Episode 156: With Chromeo
Links
Transcript
Transcript
Time Crisis, back again. Today's a very special episode, joined by my dear friends Chromio,
to hear about the history of Montreal, McDonald's, the Lebanese military, Phil Collins, Hall
and Oates, and the Tea Party. This is a very Montreal, very Chromio episode of Time Crisis
with Ezra Koenig.
Time Crisis, back again. This is a very special episode, because it's just me and Chromio.
What's up Dave? What's up P?
Hello.
We've never had the whole band on the program before. Dave's been through, but I've known
you guys for a long time, you're great friends of mine, love Chromio, and I just felt like,
this is the Chromio episode. It's the dog days of summer. Full disclosure, we recorded
this within a few months, but you know.
It's okay.
This is the Chromio episode.
Just to start, Chromio is you two guys, and you're both from Montreal, and even before
the band started, you guys first met in high school, because you both grew up in Montreal.
Yeah. Well, P came to Canada when he was seven, from Lebanon.
Seven, eight, yeah, eight.
And I came, I was born and raised in Montreal, and then we lived in France for a bit, and
then we lived in Ottawa for a bit, and I came back to Montreal at nine years old.
So, we were sort of the same age when we planted, our families planted our roots back in Montreal,
and then we went to different elementary schools, and starting what Americans would call junior
high, and what Canadians just call high school.
So, from seventh grade onwards, we both happened to go to the same French lycee in Montreal.
Yeah.
And that's where you met.
And that's where we met. P was under one year older than me.
Okay, but-
Still is.
Still one year behind.
Okay, but before we even get to that, given that this is a time crisis, we got to really
contextualize things, and I feel like Montreal, just as a place, I feel like the average American,
they, of course, they understand that it's like kind of French up there, but it's truly
such a unique part of North America.
It's really unique.
So, what is Montreal?
Explain Montreal.
Montreal is basically the last French survivors of North America, and it's not Canadian.
In my mind, Quebec has always been, Quebec is the state or province, as they call it
in Canada, is the only French state/province in Canada.
In North America.
In North America.
Right?
So, to me, it's like, already I love the concept because it's just like survival.
Yeah.
They have crazy rules to defend the French language, even though the French we speak
there is a bit, you know, it's like backwards French.
Well, it's, yeah, it's a local patois, you could say.
Yeah.
Properly speaking.
Exactly.
Well, I have a question about that.
I'm going to ask you guys a lot of like very basic cultural questions, but truly, I've
always been so fascinated getting to know you guys.
And I even think like, I've noticed sometimes hanging out with you guys over the years,
there is something that like, people just don't quite believe that Quebec is real.
Like, everybody knows that you guys grew up in Montreal.
Everybody knows that you guys are bilingual.
But I still feel like when you guys start talking, we're at dinner, hanging out with
people, you guys start talking in French, they're still like, wow, these guys really
are talking French.
It's like, it just seems so strange.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
So what was crazy is that in the early 90s, the movement for Quebec separatism was actually
enjoying its second renaissance.
So there was a first referendum for Quebec independence, I want to say, in 1982, I'm
almost sure.
And that's because the French Canadians straight up wanted to be an independent country.
So in the context of socialist, post-colonial, paramilitary, nationalist movements of the
70s, so...
Was there terrorism?
Quebec?
Yeah, of course.
So the Quebec Nationalist Party was actually, at that time, it was part of the Socialist
International.
And it had deep sympathies with the IRA and with other sort of like nationalist, paramilitary,
post-colonial movements of the 70s.
There were mailboxes that blew up in the 70s.
And there was, I think it's in 1980, something called the October Crisis, where the FLQ,
which was the Quebec IRA, which was a paramilitary terrorist organism that was...
Not as developed.
No, but it was still...
But the spirit was the same.
Yeah.
It was the same ideals.
And so they were doing like sort of like small terrorist actions.
And in the crisis of October 1970, they kidnapped, and I believe killed, a minister of education.
I'm going off memory, but that...
And that was like a big, big, big stain.
And I want to say that in 1982, there was a first referendum on Quebec sovereignty and
the no won.
Yeah.
And so that basically quelled the nationalist movement.
But in the early 90s, there was a comeback.
And P earlier talked about the language laws.
So in the early 90s was also the birth of these very, very draconian language laws in Quebec.
Which I fully support, by the way.
I mean, to some degree.
Okay.
What do the laws entail?
The most controversial one was that no business, no...
Signage.
No signage could be...
Storified signage.
Yeah.
No, any commercial signage, but also like infrastructural signage, like roads and stuff.
Nothing can be in English.
So McDonald's apostrophe S, you had to take the apostrophe out.
Or you had to write, or you had to write Chez McDonald's.
We just backed into like the perfect TC story.
Not just talking about the nationalist movement of Quebec.
Because the possessive apostrophe in McDonald's, that there's no equivalent in the French language.
Well, you would have to say Chez McDonald's.
This is in all of Quebec or all of Montreal.
In all of Quebec.
So the law was not...
Because obviously you go to parts of the world where there's a local law that, you know, every sign has to be in two languages.
So there was that too.
There was that too.
So there was bilingual signage.
The signage law was in defense of French.
So it wasn't like you have to have both languages, is that you have to include the French.
Well, no, but the French has to be twice the size.
There was size.
It's like a festival poster.
It's like the Coachella poster.
French has to be Arctic monkeys or the strokes.
And English, if you're lucky, English is Chromio.
If we're lucky on a good day.
But back to McDonald's for a second.
So your guys' local McDonald's was a Chez...
How would you... you would say Chez McDonald's?
That never happened.
No, they never happened.
But I think with McDonald's, there was intense debate.
And I don't know if the apostrophe S came off everywhere because there's franchises.
But for instance, the biggest department store in Montreal was called Eaton's.
Like E-A-T-O-N.
Some kind of generic British sounding name.
That was the Macy's.
Well, the apostrophe S came down.
Because if you just have eaten, it's a proper noun.
A proper noun can be any language.
But the apostrophe S makes it English.
So there was all of that.
And I mean, the reason why I think P says he's in favor of those things is just the general principle that
some measures do need to take place in order to preserve the French language.
I personally believe signage might not be the way to go.
It's a little bit insane.
So it didn't pass?
That was a proposal?
It passed.
Those laws passed.
So even now in Montreal, you can't find a store that only has English signage?
Hell no.
No way.
Theoretically, somebody in Montreal could walk around to all the McDonald's and would probably be seeing no apostrophes.
They give fines.
They give fines if there's too much English in the signs and stuff.
Like if the proportions are wrong on the Coachella flyer, you get a fine.
Right.
Well, what about like...
Which, by the way, I wish we could do that at Coachella.
What do you think they would do for like Subway?
Or do they keep out all the...
No, but Subway is a proper noun.
It's a proper noun.
It's fine.
It's not Subways, it's Subway.
If it's a proper noun, you can call it McIntosh or whatever you want.
Right.
So Wendy's, they would have to take out the apostrophe.
I think with these big chains, it was like Restaurant Wendy's or...
Because there was Harvey's too.
I also think sometimes the apostrophe came off.
Yeah.
I would have to do some research, but...
Right.
It was insane.
So, like, would Taco Bell maybe pass because it's a proper noun?
There's no Taco Bell in Canada.
Yeah, there is in Canada, not in Quebec.
Not in Quebec.
I don't know if it's for that reason.
We used to drive...
Well, not Dave, because I don't think he's a fan,
but I used to drive an hour and a half to Ottawa to get Taco Bell as a teenager.
Really?
Because that was our thing, just, you know, smoke a joint and go to Taco Bell.
Drive 90 minutes to Taco Bell?
Drive 90 minutes just to get Taco Bell.
I really respect that.
You know, also, if you're in Quebec, to this day,
if you're a family that's immigrating to Quebec,
you are obliged to put your kids in French school.
Okay, wait, hold on.
So, because in Quebec now, there are French-speaking areas and English-speaking areas.
So, there's English language schools in Quebec.
For sure.
But if you're an immigrant, they want to funnel you into the French part of the community.
Have to.
Like, that's the trade-off for the being allowed in Quebec.
You got to, because they need to preserve the French language.
They're not going to do it through fertility.
Even if you were emigrating from a place that speaks English, like Jamaica,
they say, "Go to French school."
Yep. 100%.
Interesting.
And not only that, but if you immigrate, no matter where you immigrate from in Quebec,
as an adult, you're entitled to free French courses.
My dad taught...
Introductory French.
Actually, I had to take that.
When I moved from Lebanon to Montreal, Lebanon is a French colony, so I already knew French,
but I still had to go through it.
Me and my family, my sister, everybody.
Of course, we went in the first lesson and they were like, "Oh, okay. You guys speak French. Get out of here."
But we had to go through the process of like, "Okay, you have to be naturalized now,
and you have to go to French school."
And it's free.
Which is not only...
It's dope.
Not only is it free, but if you immigrate to Quebec and you have kids, and you're like,
"Dude, I can't go to school and learn this new language. I have to take care of my kids."
There's daycare for free provided by the state to allow you to go and take these French lessons.
Because they're willing to shell out the money for babysitters, basically, to make you learn French.
Yes.
That's where our taxes go.
Literally, the Minister of Culture is taking care of that.
And that's only for Quebec.
Yeah, of course.
Keep in mind, the rest of Canada is technically bilingual.
Absolutely.
So even though none of the other 10 provinces in Canada speak French...
Well, they have bullsh*t French classes.
They have bullsh*t French, but it's like America.
Everybody went to French school and forgot it a year later.
Yes.
But everything in the government, every official, like pamphlets, tax forms, documents, everything is bilingual in French.
Right. You're in Winnipeg where nobody speaks French, but you work at the municipal building.
Her job was a translator for the federal government.
And all her translation bureau, which by the way sounds so Soviet when you think about it.
It was called the Translation Bureau.
F*ck, it should be a miniseries.
All they did at the Translation Bureau was translate official documents from the federal government.
And there was an endless supply.
You can imagine this kind of very like, you know, left-leaning macro state with like constant like agricultural documents, treaties, regulations.
When you really think about it, it must have been so crazy.
Like probably some like clerk in some office in like Manitoba as to like write a report about like the amount of like potassium they found in the soil.
And they have to send it to Quebec for your mom to translate into French to send back.
And she would come home.
And nobody would ever read it in French.
Yes, she'd come home and be like, literally, I have memories of childhood.
She'd come home and be like, you don't understand, to my dad, like, "Chéri, today at work we have to translate a document on Manitoban potassium.
I don't know why, I don't even understand a thing."
They send it back, it goes like straight in the garbage.
Wait, actually, David, I don't know if you know this, but there's been a long running thing on Time Crisis where I refer to things as Borgesian.
Okay.
Like the writer Borges.
And I've never been sure if I use it correctly, but you studied literature.
I know mostly French literature.
Based on what you know of Borges, your mom's job sounds a little Borgesian.
Yeah, borderline, because I would say more Kafkaian, but yeah.
Somewhere in between Kafka and Borges.
Okay.
Kafka, yeah.
Because with Borges--
Borges has like the language element and the writing, but Kafka in the--
But there's a little magic realism there.
It would almost be like she would have to translate everything on like rose-petaled paper or something and then send it via messenger pigeon.
Yeah.
My mom was more like, there was like a bureaucratic, you know, Soviet aspect to it too.
I mean, I bet there were comparable things in the Soviet Union.
Somebody sending like a document from, you know, Azerbaijan back to Moscow for somebody to like translate and send back and just like, why did I do-- yeah.
Yeah.
So, okay, clearly a lot of money and energy goes to preserving the French language in Quebec and in a way in all of Canada.
But in Quebec and in Montreal, actually let's focus on the city.
There are many people who grow up in the city of Montreal who really don't speak French outside of studying it at school, right?
Nowadays, less and less.
Nowadays, really when we go back to Montreal, bilingualism is way more integrated than when we grew up there.
But when we grew up there, my dad for instance--
Because it worked.
It worked.
Absolutely, it worked.
Most of the time now when we go up to Montreal and we meet someone, they have this in-between accent where we can't tell what their native language is.
Which back then wasn't a thing.
Not at all.
When we were growing up, you could clearly tell it was Francophone and--
Dude, my dad was 12 years old when he saw his first French-speaking Montrealer.
He lived 12 years of his life without ever interacting with a grandfather.
Just because he was in an English-speaking neighborhood.
Actually, Kenny does. He's not bad.
Oh yeah?
Yeah, he's not bad.
My grandmother-- Well, my grandparents made an effort.
Your grandmother speaks really well.
Kenny's not bad. You'd be surprised.
Yeah, but you know.
But--
Banter, blah.
Yeah, yeah.
But that's because somebody like your dad, he lived in an English-speaking neighborhood and because he's a kid, he'd go to school, he'd go to the corner store, he'd
hang out with his family.
There was also an economic divide historically in Quebec where the French were the--
Blue collar.
The working class.
The English people were the bourgeoisie and also--
Store owners and--
Yeah, they were the bourgeoisie and they also were affiliated with England, with the colonial power, if you will.
And so in the 70s and 80s in Quebec, there's still a tremendous cultural push for the singularity of French Canadian culture and with very, very explicit sovereignist
subtext.
And P and I, we bonded because we were in a very peculiar liminal position.
Here we are, French speaking, our parents speak French, I mean, my mom speaks French, my dad is Anglophone, but he decided-- my dad decided to raise me as a French
speaker out of solidarity with the French working class, actually.
Because your dad was on some-- he was a lefty, so--
Yep.
So he would just speak French at home with you.
Oh, yeah.
Yes, absolutely.
Absolutely.
My dad learned French and decided to speak French.
Yeah, but you were saying, so there's this really intense binary at the time between the English people and the French Canadians, but you guys are French speakers who
don't have roots in the country of France.
Exactly.
And so we were-- we in 1992, they thought there would be another referendum.
So it was intense.
There were Quebec flags everywhere, slogans, I mean, it was an intense climate.
And there was a deeply xenophobic subtext.
The French narrative had a sort of-- yeah.
One of their slogans was "Le Québec au Québécois," meaning Quebec for Quebecers.
And by Quebecers, they meant French Catholic, you know, white Catholics.
Right.
And so P and I were in this weird position because we're both from like minorities.
Yeah.
You know, P's an immigrant.
And it's important to say that most immigrants back then would come in with English, not with French.
You know, with a certain sort of base of English, not French.
It's the international language, right?
So you would think it's like--
I was an exception because--
Because you're coming from Lebanon.
--Lebanon is another thing.
Yeah.
Well, same with my mom.
Yeah.
Right, because they--
Same with my mom.
For people who don't know, your mom was born French-speaking in Morocco.
Yeah, born and raised there.
Yeah.
And so the dialogue was like, you know, most ethnic groups were on the side of English.
Of course.
You know, they come in--
Not only that, but a lot of ethnic minorities came to Quebec and they're like, "What?
Why the hell do you want me to-- I can't work.
I'm not going to get a job."
Or like, "You know, I spent time learning English at home and now I come here and I have to learn French."
"I got to learn this weird language?
I didn't ask for this."
Yeah.
And so P and I were in this really weird position because we were French-speaking.
We had grown up speaking French.
We spoke French at home, but we didn't relate to the independent-ist cause.
And also, I think we both had been pretty harshly discriminated against.
We both kind of endured racism and incidents of xenophobia.
But as a defender of the underdog at all times, I still supported the sort of like, you know,
the idea that they should fight to keep the language.
Yeah, but there's a difference between keeping the language and having a country.
Yeah, we were always like, you know, "Yeah, French is incredible."
And we went to a French lycée.
Like, French was our language.
It was our culture.
Our education is in French.
I grew up-- even though I'm from Lebanon and my family speaks Arabic,
I grew up in a French school in Lebanon and I grew up watching French cartoons.
Same.
My parents listened to French music.
Same.
So, there's a deep connection with the French language.
But we also felt like our French language and our French culture was quite different than the French Canadian culture.
And in fact, there was a huge disconnect because we--
One thing I kind of wonder too is like, what are the ways in which French Canadian culture is connected to French culture?
It's myth. It's folklore, dude. It's pure folklore.
Quebec is to France what Australia is to England.
So, they would send, you know, prisoners and people-- they would send people in quarantine, actually, to Quebec from France just to get the undesirables out of the way.
So, it created another thing entirely.
There might be, you know--
What are the hallmarks of French Canadian culture?
Of like white Catholic French Canadian culture that you're describing as something that you were not quite a part of?
It's actually way more Catholic than France is.
And that's one thing that P&I-- France is secular, right?
France is fiercely secular.
Quebec was fiercely Catholic up until the 60s.
Very religious.
Yeah.
And so, like, we come to-- imagine, like, we come to Canada, like, I'm Jewish, Pisa is Lebanese, dude.
And we have all these friends that have like their communion, their first communion.
Yeah. And even-- but even me as a Christian, as a Lebanese Christian--
You probably still thought they were hardcore.
Catholicism is much different than Middle Eastern Christianism.
Yeah, it's crazy. It's hardcore.
All the swear words in French Canadian dialect are all-- they're all from the church lexicon.
So, like, you--
Wait, I feel like you told me this once.
Wait--
Tabernacle.
In what occasion would a French Canadian person say tabernacle?
Like, they stub their toe?
Every day.
Every other day.
Every hour.
Every other day.
But it means like--
Yeah, every time.
Like, f***, like--
Yeah, tabernacle. We say it too.
Yeah.
Dave and I say it.
All day.
But how would they pronounce it?
Tabarnak.
Just like you get outside and the door of the car is frozen shut. You just say tabarnak.
Tabarnak.
Literally, we probably say that 25 times a day.
Yeah.
Tabernacle, Eucharist.
What is the Eucharist, by the way?
In French, it's called osti.
It's the little thing you put in church in your mouth.
Oh, the wafer.
The little--
Yeah, I know that as a communion wafer.
So, that's some uniquely French Canadian s***.
If you read French Canadian literature, like anything that deals from an era that predates the 60s, which was like the Cultural Revolution in French Canada, super
Catholic.
So, P and I, like P said, we were bonding over this culture that we felt part of but not. And also, the xenophobic undertones of the French Canadian independentist
movement kind of triggered us a little bit.
And I'll just bookend this story by saying that in 1995, the referendum came. And P and I were just homies back then. And we had gone on a weekend trip to Toronto.
As we were on the train ride back from Toronto, remember?
The results came in. And the no won again.
Yeah.
And the leader of the separatist party made a speech that's like famous in the annals of Quebec history.
And he said, this is in 1995, he said, "We lost because of two things, money and the ethnic votes."
And so, that was like--
Yeah, because you guys were the ethnic votes.
Yeah, which meant money meant the English.
English.
And ethnic votes was, you know, immigrants.
But it's a famous speech.
But there's many layers. It's like saying that French Canadians were all sort of, you know, xenophobic.
No, not at all.
I wouldn't go that far.
No, not at all. My parents, all their friends are French Canadians.
And they're all like in the arts or intellectuals and all that stuff.
It was actually a really beautiful society, a beautiful culture. And P and I partook in it like crazy.
It's just that we felt like we were in this liminal space and we did deal with some discrimination.
But it was at the same time--
It was just like, it wasn't black or white, like you're saying. It was really ambiguous.
It's very, you know, and yeah.
Quebec is a complex place. And the further you go, the less English they speak.
Yeah.
If you go to Quebec and then even further--
You mean outside of Montreal?
Outside of Montreal. If you go east, east, east, then you can forget--
Anywhere.
You can forget about English entirely.
Except in the eastern townships.
Except in the eastern townships.
Yeah. Except in this little pocket where there was American, where there was American British loyalists who moved up to Canada.
Yeah. The eastern townships is kind of like the Catskills.
Yeah, kind of. And you've got these American loyalists that moved up and were like, we're setting up shop here because you guys are still British.
Yeah. Right.
Crazy place.
I mean, for you guys growing up in Montreal, like the English versus French rivalry was still so alive.
You know, for us growing up reading about American history, this idea like, oh, the French sold a bunch of land.
It's just like, what? French people.
Then it comes up once in a blue moon, like the average American person knows there's something French about Louisiana.
But then even that, when you research that, the famous Cajun culture, I didn't know this.
This is how ignorant I was. This famous Cajun culture and Cajun cooking and all, you know, that we talk about so much.
Cajun comes from Acadian because they came from Canada.
I think I still assume like, oh, they're French, but they came from, they were kicked out of Canada by the English.
In Quebec, you go east and there's a whole other culture of Acadians also.
Well, that's not in the province of Quebec. It's not in the province of Quebec.
No, it's in Newfoundland.
New Brunswick.
New Brunswick, yeah. But you go east.
Or Nova Scotia. Yeah, Daniel Lanois, dude. Daniel Lanois is that.
Is Acadian?
Acadian is very, very alive.
It's a whole other thing.
In the eastern Canada.
Yeah, it's a whole other thing.
And it's different. We don't understand them.
I know.
In the maritime.
There's no equivalent of that in the US, like that official bilingual. Obviously, there's many bilingual people, but that official bilingual.
I mean, it's going to get like that with Spanish. We're starting to see it.
Yeah.
But it was really, really intense. And you know, P, when I would read Quebec literature from the 70s, okay, the French that they used to speak was so messed up compared to
the French that they spoke when we were kids.
Right.
So it's proof that actually the draconian language laws, what's called the language laws, they worked.
They worked.
Yeah, they really worked.
And so now when you go back to Montreal, you basically spend all day speaking French.
We can't tell, dude, because now capitalism took over.
No, no, no. Actually, now that I go back, people that I would speak French with.
Me too.
And I would speak English.
And I speak French with them now and they're like, and then he answers in English.
And they want to switch to English.
Me too.
Which is really weird to me.
People I've known for a long time, like my sister's best friend and stuff like that.
Yeah, same.
You get there and it's like, yo, you were 12 years old and we spoke French and now you want to switch to English.
Every time I talk to you in French, this is weird.
Bilingualism really is so intense now.
But you know, the famous greeting in Montreal that's now become a meme is "bonjour, hi".
Bonjour, hi.
So every time you enter an establishment, like the clerk will be like, "bonjour, hi".
And that's the only place, nobody's saying that outside of Quebec.
No, it's Montreal really. But it's like the idiosyncratic, it's like the New York next online.
You know, it's like the sort of like very idiosyncratic doing greeting.
Bonjour, hi.
Would you say that to somebody you knew?
No, it's a commercial. It's like in a business because you don't know what language your patron is going to speak.
That's nice. Say bonjour, hi and however they respond, then you can roll with it.
Bonjour, hi.
Bonjour, hi.
And if you slow me down, it's my, my big failure.
If my parents are crying, then I'll dig a tunnel from my window to yours.
Yeah, a tunnel from my window to yours.
Before we get into music, I'm just thinking, only if you want to share the story, P, but talking about your background and stuff.
I always think about the story you told once about when they tried to make you go to the army in Lebanon.
Oh, yeah.
Would you be down to tell this story?
Just because, you know, we're talking about your guys' background and you're from--
Yeah, yeah.
Before you tell the story, just give us a little context. You were born in Lebanon.
I'll give you a context. So I was born in Lebanon in 1977. At the time I was born, the war had already been, you know, fully on for two years.
The Lebanese Civil War.
The Lebanese Civil War, yeah. It started in 1975. My father was a militia, so he spent most of his time in the army, in the militia, actually.
He wasn't even the official army. So I'm born in '77. I spent most of my childhood there.
We were thrown around a little bit in Egypt, too, because my grandparents are Egyptian.
So they shipped us away from the war for two years. And then at around eight years old, we moved to Canada.
Right.
From Egypt. So I went to Lebanon, Cyprus, Egypt, and then Canada, Montreal.
So, you know, I'm Lebanese. I have Lebanese passports, Lebanese citizenship.
So officially, I'm Lebanese. I hadn't gone to Lebanon in a while.
Yeah.
And 1998 comes around. So basically, I spent from '86 to '98, I didn't go to Lebanon at all.
It was just too dangerous, you know, and my father was a bit traumatized. We were all a bit traumatized. So nobody wanted to go back.
So that was 12 years gone, but those are very formative 12 years. That was from age eight to 20, roughly?
Yeah.
So you're coming of age, growing up. You went from being a little kid to an adult.
And I imagine you identified in many ways with Montreal and Quebec as the place you grew up.
I just feel comfortable being, you know, French-Canadian, being Lebanese. I'm also, you know, my grandmother's Italian.
I grew up with my grandmother. She would only speak Italian. So I feel I identify culturally as Lebanese.
But personally, you know, in everyday, I identify as a lot of different things.
His piece speaks Italian definitely better than English.
Oh, really? Wow.
English is the last language I learned. I was 12 years old.
Spanish?
Spanish, too. Yeah.
Oh, wow. So what are you, five total?
Yeah.
So you were like a college student at this point?
Yeah, you were. We were both in college.
So you and Dave were friends. You're into...
19. I was 19.
No, I'll tell you exactly. I remember the year.
He has a better memory.
It was 1998. So you were 21.
Yeah. It was right before I turned 20.
So you're 1920-ish. You're in school.
I haven't... Yeah. In college. I haven't been to Lebanon in 12 years.
And my cousin's getting married. So my family's like, we're going to go to Lebanon finally.
By that time, by the mid-90s, everything had calmed down quite a bit.
Wasn't it over the Christmas holiday?
Yeah. Yeah. I remember that.
So, you know, the country had started picking back up again. A lot of things had changed.
Reconstruction on the way. '95 to '98 was really like a sort of a brand new step for Lebanon.
And we decided to go for my cousin's wedding.
We went to the embassy to make sure that everything was in order for my military service exemption.
Of course, you know how things work.
They were like, yeah, it's fine. Don't worry about it. You're all good.
And that's because everybody your age who lived in Lebanon had to serve in the military.
Had to serve in the military.
Is it who lived in Lebanon or who were just Lebanese?
Who was Lebanese. So there you go. Yeah.
That's why you went to check it out ahead of time.
Yeah. Resident or not, if you're Lebanese, if you go to Lebanon, as the story will go, you have to do the military service.
So we go to the embassy and, you know, it's like you can imagine the vibe, like, you know, the secretary smoking a cigarette and she's like, yeah, you're fine.
Go home. Go, go visit your family. You're good.
Yeah. So we go to Lebanon and spend two weeks there. Wedding, etc. Blah, blah, blah.
Great times, etc.
My father by then was going back and forth to Lebanon a lot.
So he was staying six months there and going back to Montreal six months.
He was doing the shuttle between the two. So my mom and sister leave two days before me and I'm supposed to leave Lebanon alone.
My father is staying behind for another six months.
So I get to the airport. It's 6 a.m. I have an early flight on Air France.
So I check in, put my luggage through. Everything is fine.
I go in, I go to the gate, wait for the flight.
And Lebanon is it was it still is, but it was very militarized. Right.
So basically the airport is a military base and it's not the TSA over there.
It's the army that checks you. And there's multiple checkpoints before you even get on the plane.
Right. The equivalent of like seven TSA security checks.
And it's a military guy every time and the military base is downstairs.
So I go through all the checkpoints, blah, blah, blah.
And I get to the last checkpoint right before you get on the plane.
There's a guy at the door and he checks everybody before they even enter the plane.
So the last guy looks at me and he's just like sort of like, you know, checking me out.
And he's like, show me your passport. So I show him my passport.
I've given my Canadian passport as it was advised to do. He looks at my last name.
He looks at my last name is very like it's like saying Jackson in the US.
You know, it's very Lebanese. Looks at my last name, looks at where I'm born.
And he's like, where are your military exemption papers?
And I'm just like, what are you talking about? Keep in mind, it's like 6 a.m.
Everybody's tired. He's grumpy. You know, I'm just kind of confused as to what's happening.
Because the six previous guys had let me through.
He's like, no, you need your military exemption papers or you can't leave.
I'm like, it's got to be a joke. Ha ha ha ha. He's like, no, no, no. You're coming with me.
He stops the plane. The whole flight was late.
He had to pull my luck, my suitcase from the wherever they put the bottom of the plane.
Brings me down to the general's office who was sleeping on his couch, barefoot, mustache about seven inches thick.
This guy is literally sleeping. He's an older man, short guy.
We wake him up. His eyes are bloodshot red. He's annoyed.
And this soldier turns on me and he's like, this guy tried to escape the country.
He's a traitor, blah, blah, blah. All this is happening in Arabic.
So I imagine that's when it went into like full nightmare mode.
You just went to your cousin's wedding. You're heading back to Montreal.
And you're like, oh, this is a mistake. And then he goes, that goes full nightmare.
This man is a traitor.
All of a sudden, you know, in those scenes in movies or like animations, when the room turns red.
I go in, they close the door and this guy is five foot two.
The mustache is wider than him. He's annoyed. Then keep in mind, everybody has AK-47s on them at all times.
This guy is really mad. He's like, oh, thank you for bringing him to me.
I will take care of this. He's like, he's full on. He wants to get me. Right.
So I'm like, you know what the f*** is happening?
And he's like, you stay here. I'm going to go to Air France.
I'm going to get your luggage and you and I are going to have a chat. Wow.
And just and brought like, you know, by that time I'm sh*tting in my pants.
So he goes, takes my suitcase. He's like, OK, so where are you trying to go?
I'm like, I'm trying to go back home and I have exams, you know, like I'm going to I was going to business school.
But at that time, he's like, yeah, no, no, no. That's not how it works.
You need your military exemption papers or you're coming with me.
And I'm like, oh, sh*t. OK, can I call my father? He's like, nope, we will take care of that.
And I imagine mid 90s, you don't have any device on you.
Oh, no. Hell no. No devices. No devices.
He takes me to the military base and it's a trek, man, from the airport to the military base.
It's, you know, bumpy roads in the military vehicle.
It's hot. The dudes are angry. You know, I'm the worst person on the planet for them because I'm a traitor.
You know, I'm just like bougie, like a Canadian guy who comes in and they have to go through, you know, the service.
So I get to the military base and they call my father who comes and picks me up.
And my father's like, we have proof that he's supposed to be exempted in Lebanon.
If you're an only child, you're exempted from the military service, which I'm not.
But I'll get to that part of the story.
So my father's like, he's an only child. He's supposed to be blah, blah, blah.
Let's we'll fix this, you know, give us a couple of days.
So the guy's like, all right, fine. And keep in mind, Lebanon is really small.
So my father, having served for a long time, being in being injured during the war,
he had a way to talk to those guys and be like, let him go and we'll be back in a week or so with his papers.
Give us time to do it. Right. So they're like, fine. That's all right.
So then the work starts. Like my father starts calling friends and old war friends and old enemies and old, you know, people he knew.
Everything is a bit of money and a bit of friendship, a bit of, you know, personal relations.
And you can fix anything in Lebanon, which is today part of the bigger issue.
But we can get to that on another episode.
So, you know, he calls everybody we know. My whole family is.
And keep in mind, it's still like Sunday morning, 930 a.m.
Yeah. We wake everybody that we know, the whole family, the friends, the old school people from Lebanon.
When you go to elementary school together, it's actually a thing like it's a bonding point.
You know, whereas here, whoever's in elementary school, like, OK, sure.
You know, there you really remember and stay connected to the. It's an important relationship.
Elementary school. Anyways, all this to say that with a little bit of help from here, from there, you know, like slipping a little five hundred dollars to a priest
somewhere to give me a certain paper that I would need to prove that I am an only child.
And all in all, we needed like five different documents to prove that I was an only child from different people, which we all were able to bribe.
So I finally got the papers and it was time to go meet at the general's office, the main, main military base in the mountains in Lebanon.
I don't know if you saw this piece of art. It's very known in Lebanon.
It's this huge structure made with tanks. It's like a sculpture made with tanks.
Well, and yeah, that's that sculpture. It's actually really dope. It's like it's very brutalist.
Anyways, that structure sits outside of the general's office.
Oh, because that's like an official military art. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
So we go there and the army general is doing a bunch of exemptions that day and there's a lineup outside of his office.
It's not like, you know, there's no like reception where you have to wait. It's literally his office. The door is open.
There's a lineup outside and you can hear everything that's happening.
So I hear people inside crying, pleading like, "Sir, I have a family in France. My business is in Paris. My children are in Paris.
I have to go back. I can't do the military service. Like this is nonsense."
And he's refused. Bam! Religious guys, "Sir, I'm a man of faith. I don't do this. I can't be in the war, blah, blah, blah."
Bam! Denied. You know, like one after another, just denied, denied, denied.
At that phase of your life, college student in Montreal, was there any part of you that could even kind of make your peace with it and say,
"Okay, I'll serve in the military for a few years. I'll go back, link up with Dave."
I had made my peace. I had made my peace. It was done.
Once I saw an imam get refused and this poor guy with children and a business in France, I'm like,
"Where's he going to care about me, this f***ing 20-year-old, you know, able-bodied?"
He's not going to care. You know what I mean?
So I had made my peace with it. I was like, "All right, this is going to be my thing."
I mean, you know, my father did it.
And how long is the service?
It's undetermined. Keep in mind, you're coming out of the war. It's not like, you know, a Western country.
If you're in and there's trouble, you're staying in. You're going nowhere.
Right. So it's not like in a country where, okay, maybe things are tense, you'll go stand at the border for a few years and hang out and play dominoes.
No, no. It's Beirut, man. It's Beirut. Like, remember the '80s?
Yeah, it's heavy.
It's Beirut.
You had to reconcile yourself not just to not going home for years.
You also had to start to imagine you carrying an AK-47 fighting.
Exactly. Yeah. I had made my peace with it.
I was like, you know, "All right, I'm born here. I went through the war. My father did it. I guess this is what we do."
You know, I just had no choice.
Yesterday I spent asleep
Woke up in my clothes in a dirty heap
Spent the night trying to make a deadline
Squeezing complicated lives into a simple headline
Out of your face in an old Polaroid
Tidying the children's clothes and toys
You're smiling back at me, I took the photo from the fridge
Can't remember what then we did
Haven't been with a woman, feels like for years
Thought of you the whole time, you know, saw the tears
In any world sometimes produces a rose
The scent of it lingers, then it just goes
Okay, so then what happened? I'm quivering. So then your turn comes.
So my turn comes. So this guy, huge man, huge, huge guy, six foot six, 300 pounds.
Again, a mustache. His desk is literally 12 feet wide.
You know, like those old school 70s, like boss desk.
His desk is huge, taking up the whole room.
He's got permanent two guards on each side of him with an AK-47 the whole time.
Holding guards, no matter what happens.
So it's really intimidating. You get in, you sit down and the chairs are really small in front of him.
And I sit down with my father and he's annoyed because he's seen like 40 people like me before.
That day. And he's denied most of them, right?
We're in front of him. I'm quivering.
And he's right outside is on one side of his desk of his office is the sculpture.
And on the other side side is the training camp.
So you can see the doors, the windows are wide open.
There's people doing jumping jacks.
You can see people doing while you're there and they're screaming and there's trumpets and like it's, it's insane.
And you're like, that's going to be me in 30 minutes.
And I'm looking at that. I'm like, that's me in two hours.
This doesn't work out. Right. Yeah.
So we sit down, the guys are annoyed. It's hot.
There's no AC. The guards are sweating and they have to keep, you know, like their position.
And he looks at us and he's like, what do you want?
And so, you know, try to be nice. Like, hi, we're here for the exemption.
And my son, he's from Canada and here's the papers and et cetera, et cetera.
So we put him through all like, you know, the information that we have given the papers.
And this guy's a **** first of all.
So power tripping is not like frowned upon. It's like dope.
You know, like people do that. Right. It's an it's OK to power trip.
It's dope to power trip. OK.
Nobody's going to cancel you. Right.
So so the guy's like, looks at the paper, makes faces and he looks through my documents and he's just like uninterested.
Yeah. Throws them on the table. He's like, how do I know all of this is real?
You know, you're in Lebanon. Like, this is easy.
You know how many people are fraudulent and fake those papers?
And which is what we did, by the way. But, you know, and I'm like, no, sir, absolutely not.
And my father's like sweating bullets and he's trying to find plan B.
There's always plan B, C, D, E, Lebanon, which is what they're always after.
You know, he knows he can get something. So he's pushing us to do it.
So so he's like, man, those papers, they look fake to me.
I don't know about this. So my father gets in damage control, damage control, be mode. Right.
So he's like, oh, well, sir, I think we have some friends in common.
My father had prepared the thing. Right. Yeah. He's an army general.
My father served. My father was in militia. And there's connections. Yeah.
And like I said earlier, elementary school is a huge, huge thing in Lebanon.
If you're with somebody in elementary school, it's your family for life.
So my friends like we have somebody in common. You haven't seen him in a long time.
His name is dadadadada. He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, I remember. Yeah, yeah.
We went to elementary school together. And he just replies like, how do I know you know him?
Like you, anybody knows me. Anybody know, you know, the village is small.
Everybody knows me and him. You know what I mean? So my father's like, let's give him a call.
He agrees, picks the phone up. He had prepared the other guy to be on.
Oh, this is like who wants to be a millionaire? Yeah.
You got to have your friend waiting by the phone. Literally my lifeline.
Yeah, yeah. Your lifeline. Literally my lifeline.
So he calls the guy and then all of a sudden the general has a smile on his face.
He's like, oh, my God, how is your mom? We haven't seen each other for such a long time.
Oh, my God. This and that hangs up the phone and his face changes back to very serious mode.
Oh, wow. And he's like, yeah, that's cool. But I don't know that it was him on the phone.
And we're just like, oh, OK. Quick thinking, quick thinking.
The guy's like, I don't know. It could be anybody like I haven't heard his voice since elementary school.
How do I know it's his voice? So we're just like, all right, let's bring him here.
And my father calls him again. He's like, bro, come here right away.
So the guy comes, we wait and keep in mind, there's still people listening to us in the lineup outside.
How far away did this guy live? 40 minutes away.
So he makes the whole lineup wait while this guy comes because we're in the room awkwardly waiting for 40 minutes.
Oh, my God. Not saying a word. And the guy finally shows up and then it's like, oh, my God, it's you.
Ha ha ha ha. Oh, this is a great celebration. Turns to the guard. Go get us some coffee.
The guards come back with coffee, with a tray of coffee for everybody.
I don't drink coffee, but I drank coffee that day.
And, you know, he comes back with a tray of coffee and again, taking time.
They're like reminiscing old stories. They're like talking, chatting and doing all kinds of stuff.
And these people are still waiting outside. We're trying to get exempted.
So we stay there another hour. I think I stayed in there for two and a half hours.
So we stay there. We have the coffee, etc. Signs me the papers, stamps everything. We're on our way out.
Great story ends. We invite that general to dinner that same night at our house.
Right. Because it's courtesy. Right. Plus, he hasn't seen his friend for a long time.
My father's like, let's make sure this is all ending properly and there's no further issues.
We need this guy on our side. Dinner at home invites him over.
And the last bit of the story is we're having dinner. I'm going to the bathroom.
And this general is coming out of the bathroom. And as he's coming out, he looks at me and he grabs my head, you know, and like that sort of thing.
We call it Nuggies. He puts you in a headlock and gives you Nuggies.
Yeah. This guy's like strong. 300 pound, six foot six guy. Right.
He Nuggies me. Not six foot five. Not six foot seven. Six foot six.
He Nuggies me and he's like, I really scared you today, didn't I?
Oh, my God. I left the next day. I was on the plane the next day.
Two step, two step, two step, two step, two step, two step.
Bright lights keep you straight. Feels like looking in a magazine.
You're on the floor. Feels like dancing is the way to go.
But if you let her see that man say, "Footwork, ah!" Show her that you're not that shy.
Let her see that man say, "Footwork, ah!" Show her you're the type of guy.
So that's what was going on with P. That's a real, as they say, a sliding doors moment.
I mean, you know, everybody has some stories about imagine what my life might have been like if I grew up here or there.
I live, my parents didn't move or something. But you really had a very critical time in your life.
I mean, how different would things have been? No Chromio. No Chromio, that's for sure.
Well, maybe you would have to bring him back. Maybe you could have gotten Dave to join the Lebanese army and say,
"Come on, we can write songs in our free time. You come over here."
Kind of like when I moved to France or New York, actually. But we didn't have Chromio yet.
Right. You guys were just tight friends. No, we were in college.
We were making beats then. We were producing.
For Montreal-based rappers, mostly?
Yeah, mostly. But I had my little indie label at that time, too.
So we were like putting out records of our friends, but putting them out through Fat Beats
and kind of like dabbling in the thriving underground hip hop scene of the late 90s in New York.
One beat that I always think of that had an interesting life of its own that for a certain type of person,
they'll be like, "Wow, I seem to recall that the first viral Andy Milonakis freestyle was over one of your beats." Right?
Yeah. Yes, that's true.
And what's the story? So that was a beat you made for a...
It was for our local kind of like our crew of... Wow, you have a good memory.
It was a... That's like some Nardwar s***, by the way.
Oh, yeah, that's pretty Nardwar.
It's very Nardwar. That was for our crew of the group that A-Trek, Alain, my brother used to DJ for, and I made the beats for.
But it also had a New York underground hip hop group called Nonfiction.
Oh, right, right.
They're still really good friends of mine. And they are and were the dopest.
They were actually Jewish guys from Stairway City Projects and Canarsie.
Right, Ill Bill.
Ill Bill, Gortex, and those guys. And they were doing like really sucked out underground rap.
And we got them on a song and that song really blew up.
Like that vinyl sold a lot. And I mean, it's kind of crazy to think we were selling like 20,000 copies of a single back then.
It was a 12-inch underground hip hop single.
Anyway, is this right? I'm really on my Nardwar s***.
Was the sample in that song something that you found in P's parents' record collection?
Yeah, it was an Arabic song that I found at P's parents' house.
Wow, deep.
Yeah, in the basement. And that song became kind of like an underground hip hop mini classic.
And I remember the instrumental Pete Rock would play back when he had a show on Hot 97 and other rappers would freestyle to it and stuff.
And so I don't know how the hell Milo Nykes got it, but he did freestyle to it.
So it was floating out there.
It was floating out there, yeah.
[Rapping]
[Rapping]
(rap music)
- So when was the transition to Chromio?
- The way it kind of happened was,
P and I both worked at this record shop.
P was doing like accounting,
and I was like overseeing the hip hop section.
And Tiga, the techno DJ from Montreal,
who was already really, really well established by then,
he had the techno section of the record shop.
And at that time in hip hop,
like there was a bit of a paradigm shift.
This is like year 2000, 2001.
And like the musical aesthetic was changing
on the one hand you had like cash money,
bling bling kind of beats.
And on another hand,
you had like these kind of swizz,
you know, cork, triton, keyboard beats and stuff.
And even like, if you listen to an album
like Jay-Z's Blueprint, which came out on September 11,
a lot of those beats are like, all the Just Blaze beats,
they're like sampled, but like enhanced
with a lot of keyboard, lush keyboard arrangements.
I didn't want to do all that.
I thought all that was corny.
I was really just doing like Lorde finesse,
DITC kind of underground hip hop sample,
you know, that--
- Dusty old drum breaks.
- Yeah, like chop a drum break,
program drums, loop a sample,
filts like Black Moon beat miners.
And the rappers in our crew
and a lot of guys I was working with,
they were like, ah man, we want like crunk (beep)
or we want some like swizz DMX beats and all that.
And I wasn't into that.
So I kind of felt like hip hop was moving
in a direction that my production style didn't work with.
And at the same time,
Tiga, who was working in the record shop,
was like, man, like your beats are amazing.
Like your hip hop beats are so cool
and people really come in
and like buy these records you produce.
Like, wouldn't you like to do a record on my techno label?
And I was like, yeah, I'd love that.
That'd be fun.
And I could finally bring P back into the fold
'cause when I was producing hip hop,
like P was in, we were making beats together and stuff
and we were hanging out with each other
all the time, every day.
But we weren't a group together.
We hadn't been a group making music together
since high school when, you know,
we were trying to play funk in our high school band.
So I was like, cool, maybe P and I can start a band
and start an outfit.
And that's like where the idea for Chromio came.
And P really was like, you know,
he wanted to play talk box since we were 14 years old
and loved DJ Quick and Zap and Roger.
And I was like, man, like I've been sampling
all these 60s and 70s records,
but I love 80s music too.
I adore 80s music and you can't sample that.
The only person who's sampling that is Buff Daddy.
So maybe we can make something out of that, you know?
And the movie, "The Wedding Singer" had just come out.
And I remember P and I saw it like twice or three times.
And I think that's like the only,
the first pop culture moment that really like made fun
of the 80s and like celebrated the 80s.
And we were like, man, let's just make 80s music.
- Which is surprising 'cause we were still close
to the 80s, at least in Quebec.
- Right. - Yeah.
- Although I think-- - Well, I think that's why
it was funny for us. - The 80s lasted a long time.
- We were kind of trolling a little bit.
We knew we were trolling a little bit
'cause we were like, well, this music can pass for funk.
It could pass for like kind of B-boy electro,
but it could also pass for 80s stuff.
- I wanna talk about this for a second
'cause I was at the first Chromio show in New York back in--
- And their second Chromio show of all time.
- Second Chromio show ever back in 2001.
I was a freshman in college
and it's part of the story of how we met.
- 2002, Ed. - Oh, 2002.
Yeah, right, probably September, 2002.
So even then, we're only 12 years from the 80s,
but now we're in the 21st century,
the end of history, the internet era.
It's almost hard to describe how different
everybody's sense of time and culture is
because like you said, Pete, late 90s,
you guys are barely out of the 80s
and maybe by Quebec standards,
you're only like four years out of the 80s.
But if that, if that.
- But still-- - I grew a mullet.
Yeah, I grew a mullet when mullets were still around.
- There was stores where you could still get
like heavy metal sweatpants
and like crazy studded biker jackets.
Like there was shops.
We used to go in Montreal and buy,
we used to buy like Bon Jovi sweatpants and (beep)
like it was still the 80s.
Hair metal was full on.
- Right, so barely over if that.
But also in terms of like the way cool people thought,
the hipster intelligentsia of the time,
music critics, whatever, in the late 90s,
not only were the 80s relatively recent,
but no decade was more hated.
- No decade was more hated.
- There's no equivalent.
Even now, I don't think for somebody
who's like growing up today,
there's any type of decade bias now.
Nobody's like, oh, the 2000s, trash.
- It's the opposite.
They're celebrating the Paris Hilton years.
- Yeah, they celebrate it.
Whereas it's hard to describe the extent
to which in the late 90s,
people thought that 60s were cool, 70s were dope.
The 80s were an abomination
where everything almost went wrong.
And then thank God for the 90s,
the world got back on track.
- Thank God for grunge.
Thank God for Kurt Cobain.
Thank God for Michael Stipe.
Thank God for Pearl Jam, you know,
and thank God for pavement and all that stuff.
Thank God for Matador Records.
- Yeah, right.
That would be kind of like the music critic perspective
at the time.
Now that became very unfashionable too, but--
- Which we went completely against.
- Completely against.
- I think it's also funny
because like the stuff that you guys are referencing,
a lot of music after you referenced and celebrated,
but at the time, truly,
there was not just an unfashionability about the 80s.
It was revulsion, disgust.
They hated the music.
They hated the hairstyles.
Even like a joke on sitcoms,
people would look at pictures of themselves
from like seven years earlier and be like,
"Oh, there's no equivalent now."
- Which is crazy because like,
when I look at Seinfeld now,
they look like they're from the 80s still.
Like Jerry has a mullet, like George,
like they look like he's wearing pirate shirts.
He looks still, he still looks kind of glam,
but in our minds, yeah, like a whole,
it was like, I think the 80s, I mean,
there was, I don't know, it was the Cold War.
It was whatever.
- And why do you think people pay to the 80s so much?
Is it because like rock was kind of on the ropes?
- A lot of things went to the extreme in the 80s.
There was some sort of like general debauchery
on everything visually, musically, you know?
So I think people had a strong reaction to that.
- Yeah, and I think the 90s bled into the 2000s
because like the reaction to that in the 90s,
whether it's, you know, Fiona Apple
or Smashing Pumpkins and all those,
by the way, Smashing Pumpkins,
I think technically started in the 80s and so did REM.
- Oh yeah, REM definitely started in the 80s.
- The grungy reaction to the 80s,
I think was a music critic's dream
because the 80s were vulgar, lowbrow.
You know, you had new wave on,
you had glam, new wave, new romantics on one side,
everybody's wearing makeup.
You had disco, which all the rock intelligence here hated,
but then you had glam rock and hair metal,
which critics hated as well.
- Obviously there's so much, it's a full decade,
there's a lot happening,
but just to be clear,
the type of stuff that you guys were referencing,
which was deeply unfashionable.
You're referencing black 80s, is what you're saying?
- Yeah, and we never thought that it was corny
because coming from Canada
and loving hip hop culture and breakbeats
and funk and all that,
like there was nothing corny about it to us.
Like Warren G samples, Michael McDonald,
we didn't know, you know, the word yacht rock didn't exist.
We didn't even know what those guys looked like.
I didn't know what Hall and Oates looked like.
We didn't know there were mullets involved.
We didn't know anything.
We just thought the songs were dope.
- And I feel like two artists that I remember you telling me
you guys referenced and would talk about in interviews
and get significant pushback for,
which is very hard to imagine now,
but two that stand out to me who are white artists,
but maybe white artists who worked in like
more of an R&B idiom were Hall and Oates
and to a lesser extent, Phil Collins.
But like those were artists who a certain type of person,
a critic, a musician hated them.
- And a female.
- It's not like you guys were referencing like Motley Crue
and people were like,
"Oh, I don't know about Motley Crue."
You're referencing Hall and Oates and Phil Collins,
people who have like beloved songs
that are on the radio still today.
- More than all the Brian Eno songs put together.
And we knew this, we knew enough about this
that we were trolling a little bit,
but at the same time, we loved the provocation,
but we also loved that music.
We loved and we rediscovered Hall and Oates.
- Yeah, but just to add to that point,
I'm not sure about the extent of how you perceive that,
but let's keep in mind that I came in after all this.
So I arrived to North America
and my first album was Michael Jackson "Bad."
So I didn't know any of it.
I was exposed to it like as if it was a new thing.
- Yeah.
- Right, so I was discovering all of this.
- But same, we were discovering all this together.
- Level zero, I had no preconceived notion of,
or like, you know.
- Like I didn't know what George Clinton
and Funkadelic and Bootsy Collins
was before the "Delight" video.
I didn't know what Bootsy was.
- But that's true for also bigger acts
like Hall and Oates and Phil Collins.
I had no attachment to anything.
- See, I knew a little bit of the '80s pop thing
'cause I grew up watching videos, but I used to love that.
And I used to love Robert Palmer
and I never had a face thinking that (beep) was wack.
- When you're getting into that,
you're listening to that music in the '90s.
'Cause for me, when I first heard great '80s pop music,
it would be in a Time Warner commercial
for like hits of the '80s,
you know, where they would show you all that stuff.
- Awesome '80s, there was one, but I bought it.
I bought Awesome '80s, I thought it was bomb.
- No, no, that was really good (beep)
but it always seemed like this funny blast from the past
because for me, I was hyper aware
that all the kids at my school listened to
either like Notorious B.I.G.
or like Red Hot Chili Peppers.
- For us, we were like, yo, Hall and Oates,
like I remembered vaguely Hall and Oates from the '80s,
but even then, like when we rediscovered it,
we were just like, oh, it's the Say No Ghost sample,
it's the De La Soul sample.
- Right, you saw the way that it connected deeply
to hip hop in the '90s.
- So for us, it was cool.
And actually when we would do,
let's say we do a DJ set, right?
- Yeah.
- We do like a little DJ set or whatever,
play some hip hop, then play Biggie,
Mo Money Mo Problems, throw in the original,
Dinah Ross, whatever, or Rapper's Delight, Chic,
like there was nothing corny.
If anything, it was just dope.
It was like, it was history.
And you know, hip hop loves Phil Collins.
So we were like, you know, hip hop loves Phil Collins.
- And Hall and Oates.
So that was our prism, was hip hop.
- Right, and so we're talking about-
- Steely Dan, yeah.
- But even Steely Dan, think Lord Tariq and Peter Guns.
(imitates drum roll)
So we're like, yeah, of course that's hot.
- Now everybody seems to love Steely Dan,
but the late '90s, yeah, it was this like,
before they even had the term dad rock,
where at least you could call it something
and have fun with it.
It was like, oh, Steely Dan.
- It was just the opposite of punk.
It was the opposite of punk.
- