me. They leaves coming
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: out filled me with emotion.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an appreciation of life.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I think that all those experiences they kind
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: of add to it and kind of make life better
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: as you go along. You know, it's such a paradox
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: that you know your friend dying is going to make
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: life better, and it's not that it makes life better,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: it makes your appreciation of what's happening.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: And you were driving along the highway, they made sure
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: you were wearing your seat belt.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I was wearing my seat belt, and somehow the
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: seat belt either broke or came undone, and the car rolled.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: It was a VW. Beetle, and I went out the
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: back window. You know, I don't remember that happening. I
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: was knocked out, but I was told that afterwards that
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: I went along the back window, that I went out
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: the back window, and I know from where I came
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: to where I was conscious that it was. You know,
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: the car was fairly far away from where I was,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: so the car kept going I was going in one direction,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: the car was going in another direction. Once I left
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: the car, so you know, when I opened my eyes,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: the like the guard rail was like literally above my head.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: And it's just a very strange scene of you know,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: being in the grass, their dog next to me, my
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: brother's dog, barking and protecting me, you know, from the
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: ambulance people who were trying to get to me.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: Time moved differently from how I'd always known it.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, right, yeah, you know, part of it is that
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: kind of I don't know if you've ever been knocked
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: out or gone unconscious, it's a very strange thing. It's
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: only happened to me a couple of times in my life,
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: and it's like it's kind of hard to comprehend, like
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: you know, like where did that time go, like, because
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: you know, you just blink and there's no gap in
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: your experience.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: I blacked out once and I was out for minute
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: two minutes, and it to me it was a split second. Yeah,
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: And I came to and my mother was shouting my name,
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Are you okay? Are you okay? I just yeah, I
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: remember that. So it goes by and a split second
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: like that. Yeah, amazing story and again, thankfully you are
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: here to tell that story and live to see punk
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: rock in Toronto. Right, you describe it as being part
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: of a tribe. Take us back to that. What was
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: the first moment you felt like you discovered something different
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: with punk?
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Well, really, honestly, like the very first sort of punk
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: show that I think it was happening in Toronto, which
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: was the Ramones playing in nineteen seventy six at the
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: New Yorker. You know, I didn't feel like I was
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: part of a tribe or anything. I think that that
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: sort of like came later where I felt like I
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: had a community within the music scene, because to begin with,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: it was, you know, I was younger than everybody else.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: So you know, when you're at that show, I was fourteen,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: and a lot of the other people who were there,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: some of who I recognized from kind of like art
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: things or just kind of like the beginnings of you know,
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: what became punk, you know, like rep Theaters. I recognized
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: some of those people, and you know, if they were
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: like twenty two, twenty three years old, they were kind
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: of more significantly they were significantly older than me, you
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: know my perception anyway, if they were nine or ten
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: years older. So it wasn't really until like a few
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: years into like really going to shows intensely that maybe
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: two years before or other people my age started to
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: come into the scene. And that was when I really
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: kind of like found that I had kind of like
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: a community because you know, you would talk with other
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: people and no other people who were older or in bands.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't until there was another sixteen year old
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: who you know, I could hang out with and who
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: had very very similar experiences. And then you know that
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: one friend became three friends and five friends and you
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: know kind of included another girl from school who was
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: also you know, really into the kind of the beginning
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: of punk rock as well. So it was just kind
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: of like a you know, it almost sounds like a
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: like you know, stand by me or a story or something.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: You know. I was like, you know, yeah, a girl
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: at high school who I met from writing band names
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: on desks, and right, you know, like, you know, who
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: are you? We have to meet? And then you know,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: when we met, we started going to shows together.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: What was it about punk rock that really pulled you
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: in as opposed to regular, you know, straight mainstream rock
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: and roll bands or I mean you.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: Know, I liked a lot of stuff all across the
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: board kind of previous to that, but it was the
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: perfect music for that age, you know, for my age
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: where you just want something. I want something fast and loud,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: And it was also kind of like the change for
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: me where you know, up until that point I hadn't
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: been to too many shows before I was fourteen, but
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: they were all kind of like in arenas or stadiums
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: and that kind of thing where the person is really distant,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: the performers distant, and you're not having kind of like
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: an intimate experience. So to go to, you know, the
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: shows that I was going to, I'm literally at the
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: edge of the stage. It was a completely different, totally
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: you know, in thralling experience. So to have that as
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: kind of like your introduction into going into live music
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: was totally thrilling because there were like so many new ideas,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: new ways of doing things, you know, I really was
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: excited by it. A lot of Like the music that
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: I was listening to a lot was like a lot
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: of forties, fifties, sixties music, well kind of like all eras.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: You know, I was always really devouring stuff, So I
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: liked kind of the history and the connectivity of the
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: history and music. But I also was really excited by
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: new things, you know, like and this felt like it
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: was something really radical and extreme and new. You know
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: in retrospect, where the sex Pistols so radical and new, well,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: they were pretty radical for the time in terms of
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: like how they really upset people, but you know, their
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: music was fairly straightforward rock and roll. But the upsetting
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: people was also a really big part of of the
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: appeal of some of it. You know that you were like,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: you know, listening to these records that were making the
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: news and causing adults to be you know, offended or outraged.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: You know, that was kind of exciting when uh, you know,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: one of my favorite bands, The Curse, put on a
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: record about a shoeshine boy who was you know, kidnapped
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: off the street and murdered, and then it you know,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: became news you know, in the Toronto sound it was
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: the it was a sensational story. So there was something
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: that was you know, as awful as that was, and
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: I recognized that there was kind of like a thrill
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: in being involved in this thing that was so disturbing
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: to people.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, and you didn't initially see yourself as
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: a musician. What flipped that switch?
