Speaker 1: Welcome, welcome, welcome back mob left, that's FOD. My guest
Speaker 1: today is a longtime friend Michael McCartin, who was the
Speaker 1: chief Membership and Business Development officer her SO Camp. Michael,
Speaker 1: how are you okay? So explain what's so canny is?
Speaker 1: So can is simplistically the Canadian version of ask CAPPA
Speaker 1: and bm I. So it's the performing rights organization in Canada. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's also now involved in mechanical rights. But that's it's
Speaker 1: it's origin. And it was formed from the merger of
Speaker 1: KAPPAC and pro can which predecessors and they were literally
Speaker 1: asked Captain B and my Canada. Okay, a little bit slower.
Speaker 1: So the acronym stands for I'm not even sure, to
Speaker 1: be honest with you, it isn't a society, a society
Speaker 1: of Canadian authors, uh, composers and music publishers, but it's
Speaker 1: not really an acronymicist. Okay. So the word two yeah,
Speaker 1: and how well, how long ago do they merge into one?
Speaker 1: Something like that? And we'll caused that. Well, I think
Speaker 1: it's just a realization that, um, it was inefficient to
Speaker 1: have two different organizations. You know, the US is an
Speaker 1: anomaly in the world. Right there there aren't many countries
Speaker 1: in the world that have more than one p R.
Speaker 1: Oh so, uh it was inefficient and uh so I
Speaker 1: mean needed scale and uh and get rid of duplication
Speaker 1: of efforts. So they emerged and it's been a very
Speaker 1: successful thing. Okay, So, since we're talking about a worldwide
Speaker 1: business today, can you think of any other country that
Speaker 1: has more than one performing rights organizations? I think Brazil
Speaker 1: uh legendarily has about ten. Oh really, of course the
Speaker 1: US now has four or five exactly we'll get into that. Okay,
Speaker 1: what is the genesis of performing rights organizations? Were they
Speaker 1: in lockstep with the developments in the US because the
Speaker 1: law is not identical, but what is the development? Well, really,
Speaker 1: another another substitute term was collective right. So really they've
Speaker 1: started as collectives by uh for the rights owners typically
Speaker 1: writers and publishers, and uh they knew that they needed
Speaker 1: to aggregate their rights together to blanket licensed radio and
Speaker 1: and other licensees. So it's really, you know, uh, parallel
Speaker 1: to the development of radio and technology that they started. Okay, Now,
Speaker 1: the big difference between the US and the rest of
Speaker 1: the country is neighboring rights. Correct, Can you explain that
Speaker 1: from my audience. Neighboring rights really is the existence of
Speaker 1: the performing right in the master recording. So that means
Speaker 1: when the master recording, when the recording is aired, broadcast, stream, whatever,
Speaker 1: it earns royalties too because it's got its own copyright. UM. Neighboring.
Speaker 1: The nuances of why it's called neighboring rights, it's a
Speaker 1: European term, but we don't have to get into but
Speaker 1: that's basically what it is. We'll get into it if
Speaker 1: you know it well. I don't know it that well.
Speaker 1: So you stepped in the hole. Let's if you can
Speaker 1: climb out of it. So basically the philosophy is the
Speaker 1: prime right is the copyright of the song of the composition.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh, and neighboring neighboring right was refers to
Speaker 1: sort of a secondary right or it's it's it's a
Speaker 1: neighbor of it. I did not know that. I thought
Speaker 1: it was neighboring right because the country to country they
Speaker 1: were neighbors. I don't think so. Okay. So what we're
Speaker 1: basically saying is when the record is played, a payment
Speaker 1: goes to the copyright holder of the record right, and
Speaker 1: it's so can you collect that correct. We we collected
Speaker 1: for the composition, not the not the recording recording, Uh,
Speaker 1: the sound exchange in the US, right, Uh, Canada RESOUND
Speaker 1: which is a collection of other organizations and PPL in
Speaker 1: the UK, etcetera. And um. Uh so it's all it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a paralleled system that's very similar to the
Speaker 1: to the copy I thought that in some countries they
Speaker 1: were unified, but they they may be, but not. Okay,
Speaker 1: So actually sorry, we just formed a joint venture with
Speaker 1: RESOUND to jointly licensed. Uh. What we call general licensing,
Speaker 1: um is the bars, restaurants, hotels, that kind of thing. Um.
Speaker 1: So that's called in tandem. And so now you in
Speaker 1: Canada you get one license if you own one of
Speaker 1: those establishments, instead of having two parties coming at you. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's assume I'm paying. How do you guys with up
Speaker 1: the money? Uh, it's in relation to what what the
Speaker 1: license fees or the tariffs are. Okay. Now this is
Speaker 1: all controlled by the government in Canada. The government. Uh well,
Speaker 1: the government plays a serious role obviously creating the Copyright
Speaker 1: Act in the first place. Um. Canada has the Copyright Board,
Speaker 1: which is a quasi judicial body that regulates copyright realty
Speaker 1: rates and secondary terms. Um. It used to be that
Speaker 1: all of our license fees were based on those those
Speaker 1: we call them tariffs. It's you know, it's a court case.
Speaker 1: You file it and you have hearings and evidence, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But since the digital age particularly, we've tried to um
Speaker 1: negotiate as many licenses license deals as we possibly can,
Speaker 1: rather go to the court of the rateboard, the copyright board,
Speaker 1: because it's very long, time consuming, very expensive for everybody. Okay,
Speaker 1: but are there terrorists that are established in case you
Speaker 1: can't make a deal. Okay, we're there terrorists established for
Speaker 1: streaming music services. There are tariffs, yeah, um, but again,
Speaker 1: virtually all of our licensee arrangements are are negotiated and
Speaker 1: negotiated with the tariff in mind. But there's a lot
Speaker 1: of elements that the tariff doesn't talk about, which which
Speaker 1: are important to us, are important to the licensees. So
Speaker 1: there's incentive to uh to uh to negotiate it. Not
Speaker 1: the least of which is it sometimes takes so long
Speaker 1: to get a tariff ruled on that the technology is
Speaker 1: dead by the time the tariff is settled. So okay,
Speaker 1: But just so I understand, they do establish standards. It's
Speaker 1: just if you want to argue with those standards, you
Speaker 1: would then go to court. Yeah, and increasingly it used
Speaker 1: to be that we would go to go to the
Speaker 1: Copyright Board file for a tariff, they would make a
Speaker 1: decision and that would be it. Then then the next
Speaker 1: phase was we have had existing tariffs, we'd say to
Speaker 1: the parts, hey, let's instead of US file a revised
Speaker 1: tariff or a new tariff, why don't we sit down
Speaker 1: and negotiate it. And then most lately a lot of
Speaker 1: times we don't even go to the board initially. We
Speaker 1: just start the negotiations. The boards always a fallback if
Speaker 1: we don't like the way the negotiations are going. Okay,
Speaker 1: why don't you explain, because you're the expert, why there's
Speaker 1: so many performing rights organizations in the United States? Well,
Speaker 1: I think you need somebody who knows more about the
Speaker 1: US environment than me. But my understanding is, um, it
Speaker 1: all started when ASCAP was declared UH a monopoly and
Speaker 1: anti trust in the was authorities, I guess, and you
Speaker 1: know my understanding of that is, um, basically, they went
Speaker 1: on strike. They didn't like the rates at radio. They
Speaker 1: pull the licenses. Radio didn't have the right to play
Speaker 1: music anymore. So, uh, they push some buttons in the government.
Speaker 1: The government declared them in the monopoly and put them
Speaker 1: on antitrust consent decree, and radio said, um, never again
Speaker 1: will we rely on one source of repertoire, and so
Speaker 1: they start a B M I okay, But recently this
Speaker 1: has been a growing area. We have global we have
Speaker 1: se sack Okay, what do you think accounts for let's
Speaker 1: say I'm an act okay, other than as off company
Speaker 1: which will say for a second, which only has a
Speaker 1: lead acts signed to it, But to go to ce
Speaker 1: SAC or another p r O, what do you think
Speaker 1: the motivation would be? Well, look, the the downside of
Speaker 1: having so many pierros in the US is that, um uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's so there's it's it's kind of a
Speaker 1: dog's breakfast in some ways, and there's and there's a
Speaker 1: it's a complexity and a lot of duplication, et cetera.
Speaker 1: The upside is this competition. And of course, you know
Speaker 1: America is the land of competition. So if you look
Speaker 1: at it as a glass half full, um, it gives
Speaker 1: writers there's competition for writer's business and each one of
Speaker 1: the p r os has their different pitch as to
Speaker 1: why they think they're the best, and they make the
Speaker 1: pitch and sometimes it's really a lot of times it's relationships. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: Uh you know, there's a business side of the pitch.
Speaker 1: Um it's uh, you know, I don't I just want
Speaker 1: to speak for them, so I don't want to give
Speaker 1: their individual pitches. But they've all got compelling pitches, and
Speaker 1: they've all got great organizations and great people. Okay, would
Speaker 1: be part of the pitch being that I can collect
Speaker 1: better than the other people. You know, I've I've seen
Speaker 1: every every element played, you know. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: they all believe that they're they're the best collectors. They're
Speaker 1: all believed that they do at the cleanest, the most
Speaker 1: thorough they all believe that they have the best staff.
Speaker 1: It can help your career. Um, and um, you know
Speaker 1: that's the that's the pitch. And and they're they're great organizations.
Speaker 1: I mean you just think how how big they are
Speaker 1: and how much money goes through them. Uh, they're you know,
Speaker 1: basically the biggest piros in the world. And uh, we
Speaker 1: have great relationship with them all. Or what are the
Speaker 1: main things that I was brought into so CAN. To
Speaker 1: do is to um reverse the situation where over the
Speaker 1: years are some of our members had a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of our high earning members had drifted away
Speaker 1: and become members of ASKAP and b M I more
Speaker 1: than any of them. And uh, you know, we set
Speaker 1: out to reverse that because we want Canadians to be
Speaker 1: members of so CAN. Uh. The reason I came to
Speaker 1: so CAN was I thought it was a great opportunity
Speaker 1: to be one of the two or three people with
Speaker 1: my hand on the rudder of an organization. I thought
Speaker 1: it was extremely important to the ecosystem in Canada, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, I could see where the future was going,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to try and help make sure that
Speaker 1: the institutions thrived and survived. And uh one of the
Speaker 1: main ways to do that was to get our members
Speaker 1: back and make sure that new new Canadian artists and
Speaker 1: writers were we're members of so CAN and wanted to
Speaker 1: join so CAN. And it's done a pretty good job
Speaker 1: so far, because you know, as you know, Canada's killing
Speaker 1: it in music. Um To Toronto arguably is the hottest
Speaker 1: music city in the world, and we have almost every
Speaker 1: single person coming out of Canada. Now, okay, so what's
Speaker 1: your pitch. Our pitch is um, just what we said earlier,
Speaker 1: which is, I think we think we're great collectors. We
Speaker 1: think we have um, great opportunities when you're at least
Speaker 1: started your career to help you connect the dots and
Speaker 1: help connect you into the ecosystem. And we're complimentary to
Speaker 1: publishers and labels and managers and agents. Okay, let's slow down.
Speaker 1: Let's let's just take the top level. I'm a big act,
Speaker 1: I'm Canadian act. I'm with b M I R as GAP.
Speaker 1: What's your pitch to them? Uh? What I just said,
Speaker 1: plus um, you make more money with us, all else
Speaker 1: being equal, because we don't charge um for foreign income.
Speaker 1: So are all the money coming from outside of Canada?
Speaker 1: We don't commission Uh and okay, so b am I
Speaker 1: and ask they all commission that? Yeah, okay, And well
Speaker 1: how can SO can't get away without commissioning it. It's
Speaker 1: just a decision that they made quite a while ago
Speaker 1: as an attempt to try and convince people not to leave.
Speaker 1: And they said, you know, look at stay here and
Speaker 1: we won't commission the money. So just the cost of
Speaker 1: it is embedded in the costs of running, so can
Speaker 1: we're one of the most efficient p r os in
Speaker 1: the world and um, it's it's it's a lot less
Speaker 1: costly to administer the foreign royalties and it is the
Speaker 1: domestic one. So um and that is because well because um,
Speaker 1: uh the foreign p r O of all, we have
Speaker 1: already done a lot of the work matching the you know,
Speaker 1: the repertoire and so that you know, we get statements
Speaker 1: from them and it's it's easier to go through those
Speaker 1: than to do all the original matching ourself. I mean,
Speaker 1: don't forget. I mean these days, an organization like ours
Speaker 1: is we're tracking like two million performances a day now,
Speaker 1: so it's pretty it's pretty daunting. And so we think
Speaker 1: that we're one of the most advanced in the world.
Speaker 1: And in doing all that and that, um, we have
Speaker 1: high touch service. We have a whole team of people
Speaker 1: who are assigned to UH two members and they have
Speaker 1: a personal relationship with them. When we hear quite often
Speaker 1: that people really appreciate that. And even if you're a
Speaker 1: big star, your business manager really appreciates it. Okay, So
Speaker 1: let's say you're collecting in Canada. People always say this,
Speaker 1: Oh my record was played whatever, I didn't get paid?
Speaker 1: How much is it digitized and accurate to what actually
Speaker 1: is being played? So I tell you a funny story. Um,
Speaker 1: I was on the board of so CAN for twenties. Wait,
Speaker 1: so canon is own by who? It's a it's a
Speaker 1: it's a for profit collective owned by its members, and
Speaker 1: members are writers and publishers. Even though it's not for profit,
Speaker 1: we we try and adopt a for profit mentality in
Speaker 1: terms of, you know, not being a stay bureaucracy and
Speaker 1: feeling like we have competition, et cetera. But so for
Speaker 1: when when when BDS came along? A number of bds
Speaker 1: is a service from Nielsen that listens to radio stations.
Speaker 1: The computers listen to radio stations that identify the recordings
Speaker 1: audio finger putting lections, AM and UM. So when that
Speaker 1: first came along, a number of number of from the
Speaker 1: board said, hey, so CAN should adopt this because you know,
Speaker 1: one of the main complaints you used to hear in
Speaker 1: the from about PRS back then wherever whatever country or
Speaker 1: that with everybody uses a survey system to figure out
Speaker 1: what's being played in radio and how could that possibly
Speaker 1: be accurate? So? Um, several years of discussion went on,
Speaker 1: and investigations and and finally and there was nothing. There
Speaker 1: was no obvious argument why we should do it because
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna make any more money. It wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna change the license fees coming from radio. It's gonna
Speaker 1: cost a lot more money than the survey. It's going
Speaker 1: to create a lot more data to handle. And the
Speaker 1: only question was whether it was more accurate or not.
Speaker 1: And intuitively we all fet I thought it has to
Speaker 1: be more accurate. So, um, we hired somebody to study
Speaker 1: our survey. And this is back in the Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: hired somebody to study the survey, and um, they said
Speaker 1: your survey is the most accurate in the world amongst
Speaker 1: p r o s and that it's accurate within someone
Speaker 1: you know that the statistics of it, and um, and
Speaker 1: uh so the management is so kind at the time
Speaker 1: said see, there's no reason to to the ghost. So
Speaker 1: but a number of us, sort of the kind of
Speaker 1: younger ones, said, you know what, this is the digital era.
