AS HEARD ON THE...
The Flyer Vault
Co-Author
ROB BOWMAN
For the full conversation, listen to the Dec. 18, 2019 episode
Brian Borcherdt of
HOLY FUCK
For the full conversation, listen to the Jan. 15, 2020 episode
CM: We were speaking with Holy Fuck drummer Matt Schulz re-
cently and he mentioned that more of the drums on Deleter are
live tracked, which is different than the band’s older records.
Brian Borcherdt: Part of it is just the medium, like what we’re using. In
the early days, one of the largest impetuses that formed the band was
this concept of “let’s get together and see what happens if we go in
there with our hands tied and try to do something that’s a little unfamil-
iar to us.” Coming from a background where I played guitar, and Graham
[Walsh] did a lot of synths and is a little more electronic-minded in his
approach, we wanted to do something that was still unique. So, for us
that meant plugging in things that aren’t even really instruments. Like,
let’s go to Value Village instead of the music store. Let’s go somewhere
where we’re only going to find cheap, battery-operated odds and ends
and let’s see if we can make them musical. It was about pushing our-
selves creatively and also getting handicapped in the process…
But then all we can do is maneuver around it and play within it be-
cause we can’t change it. There is nothing programmable about it and
you can’t will anything out of the instrument that isn’t already there. But
we never wanted to be dogmatic about this approach to music. It was
something we enjoyed doing, but after 10 years of touring, all those
old things eventually kicked the bucket. They’re all toast because the
batteries corrode, the gear comes off the luggage conveyer belt and
it’s in pieces and you have a show to play that night. So, all these found
objects and bits and bobs just weren’t designed to last, so what are we
left with? We’re left with something more familiar and modern.
CM: There’s this
perception that
prior to the late
1960s, Toronto was
this boring, cul-
turally backwards
city…
Rob Bowman:
That’s totally wrong!
Just look at who was
playing here. Dig this,
we have this chapter
[in The Flyer Vault:
150 Years of Toronto
Concert History] on
calypso, reggae, and
dancehall. Well, as
early as the late-‘50s
… there were five
clubs run by Caribbe-
an immigrants and
DANIEL TATE (LEFT) & ROB BOWMAN
largely for Caribbean
immigrants, although
some of the hipper white people in the city got there. These
clubs, generally, weren’t licenced – which doesn’t mean liquor
wasn’t there, but they weren’t licenced – so they’d go ‘til four
or five in the morning. And this is in “Toronto the Good” of the
late ‘50s and early ‘60s while all the nice people in the suburbs
are going to bed at eight o’clock because there’s nothing on
TV and getting up way too early in the morning to look at their
Bibles. I’m kind of joking…
So, it was a straight city, but there was always this stuff
happening. There were places like the Casino Club and Shea’s
Hippodrome that brought in these big acts, and the newspa-
pers referred to them basically as “dens of iniquity,” but they
were clearly where the action was happening!
Prism Prize Founder
LOUIS CALABRO
For the full conversation, listen to the Jan. 15, 2020 episode
CM: How did music videos maintain their importance – or even become more important – in
the post-MTV/MuchMusic world?
Louis Calabro: Someone explained it to me recently that it’s kind of a gamble when you put a video out
there. If a label has decided to spend some money on it, they are making the call that it could possibly do
great things for their artist. So, they understand that it’s a marketing tool, but it’s also so much more than
that now. It gives you a sense of who the artist is, knowing that it’s traveling around the world and it’s go-
ing to have a premiere, it’s going to tell another story about your artist. It’s just become a bigger conver-
sation with artists and how they treat it as marketing. So sure, it’s always going to be a marketing piece,
but now it’s a little more nuanced. It’s not just to get the song out there or “you need a video because you
have a song.” It’s, “let’s now continue telling the story about our artist…”
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18 CANADIAN MUSICIAN