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: I always want to be in a band, but just
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: did not do anything and didn't have the opportunity. I
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: wasn't selected for learning an instrument in high school, so
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: I had told my mother I wanted to learn how
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: to play guitar. She bought me a used guitar with
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: a warped neck on it, and she didn't know the difference.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: I didn't know the difference. Someone told me later, It's like,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: I can't play this thing and a book. You know,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: that's just not the way that I can learn anything.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: You know, just hear you ten year old ghosts go
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: on your own with this guitar. Lots of kids, do
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: you know. It's amazing to me, like people that I
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: know that become obsessed with an instrument at a really
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: young age, but that wasn't me. But another thing that
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: was really amazing about punk rock was like how it
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: made everything democratic. It didn't matter whether you could play
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: an instrument, or if you'd been in a band before,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: or if you could even sing, because I didn't know
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: what my singing voice sounded like. But I was, you know,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: became a singer in a band with three friends. So
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: that was kind of like my introduction to you know,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: being in a band, sort of being a musical, being musical.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: But it was really kind of an accident that I
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: started playing drums again. I you know, something that I thought, oh,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: that would be fun to do. But it wasn't like
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: I had any place to practice drums, you know, my
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: mother wasn't going to stand for that at home. So
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: two of the guys that i'd been in Crash Gills
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: five with the band that I was in, they had
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: had like kind of like a little more of falling
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: out when the band ended than I did with them.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: I was still friends with both of them and was
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: there when the two of them kind of like got
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: together to work on a project with someone else, Bruce
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: mccollor from The Kids in the Hall, And I just
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: happened to arrive to hang out with Brian at his
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: apartment when they were wrapping up recording these songs, just
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: in Brian's apartment, and the two of them were like, oh,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: you know, what do you think do you want to
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: play music again? Do you feel like you want to
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: get together? And you know, this really kind of tentative,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: you know, exes talking about dating again, and they're like, yeah,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: sure that'd be good. Well do you want to get it?
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Should we ask someone to come and play drums? Who
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: do you want to get And I just said I'll
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: do it. I loved it, and amazingly, you know, they
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: went for it. They were open to it, which is
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: you know, part of you know why I love those
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: guys so much. You know, they were so open minded
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: and just like, yeah, I'll try that. Sure, I'll try that.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: And you know, they had no reason to stick with
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: someone who could not play drums, because they were both
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: amazing players. You know, Brian is still you know, recognized
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: as being one of the best guitar players in Canada.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: You know, people say it to me all the time
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: and and he's just incredible. So you know that we
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: that they were, that they would do this with me
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: was you know, very I feel very grateful for that because,
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: you know, playing with them kind of well, all of
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: us together together, we made something that put us all on,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: you know, a path that became our living and kind
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: of a pretty significant part of our life.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: How did that go early on in terms of playing
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: the drums, did you find that you had a natural
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: innate tale for an internal clock that was like, Wow,
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: I can do this or was it pretty bad at
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: the beginning? You had to work at.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: It, you know. Honestly, it was like pretty rough, and
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: there's definitely there's positive things and negative things about it.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: One of the negative things I think about learning to
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: play drums when you're in a band is that you
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: have to keep like the beat. You know, you have
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: to just keep going. You can't stop. So that part
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: is really good, but I think it kind of like
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: limits your I don't know the variety of your expression.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: For me, anyway, that was my own kind of like feeling.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: We did a box set of all of our albums
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: with another album of like extra tracks on it. So
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: I was listening to all of these tapes of right
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: back to the very first rehearsals that we had together,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: and I honestly I was like, these are amazing. I'm
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: so glad that we did these because they are so
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: like it's like, you know, this sort of lesion of
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: really great players with someone who doesn't know what they're doing,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: and it makes a very unique sound. We made a
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: really unique sound and again became an instrumental band. Very
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: like totally by accident. So this thing that was part
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: of our uniqueness came about by accident because we did
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: have a singer and he quit after a couple of reversals.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: So it's like all these things just a line that
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: made us kind of unique. And things that you would
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: think of as being detriments to your ability to move forward,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: we're all positive things. That's something that I feel like
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: I constantly learned from. You're never too young or never
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: too old to learn new things, and that there's value
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: in every approach. You know, you can just do anything.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: You can do anything.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and also you just don't get in the way
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: of just the natural progression of of life, Like things
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: just fall into place. You could try to make things happen,
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: but like you say, band members come and go and
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: things just they just land the right way.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I was playing pretty simple things to begin with,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: and you know, over time, as I got better, things
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: got a little more you know, sophisticated or complicated or whatever.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: But it it came from like you know, I mentioned
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: that in the book that it was like the Cramps
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: and the Ramones, two bands that had like really basic
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: kind of like very you know, pretty easy to follow
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: songs kind of the same as like you know, the
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Kinks or you know a lot of like sixties garage
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: rock where you know, there were a lot of pretty
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: primitive bands, but you know the Cramps. They had the
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: one song Rock and Bones that I remember thinking like,
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: this is so amazing because it's just kick snare, kick snare,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: boom boom. I was like, I could do that, Like
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: if things start falling apart in a song, I can
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: just go to that and I'm gonna be okay.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Well with Crash Gills five part of that
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: scene for a while, did you did you start develop
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: a following playing a lot of clubs around there.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: We were together for like two and a half years.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: The first the first year Brian was in the band,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Brian Connolly, and then he quit the band and another
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: friend of ours, Mohammed Nagdi joined, and you know, we
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: made one seven inch single. We recorded a second record
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: that we never got to the way of mixing it.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: We split up before we got there, and we played
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: around locally. We would go here and there, like you know,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: small towns around Toronto. We played a lot with band
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: from London, the Demis, So we did a lot of
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: shows opening for them, going different places, played our own
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: shows and you know in Montreal and Ottawah and you
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: know all around kind of southern Ontario. We didn't go
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: too far, but a great experience, you know, we had.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: There were a lot of bands that that I think
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: we kind of like felt like we had a little
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: community with and you know, some of those people are
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: still like the friendships that I have today. You know,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: it's kind of like this person is connected to that
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: person and you know, this is the girlfriend of you know,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: the guy in the band that we played our second
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: show with, and she's a good friend of mine.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: The book doesn't romanticize the punk scene, and you mentioned
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: that the homophobia was within parts of the scene. How
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: difficult was it navigating that personally for you?
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: Honestly, I wouldn't say it was like so difficult, and
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: partly because I was in the closet, so you know,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: kind of word got out. You know, someone saw me
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: going into a gay bar and yeah, told me that
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: that they'd seen me, and then you know, other people
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: knew and people were talking, and then at some point
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: it was like, you know, kind of like how many
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: like so many things were at that time. It was
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: like common knowledge, but we just people didn't talk about it,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: I think kind of until I acknowledged it myself. Other
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: people didn't really talk about it too much. So you know,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: coming out was sort of a gradual process, and you know,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: at first I wasn't really so comfortable with the people
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: even that I was in a bandwidth like telling them.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: You know, it was like, you know, definitely fear about it,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: and I don't even know like exactly what the fear is, like,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: you know, fear of rejection or fear of kind of
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: losing your play and the social structure, which is you know,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: relatively meaningless at that time, but you know, when you're
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: really young, those things are more important, you know. Sure,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: So you know, there were definitely a lot of things
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: from from everywhere, from movies, from songs, from bands I
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: was going to see, from just you know, all the
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: messages you get from people in high school. Just like
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: living kind of in a world that is, you know,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: mostly straight, you get all the messages all the time
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: that that they are not for what you are, you know,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: so you know, you you until you kind of have
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: the inner strength to kind of face at yourself and
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: kind of deal with it. Then those things just have
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: a power over you.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I remember when when Rob Halford came out. I
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: don't remember when that was, but it was great that
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: there was. It was it was the fans just didn't
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: seem to care.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, it was you know, and I feel like
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: that made him so much more you know, like he
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: was kind of like this sort of superhuman you know character,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: like lots of singers and in bands or people in
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: bands were. But after a certain point, I think kind
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: of like you know, as media and kind of our
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: understanding about bands, all about the mythology about it has
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: been mostly sort of taken apart, you know, like we
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: understand now that a lot of that stuff is sort
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: of a put on, you know, like it's theatrics. And
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: so you see someone like Rob Halford, who is a
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: fully formed person now, you know, and he's a lovable, funny,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: sweet guy.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: So it's like him coming out just made him so
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: much more interesting because, you know, coinciding with the times
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: of you know, being gay or being you know, in
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: a band and being gay, that those things are they're
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: meaningless to most people. The people who are who they
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: have meaning for. It's on both ends of the spectrum.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: It's either really positively or really negatively. And the people
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: who it's really negative for, it's like who cares?
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: You know, that's the reason now, you know, just weed
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: them out.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they're not people that I want to, you know,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: hang it out with. You know, we've we've all had
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: enough of those that are you know, family picnics and whatnot.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: You know, we talk with Don Pyle, musician, record producer, photographer, writer,
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: a man of many hats. We didn't really talk about
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: your photography all that much. I know that's a big
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: part of your life too. Is new memoir rough description,
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: Love Letters and ghost Stories from a Life in Music.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: It's dueout May twenty sixth I don't talk about Shadowy
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: Men and a Shadowy Planet. They formed in nineteen eighty four.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: Brian Connelly on guitar, keyboards read Diamond on bass, yourself
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: on drums, right yep. And it became a defining part
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: of your life. Talk about how the band came together
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: out of your earlier bands and experiences like.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: I was mentioning about meeting by accident. Reid had this
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: duo with Bruce McCullough from Kids in the Hall called
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: a Ryan's belt that was like guitar, bass and a
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: drum machine, and it was kind of like funny songs,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: sort of like what Bruce does on his live shows
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: and on his own records, and you know, he's still
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: kind of doing a similar kind of thing. So when
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: we first got together, it was like, you know, there
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: was no agenda, but Ken, who was our singer, he
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: had a couple of songs he'd been in a band
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: with Reid, and we just started playing our own song.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: We just like made stuff up and so we would
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: just play sometimes on one riff for an hour and
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: then eventually started recording little bits of things and then
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: realize saying like okay, this bit goes with that bit
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: and putting songs together. So I think that we felt
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: like really kind of empowered really early on because we
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: didn't need a PA. We didn't care about a record deal,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: we didn't care about a manager. You know, it was
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: just like such low stakes that we just pursued what
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: we wanted to do, which was lots of times like
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: making stuff like building sets for shows, like ridiculous elaborate sets,
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: which were all kind of like to distract from our
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: self consciousness about being a band on stage. So anyway,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: we the first time that we played, we had such
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: a great response, and we were really lucky because I
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: kind of feel like after our very first show, we
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: could just do whatever we wanted. You know, we could
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: play wherever we wanted, and you know, mind you are
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: our aim was like, you know, not so high. You know,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: it's like, we're going to play at this club that
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: holds two hundred people and sell it out. You know,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: that was incredible to us, Like, you know, we can
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: sell out our favorite club and we can make records
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: and give them away because there's enough people coming to
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: our shows to give away singles that we've you know made.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: So we just started doing things, making records, constantly writing songs,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: putting out seven inch singles because they were still super
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: cheap to do. Postage was still affordable. All those things
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: that have made records you know, an elite object. Now,
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: those things weren't barriers at that time. So we did
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: a ton of singles and then just we there was
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: something about being an instrumental band too that really created
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of opportunities for us and doing soundtrack stuff.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: So we started having a lot of people asking us
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: to do music for their films, friends doing you know
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: stuff for their short films, and then more of that,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: and then eventually with the Kids in the hall because
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: Reid was their theater tech, he was doing their live
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: sound kind of producing their live shows, and we were
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: friends with them and started doing shows live with them
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: where we were on stage together and basically the exact
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: same format as the TV series, where you know, they
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: would film a bit and then the lights would come
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: up and we'd play, and then our lights would go
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: down and then it would be back to them, so
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: you know, as scenes were changed, that kind of stuff,
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: and they had a song on our first seven single
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: that they were using as their theme to open their
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: live show off of our you know, little record, and
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: they pushed for that to be the theme for the show.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: They pushed for us to be the band that was
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: doing music for the show because we had this great,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: easy relationship and kind of i think, very sympathetic sensibilities,
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: and so when we started doing the series, you know,
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: obviously that created you know, a bigger opportunity for us.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: We were really kind of like on the verge of
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: making a living in the band already before we start
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: doing the Kids, and that was just simply by just
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: going for it, you know, like so many bands in Canada.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: It was a real common thing for bands to you know,
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: like our goal is to go to Montreal or you know,
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: to go to Vancouver, and we're like, Vancouver is so
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: far away, why don't we go to New York City
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: that's closer, or you know, Detroit. And so we started
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: going into the States a lot, and it was somehow
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: something that a lot of Canadian bands were a friend
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: that we're afraid of, but we were playing in US
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: all over North America.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: Why do you think that was? Why were they afraid
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: to go to the US.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: I don't even think that people are conscious about it
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: being fear. I think it's just because it's easy. It's like, Okay,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: this magazine that's coming out about Canadian rock is writing about,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: you know how what's happening in Halifax, what's happening in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: So those are the places that we are sort of
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: trained to be that this is our that pathway from
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: left coast to right coast, that is the path that
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: we will follow for a long time. You know. I
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: think that there's a bit of like at the time.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: I think there was certainly a bit more of like
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: Canadian insecurity. If you went to the States, a lot
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: of bands like nobody was interested and so.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: You're starting from the bottom again if you go to you.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: Know, but we didn't, you know, our our bottom, like
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: what we measured as success was so close to the bottom.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: That was like that it was like this is great,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: you know, like and we were very very lucky to
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: have people who uh had some kind of influence, who
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: who really liked us and we're fans of us, and
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: so people like Kelvin Johnson from K Records Beat Happening,
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: like you know, he put on the first shows that
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: we did in the States in Olympia, Washington, and uh
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: kind of like because of Calvin's endorsement, it was like
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: the West Coast like became like a real like a
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: place where we did really well. And you know, we
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: had a lot of people from pretty well known bands
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: coming to see us, and you know, we had a
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: lot of great sort of like word of mouth support.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: You know, we certainly played closer to home Buffalo a lot.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: We became friends with bands down there, So it was
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: I don't know, it just seemed easy to us to
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: go to the stage.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: What point did you realize it was going to be
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: mostly instrumental? Was that a conscious decision? Did it just
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: happened naturally that way. Was it because of music you're
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: going to make for soundtracks that you decided to go instrumental.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: How did that all play out?
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: It happened by accident after our fourth rehearsal, when Ken Priestley,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: who had been singing and playing guitar in the first
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: few rehearsals, decided that it was too far to come
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: to rehearsal because we were rehearsing in the basement of
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: Brian's work and you know kind of like secretly on
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: the weekends and evenings when no one knew that there
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: was a band in the office. But Ken lived, you know,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: pretty far out on the edge of the city, so
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: he just didn't feel like it was worth it. So
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: we just said, well, let's just carry on. You know,
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: we all were into a lot of instrumental stuff. We
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: were big fans of Link Ray, you know, knew a
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: lot of kind of like the original kind of like
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: surf sort of stuff, and we're you know, really into
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of soundtrack stuff. Nino Roda and Heo Morricone,
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: some of the classic soundtrack things. And I think that
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: we thought of ourselves as, like, you know, or the
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: music that we were making as being kind of like
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: almost like soundtrack music, and like even our band name.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: When we had to pick a band name, like, we
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: didn't think we were going to play live because we
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: were so beginnerish, But when a friend offered us free
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: rehearsal time in the rehearsal space in exchange for opening
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: for their band, we're like, okay, well let's do it.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: And the band name that we picked, we thought, Okay,
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: this name is too long and too stupid to be
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: a name that you're going to carry with you for
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: the rest of your life. So, you know, it was
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: kind of a name that kind of suited a band
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: that was only going to play a couple of times.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: Where did the name come from? What's the origins of it?
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: It's not a very interesting story, but it was just like, Okay,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: we have to come up with a name. And so
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: we all made lists and we all had shadowy something
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: on them, and Brian had made this cassette, this mixed
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: cassette for Read that was entitled The Shadow of a
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: Shadowy band, and so from our various lists, we put
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: all these pieces together and made this name that sounded
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: like it was a movie title. Yeah. So it was
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: like we liked that it sounded like a movie.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: Title, yeah, or almost like a sci fi slash film
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: noir name. It's it's an unforgettable name, it really is.
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: I'm curious if you know the name James Calvin Wilseie because.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: Oh, of course, yeah, with with Chris. Chris Isaac was
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: in the The Avengers.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: Yes, And you know, I thought of him when I
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: was listening to your music because he had that style too,
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: and it's just a fantastic sound that he had and
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: a sad ending to his life. But there's a there's
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: a great book that was written on him that you
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: should check out if you get a chance.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I didn't know there was a book about him. No.
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: I was a big fan of The Avengers yep, and
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: and got into Chris Isaac pretty early as well, partly
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: because of my friend Louis doing his sound being his
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: sound person. I was hearing Chris Isaac when he was
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: in the band Silver Tone before it was his band,
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: And there's kind of like all these connections across over
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: with with punk Ro because John silver who had been
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: the drummer and the band the Dills, a band that
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: I was a big fan of and got connected with
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: when I was young. He was it was kind of
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: like his band Silvertone, and Chris Isaac was like the
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: singer guitar player in it. And then but then he
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: got ousted from the band, and then it became you know,
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: Chris Isaac and Silver Tone and then just Chris Isaac.
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: The book, by the way, is Michael Goldberg. I had
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: him on to talk about that's the author in the
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: book is called Wicked Game, The True Story of Guitarist
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: James Calvin Wilsee. I can't recommend it enough.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: It's one yeah, no, I really want to read that.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: Your band best known for that track having an average Weekend.
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: There's an alternate version that's the one that's used for
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: the show Kids in the Hall. Right when you wrote
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: that song, did you have any idea that it had
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: become so iconic?
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: Never, like, you know, it was the third song on
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: a three song seven inches, so you know, honestly, all
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: the songs are first several singles. I really like all
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: of the songs that are on those and we chose
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: those songs out of the songs that we had written
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: at that point, like for each of the singles, because
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: they sounded like singles. And there's something about writing for
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: a single that is very different than just writing kind
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: of like more sort of free formed or abstractly or
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: you know, exploratory. It's like, you know, we're raised on singles,
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: so it's like very concise. You know, you get in,
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: you get out, you know, you go to many parts
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: and then the song is over. I remember when we
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: recorded that one, I thought it was like so sophisticated
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: because it had twelve string acoustic on it, and it
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: just like it gave us such a different sound because obviously,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: like you know, we're playing live, it's just like one
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: electric guitar player, So with two twelve string guitars, you know,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: playing the same part in stereo, it just gave that
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: song like such a vibrance and are kind of I
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: don't know, kind of like an emotional warmth to it
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: that was sort of unexpected until it was recorded, so
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, the first song on that
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: was the song on that single was the one that
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: we thought was like the catchiest song. You know, this
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: is a song called Our Weapons Are Useless, and that's
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: a song that you know, people like it, but I
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: can't say it's ever been like one of the songs
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: where people are like, yeah, that song is the best
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: song you ever wrote. But you know, it's a great
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: thing about being in a band when you write a
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: you know, one hundred and fifty songs, there's different songs
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: kind of rise and fall to the surface, and you know,
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: some old songs that you you've dropped for eight years
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: suddenly become your favorite song.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much for checking out the book down Rock podcast.
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: If you've just found the podcast, welcome. If you've been listening,
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: thank you so much for your support, and make sure
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: you tell a friend, a family member, share on social
• 46:08
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• 46:11
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• 46:14
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• 46:16
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• 46:21
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• 46:24
  Speaker 2: the full episodes on video, along with video highlights from
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: episodes on the Booked on Rock YouTube channel. Find it
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: at Booked on Rock. Thanks again for listening. Now back
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: to the show. Well, let's talk about Dallas Good. Now,
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: your relationship with him, it's a recurring thread throughout the book.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: He's best known as the co founder, guitarist and vocalist
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: of the band The Sadies. Right, You and Dallas had
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: a long standing creative and personal relationship, and you write
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: in the book quote, I can barely remember a time
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: when I didn't know Dallas could. And there's the title.
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: It's not just Good, it's Dallas Good. That's the chapter's title.
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: That's powerful. What made him such a unique musician compared
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: to the others that you've worked with.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: Dallas, first of all, is super encyclopedia. Is that the
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: words encyclopedic, you know, even though he was like, you know,
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: quite a bit younger than me and and us to
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: think how much age difference there was, like sixteen years
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: or something, I forget, But when I first met him,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: I didn't, you know, there was no kind of like
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: age gap in my mind, because he knew all the
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: same kind of foundational things. You know, our early R
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: and B, you know, the Kinks, psychedelic stuff, you know,
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: thirteen four Elevators, the Ramones, punk rock, hardcore. He had
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: like all the bases covered country music. His dad and
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: his uncles are still in a band called The Good Brothers,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: who are kind of like a Canadian institution country band.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: That that was what he grew up in, you know,
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: like his parents being friends with the Grateful Dad and
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: you know, his uncle dating Janis Joplin, so there was
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: like a real kind of like musical legacy. But he
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: also went to university. He was a you know, to
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: study musicology. You know, he was really into the history
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: of music and one of those people who is also
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: just like really consumed by playing the guitar, like Dallas.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: It seemed like from a really young age was very
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: distinctly on a path towards becoming a musician, not like
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: you know, a musician who works in a music shop,
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: which is kind of like, you know, kind of how
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: I got to know him more because he was working
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: in this used show. Him and Sean from the Sades.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: They were coming to see Shadowy Men at the time
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: as well, so you know, we're crossing paths with them.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: But he was just really easy to connect with on
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: the sort of similar level. And we first worked together
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: on an album with Jad Fair from the group Half Japanese.
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: There was a documentary made about Jad and his band
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: Half Japanese, and which resulted in us writing an album
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: with Jad Fair shadowy men writing an album and then
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: Brian the guitar player, didn't want to record the album,
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: so we asked Dallas to play on it, and that
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: was sort of the beginning of our working relationship. And
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: that happened like pretty much at the same time as
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: he was starting the Sades. So you know, at that time,
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: Dallas was in like at least seven bands. He was
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: in so many bands, and the Sades weren't like, you know,
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: kind of of the the center of everything yet. So
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: you know, we played in this band, Phono com Uh.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: You know, that started because of the Jad Fair thing.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: We toured with Jad, toured on our own as a
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: three piece with no base, and then uh eventually decided
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: to get a bass player and then you know, did
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: our own album with the bass player, and so just
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: over the years, because of what our connecting interests are,
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: our proximity to each other, because we lived pretty close
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: to each other, we were always kind of like crossing
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: paths and working together. We were both learning how to
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: do recording recording engineering, so you know, we would work
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: on each other as recordings. I mixed a lot of
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: the Sadie stuff. I recorded a lot of the early stuff. Similarly,
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: Dallas played on so many things that I did, you know,
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: film score things, or or just like little projects where
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: I'm just writing something would play it for him and
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: he would be like, you know, I'm in your band,
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: Like there's no band, but I'm in your band, so
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm going to do some guitar on this.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: So it was like working relationship friendship. And then just
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: over the years, you know, with the people that you're
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: closest to, it was really like someone like the kind
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: of like more difficult personal things that each of us
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: were going through that brought us closer together because that
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: was where, you know, kind of like our emotional friendship
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: sort of developed because you know, you have the music
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: thing and and you know, it's so easy to spend
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: tons of time with people who you're in bands with
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: and kind of you know, not have a deep emotional
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: relationship with. But that happened with Dallas and I, and
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: it was, you know, one of those friendships that was
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: just like always growing. And then you know when Phono
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: coom ended, it was totally natural that like, okay, now
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: the Sades, I'm not like part time in seven bands anymore.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: I am in this band. And then when he like
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: focused on the Sades, it was like they just like
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: blew up, you know, and that was amazing to see
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: to see someone who was your friend, you know, from
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: when they were sixteen years old, just with every album
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: writing music that was more and more sophisticated, more and
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: more emotional, just like the deeper connections that they formed
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: across the country, across the whole continent. Like you know,
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: it was so great because you know, when they started,
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: they were doing a lot of you know, kind of
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: I think kind of music that was perhaps with a
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: similar relationship to things from the past that shot we
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: men had a relationship with, you know, like country, surf,
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: punk rock, So you know, I kind of felt like
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: we were in we were a similar family. They were
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: like we were a family sort of together. We were
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: you know, shadowy men and Sadies were part of the
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: same family, and that sort of extended to like you know,
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: the Good Brothers, their friends and then other bands that
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: we played with. But you know, as Dallas traveled and
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: toured more. All the people that Shadowy Men were friends with,
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: sometimes through our introductions, sometimes just naturally that they were
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: drawn to each other. They all became Dallas's friends, but
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: kind of like beyond that, so like you know, people
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: that you know like Buffy Saint Marie and Gordon Lightfoot
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: and Randy Bachman, all these people, you know, were just
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: like in awe of them because they were you know,
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: they still are, but as a four piece band when
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: they were going, they were they were super powerful and inspiring.
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: The crossover with Nico case also that was a big
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: kind of like Shadowy Men Sades sort of like passing
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: the baton because Brian from Shadowy Men, it was on
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: Nico's first couple of albums. He worked with her and
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: toured and then when she was like looking for someone
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: else to you know, a band to do stuff with,
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: Brian recommended the Sades. Dallas toured with Nico with you know,
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: not the Sades with you know, as a guitar player
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: in her band, with other musicians. So you know, we
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: had just a lot of similar family.
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and he was so young when he passed, he
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: was only his late forties.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, unbelievable, Like you know, it's just like you know,
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: there's some people where it feels sort of more tragic
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: or just more awful because you know they're just like rising.
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: Rising Dallas is like going towards the the the thing
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: that will ultimately you know, he has the respect and everything,
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: but there's still a really hard working band. You know,
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: they're they're having to work all the time to to
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: make a living. He didn't have a comfortable living yet,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: as you know, someone with sort of like that, you know,
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: one or two songs that are your great success, you know,
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: to allow to make you comfortable.
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: It came by such surprise. I mean it was just uh,
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: it's just I mean, he didn't he had I get
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: think he went in for a procedure for coordinary issues,
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: and yeah.
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: It happened being tested for for this this hard heart
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: condition that he had and that he didn't know of,
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: an undiagnosed heart condition. I don't know if you've seen
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: or heard. He did an album that just came out
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: for Record Store Day, an album with Richard Reed. Perry.
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: Richard does tons of like soundtrack stuff. He's in the
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: Arcade Fire. But the two of them met at a
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: music festival more than ten years ago and started working
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: on an album together ten years ago and it has
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: just come out, and it's like it's you know, just
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: adds to the heartbreak because it's so good. It's such
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: a beautiful album, and you know, it was pretty rare
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: that Dallas would step aside from the Sades to do something,
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: so it really was, you know, another dimension of what
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: he was capable of, and you know, so sad that
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: we you know, not only is he not here, but
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: that there's not more of that. In some ways, you know,
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: I kind of feel like it's awful, But I think,
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: like God, Dallas did everything like he you know, he
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: got to work with like so many people that he idolized.
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: He had, you know, people that he grew up idolizing
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: that we're now fans of his. He's done so many records,
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: he's you know, he's he's done so many things. But
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: you know, I kind of felt like, you know, there's
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: more because he's he's like he's the Richard album. I
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: kind of feel is like, Okay, this is like the
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: beginning of a new phase. This is is you know,
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: Dallas as like producer. He produced a few records recently,
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: band called TV Freaks, an album that I worked on
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: with him, another band called the Gary's that he did
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: during the pandemic lockdown. So you know, he was really
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: all these skills and talents that he accumulated built, you know,
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: they were all kind of coming out and he could
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: play everything. You know. He went on tour with Justin
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: Town's Earl, the Sades Towns Earl. They backed him up
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: and Dallas is playing keyboards on it. Like you know,
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: he grew up playing piano, but it wasn't something that
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: was his forte. But at the same time, he was
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: one of those incredibly musical people where like I was
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: sitting with him at the piano. I don't know if
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: you know that Alice Cooper to the seventies. Yeah, like
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: one of the you know, the Love of the Death
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: of Killer right where it has this like long piano
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: thing that joins two songs together, and he sat down
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: at the piano, and you know, I just watched his
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: long spidery fingers just kind of like intuitively know where
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: to go to play that and watched him in just
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: a few minutes figure out this whole long passage that
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: you know, for me was like drilled into my brain
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: from twelve years old and to see you know someone
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: like decode. The mystery in front of me was like logic,
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: Find the bookkedown Rock website at booked on Rock dot com.
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: There you can find all the back episodes of the show,
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: the latest episode in video and audio, links to all
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: of the platforms where you can listen to the podcast,
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: plus all the social media platforms were on Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok,
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: and x. Also check out the booked on rockblog. Find
• 59:29
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• 59:32
  Speaker 2: rock book releases, and before you go, check out the
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: Booked on Rock online store, pick up some booked on
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: Rock merch. It's all at booked on Rock dot com.
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: Another great talent that we lost too soon as Steve Albinie,
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: and you have a chapter devoted to him as well.
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: He was the engineer on the nineteen ninety three album
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: Sport Fish and The Lure of the Bait The Luck
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: of the Hook He seemed to capture, and he's known
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: mostly for that album he produced for Nirvana in Utero.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: He's he's known for being able to capture that sound
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: of the drums like you feel like you're in the
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: room and you write, quote, Steve's not so secret ingredient
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: was his superb skill. Talk about his approach what made
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: him so unique and able to capture that sound on
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: the drums.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: Steve was a sort of magical mix of scientists and artist,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: uh where he really studied the properties of microphones sound,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: you know, technique, sound dynamics, the science of sound reflection,
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: all of the you know, pre amplification. Like you know,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: he knew electronics really well. He could take equipment apart,
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: repair it. Like I mentioned the book this one recording
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: that when Phono Com recorded our album with him, the
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: studio that we went into, all this equipment, which was
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: part of the reason for choosing this studio, was broken
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: and so we got there and Steve's like fuck, and
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: then he spends the whole first day repairing everything in
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: the studio. And so the guy who owned the studio
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: afterwards said, like, my studio never worked this well ever. So,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: you know, as a sort of technician musician, he he
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: was super skilled. But he also had an extreme and
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: I don't know what you'd call it, but a I
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: guess extreme sense of humor, and you know, kind of
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: like what I said about punk rock, like he came
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: from punk rock thing as well, so he could see
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: the humor in certain aspects of like violence or really
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: aggressive music, or music that made no sense that was
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: kind of like exploratory or kind of like you know,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: the foundation of it is noise rather than than melody
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: or scientific things that made you or or language play
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: that made you play guitar, that made him play guitar,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: like language phrasing, so you know, not conventional guitar playing
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: where it was kind of like you know, making machine
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: sounds or making animal sounds or sounds that had phrasing
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: like conversation. That was something I saw him do that
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: I thought was really cool. It was like playing guitar
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: with like syllables, you know, like so not in one, two, three, four,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: five six, you know, not that it was like you know,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: like that. Uh so, you know, he had all of
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: these kind of odd traits and was an esthete to
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: the max, like you know, like love beautiful microphones, would
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: rather use like, Okay, this microphone is essentially the same
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: as this one, but this one sure is beautiful. So
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: he would buy like esoteric microphones from Russia or Poland
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: because there were such beauty, beautiful things and like his
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: band Schlac, you know, their logo to begin with was
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: the logo for this microphone company, Lomo. And he was
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: such an intelligent guy too. He could be super caustic
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: and it's very smart, very analytic, and would sometimes kind
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: of be uh, you know, her full in his extremness.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: But he was someone who over time that I saw
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: become a much more sensitive and better person, largely because
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: of finding someone who was just completely accepting of him
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: and being loved and having kind of like love, you know,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: like love reflected too and from the person who became
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: his wife, Heather, within a so you know, I saw
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: him just become a much more thoughtful and caring person.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: So he was, you know, a really wonderful guy. I
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: know there's a lot of you know, people like after
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: he died that were like have no time for him
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: or no patience because of you know, some things that
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: that he'd done or said past. But even though I
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: knew some of those things that people had mentioned, I
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: could sort of see through it because you know, I
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: understood that sort of like black sense of humor to
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: say like the most offensive thing, knowing that this is
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: going to piss off a person that you want to
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: piss off, you know, not because he like you know,
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: necessarily felt some of those things or you know, believed,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: I think even some of the things he was doing.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: He was total no bullshit about sort of the commercial
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: aspects of music, and I think that that was a
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: place that that really helped shadowy men catch his eye
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: because I think, you know, I know, he saw the
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: way we were doing things and it was kind of like,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: you know, very much outside of like the music business,
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: and and you know, with a sense of humor but
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: not being goofy that we took our playing seriously, but
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: also you know, acknowledged things like, you know, our foundation
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: of classical music comes from Bug's bunny. You know, it's
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: the same with him. So we had, you know, some
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: sort of similar things. But he was definitely a little
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: more caustic than we were and sometimes maybe not as
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: sensitive as we might have been. But he was also
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: a very sweet and sensitive guy, you know.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the story of the famous story, but he
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: got a flat fee for producing in Uterow he refused
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: the percentage and he was he marched to the beat
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: of his own drum.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, Honestly, it's been really cool over
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: the years to see with him because you know, he
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: gets asked all the time about the Pixies, Nirvana. Tell
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: these stories, you know, over and over again and tell them,
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: and it's been interesting to see his perception or it
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: was interesting to see his perception of those experiences change
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: over time, because I think he was kind of like
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: more sort of hardline, anti corporate and you know this
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: band who's kind of like blowing up and doing their
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: record and so like, we worked with him right after
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: he did One of the times that we worked with
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: him was right after he did in Utero, so we
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: were hearing you know, all kinds of Nirvana stories and
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: recording of that and.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because they finished, I think what they recorded in
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: February of ninety three, and you were with him be
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: after that.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: Well, we recorded with him. I recorded with him five
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: or six times, so there was like, you know, not
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: just the album, you know, the Phono Cam album. We
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: did a couple of singles with him. You know, another
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: band that I was in recorded with him.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: The sport Fishing one was recorded though in what leap
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: would that have been early ninety three?
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: That about right? Yeah, Yeah, So Yeah, so seeing how
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: his kind of like take on those experience changed over
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: time was not so hard line, you know. It was
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: more more of a kind of human sensitive understanding about
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: what was going on with them through that experience as
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: well as the experience that he had with them, and
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: kind of like you know that they were, you know,
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: on the same team.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: You know, I love that album, and I gotta say
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: so good the is I think it's the it's a
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: bonus track on there. Yeah, it's a bonus track Schues
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: sixteen encores.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah we did.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: Okay, is there a story behind that? Because I I
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: made a list of all this the songs that I
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: notice that you cover in there.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: Well, the one that is on the recording is probably
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: only half as long as as how it eventually got
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: and and then when we started playing again with Dallas,
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: it got even bigger and.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: Deuced from kiss in There and Tie your Mother Down
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: from Queen.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: You know. I think that that was like a sort
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: of a mix of like those k Tel ads where
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: you know, the where you hear like just the riff
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: of of you know, the song, and so it's like
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: this complex thing boiled down to its like most minimal
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: signature you know.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: I found twenty three. I think I might be twenty four.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: So we uh.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: Songs, God, that's great.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: Uh yeah, we just honestly, I think of that song
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: as like being like soup, like you one of those
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: community soups that you just keep adding ingredient to. Yeah,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: sometimes it tastes really good. Sometimes it's garbage.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: Well, I'd love to know where the groove is in
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: the Heart come from. That was just out of nowhere,
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: you know, It's like smoke on the water.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: And I mean that bass riff is so great.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: It's great.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, when we put that in, So we had been
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: doing the song for a while before we put that in,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: and really surprisingly read the bass player didn't know that song.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: It was like, how could you have missed that song?
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: And but you know we're like, you know, we've got
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: to do it, and we put it in. You know
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: you kind of look like, Okay, where can this piece
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: fit into the song?
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: It's so great.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: I remember. So then when we first introduced Grooves in
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: the Heart, well, we played that part. I mean, the
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: song was so ridiculous because it was just like, you know,
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: people just hot wired to react. So the whole song
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: was just people going what you know with every rift
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: but grooves in the heart. I gotta say that one
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: like really put people over the top. People freaked out
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: for that one, sure, And then when we put our
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: own riff in, we thought like, how stupid and arrogant
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: would it be to put our own riff into this
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: medley of the greatest riffs ever written.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: I love it, but yeah, that whole album is fantastic.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: The Book Down Rock podcast is part of the Boneless
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: Podcasting Network. If you're a fan of classic rock and
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: classic film like I am, go to Boneless dot lovable
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: dot app to find over twenty great shows there that's
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: Boneless Downlovable dot app, or just go to bookdown Rock
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: dot com the Bonus podcasting network. It is what you
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: want to be listen with confidence. So the book is
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: out on May twenty six. People can pre order right now, okay.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: From ECW or your local bookstore. It's available all over
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: the world, you know, just ask your local bookshop or
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: order it online or from ECW press dot com or
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: ECW dot com.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Rough description, love letters and ghost stories from my
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: life and music. Yeah, this was this was fun man.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much for coming on the show talking about
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: the book, your amazing career. Yeah, Don Pyle, this is awesome,
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: great to talk with you.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: Thanks. That's it. It's in the books.