Speaker 1: The reason why we have to do it is because
Speaker 1: it's stupid not to do it. And that's we said, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's gonna think on BDS. And then for a year,
Speaker 1: they ran BDS in parallel to the old survey, and
Speaker 1: the number one thing they learned by doing that was
Speaker 1: that the survey was incredibly accurate. Um now does it
Speaker 1: miss onesies and twosies wants? Well, yeah, the surveys do.
Speaker 1: So the there is there's no question that the that
Speaker 1: UM BDS and and that kind of type of audio
Speaker 1: fingerprint technology and digital monitoring is more accurate. Um. But
Speaker 1: it's really the long, super long tail. Okay, but it's
Speaker 1: cheaper to do and and it also need the startup
Speaker 1: costs were heavier. But actually to do it, it's yeah.
Speaker 1: And the number one thing that it did for so
Speaker 1: CAN was they had to think about how to handle
Speaker 1: the orders of magnitude greater amounts of data. So they
Speaker 1: set up processes and technology to do that. That when
Speaker 1: the digital era came along and you look around the
Speaker 1: corner and oh my god, there's a tsunami of data coming.
Speaker 1: So can hat was already set up to handle it,
Speaker 1: so unlike some of its peers around the world, So
Speaker 1: that that was really the number one benefit of doing
Speaker 1: that was unintentionally preparing let's go a little bit slower.
Speaker 1: I'm a person, I have a song is played on radio?
Speaker 1: Once is that tracked A I get to get paid?
Speaker 1: It's uh yeah, it's track now get paid and I
Speaker 1: will get paid, although one one place won't. We probably
Speaker 1: isn't even a penny. Well on radio, no, it's approximately
Speaker 1: a dollar. Let's let's let's say it's a dollar. Wait,
Speaker 1: one play is a dollar on radio? Yeah, it's really yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's probably less than like seventy eight cents or something
Speaker 1: like that, but it's yeah, okay. How do you then
Speaker 1: extrapolate or do in terms of as you say, restaurants, cafes, etcetera. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well those are those are harder, so you know, um
Speaker 1: various um. That goes back to the sort of survey mentality, right,
Speaker 1: so it's rough justice, it's approximations, and we we try
Speaker 1: and figure out um uh well actually these days, some
Speaker 1: of the music services that serve those places, they have
Speaker 1: the data. Um, they know what's being performed, so we
Speaker 1: get that data. In the cases where we don't have
Speaker 1: the data, we try and figure out, Okay, this money
Speaker 1: that we collect from those licensees has to be paid
Speaker 1: out as fairly as possible, as accurately as possible. We
Speaker 1: have no data, so let's um, what data can we get.
Speaker 1: We can figure out, well, you know, most of them
Speaker 1: play popular music, so we'll take that music without their
Speaker 1: license fees and we'll put them in the popular music
Speaker 1: pools so that people who have music that's likely being
Speaker 1: paid played get paid. But increasingly we're doing things like
Speaker 1: um experimenting with putting uh you know Shazam BDS type
Speaker 1: listening posts into into clubs. Uh. The d M world
Speaker 1: and the DJ world are very concerned about accuracy, and
Speaker 1: so we're working with them. We have what we uh
Speaker 1: working with Pioneer, where their further Cubo service where they
Speaker 1: have a they can produce a data stream of the
Speaker 1: titles that would be that the DJ's playing. So Pioneer,
Speaker 1: what was pioneers motivation? UM? I think they created a
Speaker 1: thing called Cubo. I believe it was a social media platform,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to know what was being played, say
Speaker 1: in Lisbon, so that people dancing in London could see
Speaker 1: on their phone what their friends were dancing to and
Speaker 1: maybe requested that kind of thing. So they needed that
Speaker 1: data stream. So we're really working really really hard to
Speaker 1: try and make sure that there's data every single place
Speaker 1: music is used we have a lot of big plans
Speaker 1: in live because one of our biggest problems in the
Speaker 1: same as all the pr os, is getting accurate set
Speaker 1: lists from concerts, getting the artists to to to get
Speaker 1: them to us. Some places in Europe the promoter is
Speaker 1: required by law to produce the set list or not
Speaker 1: in North America, so we have to figure out how
Speaker 1: to get that set list. So, um, we're we have
Speaker 1: a were first pr O in the world to have
Speaker 1: a PI platform. So API is Application programming interface, so
Speaker 1: it's basically how one platform talks to another and computers
Speaker 1: talk and um. So we have a PI s basically
Speaker 1: for every capability of our platform, including sending us your
Speaker 1: concert stuff. So there's a We built up the APIs
Speaker 1: and thinking that would be a third party marketplace would
Speaker 1: spring up, that people would have services that they need
Speaker 1: to connect with our platform. And sure enough a company
Speaker 1: in Calgary came along called Mazuka and they what they
Speaker 1: do is they connect all the parties in the live
Speaker 1: music ecosystem managers uh to agents, UM, venues, promoters, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And they share digital assets about a tour, videos, posters,
Speaker 1: uh whatever, the information on the tour and one of
Speaker 1: the byproducts, of course, is everything we need to know
Speaker 1: to pay a concert, except for the set list. So
Speaker 1: they use our A p I s so that you
Speaker 1: can using their at Mazooka app. You're an artist or manager, whatever,
Speaker 1: you can dial up your catalog out of our of
Speaker 1: our database, create a set list and push a button
Speaker 1: and send all the concert information to us, including the
Speaker 1: set list. And that's really revolutionizing. How how we deal
Speaker 1: with the live concerts and successful okay, and venue? Well,
Speaker 1: how do they How is that fee established percentage? Well,
Speaker 1: unconscious percentage of the box office? Box office is three
Speaker 1: in Canada. It's a lot harder than that in some
Speaker 1: of European territories and a lot lower than that in
Speaker 1: the US. And right, so it's not a flat fee
Speaker 1: in the US. Well, you know, of course, in our world,
Speaker 1: as you start to peel back layers, it gets more
Speaker 1: and more complex. And part of the reason for that
Speaker 1: is that, especially in the Copyright Board era, every single
Speaker 1: licensee thought that they're different and the rules shouldn't apply
Speaker 1: to them. So they would go to the copyright Board,
Speaker 1: and the Copyright Board said, okay, we'll make an exception
Speaker 1: for you, and and then it just becomes very complex,
Speaker 1: but very simplistically, if you have a hard ticket, it's
Speaker 1: three percent of the box office. Okay, let's assume I
Speaker 1: sell my catalog like Mark is is buying up catalogs.
Speaker 1: How does that affect my soul? Can I saw Mark
Speaker 1: last night? Actually? By the way, UM, it doesn't affect
Speaker 1: it at all. We're do we pay whoever the owner
Speaker 1: and uh an and or administrator is so um uh
Speaker 1: if catalog changes hands, we just take the hose out
Speaker 1: of one plug and put into another. So a writer
Speaker 1: can sell hes rights. Uh, great question. So can is
Speaker 1: historically um? Uh not allowed that? In the last few
Speaker 1: year years, Um, we've liberalized that a lot because realized
Speaker 1: that it's a different world now. Um, there's more information
Speaker 1: that people have. It was sort of to protect writers from,
Speaker 1: you know, bad deals. I guess that would be the
Speaker 1: mentality that it was, And now I think it's a
Speaker 1: much more sophisticated world. There's more information out there, there's
Speaker 1: more advice you can get, there are more people wanting
Speaker 1: to buy writers share, and so we have situations where
Speaker 1: where we allow it some Every bureau around the world
Speaker 1: has kind of a different mixture of of rules around that.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to an earlier comment, why is Toronto
Speaker 1: such an epicenter of music creativity? Great question. Um, Canada
Speaker 1: has always produced a lot of talent. Um, as you know.
Speaker 1: And and uh, I think that the sort of perfect
Speaker 1: storm that's happening in Toronto right now is a is
Speaker 1: a functional a lot of things. I think that, UM,
Speaker 1: the the support for Canadian culture that the government introduced
Speaker 1: the number of years ago. In fact, this is the
Speaker 1: fiftieth anniversary of the Canadian Content Regulations on radio um
Speaker 1: profound effect on the ecosie them uh and uh, nowadays
Speaker 1: we've got um uh if you look at the people
Speaker 1: from Toronto are kind of killing it. So we've got Drake,
Speaker 1: the Weekend, Lessia, karash On, Mendez, et cetera. Um, those
Speaker 1: are the above the waterline. Part of the iceberg below
Speaker 1: the waterline is actually to me a bigger story, and
Speaker 1: that is all the producers, beat makers, co writers that
Speaker 1: work with them, Like we have eighty members in the
Speaker 1: greater Toronto area that are co writers and Drake and
Speaker 1: Weekend Records not including Drake in the Weekend. And um
Speaker 1: uh the reasons for that are, um, if you look
Speaker 1: at all these people killing it. There's there's a number
Speaker 1: of things that are have in common. One, they're disproportionately multicultural.
Speaker 1: They are disproportionately immigrants or first generation children of immigrants.
Speaker 1: It's a specifically in Canada, Toronto, Toronto. Yeah, uh, this
Speaker 1: is well, as you know, Canada is a very multicultural
Speaker 1: country exactly, but the real big clusters of that are
Speaker 1: Toronto and Vancouver. Right, Well, don't I I had a
Speaker 1: cab driver once in Toronto said there are more more ethnicities,
Speaker 1: more cultures represented in Toronto than any other city in
Speaker 1: the world. Yeah. I think there's like a hundred and
Speaker 1: three languages or something. And and so these kids, Um uh,
Speaker 1: so there's that. There's that. Um like, look the Weekend
Speaker 1: for instance, a great example. He's an Ethiopian Canadian. He's
Speaker 1: born in Canada as a mother, wasn't He's managed by
Speaker 1: a Lebanese Canadian born in Lebanon and an Iranian Canadian
Speaker 1: born in Iran. And uh, there's no better example in that.
Speaker 1: Um we did, uh my my head of a and R.
Speaker 1: Rodney Murphy and i Ax years ago did a made
Speaker 1: a word cloud of the artists were talking about and
Speaker 1: the beatmaker, co writer, producers and you put it up
Speaker 1: in the screen, and um, it's remarkable how multicultural it is.
Speaker 1: It's just it's really the okay, it is multicultural. Why
Speaker 1: does the multiculturalism uh in gender's success. Um well, I
Speaker 1: think that all the usual reasons why immigrant communities, you know,
Speaker 1: have the drive, et cetera. But I think in this
Speaker 1: case also part of it. One of the reasons for
Speaker 1: the direction of the music, which is a big part
Speaker 1: of why it's so successful, the direction being a course
Speaker 1: hip hop, pop and and related music is because these
Speaker 1: kids they grew up um uh, they want to reject
Speaker 1: their parents music. Um. Their their their household is not
Speaker 1: connected to the historic thread of Canadian culture, so rock
Speaker 1: folk whatever that they're not getting that at home. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so they get exposed to the music of the
Speaker 1: world coming through the major media through the and that's
Speaker 1: generally American music, and it's generally hip hop. So they
Speaker 1: kind of grew up in a in a more hip hop,
Speaker 1: urban music centric environment than than the people they're if
Speaker 1: their friends were and their neighbors were. Um. And then
Speaker 1: another uh common thing is that they all make music
Speaker 1: in the box. Of course that's on the in the computer. Um.
Speaker 1: Live instruments play very little bit. Why is that, uh,
Speaker 1: an advantage that Toronto has compared to the rest of
Speaker 1: the world. I don't think it's advantage compared to the
Speaker 1: rest of the world. But there's a huge beatmaking community
Speaker 1: in Toronto, I think arguably I say two things that
Speaker 1: are kind of bold that you know, maybe there's a
Speaker 1: slightly exaggeration, but I don't really think so. UM Toronto
Speaker 1: in many ways controls the sound of popular music in
Speaker 1: the world today because of all the people were talking
Speaker 1: about and success they have, UM and its indisputably the
Speaker 1: beat making capital of the world, I think. And one
Speaker 1: of the reasons for that is community. And it's a
Speaker 1: community amongst the kids that are from these uh immigrant
Speaker 1: families and they go and they live in those neighborhoods
Speaker 1: or they live in the neighborhoods where um uh you know,
Speaker 1: they're passing around mixed tapes and you know, in the
Speaker 1: previous generation UM and UH. There's actually a guy named
Speaker 1: rich Kid who UH was one of the early doctors
Speaker 1: of what was then called Fruity Loops, which is a
Speaker 1: digital platform to make music and now called fl Studios.
Speaker 1: And and he was a real leader in getting other
Speaker 1: kids on the platform and teaching them how to use it.
Speaker 1: There's been a couple of organizations, one called the Beat
Speaker 1: Toronto Beat Academy, which was started by two women who
Speaker 1: saw these young kids around them that we're really talented,
Speaker 1: but they might get lost in the street. And it's
Speaker 1: kind of like, uh, people in the neighborhood starting a
Speaker 1: soccer team or something. They started this thing called the
Speaker 1: Toronto Beat Academy and they had beat battles. That was
Speaker 1: the primary activity, and but it became a community where
Speaker 1: they all shared. Probably ten years ago, so maybe maybe
Speaker 1: a bit a bit longer and fat um uh. One
Speaker 1: of the founders of it um was in the press
Speaker 1: about three or four years ago, uh, and the headlines
Speaker 1: were from homeless to Harvard. At one point she was
Speaker 1: homeless and she ended up crowd funding herself to Harvard
Speaker 1: and UM. So the way the Beat Academy got these
Speaker 1: kids into international beat battles that gave them confidence um uh,
Speaker 1: you know, connecting to each other, some sort of structure. Uh.
Speaker 1: They taught each other tricks, they won most of the
Speaker 1: beat battles they entered. UM. And there was another organization
Speaker 1: called the Remix Project, which is a project in the
Speaker 1: Region Park area in Toronto, which is a challenging area
Speaker 1: for kids, and it was intended to keep kids off
Speaker 1: the street. And one of the programs there was was
Speaker 1: a music program and actually some of Drake's people uh
Speaker 1: early on started teaching there and so this became both
Speaker 1: these things became farm teams for beat makers and arguably
Speaker 1: not to be clear, they get any government support. Um.
Speaker 1: The Remix Project might have. Um, we've so candids helps
Speaker 1: support these organizations with uh, you know, helping fly people
Speaker 1: to beat battles and and that kind of thing, um,
Speaker 1: but largely no, but um, we'll give me back to
Speaker 1: the government support connection a little while. Um. Anyway, So
Speaker 1: that's one of the reasons why it's it's so huge.
Speaker 1: So we got you know, Frank Duke's boy one Noah
Speaker 1: shebib uh murder beats uh. Dr McKinney, uh Wonda Girl,
Speaker 1: one of the greatest female beat makers in the world.
Speaker 1: She came from the Beat Academy. And you know it's
Speaker 1: just because academy just like an after school program or
Speaker 1: is it something where there's actually courses. No, No, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like an informal after school program. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh. Um, so so you got that aspect. So
Speaker 1: that so you know, modern beat making became a really
Speaker 1: big thing in Toronto. And of course you know, all
Speaker 1: nothing happened if it wasn't for Drake, But I'll get
Speaker 1: to that in a second. So you've got their disproportionately.
Speaker 1: Immigrants are children. Immigrants make music in the box. Live
Speaker 1: instruments play virtually no role in making the records, and
Speaker 1: live they play like sort of a proper role. Um
Speaker 1: and uh. They all made it through the internet, either
Speaker 1: they became popular with the public first and then got
Speaker 1: signed to a deal or vice versa. But the Internet
Speaker 1: played an incredibly important role. Don't forget the last two people.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think the two biggest music success stories
Speaker 1: on fine where Sean Mendez and Ruth b and um uh.
Speaker 1: You know, so that's an indicator of how I don't
Speaker 1: know why it happened in Canada, not nowhere else, but
Speaker 1: it did. Um and uh. Then one of the most
Speaker 1: important things is that this is one of the most
Speaker 1: mind blowing things to me and had a profound effect
Speaker 1: on how I think about the industry now. When I
Speaker 1: realized this about five years ago, I was talking again
Speaker 1: to Rodney Murphy, my head of an arm. We're analyzing this,
Speaker 1: this group of people, and then I realized not a
Speaker 1: single one of them played a gig before they were famous.
Speaker 1: And you know, especially a country like Canada where the
Speaker 1: live you know, grinding out in the clubs and bars
Speaker 1: was such a big part of of having a career
Speaker 1: and it just blew my mind when I realized that.
Speaker 1: And when when when we first started saying this to
Speaker 1: people in the business, you have to wait, ripe the
Speaker 1: brain matter off the wall and uh. But anyway, so
Speaker 1: that those are all common characteristics, right, and um there
Speaker 1: was a incredible um uh sort of boiling pot of
Speaker 1: water of talent in hip hop and R and B
Speaker 1: that was that was kind of bursting at the seams
Speaker 1: in Canada for probably ten years that couldn't get out
Speaker 1: of the country because, um, the American industry would not
Speaker 1: take that Canadian playing that music. Seriously. I spent a
Speaker 1: lot of money in my publishing trying to develop that
Speaker 1: scene and uh lost most of it. Um and had
Speaker 1: a lot of support from my New York and l
Speaker 1: A compatriots, but they just didn't think that Canadian could
Speaker 1: ever do it. And then that manifests itself in a
Speaker 1: million million different ways. Either they said, well it's good,
Speaker 1: but it's Canadian, or it's not good, or but what
Speaker 1: it really was. It's kind of like Nashville, you know that. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's hard for nash people, Nashville people to imagine something
Speaker 1: from outside of Nashville working in Nashville. Um. And in
Speaker 1: spite this is in spite of the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: the Brian Adams of the world and the guests who's
Speaker 1: the b t O s and the Rushes had broken
Speaker 1: through that barrier in rock music. But the barrier existed,
Speaker 1: It really did. And then so somebody had to break
Speaker 1: through in hip hop and R and B. So, um,
Speaker 1: Drake existed. I think Drake exists because A he's make
Speaker 1: a talented and incredibly smart guy, but b because of
Speaker 1: the TV show Degrassi. Uh and uh. That's a really
Speaker 1: good example of the Canadian support system because there's Canaan
Speaker 1: content regulations in television as well. There's a grants just
Speaker 1: explain with Canadian content in radio and television. You have
Speaker 1: to play a minimum percentage of of your air time
Speaker 1: has to be Canadian content. Okay, let's just stop for
Speaker 1: one second. In the era of the internet. How important
Speaker 1: is that still on radio? Great question, because um, we're
Speaker 1: that's okayn, We're really concerned about this because not so
Speaker 1: much about radio, because that's long settled in UM. But
Speaker 1: it really in many ways this regulation saved Canadian culture
Speaker 1: because um, in the you know media eras in the fifties, fifties,
Speaker 1: early sixties, UM, Canadians were swamped with American media and
Speaker 1: it was very difficult for Canadian voice to be heard
Speaker 1: unless you moved to United States and got a record
Speaker 1: deal and became famous like a Gordon Lightfoot or nearly
Speaker 1: Young or something like that. And UM, so they created
Speaker 1: the legislation and fact at that point, UM, Canada was
Speaker 1: not a very confident country in terms of its own
Speaker 1: identity and um uh, Canadian radio would not play you
Speaker 1: because you were Canadian. The guests Who was called the
Speaker 1: Guests Who because they tried to put out an independent
Speaker 1: record and when the the independent label realized that if
Speaker 1: anybody guess their Canadian, they wouldn't play the record. So
Speaker 1: they wrote guests Who questioned Mark on the label to
Speaker 1: get the discocist the question to to guess it. Make
Speaker 1: it turn into a contest and they thought that was
Speaker 1: the name of the band, so they had to change
Speaker 1: their name of the guest suit. That's how bad it was. Um.
Speaker 1: And so uh, you know, you fast forward to now
Speaker 1: and and we have all this incredibly healthy ecosystem, very
Speaker 1: much partly because of that Canaan content regulations. UM. But
Speaker 1: um it's we think there's a real discover ability problem
Speaker 1: in the digital area. So I'll get to that, back
Speaker 1: that in the second. But with Degrassi, so there was
Speaker 1: conconading content regulations on television as let's talk about the
Speaker 1: development of Degrassi and how that happened with the government, etcetera. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So um it was created by um uh Lenna Skis
Speaker 1: Skyler and her husband Steven Stone, who was a well
Speaker 1: known music attorney, and um, they wanted to create a
Speaker 1: television show that um was uh positive role uh for
Speaker 1: kids and not the usual entertainment bs and talked about
Speaker 1: real issues the kids really wanted to know about and
Speaker 1: talked about at school and and and counter to school.
Speaker 1: So um, there's a very healthy grant system to make
Speaker 1: television programs in Canada. So they got some grants and
Speaker 1: they just just just because I live in the US, obviously,
Speaker 1: you have these grant systems, you're supported by the government.
Speaker 1: How does the average Canadian feel about paying taxes to
Speaker 1: support that? Um, I don't see or hear anybody's talking
Speaker 1: about that. I mean, certainly, when when the legislation first
Speaker 1: came in, the content legislation first came in, and then
Speaker 1: when the grant systems propped up popped up shortly after that,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of people saying that. But they
Speaker 1: take it for granted now that that that's what the
Speaker 1: system is. And and it's been a very just because
Speaker 1: we live in the United States, this is being need about.
Speaker 1: What is the top tax rate in Canada right now?
Speaker 1: Income tax? Well, I'm not an accountant, but it's more
Speaker 1: than it is more than. And also although Trudeau was
Speaker 1: just re elected, Uh, there is some conservative pushback and Canada,
Speaker 1: what do you think that temperature of the country is
Speaker 1: right now? Well, you know, we obviously see what goes
Speaker 1: on in US and UK, etcetera. And um, there's Uh,
Speaker 1: there was a sort of a more conservative movement, as
Speaker 1: you said, but and it resulted in in Justin Trudeau
Speaker 1: having minority government. Um, so they didn't they didn't. It
Speaker 1: wasn't a change in government, So you're probably with every
Speaker 1: minority government, you're gonna see probably more governing from the middle.
Speaker 1: So there probably will be a swing towards more towards
Speaker 1: the middle of Canada. But don't forget the left right
Speaker 1: in middle in Canada totally different than the US. Um.
Speaker 1: The US generally is I think a much more conservative
Speaker 1: country and and uh um, you know, some of our
Speaker 1: more left winging went left wing. Uh political leaders over
Speaker 1: the generations might have been considered communists if they were
Speaker 1: in the United States, and some of the more right
Speaker 1: wing people would have considered being considered middle of the road,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, But that's that's just a general just
Speaker 1: just before we get back to the grassy. The fact
Speaker 1: that Canada is such a cultural impact around the world,
Speaker 1: has that ultimately affected the feeling that, uh or not
Speaker 1: that Canada is a second class environment? Right? So good question,
Speaker 1: So I can I can trace it certainly in my life. Um.
Speaker 1: I traced the rise of of positive self identity and
Speaker 1: Canadians and national pride with the after Canaan content regulations
Speaker 1: came in. Before that, there was very few if no,
Speaker 1: there wasn't no music industry and there were very few
Speaker 1: artists that you could look up to as Canadians. There
Speaker 1: were role models or that talked about Canadian things or whatever.
Speaker 1: And again the ones that you you were aware of
Speaker 1: moved to the US and and came through the U
Speaker 1: S system. And um, the existence of groups like the
Speaker 1: Tragically Hip, I think are is in incredible success story.
Speaker 1: Even though they never really had a lot of success
Speaker 1: outside of Canada, this level of success that had had
Speaker 1: inside the country was absolutely unprecedented. And really it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter that they weren't that successful anywhere else, because um,
Speaker 1: I don't want to underplay the success they did have,
Speaker 1: but they weren't as nearly as anywhere else. And that's
Speaker 1: that's an amazing thing because look at any other healthy
Speaker 1: music ecosystem around the world, like Britain. We always talked
Speaker 1: about all these great stars coming out of Britain, all
Speaker 1: the great music. Well if you actually live there for
Speaker 1: a little while to see all the stuff that doesn't
Speaker 1: get out right, and like the madness the syndrome right
Speaker 1: from you know, decades ago, and you talk to Britain,
Speaker 1: what do you mean you've never heard of madness? You know?
Speaker 1: So same thing. And so I think that the existence
Speaker 1: of that kind of thing is as an indication of
Speaker 1: a healthy music ecosystem, and Canada nerve used to have that. Okay,
Speaker 1: one more thing used to be if someone made it.
Speaker 1: You mentioned you know Neil Young, There's Joni Mitchell, Bryan Adams.
Speaker 1: They would basically base themselves in the United States. Do
Speaker 1: you think that's changing? Yeah, although I think you go,
Speaker 1: you go, rid of your business needs you to go. Um.
Speaker 1: And so you look at Drake. You know, he's got
Speaker 1: homes here, He's got homes you know, in in Toronto
Speaker 1: still and a lot of them, you know, it's the
Speaker 1: Canada is their emotional home now more than it ever
Speaker 1: was before. And you look at Drake, how proud he
Speaker 1: is a Toronto and he's been multibillion dollars worth of
Speaker 1: ambassador branding for the for the city. Um. And that
Speaker 1: never used to happen before either, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: people were before Canadian content sometimes in some way Canadians
Speaker 1: were kind of embarrassed to be Canadians. And then the
Speaker 1: first wave was they weren't embarrassed anymore. But they're quietly proud,
Speaker 1: and now they're very loudly proud. And that's been an
Speaker 1: incredible development. And and it's absolutely guarantee you very much
Speaker 1: driven by by Canadian artists emerging. Okay, so go back
Speaker 1: to the Grass. So the Grassy starts up, Drake's on it.
Speaker 1: Just to be clear, how many years is the Grassy run? Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's got to be fifteen. Anyway, Drake
Speaker 1: wasn't on from the beginning. I'm not sure. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think he was whatever. But um, so fast
Speaker 1: forward to he leaves the show. It's my it's early, myself,
Speaker 1: let's stop it because it's important. It's like Trump. The
Speaker 1: Grassy was not only popular in Canada, was distributed certainly
Speaker 1: in the United States, right, and nobody in Canada other
Speaker 1: than people in the television business knew that it was
Speaker 1: a success in the US. And um was it also
Speaker 1: aired elsewhere? Oh yeah, all over the lot of countries
Speaker 1: around the world. Yeah, but it was on Nickelodeon here.
Speaker 1: I think that's so funny story when um uh, shortly
Speaker 1: after Drake broke as an art music artist. Um, my
Speaker 1: wife and family and I were in l A visiting
Speaker 1: with some people I used to work with here and
Speaker 1: to two women that hadded families and they used to
Speaker 1: work within their sisters and uh um uh. Their kids
Speaker 1: were younger than ours. And we're all sitting in this
Speaker 1: big family restaurant, big long table. Are my family on
Speaker 1: one side, there is on the other side. And the
Speaker 1: kids were really quiet. They were not talking at all,
Speaker 1: and they were just staring at us. And after a
Speaker 1: few minutes it got kind of uncomfortable. And and then
Speaker 1: the bravest one spoke up and said, you guys don't
Speaker 1: sound Canadian. And we said, what do you mean. They said,
Speaker 1: you don't sound like those people in the grass And
Speaker 1: I said, oh, you watched a grassy and Selene their
Speaker 1: mothers said, my friend Selene that their mother said, are
Speaker 1: you nuts? This is the biggest thing amongst the teens
Speaker 1: and tweens down here, and nobody in the Canadian music
Speaker 1: industry anyway knew that. And that's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why Drake was overlooked by the Canaan music business. Certainly,
Speaker 1: one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made in my
Speaker 1: career was I could never, I can never. I'll never
Speaker 1: forget every week for a year in early my Space days,
Speaker 1: Barb Seten, who worked for me, you know very well,
Speaker 1: in Tanya Coglan and Mike Fox and UH, my staff
Speaker 1: and my publish in Canada would sit around and we'd
Speaker 1: have an a R meeting and we would filter the
Speaker 1: MySpace charts for Canada and Drake was number one and
Speaker 1: number two for a year and UM, but we didn't
Speaker 1: know why this was. I mean, listen to the music
Speaker 1: with that was pretty good, and you know, and and
Speaker 1: but we just didn understand the entire picture because we
Speaker 1: had no idea that he would had, you know, hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of fans in America. So basically, his mixtapes
Speaker 1: are blowing up in America and we didn't know that.
Speaker 1: And people who follow that stuff in the US, the
Speaker 1: little Waynes and then the people in the industry saw
Speaker 1: the happening and that was the That was the moment
Speaker 1: when everything became possible for Canadian music because they didn't
Speaker 1: care where he's from, because the American public was had spoken.
Speaker 1: And so from that point on it has not only
Speaker 1: has it not mattered that you're Canadian in those those genres,
Speaker 1: but now it's cool to be Canadian. UM. A couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, UH, one of my publisher members, UM
Speaker 1: who's runs a multinational in Toronto, the Toronto office the
Speaker 1: multinationalist sent we were talking about this very issue, and
Speaker 1: he said, yeah, so and so the you know, the
Speaker 1: head of the us AT us off Creative Stuff just
Speaker 1: called last week and said, we're signing this girl in
Speaker 1: l A. Um looking at her bio material, turns out
Speaker 1: she was raised in l A but born in Toronto.
Speaker 1: Would you mind if we said she's from Toronto? That
Speaker 1: is really a switch. Let's mind blowing to Canadians, right
Speaker 1: to think that that anybody would ever think it's cooler
Speaker 1: to be from from Toronto than l a. But in
Speaker 1: many ways it's true now, you know, at least, I
Speaker 1: mean what it is is is that Canadians, don't they
Speaker 1: people growing up admiring Drake will now take it for
Speaker 1: granted that you can conquer the world and you can
Speaker 1: do it from Toronto, and you can do it proudly
Speaker 1: and there, and that you know, there's kids coming to
Speaker 1: Toronto as tourists that want to stand in the street
Speaker 1: corner that he talks about in his songs, just like
Speaker 1: you know, used to happen to Canadians listening to American
Speaker 1: songs right come in l A Okay before the Toronto.
Speaker 1: See not that there always hasn't been a Toronto scene.
Speaker 1: The big scene was in Montreal. Broken social scene. What
Speaker 1: do you think cause that well, broken social scenes partly
Speaker 1: from Montreal. Well, I mean did Montreal see I don't
Speaker 1: want to make it about broken social Yeah, well Montreal's
Speaker 1: tray will be vibrant city. That's one of the greatest
Speaker 1: um places in the world to go to school, for instance,
Speaker 1: and so and and you know it's it's a very
Speaker 1: European culture. That's the uh work to live culture more
Speaker 1: than the work they live to work culture. So you know,
Speaker 1: they take art seriously. Um, they take culture seriously. And um,
Speaker 1: there's there would used to be a lot of clubs
Speaker 1: and and and it's a big call ug town so
Speaker 1: you get that that melting pot as well, and get
Speaker 1: arcade fire out of their for instance, right, um and um.
Speaker 1: You know it's also kind of the Quebec music scene
Speaker 1: is kind of her metrically sealed. It's sort of like
Speaker 1: almost like Nashville where um, or even in England in
Speaker 1: a way like I I look at those music scenes
Speaker 1: as places where you look at it as a sport.
Speaker 1: You're in the stadium and the game is unfolding on
Speaker 1: the field in front of it. You can understand the game.
Speaker 1: You can see the prep with the ends of the box. Right,
Speaker 1: So cabecs like that and US and and uh it's
Speaker 1: um it's got a star system and um uh and
Speaker 1: it's kind of it's never easy to get careers reving,
Speaker 1: but it's probably easier there than some other places. To
Speaker 1: what degree do you believe Canadian social safety net boost
Speaker 1: music development? What's huge? Because um uh you know of
Speaker 1: Canadian content and the government grant supports and other other
Speaker 1: other encouragement of the arts. Um and uh, that's all
Speaker 1: tied to the same mentality, right, and you know your
Speaker 1: Canadian musician doesn't have to worry about going to the
Speaker 1: hospital and if it's going to bankrupt them. Uh, you
Speaker 1: know which is you know a huge thing. Let's say
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm a twenty two year old person making
Speaker 1: beats in Canada. Can I get money from the government
Speaker 1: just to live? Uh, They'll give you a check to live,
Speaker 1: but um, you can You've got organizations like factor forgetting
Speaker 1: music organizations. I'm not even in the music business. To
Speaker 1: what degree you know you don't get paid by the governments.
Speaker 1: That's what squee is their welfare well, it's like welfare
Speaker 1: like there is anywhere. But our musicians living on welfare
Speaker 1: these days not so much now because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of employment. You know, it's it's a healthy economy people have.
Speaker 1: It's a gig economy. So people they'll have a day
Speaker 1: gig and you know, and they uh spend their evenings
Speaker 1: and weekends banging away at their at their art and
Speaker 1: eventually I could give up the day gig if they're lucky. Okay,
Speaker 1: Vancouver was historically a rock town. Is that still true Vancouver? Um,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people talked about the Vancouver music scene. UM.
Speaker 1: In some ways people say it's dead. Um, certainly the
Speaker 1: rock side of it because the club scene has disappeared
Speaker 1: a lot. UM. But you know, we had so canon
Speaker 1: in our in our staff. We truly believe that, UM,
Speaker 1: Vancouver could be the next biggest place because again you
Speaker 1: talk about multicultural it's amazing and we just think that
Speaker 1: people aren't fishing in the right ponds and we're making
Speaker 1: big strides and making connections in the you know, South
Speaker 1: Asian communities and uh places where you know there's somebody
Speaker 1: in their bedroom that's making something incredible, and UM, we
Speaker 1: just got it. They're not connected to the business because
Speaker 1: they're growing up not knowing. Right, Okay, the story and
Speaker 1: you were part of it. The story twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: years ago was how publishers were starting acts and then
Speaker 1: they graduated to the labels. To what degree is so
Speaker 1: can involve in development and what place in the game.
Speaker 1: So twenty three years ago, if you set out to
Speaker 1: be a creator, music, creator, artist, writer, um, one of
Speaker 1: the first two or three thoughts that came into your
Speaker 1: brain was, oh, I gotta joined so can or if
Speaker 1: the America asked CAMP B M I or pr S
Speaker 1: in England. One of the reasons for that you see
Speaker 1: it on record credits and you wouldn't necessarily know what
Speaker 1: it is, but you see it relationships in relationship to
Speaker 1: being a pro. So I got to join that. And
Speaker 1: just to be clear, if I'm an American, can I
Speaker 1: join so can? Uh? There's no rules, but we we
Speaker 1: do not We don't want our members to leave and
Speaker 1: become members of the U s p r os and
Speaker 1: so therefore, and we don't want to sign people that
Speaker 1: the U s p r O S would want to
Speaker 1: sign in their own countries. So and I could do
Speaker 1: it if I wanted to. There's no law that says
Speaker 1: you can't. Um, but we we we respect their Okay,
Speaker 1: So I go back to your point. Yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: what was my point? You're talking about Vancouver, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you're talking about development of acts, right, so me
Speaker 1: thirty years ago we left it right, So when you
Speaker 1: first started out years ago, you thought of joining. So
Speaker 1: I can ask my whatever, um we're trying to do now,
Speaker 1: is trying to get that little logo back in the
Speaker 1: brain of somebody who was sitting in their bedroom and
Speaker 1: they're fourteen years old and saying I think I want
Speaker 1: to make music because there's a lawful lot of other
Speaker 1: logos crowding it out. Okay, in the digital era, how
Speaker 1: do you get that logo? See? Yeah, so um uh,
Speaker 1: we want to treat We want to implant the thought
Speaker 1: that your career starts here. Right. So, um, we have
Speaker 1: what we call the new member value gap, which we
Speaker 1: identified which is okay, if I joined, so can uh,
Speaker 1: what what do I get? And well, you get royalties? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't have any music ding royalties yet? Right,
Speaker 1: So so you get joined, so can even though you
Speaker 1: don't have a record out? Yeah, yeah, we have five
Speaker 1: or six thousand people you're joining. We have about a
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty thousand members and UM, so we try
Speaker 1: and create programs to UM. We look at as it's
Speaker 1: like ecosystem. It's a pond. We want to be the
Speaker 1: sunshine in the pond. We want to you know, there
Speaker 1: to be more planked than you know, more guppies and
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. And so uh, it's it's a
Speaker 1: less targeted than a than a publishing company or record
Speaker 1: label would do it. UM. You know, we have program
Speaker 1: we have it. For instance, we have an educational program
Speaker 1: called Cooking Beats where we have a famous beat maker
Speaker 1: will set on the stage and it's like the motif
Speaker 1: of a cooking show on TV. Instead of the cameras
Speaker 1: and the ceiling looking down in the stove, we have
Speaker 1: their laptop, laptop hooked up to a giant screen and
Speaker 1: they tear apart one of their famous beats and then
Speaker 1: we'll trought to set a community music week or conferences
Speaker 1: like that, and and they're very very popular. Kids love it. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know that gets the brand own, it gets it
Speaker 1: educates people. We have song camps. Now, how about literally
Speaker 1: giving an act money to develop or literally trying to
Speaker 1: make in roads in a label or a publisher. So, um,
Speaker 1: you know, again we're complimentary to what the publishers and
Speaker 1: labels do. We think we're at the stage pre when,
Speaker 1: prior to when people are ready for them. So if
Speaker 1: we can do something to keep somebody alive for another year,
Speaker 1: get them to a showcase, uh, get into a song camp,
Speaker 1: get some craft development, and get them some confidence. When
Speaker 1: we have a song camp, the number one thing that
Speaker 1: comes out of it is self confidence. Yeah. You know,
Speaker 1: every camp usually yields one song that gets cut or something,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of they're always sequestered and people are
Speaker 1: living together for a week and they come out of
Speaker 1: it feeling like they just had a week's worth of
Speaker 1: incredible group therapy. You know that they did make them
Speaker 1: make the right choice in their life and they and
Speaker 1: they have now a group of people that that they
Speaker 1: know that think like them and et cetera. And so
Speaker 1: just the boost of self confidence, um, keeps them alive
Speaker 1: and and and and and working at their craft for
Speaker 1: another year and then they're ready to get a record
Speaker 1: deal or a publishing deal. Okay, So people thought hip
Speaker 1: hop would die and today they would say it's like
Speaker 1: rock and roll it's forever, but rock and roll seems
Speaker 1: to have died. So as someone who's a big observer
Speaker 1: of the scene certainly where it's happening, you know, what
Speaker 1: is the runway, what is the roadmap into the future. Well,
Speaker 1: it's somewhat controversial when I say this, and I don't
Speaker 1: say it because I wanted to be this way, but
Speaker 1: this is my own personal opinion of what the future holds.
Speaker 1: Is that I think that the guitar is dead and
Speaker 1: rock is dead. Uh, And then that's an exaggeration. They're
Speaker 1: not dead, they're never going away, but they're never going
Speaker 1: to be the primary yeah, like jazz um. And one
Speaker 1: of the reasons for that is that's the unstoppable march
Speaker 1: of technology, in the unstoppable march of the democratization of music,
Speaker 1: the democratization of the making and music. So look back,
Speaker 1: say um electric guitar wasn't was a great example itself
Speaker 1: of of incredible democratization the creation of music. And so
Speaker 1: before that you had big band era. You had to
Speaker 1: bus loads full of really sophisticated people could read music,
Speaker 1: write music, and we're well trained their instruments, and they
Speaker 1: can only record if they went into a thing called
Speaker 1: a studio owned by a record label, and um, that
Speaker 1: was a very elite, closed group of people. Uh. Then
Speaker 1: an electric guitar comes along and say, Buddy Holly's hands right,
Speaker 1: three chords, just not doesn't know how to play his
Speaker 1: guitar like a you know, famous traumpa player of Benny
Speaker 1: Goodman knew how to play his clarinet or whatever. He
Speaker 1: wasn't trying. He just knew three chords. And he recorded
Speaker 1: in a garage, which is also democratization of recording. Where
Speaker 1: is you know, um, what's his name, Norma Petty? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this producer probably bought used gear from one of those
Speaker 1: big New York studios that you couldn't get into anymore
Speaker 1: and and put it in his garage and and that
Speaker 1: was you didn't they didn't need permission from anybody, And
Speaker 1: they went toured with three guys at the station wagon,
Speaker 1: hugely forward, you know, sampling, same thing, right. So I
Speaker 1: think that, um, that march of technology that democratizes creation
Speaker 1: of music is unstoppable, and and it puts creation of
Speaker 1: music in the hands of people who don't have any training,
Speaker 1: and every generation, people who are most interested in making
Speaker 1: music pick up the tools of their generation, which today
Speaker 1: is a laptop or a phone. Um and uh, and
Speaker 1: starts to make music with those tools, and the very
Speaker 1: best of them, in the most motivated and driven, you know,
Speaker 1: end up becoming successful and make a difference, and that
Speaker 1: becomes their generations music. That's what's happening now. And I
Speaker 1: think personally the next wave of the democratization of the
Speaker 1: creation of music is artificial intelligence, because I think I
Speaker 1: think the the future of creation of music will be
Speaker 1: how people humans create art by mucking with the technology
Speaker 1: a little bit deeper. So some examples. UM I started
Speaker 1: as a recording engineer and UM, I watched the introduction
Speaker 1: of the drum machine, and uh. First of all, drummers,
Speaker 1: of course were horrified, and they had every excuse in
Speaker 1: the world. Why was no good, It didn't feel like
Speaker 1: a human blah blah blah. And of course people try
Speaker 1: to use it to make it sound real. And and
Speaker 1: then the smart drummers said, well, they bought one and
Speaker 1: they became a percussion solutionist instead of a drummer, and
Speaker 1: they still had the same producers would hire them, and
Speaker 1: now they hire them to make that drum machine thing.
Speaker 1: And then um, eventually people started using a drum machine,
Speaker 1: uh in ways that people couldn't play drums, to take
Speaker 1: a high hat and go you know that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and and so that's what it got its real value
Speaker 1: because it's doing something in the person can't do. Then
Speaker 1: I watched the sampler come in the fair Light, was
Speaker 1: the first commercial digital sampler, and um, I remember the
Speaker 1: very first reaction people was always, although now we don't
Speaker 1: have to hire a cello player, I can sample a
Speaker 1: cello and played on the keyboard. And then I attributed
Speaker 1: to may not be true, but I personally in my
Speaker 1: life attribute the breakthrough commercial breakthrough of the art of
Speaker 1: using a sampler was owner of Lonely Heart by Yes,
Speaker 1: Trevor Horne produced it. And I remember where I was
Speaker 1: when I first heard. I was driving along the freeway
Speaker 1: in Toronto and I had to pull over because I
Speaker 1: couldn't believe what I was hearing. I'd never heard anything
Speaker 1: like it. And of course what he did instead of
Speaker 1: trying to emulate something real, he said, gee, I won
Speaker 1: if we put the entire Lenon Symphia orchestra on on
Speaker 1: each key and then went, you know, but right, and
Speaker 1: he created something that humans couldn't do, so I think
Speaker 1: that that's the same thing with artificial intelligence. Another example
Speaker 1: of technology like that would be the auto tune. So
Speaker 1: the guy invented auto tune, I've read interviews with him.
Speaker 1: He invented auto tune to tune vocals um And yet
Speaker 1: you know, the breakthrough for auto tune was the share
Speaker 1: record and I believe and the guys were in the
Speaker 1: studio I'm sure with her and they said, oh, it's
Speaker 1: she's slightly out of tune. How what do we do.
Speaker 1: I've heard this new thing called auto tune. Let's go
Speaker 1: rent it. They rented it, They plug it in, and
Speaker 1: what do you do when you plug it in a
Speaker 1: piece of gear For the first time, you turn it
Speaker 1: all the way left and then all the way right.
Speaker 1: And when they turned it all the way right, it
Speaker 1: went and invented that over auto tune sound. And then
Speaker 1: the next wave of music I remember seeing was I
Speaker 1: think we might have been Farrell or one of those producers,
Speaker 1: and maybe a timble in Farrell. When the height of
Speaker 1: when auto tune first came in widely, they said, even
Speaker 1: if it's in tune, I auto tune it because that's
Speaker 1: the sound of music today. And now You've got kids
Speaker 1: growing up who were one of us to be singers,
Speaker 1: and they're listening to auto tune records and they naturally
Speaker 1: sound like their auto tune. So all you look at
Speaker 1: all those kind of developments, and then I think it's
Speaker 1: really easy to look at artificial intelligence. Okay, that's certainly
Speaker 1: democratizes creating music because anybody un initiated describe what artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence is and how it would apply in the music business.
Speaker 1: I'm not intelligent enough to aren't describe artificial intelligence, but
Speaker 1: you know, it's you program the computer to the point
Speaker 1: where it can imitate human behavior and then hopefully go
Speaker 1: a little step. Well yeah, and uh and some machine
Speaker 1: learning is another another term for it. So there's already
Speaker 1: platforms out there that make music that um that either
Speaker 1: have no intervention from a person or you you interact
Speaker 1: with it in different ways like you type in purple
Speaker 1: or something and um uh, so that I think that's
Speaker 1: the future right now. Way, just to be clear, because
Speaker 1: based on all your things, you've said, there's a technology
Speaker 1: and the human plays with the technology. Do you believe
Speaker 1: that ultimately AI will create its own music or what
Speaker 1: the human will do with the tools of a the
Speaker 1: letter so well. First of all, AI is making music
Speaker 1: right now. But again, just like those examples I gave, um,
Speaker 1: they're using people are expecting regular sounding music to come
Speaker 1: out of it, and people are saying, well, it's not
Speaker 1: very good, or it's not you know, it's there's no
Speaker 1: soul or whatever. But I think what's gonna happen is
Speaker 1: that somebody will interact with it and come up with
Speaker 1: something the equivalent of taking the high hat and going
Speaker 1: They'll do that with words, they'll do with melodies, they'll combine,
Speaker 1: you know, um, different strains of music that people have
Speaker 1: never done before. They'll do it in a way you
Speaker 1: can't before, and they'll do it without any knowledge of
Speaker 1: how to do that because they're just interacting computer. Okay,
Speaker 1: how comes certain sounds have their window and faith Like
Speaker 1: in the late seventies it was the syndrome, right, but
Speaker 1: the fake hand clap of the t R O eight
Speaker 1: O eight lives on. Why do you think that is?
Speaker 1: I have no idea, I mean doing what I hear that,
Speaker 1: I go remember that two. So it immediately makes it
Speaker 1: me feel like these people are not testing the limits,
Speaker 1: which brings me to the next question. Irrelevant of what
Speaker 1: instruments or how this music is created right now, A
Speaker 1: lot of the popular music's lacks melody. Do you believe
Speaker 1: melody will come back? Well, I don't even say it.
Speaker 1: I don't even think it lacks melody today. I think that, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's really easy to say, oh, today's music
Speaker 1: sucks in whatever way, either that sucks generally or that
Speaker 1: has no melody or whatever, and I think that we
Speaker 1: have no perspective on it. I think that every generation
Speaker 1: has always said that about the following generation's music. Um,
Speaker 1: I hear lots of melody cooks on record. Generally there
Speaker 1: are somebody a featured singer and a rap record or there,
Speaker 1: or there are an instrumental part. But I hear lots
Speaker 1: of melodies. There's no question that records today, the production
Speaker 1: it forms more of the of the core of the
Speaker 1: of the record than in the in the past. But
Speaker 1: again that that's just a um, the march of time.
Speaker 1: That's progress. I mean that there's more technology involved with
Speaker 1: making a Well, I would say a lot of the
Speaker 1: be driven records, melody is secondary, tertiary or there at all.
Speaker 1: So just like the same thing. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: steampunk movement which drives me nuts, but one would anticipate
Speaker 1: it somewhere down the line. There's gonna just like with vinyl,
Speaker 1: which is really amplified beyond the reality. Don't get me
Speaker 1: started exactly, We're on the same page, it sounds like.
Speaker 1: But the UM there will be people who would probably
Speaker 1: return to acoustic instruments just as a reaction. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: no question the pendulum always swings. But I think that
Speaker 1: the real instrument backlash will be upward peaks of downward curve. Okay,
Speaker 1: so do you anticipate any changes imminently? I think that,
Speaker 1: you know, the next few years, whether it's two, three, five,
Speaker 1: we're gonna see UM great records come out that have
Speaker 1: astonishing things about them. They are there because of the
Speaker 1: AI and have with the way the person screw with it. Again,
Speaker 1: I can't, you know, I'm not smart enough to involved
Speaker 1: in enough to imagine exactly what it is. But very simplistically,
Speaker 1: you know you're gonna get somebody who takes Bob Dylan
Speaker 1: a lyric program and turns Bob Dylan to ten, takes
Speaker 1: a melody program and turns you know, McCartney to minus
Speaker 1: five and hooks up the digital of delay in a
Speaker 1: phaser between them or something. You know, that's a very
Speaker 1: uber simplistic way of describe. You believe that's within the
Speaker 1: next two or three years. I think two to five years. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk. Spotify is the dominant player in streaming music,
Speaker 1: even eclipses YouTube at this point. Uh. But if you
Speaker 1: look at the Spotify Top fifty, unlike if people who
Speaker 1: grew up in the air of Top forty radio, it
Speaker 1: is pretty monochronistic, if that's even a word, monochrome, and
Speaker 1: then it's all basically hip hop, maybe a little pop
Speaker 1: thrown in. This is a unique thing because there used
Speaker 1: to always be a filter saying no, we're gonna put
Speaker 1: in these other elements. And to agree there's radio radio
Speaker 1: to a great degree replicates that. To what degree is
Speaker 1: that evidence of what people really want? Or do we
Speaker 1: need an opportunity for other styles of music. That's a
Speaker 1: great question. And I sort of alluded to it earlier
Speaker 1: that we're concerned about that when it comes to say
Speaker 1: the existence of Canadian content, right, UM are very early
Speaker 1: on in our studies. We're going to refine our data,
Speaker 1: but our data is showing that, um, the consumption of
Speaker 1: Canadian music by Canadians is disturbingly low in the in
Speaker 1: the digital space compared to the traditional broadcast media. And
Speaker 1: if that's the case, um our next thinking is that
Speaker 1: it must be a discover ability issue, because there's no
Speaker 1: availability issue. Everybody's got the music on those platforms. And
Speaker 1: an example of and so basically they're unintentionally biased, perhaps
Speaker 1: in favor of of cultures from large countries or large populations,
Speaker 1: or you know, certain genres of music or whatever. It's
Speaker 1: it's an unintentional and biased and um a good example
Speaker 1: that would be you know, the it was that Martina
Speaker 1: McBride into last year since she tried to create an
Speaker 1: automated playlist and she seated it with a Rebend McEntire
Speaker 1: track or something like that, and then uh, nineteen of
Speaker 1: the other tracks that were automatically generated for we're all men.
Speaker 1: Uh you know so, and these aren't There's nothing evil
Speaker 1: about all this stuff. These are an unintended consequences of
Speaker 1: the mecha describing mechanisms. And I think these these platforms
Speaker 1: genuinely a want to make music as discoverable as possible
Speaker 1: and and and please the customer that way, and be
Speaker 1: they want to localize their products for different territories and
Speaker 1: different cultures. I just think that we're not there yet
Speaker 1: to the point where it's done done well enough. And
Speaker 1: uh so that's a concern of ours in terms of
Speaker 1: Canadian content. But if you could insert any subgenre or
Speaker 1: small genre or of music there that I think everybody
Speaker 1: should be as concerned. Uh, because um of what you're saying. Okay,
Speaker 1: you started out as a drummer. Okay, drummer. When did
Speaker 1: you start playing drums? It was about five. My dad
Speaker 1: was an amateur drummer and he your father, and so
Speaker 1: it's in the family. Yeah. He was a big jazz fan.
Speaker 1: Uh and um uh. He would played in little jazz
Speaker 1: combos and um. And he actually taught me how to
Speaker 1: listen to records. We'd sit around on a Saturday afternoon
Speaker 1: and you'd have a beer and from in front of
Speaker 1: the big gold console stereo that's as big as a couch,
Speaker 1: and he'd be listening to you know, Benny Goodman and
Speaker 1: Count Basie and all those people, and uh, he'd say,
Speaker 1: listen to this, listen that secks, so listen to how
Speaker 1: that got drummer did this? And uh so that really
Speaker 1: got me both intrigued and and interested and be able
Speaker 1: to listen, right and uh. And then I played in
Speaker 1: a town marching band that my dad was involved with
Speaker 1: to keep the kids off the street. We had no
Speaker 1: music in schools. But I was the youngest kid ever
Speaker 1: in the band. And I would we'd be on the
Speaker 1: march and I'd be playing the symbols and um, I
Speaker 1: would hit them so hard that they they'd stick like
Speaker 1: a suction cup, but to go clang, clank. And then
Speaker 1: so the leader of the band would mark time and
Speaker 1: make for the band to catch up, and he'd take
Speaker 1: them out of my hands and unstick them and hand
Speaker 1: them back to me. And then we also played uh.
Speaker 1: Concert was a concert band to like forty kids, right.
Speaker 1: You know, I was probably ten when I joined, but
Speaker 1: there was maybe the oldest seventeen eighteen. And um, the
Speaker 1: leader of the band, his name is Frank Banks, was
Speaker 1: really a progressive guy and he and he was trying
Speaker 1: to keep the kids interested in and this is the
Speaker 1: air at rock era. So he did an arrangement of
Speaker 1: Tommy's overture that we were playing in this you know
Speaker 1: forty person Bank. Yeah, and then and then he let
Speaker 1: myself and the other drummer bring our drum kids in
Speaker 1: and we did dueling in a god at avita solos
Speaker 1: in the middle of this you know, horn orchestra, um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you know bands and everything. But I wanted
Speaker 1: to be um. I didn't think you could you could.
Speaker 1: I didn't think you could be from my town and
Speaker 1: and and and be successful in me it's just to
Speaker 1: be from my audience. Where was your it's called Lindsay
Speaker 1: was about an hour and a half from northeast to
Speaker 1: tron On and uh and in the entire existence of
Speaker 1: the town, nobody ever made anything out of being a
Speaker 1: music career. And talk about Canadian content impact um uh.
Speaker 1: At our work show that's coming up in the end
Speaker 1: of March, um, we're probably there's probably half a dozen
Speaker 1: or more awards going to people from the area of
Speaker 1: my town. Okay, so you're growing up, Are you like
Speaker 1: a music fanatic, buying the records, listening to the radio
Speaker 1: or is just one thing that you do? No? No,
Speaker 1: I was fanatical about it, and I was fanatical about records.
Speaker 1: I was. I just mesmerized by what I called my
Speaker 1: magic records. And everybody's got them in their life. There's
Speaker 1: those records that you know when your girlfriend leaves your
Speaker 1: something that saves your life by listening to it, or
Speaker 1: just takes you to another world transport you and I
Speaker 1: had records like that, and and what would you remember
Speaker 1: a couple of those records? Um, well, certainly Dark Side
Speaker 1: of the Moon uh. And in fact that record um
Speaker 1: and the guests who I get that the minute, but
Speaker 1: they guess who to me are the big bang a
Speaker 1: Canadian music and and and before them you didn't think
Speaker 1: that you could be Canadian and you could do this.
Speaker 1: And after them, they made people realize that you could
Speaker 1: be Canadian, you could have world success and and and
Speaker 1: not have to move to the US. And even in
Speaker 1: my life, bigger story was behind the scenes, you could
Speaker 1: do that. And Jack Ridgards and the guy who discovered
Speaker 1: and produced them, became sort of my hero. And I
Speaker 1: wanted to Uh. I wanted to find him because I
Speaker 1: wanted to find what the secret of making a magic
Speaker 1: record was. And so I was in the technology and
Speaker 1: electronics and and when you know, you're the era of
Speaker 1: Pink Floyd and all the flying echoes and things like that,
Speaker 1: and I thought, Okay, it's technology that's the secret to
Speaker 1: making a magic record. And so I wanted to become
Speaker 1: a recording engineer, and um, I wanted to thought you
Speaker 1: could must be a school for it, because you look
Speaker 1: at a picture of a recording console, it was a
Speaker 1: thousand knobs on it. And there wasn't any schools in
Speaker 1: the world. And I looked for two years and finally
Speaker 1: the first world's first credited chorus for recording engineering record
Speaker 1: record production sprung up in London, Ontario, Canada, called Music
Speaker 1: Industry Arts at Fanshaw College, and I found it. It
Speaker 1: was amazing moment in my life when I realized there
Speaker 1: is a school and my goal was to find the school,
Speaker 1: get into school, graduate, find Jack Richardson and go work
Speaker 1: for him. And that's exactly what happened. Okay, how long
Speaker 1: were we in the school? Three years? How did you
Speaker 1: find Jack Richardson? Um? He came down to the guest
Speaker 1: lecture one day because his son, Garth was a new
Speaker 1: student in the first year and I was in my
Speaker 1: third year, and I thought, this is it. My heroes
Speaker 1: come I this is my day. And I basically falled
Speaker 1: him around like a puppy dog and basically hung onto
Speaker 1: his ankle, wouldn't let go all day, and finally at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, he turned his son and
Speaker 1: he said, who's that kid? And uh Karth said, well,
Speaker 1: he's actually the number one student in the school. And
Speaker 1: he said and and he said, he's not crazy, he
Speaker 1: just thinks he's said you're just his hero. So Jack
Speaker 1: turned him and say, if you're ever in Toronto sometime,
Speaker 1: give me a call and come into the studio. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And they basically never left. And I graduated and he
Speaker 1: got an internship. Didn't call it that then, but he
Speaker 1: and he's hired me for the summer. And when I graduated,
Speaker 1: and the very very first day, my other hero was
Speaker 1: bob Ezman and the very very first day was bob
Speaker 1: Ezman session. So it was like, what was your role
Speaker 1: was in turn? Okay? And you remember what the session was? Uh?
Speaker 1: Tim Curry her picture Schaces first solo record. Okay, So
Speaker 1: how did you graduate? Up the ladder in the studio?
Speaker 1: Because I had been to school and and I was
Speaker 1: in the first generation of people had been to school,
Speaker 1: nobody knew what I knew and U uh. One day
Speaker 1: Jack was producing a vocal and the head engineer UM
Speaker 1: couldn't for some reason, couldn't get sound working and Jack
Speaker 1: and the and the singer got up pretty upset of
Speaker 1: chorus after about five minutes of no sound, and uh
Speaker 1: singer said, I'm going to get a coffee and and
Speaker 1: Jack turned to the engineer said I'm gonna get a
Speaker 1: coffee too, And if when I come back, if it's
Speaker 1: not happening, you're done that kind of thing, right, So
Speaker 1: he was just shaking, right. And because I knew how
Speaker 1: to work the board. I knew how to work the
Speaker 1: board because when I was hanging out there before they
Speaker 1: hired me, I would talk to the maintenance guy and
Speaker 1: he would give me a photocopy of the schematic of
Speaker 1: the board and then a photocopy of the front page
Speaker 1: of the manual. So I built a life size cardboard
Speaker 1: cutout of the board when I was in school, and
Speaker 1: I used to pretend to work it was sitting in bed.
Speaker 1: So by time I started there as a gopher, I
Speaker 1: knew how to work the board, eve though I've never
Speaker 1: touched it. What kind of board did they have? There's
Speaker 1: a highly modified auditronics And what was the name of
Speaker 1: the studio then Nimbus nine. Yeah, so um, anyway, so
Speaker 1: they I knew what was I knew why the guy
Speaker 1: would couldn't get the sound, but I didn't want to
Speaker 1: embarrass them in front of Jack. And so as soon
Speaker 1: as Jack left the control and I said, Jim, try
Speaker 1: the red button over there, and he looked at me like,
Speaker 1: who do you? Who are you? What do you know?
Speaker 1: And uh, Finally, just before Jack came in, and he
Speaker 1: knew he had nothing else to lose, so he tried
Speaker 1: the red button in the sound came on right. So
Speaker 1: from that moment on, they trusted me to do things.
Speaker 1: And then I happened to be lucky enough to be
Speaker 1: asked to engineer a demo for a band called the
Speaker 1: Kings because they're managers. Life was a receptionist in the
Speaker 1: studio and she talked Jack into give him the band downtime,
Speaker 1: free time, but he said, only if you can get
Speaker 1: one of the guys to engineer it. And nobody wanted
Speaker 1: to do it, and again I said I'll do it,
Speaker 1: and they looked at me. He said, you you don't
Speaker 1: know how to do anything, and I said no, I
Speaker 1: went to school, remember, And they had no choice. They
Speaker 1: had how long have you been working there at that?
Speaker 1: Three or four months? Maybe six months? And um, and
Speaker 1: so they said, well, I. I I guess it's the only
Speaker 1: the only choice. So they let me go in that
Speaker 1: weekend and I worked with this band and and they
Speaker 1: went off to try and get a record deal. And
Speaker 1: about six nine months later they couldn't get a record deal,
Speaker 1: but they came to the father they got guitar player's
Speaker 1: father had died left him a lot of money, so
Speaker 1: they said, we want to make an independent record and uh,
Speaker 1: we would have blockbooked the studio for a month. We
Speaker 1: want Mike to engineer and produce it, and they said,
Speaker 1: but he's only ever done your demo. And then we
Speaker 1: also said, um, nobody's ever had any success with independent records.
Speaker 1: This is nineteen eighty let's say anyone and m and
Speaker 1: we tried to talk about of it, and they finally said, look,
Speaker 1: we're trying to block book your studio for a month.
Speaker 1: Do you want the business or not? So they said, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can do it, but Mike has to work with
Speaker 1: the other engineer named Ringo Ringo Hersina, who was how
Speaker 1: many rooms were there in the studio just one, but
Speaker 1: actually that factors into the rest of the story. So
Speaker 1: we we so Ringo and I the next day started
Speaker 1: making this record with this band called the Kings, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, thirty days go by and we make the record,
Speaker 1: and we're starting to do rough mixes and and and
Speaker 1: they had a new song was actually two songs and
Speaker 1: one it's called this beat goes on and switch right
Speaker 1: and and they had. But but in our really triumphant
Speaker 1: moment during the making the record was figuring how to
Speaker 1: connect the two songs because it recorded separately, right, and
Speaker 1: they were so much Why did you decide to connect them? Well?
Speaker 1: That they did that was that was the bands and
Speaker 1: and there and one of the managers was I thought
Speaker 1: was an r and our genius. They had decided to
Speaker 1: do this, and they had they had realized by playing
Speaker 1: it live that they didn't work very well independentalty. But
Speaker 1: you put them two together. And that was one of
Speaker 1: the biggest lessons I learned about hit songs was from this,
Speaker 1: because I asked the manager, I said, why did you
Speaker 1: guys know that this was the only way it works?
Speaker 1: You said, very simple. Hit records are rhythm melody hooks.
Speaker 1: One of them's got the melody hook, the other has
Speaker 1: got the rhythm hook, you know, and that kind of thing. Right. So, anyway,
Speaker 1: we were had the rough mixes together and Bob, I
Speaker 1: know he got the credit on the record. I bought
Speaker 1: the record. Yeah, well he so he came around, uh,
Speaker 1: trying to measure. He was thinking of buying the place,
Speaker 1: and he was measuring one of the rooms to see
Speaker 1: if you could build a second room, second studio. And
Speaker 1: when the band heard the Bob was there, they said, oh,
Speaker 1: you got to bring him in and hear the stuff,
Speaker 1: and and Ringo and I said, on, I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, he doesn't probably want to hear this stuff.
Speaker 1: And Ringoes and said, you know, he hasn't worked with
Speaker 1: an unknown band since Alice Cooper. And we've tried all
Speaker 1: these excuses. We didn't want to bother Bob. And finally
Speaker 1: the manager said, inter just me to him. So okay,
Speaker 1: so we go introduced them and then they talked for
Speaker 1: a while and and he brings Bob back in the
Speaker 1: control room. Bob says, let me hear it. So he pressed.
Speaker 1: We pressed playing on the tape, and the first thing
Speaker 1: he hears is this. He goes on switching the guide.
Speaker 1: He stops it at the end and he says, there's
Speaker 1: a hit record. I'm gonna get you guys a record deal.
Speaker 1: Seven days later, he had them to deal with Electric Records,
Speaker 1: and he came in the in the studio waving a
Speaker 1: telex or something and uh saying, great news. You know,
Speaker 1: We've got the record deal, and I'm gonna produce and
Speaker 1: reproduce the record. And Ringo and I sat during it,
Speaker 1: where does that leave us? And Bob looked at us like, oh,
Speaker 1: you guys are gonna engineer an associate produce. We said, okay, fantastic,
Speaker 1: and so we just the next day we started remaking
Speaker 1: the same album. Did he remake it from scratch? Oh? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And and and and you know, it was an incredible
Speaker 1: example of Bob's genius because he made some subtle changes that,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, made a huge, huge difference and and
Speaker 1: um uh so it was good. But although that was
Speaker 1: the punk era and um, and the band was not
Speaker 1: really a punk band, but they were trying to adopt
Speaker 1: a few the ethics of punk, and Bob was really
Speaker 1: into punk, and and he decided that he didn't want
Speaker 1: to uh spend any time making getting the sounds, so
Speaker 1: um it was basically, you know, put the microphones up
Speaker 1: in a roll tape kind of thing. And and to
Speaker 1: this day I figured I might have still been an
Speaker 1: engineer if they would have given us time to get
Speaker 1: better sounds. But I don't know that record was a hit,
Speaker 1: at least in Los Angeles. How come they could never
Speaker 1: follow it up? Why? Why do most people not follow
Speaker 1: it up? Because it's lightning, you know? I guess they
Speaker 1: Also they kicked the manager out of the out of
Speaker 1: the whole situation, and UM and I really felt that
Speaker 1: he was an incredibly important part of the of the
Speaker 1: creative dynamic of the band. And so after I left
Speaker 1: working for Jack Richardson and then left after we left
Speaker 1: working for Bob too, UM, I went back and found
Speaker 1: that guy and we started our own company. We called
Speaker 1: ourselves the Producers. Uh. Inspired by the movie and UM
Speaker 1: went around finding bands, take him a studio and make
Speaker 1: records and UM UH did a lot of great stuff,
Speaker 1: but couldn't get arrested. And eventually, UH Frank Davies was
Speaker 1: running a TV Canada offered me a job as created
Speaker 1: person there. Okay, let's go back. So what was your
Speaker 1: How long were you an engineer after that King's record?
Speaker 1: A couple of years, I guess. And you worked with
Speaker 1: Bob Yeah, yeah, I worked with him on the next
Speaker 1: King's record and then Kiss record the elder. So you
Speaker 1: were Bob's guy, one of them. Yeah, right, how did
Speaker 1: it end for you? Um? So you know, when you're
Speaker 1: working a studio, it's twenty four hours a day, seven
Speaker 1: days a week, thirty days a month, right, And UM,
Speaker 1: I had treated my schooling that way. So three years
Speaker 1: of seven school, uh, probably three years seven in the
Speaker 1: studio and I was about at the end of my
Speaker 1: rope and I didn't really realize it. And um, and
Speaker 1: Bob had taken for some reason, I guess with the
Speaker 1: timing of the Kings or the or the Kiss was
Speaker 1: working out the way it was supposed to be, and
Speaker 1: we had to do both records at once basically, so
Speaker 1: he had we do two weeks with Kiss, two weeks
Speaker 1: with Kings too. Was Kissed Kings and it was just
Speaker 1: driving me crazy. And finally, uh, um, one day Bob
Speaker 1: was really late for the studio and UM, we got
Speaker 1: tired of waiting for him because we had decided that
Speaker 1: if we had worked ahead, he might not like it,
Speaker 1: and uh, we be working for nothing and if and
Speaker 1: so W do W that we decided not to decided
Speaker 1: to go out to dinner and uh, soon after we left,
Speaker 1: he arrived and uh he was upset that we weren't there,
Speaker 1: and so we got back to the studio. He said, Okay,
Speaker 1: just because you guys have done this, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to work the weekend. And that was gonna be the
Speaker 1: first weekend I'd had off in months. And somebody said
Speaker 1: work the weekend. It literally heard of spring my brain
Speaker 1: go boing. I turned around and walked out the door. Uh.
Speaker 1: The studio was the edge of in the edge of Toronto. Um.
Speaker 1: I walked in the countryside for probably two hours. Bob
Speaker 1: and his wife and it was just getting dark. They
Speaker 1: came in looking for me. People thought I'd like jumped
Speaker 1: in the river or something, and uh uh I turned
Speaker 1: down the offer to drive me back to the studio.
Speaker 1: I got back to the studio, I went in and
Speaker 1: tacked up a sign on the wall said gone fishing.
Speaker 1: And a friend of mine worked for a wholesale travel agency,
Speaker 1: and I said, caled her and said get me on
Speaker 1: the beach tomorrow. So I went to the Bahamas for
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks and two or three weeks and
Speaker 1: sat of the beach, just staring at the beach. During
Speaker 1: an that was the end. No, what happened was I
Speaker 1: met a Rastafarian. Uh, this is a true story. I
Speaker 1: met a Rastafarian on the beach and u and started
Speaker 1: smoking joints with him, and he said, uh, you know
Speaker 1: what your problem is. I don't want to take the accent,
Speaker 1: but he said, your problem is you've spent too much
Speaker 1: time working on your career and basically, give you've atrophied
Speaker 1: as a person, like a three legged stool. You know,
Speaker 1: you've got the physical mental and uh and and and
Speaker 1: spiritual legs and a couple of have fallen are short,
Speaker 1: you've fallen over. So I thought that's a great thing.
Speaker 1: So I came back and I didn't care about my
Speaker 1: career for a while. And uh then kind of stuff
Speaker 1: started to happen, and I found got the partner with
Speaker 1: that producer with the Manka. But when you came back,
Speaker 1: you didn't work in the studio anymore. Did nothing for
Speaker 1: a while. And then and found my partner and we
Speaker 1: found and we started, um, you know, finding gods in
Speaker 1: the studio. But when you walked for good, they were
Speaker 1: cool with that. Today the people are lining up to work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Bob was incredibly understanding about it. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: he knows the pressures of all that stuff, and and
Speaker 1: so you know, I I learned more about balancing myself.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, with that and and it's I
Speaker 1: think that's a good, good lesson for anybody's life. You know.
Speaker 1: So you go to work for a TV publisher, how
Speaker 1: do you end up running E M my music Publishing Canada?
Speaker 1: I was so I was really lucky that. Um Uh.
Speaker 1: Shortly after I got there, um I met with one
Speaker 1: of the writers of a band called Toronto that had
Speaker 1: been signed there and at a TV Canada and it
Speaker 1: was it was the biggest outlet for Canadian talent. Um.
Speaker 1: They had Aldo Nova, they had Eddie Schwartzer wrote me
Speaker 1: Hip Hippie with your best shot. Um they had a
Speaker 1: big had chili whack um a lot of success. And
Speaker 1: they had this band called Toronto that was on Solid
Speaker 1: Gold Records and Neil Dixon's label, and um uh, the
Speaker 1: good Brian Allen, the guitar player me and writer called
Speaker 1: me up and he said, you know, our deal is
Speaker 1: up with you guys, and you only published the stuff
Speaker 1: that was on our records, and I have some stuff
Speaker 1: that wasn't on the record. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: want to hear it? I said yeah, sure. So he
Speaker 1: came in and played me a bunch of demos and
Speaker 1: one of them was a song called what About Love
Speaker 1: and it was a little cassette port of studio demo
Speaker 1: and I said, wow, that's a great song. I've only
Speaker 1: been on the job for about a month. I already
Speaker 1: know that I can't sell that song with with that
Speaker 1: bat of a demo. And uh, then he called me
Speaker 1: a week later, so I found Uh. We actually tried
Speaker 1: to record it on the album the Jim Valence produced
Speaker 1: for us, and Jim Valence co wrote it and I
Speaker 1: got left off the last minute, so I have a
Speaker 1: rough mix of the produced version one it here. I said, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: so I brought it in. It was just I thought
Speaker 1: it was a total smash. Got it to Don Gerson,
Speaker 1: who was ahead of in our capitol, who wanted songs
Speaker 1: for Heart, and UM he picked it for Heart and
Speaker 1: they had a giant hit with it and basically resurrected
Speaker 1: a career, and um gave me a career in music
Speaker 1: publishing because all of a sudden, now I had I
Speaker 1: scored a big goal, right And that was right before
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson bought the company. Just stop there that the
Speaker 1: original rough mix. How close was that to the finished
Speaker 1: hard version? Unbelievably close. It was my first lesson in
Speaker 1: that almost every nine times out of ten, when somebody
Speaker 1: uh gets a demo and and and and cuts a
Speaker 1: record of it, it's it's just like the demo. And
Speaker 1: that's a big lesson for me and publishing in some
Speaker 1: song plugging is that nobody has any imagination, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: So Michael Jackson then buys the label, but he buys
Speaker 1: it to get the get the songs and fires everybody
Speaker 1: in the world. Um. And just as we're turning out
Speaker 1: the lights, I got a call from a journalist music
Speaker 1: journalist named Nick Cruen who worked for a Maga trick
Speaker 1: Natie mag trade magazine called the record David Farrell and
Speaker 1: David now has f y I music, which you've probously seen,
Speaker 1: remember the record and uh, And he had assigned Nick
Speaker 1: the job of trying to get somebody in a TV
Speaker 1: to talk about the fact that everybody's losing their jobs.
Speaker 1: And he called me up and he said, you're my
Speaker 1: last chance. You're the lowest guy in the poll in
Speaker 1: the world. And I've tried to get everybody talking, nobody
Speaker 1: will and so I had this vision that if I
Speaker 1: was going to go down, I might as well go
Speaker 1: down in flames. And I thought, well, I'll just be honest,
Speaker 1: and that I actually honest to God. Had a vision
Speaker 1: of a Star Trek episode where um, they were lost
Speaker 1: in space and they and they couldn't get a hold
Speaker 1: of anybody, and there was a ship passing a few
Speaker 1: light years away, so to get its attention, Spock jettison
Speaker 1: to the last bit of anti matter and blew it up.
Speaker 1: In of course, the explosion caused the ship to come
Speaker 1: and find them and save them. So I thought, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna create an explosion, So I I said, you know that,
Speaker 1: how I talked about how important a TV had been
Speaker 1: to h to Canadian talent and getting an outlet to
Speaker 1: the world, And um, Michael Jackson was just going to
Speaker 1: mothball the whole thing. And he presents an image of
Speaker 1: being a caring religious person. He just turns out to
Speaker 1: be another ruthless muggul. So he printed it and everything
Speaker 1: and never thought anything else of it, And um went
Speaker 1: off of my were Mary Wade and I actually got
Speaker 1: a job at Attic Records, uh Elamaire's company doing A
Speaker 1: and R and UM. Unbeknownst to me, this got picked
Speaker 1: up by an American wire service, and I was being
Speaker 1: quoted on radio stations and newspapers, calling Michael Jackson and
Speaker 1: Ruthless Mugu and also unbeknownst to me, he was reading
Speaker 1: all this should be making a commitment to all these
Speaker 1: writers and things, and and they go, okay, what do
Speaker 1: you want to do? And what Branco told me was
Speaker 1: that he said find this guy and how room. So
Speaker 1: I'm working for Almayer and I get a call from
Speaker 1: the head of CBS Songs in Canada because CBS Songs
Speaker 1: had had the adminised administration of it, and he said,
Speaker 1: there's an airport. There's a plane ticket at the airport
Speaker 1: for you're going to New York to talk to the
Speaker 1: head of CBS Songs. I said, okay, So I went
Speaker 1: to the airport and got it picked up by a
Speaker 1: car at Lagority and they took me to see Mike's
Speaker 1: Stewart and Harvey Shapiro iran CBS Songs and and they
Speaker 1: said Michael Jackson's read your comments and then just stared
Speaker 1: at me. And I thought I was getting up with
Speaker 1: the Hudson River. And finally I just I looked up,
Speaker 1: I looked down and left right, and I just you know,
Speaker 1: it was really really awkward. And so finally Mike Stewart goes,
Speaker 1: he wants to give you a chance to put up
Speaker 1: a shut up and uh, he said, So I said okay,
Speaker 1: And he said, all right, so go back to Canada
Speaker 1: and uh work for CBS songs. So that was that
Speaker 1: was the negotiation that I went back to downstairs, got
Speaker 1: in the car that was waiting for me, went back
Speaker 1: to the airport, and and what did you tell Al Mayor? Um?
Speaker 1: I don want to embarrass him, so uh, but but
Speaker 1: I'll h had actually said to me, I don't want
Speaker 1: you to take this job, just waiting for a job
Speaker 1: from Major to come along, right, And and there was
Speaker 1: some things about the job that I didn't think we're
Speaker 1: as advertised and and and um, so I didn't feel
Speaker 1: so bad about it other than I did feel bad
Speaker 1: about it, but I felt like it wasn't what I
Speaker 1: thought it was gonna be. Right, And and so I said, well,
Speaker 1: you don't have to you don't have to pay me
Speaker 1: for the week I've been here. And he said Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: so you gotta work for CBS. How does that morph
Speaker 1: in the E M R sp K bought it? And um,
Speaker 1: by this time, you know, I'm doing pretty well as
Speaker 1: a song plugger. I'm getting songs and Joe Cocker records
Speaker 1: and things like that. And uh um, I guess Marty Bander,
Speaker 1: Charles Koppelman and Steven swid were doing their due diligence
Speaker 1: on the office and they had me condend to New
Speaker 1: York and meet them, and I think I gave a
Speaker 1: pretty passionate pitch about Canadian music and and how the
Speaker 1: how the future could be and how um you know
Speaker 1: this government support and all this kind of thing, and
Speaker 1: and they so they seemed to like me, and they
Speaker 1: empowered me, and and then actually moved me to l A.
Speaker 1: So mid eighties, UM, my wife Sam and I and
Speaker 1: my oldest, my then only child, t J packed up
Speaker 1: and moved to l A and worked for EM Despicat
Speaker 1: down here initially, and then they sold the E M.
Speaker 1: I became M I and uh um. While that was
Speaker 1: down here. Um, one of the things that did was
Speaker 1: he introduced me to Charles Koppleman and Marty Bander and
Speaker 1: induced me to Artie Mogul. You must know, Artie the biggest,
Speaker 1: most unforgettable character I've ever met in my life inside
Speaker 1: or outside the business. Brooklyn Street hustler, you know, gambling addiction.
Speaker 1: Uh he was the Forest Gump of the music business
Speaker 1: right where almost anybody you wanted to name that was huge.
Speaker 1: He had some sort of association with them or the
Speaker 1: deal or whatever. Right And um so he said, Uh, okay, kid,
Speaker 1: who do you want to meet? And I said Richard Perry,
Speaker 1: as I was fascinated by producers, and uh so he
Speaker 1: he literally picked up the phone and dialed his number
Speaker 1: from memory and Richard answered and already said Richard, already
Speaker 1: lunch the Dome tomorrow and then hung up and uh
Speaker 1: dome was right next to our offices. And uh so
Speaker 1: the next day we're walking over there, and he said,
Speaker 1: we have to think of some excuse when we're meeting
Speaker 1: Richard Perry. He doesn't want to meet you're you're just
Speaker 1: a schmuck from Canada. And so he said. At this time,
Speaker 1: we was right after we had Tracy Chapman was a
Speaker 1: big case of success story, and all the labels wanted
Speaker 1: to have a production deal with That's b k so
Speaker 1: he said, um, we'll we'll tell him we need some
Speaker 1: acts for the production company. So we sit down and
Speaker 1: having lunch and he's telling us the different things he's
Speaker 1: working on, and none of them seemed that interesting. And
Speaker 1: then he could tell he wasn't getting a spark from us,
Speaker 1: and so he kind of like reached down into the
Speaker 1: bottom of his mental bag and said, well, it's one
Speaker 1: of the things that when working on it's the Daughters
Speaker 1: of Wilson of but beach boys and mamas and papas as.
Speaker 1: So as he said that, he could tell all they
Speaker 1: got a big rise from. Marty and I were looking
Speaker 1: each other eyes bugging out, and so he switches in
Speaker 1: the uber sales pitch mode. So already slammed the table
Speaker 1: and he said, we want them. And then the entire
Speaker 1: restaurant went silent, like you see in the movies, right,
Speaker 1: and everybody's staring at us. And I said, Alartiy shouldn't
Speaker 1: listen to some music first. He said, no, we want them,
Speaker 1: and I said already, and we gotta listen to some music,
Speaker 1: and he's all right, sending over some music. So we
Speaker 1: go back to the office. An hour later, a messenger
Speaker 1: rise at the cassette. We put it in. The very
Speaker 1: first song of the cassette is hold On, and we
Speaker 1: look at each other we go, I can't believe it.
Speaker 1: So we said it to Charles Coppelman and the next
Speaker 1: morning he calls from his car on the way and
Speaker 1: he said, this is amazing. I'm going to sign them.
Speaker 1: So again, we had all these output deals, right, had
Speaker 1: production deals with all the different labels, and we had
Speaker 1: to hand them. We had to pitch them certain number
Speaker 1: of acts a year. So Arty says, watch this kid,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get the biggest record deal for a new
Speaker 1: artist the history of mankind. So we've got to go
Speaker 1: to dinner with all the heads of all the labels
Speaker 1: and and uh, and we'll Phillips and uh watched the
Speaker 1: wind up and he wound it up to six hundred
Speaker 1: fifty dollars for the first record. And then bang, SPK
Speaker 1: is sold and now it's SPK Records, and uh, Charles,
Speaker 1: I'm in already's office when day Charles called and he said,
Speaker 1: I got good news and bad news. The good news
Speaker 1: is we want the girls for SPK Records. The bad
Speaker 1: news is we're not paying them six hundred fifty grand
Speaker 1: and you have to tell them. He said, watch this, kid,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna wind it down. Only already could have done this,
Speaker 1: and and but what he did was promised them that
Speaker 1: SPK will stop at nothing to make the record successful.
Speaker 1: And of course that's what was the case. Now were
Speaker 1: you at the first SPK convention in the desert when
Speaker 1: they debuted? Yeah, I was there with Hysteric and Michelle Phillips, etcetera. Okay,
Speaker 1: how come Glenn Ballard ended up producing the record because
Speaker 1: um uh Richard to develop the group had brought in
Speaker 1: Glenn to do the demos, and so Glenn and co
Speaker 1: written everything and produced the demos. The demo hold On
Speaker 1: was phenomenal, you know. Okay, so it ends with an
Speaker 1: E M. I. Ultimately when there's another corporate transition and
Speaker 1: then you go to work for only and now you're
Speaker 1: so kept. Who are you? Are you as a drummer,
Speaker 1: a recording engineer, a publisher, a guy on performing end
Speaker 1: of it performance rights. I'm a guy who was a
Speaker 1: whole career was in search of the secret of making
Speaker 1: a magic record, and one day I found I figured
Speaker 1: it out and it wasn't um anything. The technology was
Speaker 1: doing it wasn't anything about guiding the performance. It was
Speaker 1: about what they were singing. It was the song that's
Speaker 1: secret to making a magic record. And so I'm a
Speaker 1: song person and I had a incredibly fortunate to to
Speaker 1: exercise that love of song and songwriting as a publisher,
Speaker 1: and now I'm doing that as a as a you know,
Speaker 1: chief membership officer at so can UM. We're protecting writers,
Speaker 1: protecting their rights, getting them paid, We're stimulating their creativity.
Speaker 1: It's all the stuff that i've i've already has ever done. Okay,
Speaker 1: are you as excited about music today as you were
Speaker 1: back then? Yeah? I think I think that, Like I
Speaker 1: said earlier, I think every generation picks up the tools
Speaker 1: of a generation and starts making music. But one can
Speaker 1: argue that certainly in the sixties and seventies music drove
Speaker 1: the culture. There was music and radio. Certainly, for the
Speaker 1: last twenty five years there's been technology, and as big
Speaker 1: as music is, I will argue that technology drove the culture.
Speaker 1: What is music's place going forward? Well, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: of course, I've I've seen you. You're right that a lot,
Speaker 1: and I agree to a large degree. Although, by the
Speaker 1: way I said to Dug the engineer. When I came
Speaker 1: here today, I feel like I'm in the Abbey Road
Speaker 1: of podcasting because you know, to me, this is not
Speaker 1: about me, this is about you, because I'm so inspired
Speaker 1: by everything you're right, and and I listened to every
Speaker 1: one of your podcasts. But okay, okay, but um, you know, yes,
Speaker 1: I think that more kids grow up today idolizing tech
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs and want to be an tech entrepreneur. Probably then idolize,
Speaker 1: you know, so called rock stars and want to be
Speaker 1: so called rock stars. But I also think that you know,
Speaker 1: the historically, the people of our generation, uh and and
Speaker 1: the music that we're we're into. It's easy for us
Speaker 1: to say that music is not driving the culture anymore.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if you could say that if
Speaker 1: you're a hip hop fan, you know, and if you know,
Speaker 1: I would say, with hip hop, and this is not
Speaker 1: only about hip hop. To the people it's important to
Speaker 1: it's huge. But prior to the last fifteen years, last
Speaker 1: ten years, if you were as big as Drake, everybody
Speaker 1: in America knew Year's songs. This is not a reflection
Speaker 1: on Drake. It's just a reflection on society. And it's
Speaker 1: not only music, it's hard to get that level of
Speaker 1: mind share, and I don't believe the business is adjusted.
Speaker 1: And what I also believe is the result of that. However,
Speaker 1: much of the mind share of music hip hop gets.
Speaker 1: The press and the major labels are focusing only on
Speaker 1: that as if it were the last century, when all
Speaker 1: these other things who that may never graduate to that
Speaker 1: level have a greater impact, impact or more self sustaining
Speaker 1: than ever. No, I don't disagree with that. I mean,
Speaker 1: the amount of noise out there is incredible and and
Speaker 1: as you say, if you're inside the bubble, you think
Speaker 1: that something everybody knows about something and they and they
Speaker 1: don't really right. But in terms of the influence, mean,
Speaker 1: look at the influence of hip hop's head on fashion. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: but it's a language, yeah, but a little long in
Speaker 1: the tooth, yeah, for sure. You look at the opinion
Speaker 1: of always swings and that there's going to be something
Speaker 1: that that that replaces the So the interesting thing is twofold.
Speaker 1: We we lived through so many ears. Let's just call
Speaker 1: it the MTV era, and it was to a degree
Speaker 1: driven by MTV, where they promote one thing and then
Speaker 1: that would be over. The sound would change completely and
Speaker 1: certainly since the beginning of the century, the sound has
Speaker 1: been hip hop. Okay, not that it hasn't evolved. So
Speaker 1: for those of us who lived through the previous decades,
Speaker 1: we constantly expected something to else to come along, and
Speaker 1: it has not happened. Not granted, hip hop embrace the
Speaker 1: Internet long but for every other genre, if the other
Speaker 1: genres have, you've been embraced there. But speaking of hip hop,
Speaker 1: one thing you've maintained, and we've talked a lot about,
Speaker 1: is you believe with songwritings. Yesen's but you also believe
Speaker 1: it's about collaboration. Okay, and certainly that's what hip hop is.
Speaker 1: Why don't you tell my audience your beliefs about collaboration. Well,
Speaker 1: I always I always write your nasty note every time
Speaker 1: you should on collaboration. Uh, you know the the the
Speaker 1: knock on collaboration is it's committee songwriting, right. Well, that well,
Speaker 1: it's one thing to have too songwriters, the other thing
Speaker 1: to have nineteen Yeah. Well, look that that could be overboard.
Speaker 1: But often sometimes that's because there's there's samples in corporate
Speaker 1: and I'm talking about how many people are in the room. Well,
Speaker 1: like I think about this a lot and for one thing,
Speaker 1: and maybe they go overboard. Now. I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: joke that people say, if you deliver pizza to the
Speaker 1: session and you get to UM. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: if you take the Motown era, right, which you know,
Speaker 1: my one of my mentors, but Marty Bander, used to say,
Speaker 1: arguably was the greatest era, uh you know, or the
Speaker 1: greatest the most successful UM creative music scene in history.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot to be said about that. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, you had great records where UM would ended
Speaker 1: up being the biggest hook in the record was a
Speaker 1: guitar part that the guitar player made up in the
Speaker 1: studio as they're recording it. And a lot of times
Speaker 1: they never got in your writing credit, right, So you know,
Speaker 1: maybe the pendulum was too far that way. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: gone too far the other way. But at least there
Speaker 1: are people are being inclusive as to people, you know,
Speaker 1: who's important in the making of the record. UM. But
Speaker 1: I will I will stop there though. But the differences,
Speaker 1: especially those records, they were essentially cut live, whereas today
Speaker 1: many of the hit records are. We worked and we
Speaker 1: worked every other people polishing it to try to make
Speaker 1: it a hit record. Well, I think that, Well, look,
Speaker 1: who knows what goes through the minds of everybody when
Speaker 1: they're doing this. I think it's there's always the gamut
Speaker 1: from people sitting down to make a hit record for
Speaker 1: all the way from that to people are sitting down
Speaker 1: to make great music and it happens to be a hit.
Speaker 1: So whichever way, I think that people are just trying
Speaker 1: to have be great, and they're trying to make great music,
Speaker 1: and they're trying to make a lot of money at
Speaker 1: the same time. Um, most great music, to me has
Speaker 1: been the result of collaboration of one sort of another,
Speaker 1: whether it's co writing or not writing. Look The Who,
Speaker 1: for instance, probably a great example, right. I can't imagine
Speaker 1: Pete Townsend having a successful career as a singer songwriter
Speaker 1: if he hadn't been in The Who. Can't imagine Roger
Speaker 1: Dalter having a successful career as an artist if he
Speaker 1: wasn't in The Who. And back in those days, um,
Speaker 1: the first rung in the ladder was so high that
Speaker 1: you couldn't get to it. You had to try to
Speaker 1: scheme how to get to that first rung. And so
Speaker 1: you know, the visual metaphor would be well, one of
Speaker 1: this group of people get down in all fours and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stand on their back, and then somebody can
Speaker 1: stand on my shoulders and they can grab the first rung.
Speaker 1: And so they coalesced into self organized groups of people
Speaker 1: to make something that was better than any one of
Speaker 1: them could do. The whole was great than some of
Speaker 1: the parts. And that's what I think all collaborations are. So,
Speaker 1: whether so whether it's songwriting, whether it's uh, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: well we haven't discussed it quite this deep before, or
Speaker 1: maybe I haven't gotten it, And I certainly agree with
Speaker 1: that overall philosophy. Let's just say the song now, let's
Speaker 1: of course the point being was the lick part of
Speaker 1: the song? Whatever? But literally, as a publisher, I guess
Speaker 1: they're coming in with demonos. They come in with a song.
Speaker 1: Do you believe that there are multiple people in the room,
Speaker 1: let's just say even two or three, it's better than
Speaker 1: having one. Well, if it's the right dynamic, sure, you
Speaker 1: know you have you can't have somebody who's a bullying
Speaker 1: you can't have. You have to have. There has to
Speaker 1: be an OD tour, has to be an O tour.
Speaker 1: And then whether that's the artist themselves, which in case,
Speaker 1: in the case of most of these people were talking about,
Speaker 1: I think it's the artist that's the tour who's you know, um,
Speaker 1: But somebody has to be the creative brain. It's like
Speaker 1: a movie that movies have hundreds of people working on them,
Speaker 1: but you will go to see a Quentin Tarantino movie,
Speaker 1: you know whose movie it is, even though he's got
Speaker 1: a several hundred people working in the movie. Right. So
Speaker 1: I think the most all the great music out there
Speaker 1: has that person. And they're and if they're if they're
Speaker 1: doing their job right, they're bringing in ideas from everybody,
Speaker 1: and they're they're rejecting the shitty ones and they're accepting
Speaker 1: the great ones, or you're they're rejecting the ones that
Speaker 1: will fit their vision and they're and they're accepting the
Speaker 1: great ones. And uh um. So how could you have
Speaker 1: too many good ideas? I don't think you can. And
Speaker 1: I think it takes it's very very, very very rare.
Speaker 1: You have one human being who has enough great ideas
Speaker 1: and is a good enough I meanipulating all the elements
Speaker 1: of music themselves and can sing or wrap it themselves.
Speaker 1: How many human beings in the face of the earth.
Speaker 1: Are that good? They can do it all by themself,
Speaker 1: not not not many prints Todd Roun, Grant, etcetera. Okay,
Speaker 1: so here you are, You've had a storied career. What's
Speaker 1: your personal dream and your time left? I'm talking about
Speaker 1: business ones which may INTERESTCT with personal Um, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a good question. UM, I just want to keep doing.
Speaker 1: What I'm doing was just to help inspire, help um
Speaker 1: protect uh and songwriters and and and have create environments
Speaker 1: where they can succeed. And I think, UM, I want
Speaker 1: to see so Can continue with the path it is,
Speaker 1: which is becoming a globally competitive p r oh because
Speaker 1: in the world, that's you know, going back to why
Speaker 1: did I go to so canus? Because I wanted to
Speaker 1: see it become globally competitive, because um, all the new
Speaker 1: licensees are the most powerful companies in the history of
Speaker 1: the world. And UM, sooner or later you're gonna get
Speaker 1: completely lost and nobody will talk to you if you're
Speaker 1: not of a certain size, not a certain body of
Speaker 1: repertoire that they need certain capability with the back office.
Speaker 1: So so Can's on that path, and I want to
Speaker 1: help it continue in that path. Um and UH. I
Speaker 1: just want to, you know, as I said, help people
Speaker 1: make get from pointing to point B. And I've always
Speaker 1: been most interested in working with people who had nothing
Speaker 1: going on career wise and helping them have a career.
Speaker 1: That I was interested in in finding people who had
Speaker 1: a career going on and helping them get to the
Speaker 1: next level. It's it's okay, who was someone you worked
Speaker 1: with well, you thought had it didn't make it? Um
Speaker 1: multiple depends on the definition that didn't make it was
Speaker 1: not did not turn out to be financially successful, have
Speaker 1: a sustained career, and the people paying attention didn't know
Speaker 1: who they were, um I was My answer is going
Speaker 1: to be not um not as dire straits as you're
Speaker 1: just described, but somebody who didn't get their due commercially
Speaker 1: would be a stero um. Those of you that that
Speaker 1: have I ever heard of her, No, how incredibly talented
Speaker 1: she is and she still still works in the business,
Speaker 1: and she's a great person and has um um you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of good stuff going on, but she should
Speaker 1: have been a super duperstar and uh um uh. And
Speaker 1: I think that's just one of the things. But the
Speaker 1: gods didn't let it happen. Her her original collaborator, DC
Speaker 1: McKinney has gone on to become uh one of the
Speaker 1: most important influential, you know, producers in the in the world.
Speaker 1: And he was a big part of the Weekend. Uh
Speaker 1: sound when the Weekend came out. Um, but she's just
Speaker 1: mega talented. Um. Look, I don't I don't know. Uh.
Speaker 1: Even though I've had a career where, you know, my
Speaker 1: job was the green light things, I really honestly don't
Speaker 1: really know how why some things work and why they
Speaker 1: don't right. Uh, I'm fascinated by it, like I always studied,
Speaker 1: tried to study green light stories and other industries to
Speaker 1: try and apply it to me, you know. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the two greatest green light stories in the
Speaker 1: history of the entertainment business for George Martin signing the
Speaker 1: Beatles and UH twenty century Fox Ellen Ladd Jr. Or
Speaker 1: Giving the green light to Star Wars, and they're both
Speaker 1: followed the exact same thing, which is they just had
Speaker 1: a gut feeling about the people and standing in front
Speaker 1: of them, and there was no science, no math, no data, um,
Speaker 1: no thinking, just uh. In the case of of Star Wars,
Speaker 1: alliad Jr. Uh after um um George Lucas has been
Speaker 1: turned down by every movie studio. And after he presented
Speaker 1: his treatment and his pitch to Ellen Jr. Ellen Jr. Said, Uh,
Speaker 1: I haven't got a fucking clue what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: but you're the guy who made her made American graffiti
Speaker 1: and that's good enough for me. And I was lucky
Speaker 1: enough to meet George Martin a number of years before
Speaker 1: he died, and I asked him about, you know, the Beatles,
Speaker 1: and I said, look, I've read every single thing you've
Speaker 1: ever written, every interview you've ever done, but I gotta know,
Speaker 1: standing in front of you, what was going on in
Speaker 1: your in your head, your heart, and your gut. And
Speaker 1: you made that decision. And he said, uh, there's three things. Three.
Speaker 1: He had three reactions. His first reaction was that he
Speaker 1: thought they were pretty crappy band. His second reaction was
Speaker 1: there's no evidence they could write songs. But a third
Speaker 1: reaction was when they walked in the room together, they
Speaker 1: had so much overwhelming charisma that he felt like they
Speaker 1: changed the molecules in the room, right, And um, I
Speaker 1: think that's you know, that's sort of what it's about.
Speaker 1: And uh, that's a that's a fun part about what
Speaker 1: we do too is that you just never really know.
Speaker 1: And okay, who you most proud of being a midwife
Speaker 1: to success of Um, there'd be several some forty one
Speaker 1: would be one of them. Um uh we again in
Speaker 1: my publishing. We signed them when they were still in
Speaker 1: high school and they they were brought to our attention
Speaker 1: by getting Mark, guy named Marx Costanzo, who was from
Speaker 1: a group called Len and they had a hit with
Speaker 1: still My Sunshine Love that record. In fact, Mark would
Speaker 1: be another one because Mark was Lynn was a group
Speaker 1: that uh um, they had a um it was a
Speaker 1: brother and sister market Sharon and and and the number
Speaker 1: of other people, and they had this reputation but I
Speaker 1: didn't know they had a reputation of being impossible to
Speaker 1: deal with. And in fact, when I just when I
Speaker 1: signed them, I got calls from all the record people
Speaker 1: in Toronto who said, we heard you just signed Lynn.
Speaker 1: And he said, yeah, why and they said I kicked
Speaker 1: that guy out of my office, you know, and uh
Speaker 1: so to deal with them and then to help nurture
Speaker 1: that through um, okay, talk him. They could never follow
Speaker 1: that up. Uh it's lightning, you know how many how
Speaker 1: hit by lightning. I mean, uh, and where are they today,
Speaker 1: the brother and sister. Um, Well, Mark still is in
Speaker 1: the business and he's it spends a lot of time
Speaker 1: in Nashville developing a creative scene around him and down there.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he's going to break through with it very soon. Um. Still,
Speaker 1: my sunshine had half a dozen unbelievable sinks in the
Speaker 1: last couple of years. Uh, so I think he's doing
Speaker 1: pretty well off of it. Um. But some forty one
Speaker 1: was cool because so he kept saying to us, there's
Speaker 1: this group that his friend Greg Norri had befriended, and
Speaker 1: we got to hear them. When we say, okay, how
Speaker 1: do we hear them? Well, they don't play any gigs
Speaker 1: during Stone High School. Well did you have a demo? No,
Speaker 1: and have a demo. So, after a lot of back
Speaker 1: and forth, we dectarted to go to their basement in
Speaker 1: a suburb of Rontical a Jackson and Derek Wilby's basement
Speaker 1: and uh we went down and heard them played two
Speaker 1: or three songs and we said, this is amazing, you're
Speaker 1: signed and um. And then what happened was Greg Norri,
Speaker 1: who was from a band called Trouble Chargers was the
Speaker 1: connections between Mark and the band. Uh. Greg thought he
Speaker 1: was the manager and he came back off the road
Speaker 1: and found his band now had a publishing deal and
Speaker 1: um and uh he and Mark had a bit of
Speaker 1: an argument about it. So Mark left the scene. And
Speaker 1: then so we strategized with Greg what to do. We said, well,
Speaker 1: since they never really played any gigs, they need to
Speaker 1: play gigs in order to play gigs. Didn't meet an
Speaker 1: independent record, so let's make an independent record. So they
Speaker 1: got some factor money, one of support systems. We put
Speaker 1: in some money, made a record and which we liked
Speaker 1: it so much we decided to change the strategy a
Speaker 1: right to the shop a record deal for them, and
Speaker 1: everybody in North America turned them down except for an
Speaker 1: independent label from Montreal called Aquarius Records. They didn't want
Speaker 1: to sign to Aquarius for the world, so they kept
Speaker 1: that interested in the back pocket. And then we kind
Speaker 1: of just stumbled along for a long time, and we
Speaker 1: got all got really dejected, and finally the band came
Speaker 1: to us and said, we think we know what the
Speaker 1: problem is, and we said, what's the problem. They said,
Speaker 1: everybody just listens to our demo and they think we
Speaker 1: sound like Link one Nity two. They don't understand what
Speaker 1: characters we are, so we have to present that dimension.
Speaker 1: That's pretty smart. What do you want to do about that?
Speaker 1: While we want to make an independent ePK. And they
Speaker 1: used to uh yeah, they were the kind of kids
Speaker 1: that had at those days of camcorders. They had a
Speaker 1: camcorder welded to their forehead wherever they went. They made
Speaker 1: all this footage we would now called jackass type footage,
Speaker 1: but it didn't exist in and and these guys would
Speaker 1: have been monsters on YouTube if if it had existed
Speaker 1: them And so anyway, they took all that jackass type
Speaker 1: footage they added together in a seven minute masterpiece that
Speaker 1: was to this day probably the funniest thing I've ever
Speaker 1: seen in my entire life. So we got that to
Speaker 1: the labels and everybody changed turned around because of the
Speaker 1: rest in the band. They now understood that their characters.
Speaker 1: Remember one time, Lee Lust and our guy from Electro
Speaker 1: came today. So he was a great guy. So he
Speaker 1: came to Toronto. He was the first day and our
Speaker 1: guy that flew to the Toronto just to meet the band.
Speaker 1: And so I told them, I said, listen, guys, where
Speaker 1: this guy's coming in. We're gonna go to dinner selfishly.
Speaker 1: It's going to be near my house. It's an Italian restaurant.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit she she and I was just
Speaker 1: kind of beating around the bush and then they go,
Speaker 1: you mean you want us to not dress like slobs?
Speaker 1: And said, well, yeah, if you could, no problem. So
Speaker 1: the next day I picked Lee up the airport. We
Speaker 1: go to this restaurant, Italian restaurant, my neighborhood, and we're
Speaker 1: waiting and waiting, waiting and finding the band shows up.
Speaker 1: You could tell they showed up because it was a
Speaker 1: commotion at the front door. And they had gone to
Speaker 1: the good Will store and bought these like mafia don
Speaker 1: junior suits, pinstriped suits and that trench coats. And they
Speaker 1: walk into this Italian restaurant that dressed like mafia dons
Speaker 1: with the trench coats hanging off their shoulders, and the
Speaker 1: everybody in the restaurant just stopped what they're doing to
Speaker 1: stare at them. They and there was a big commotion.
Speaker 1: Then the maitre d like took their jackets and them
Speaker 1: up and they sit down and then what do they do.
Speaker 1: They reached into their suit jackets and they pull out
Speaker 1: toy gun and put them on the table and the
Speaker 1: waiter almost dropped entirely a tray of drinks. It was
Speaker 1: the funniest thing I've ever seen, you know. And that's
Speaker 1: the kind of guys that that was pretty satisfying to see.
Speaker 1: That happened in the lens thing. And in three days, Grace,
Speaker 1: I suppose would be another one because they learned how
Speaker 1: to write songs in my office. Um. Gavin Brown was
Speaker 1: the writer producer that I had signed, and uh, we
Speaker 1: had a new studio that we built in the office
Speaker 1: and he said, like, found this band, there's nothing worth
Speaker 1: listening to him, I want to take them in to
Speaker 1: see what we come up with. That said okay, sure,
Speaker 1: So it took him in the studio and they had
Speaker 1: they had like a sound and a vibe, but they
Speaker 1: didn't really have a you know, great strong songs. And
Speaker 1: so every day they would emerge from the studio that
Speaker 1: come my office, play me the songs and I said
Speaker 1: it's okay, And they looked dejected. And they go back
Speaker 1: in the room with Gavin the next day and you
Speaker 1: can see the look in Gavin's face that he was
Speaker 1: trying to tell them they weren't ready yet either, And
Speaker 1: eventually it came in with something that was really good,
Speaker 1: and I said, wow, that chorus is amazing, and they
Speaker 1: started high fiving each other and I said it'd be
Speaker 1: good enough to be a verse and they said, well,
Speaker 1: what do you mean. I said, well, it's good enough
Speaker 1: to be a verse. Now you gotta write a great
Speaker 1: chorus that's even better than that. And they said it
Speaker 1: has to be that good and I said yeah, and Bob,
Speaker 1: I'll never ever forget this. You could see the lightning
Speaker 1: bolts go from between person to person, and from their
Speaker 1: eyes you could just feel the energy in the room
Speaker 1: that the switch had been flipped. The next day they
Speaker 1: went in the studio with Gavin and they wrote I
Speaker 1: Hate Everything about You, which is the deal that got
Speaker 1: them the record deal song and got them the record deal,
Speaker 1: made their career happen to this day. They just they
Speaker 1: broke last year. They broke the record of Val van
Speaker 1: Halen had I think fourteen number one rock records in America.
Speaker 1: They got sixteen now and it's all driven by the
Speaker 1: song because they got the whole songwriting thing right. Michael
Speaker 1: has has been wonderful. We got great insight into Canada
Speaker 1: your career. They more the plum, but for now we're done. Alright,
Speaker 1: well thanks, okay, until next time. This is Bob s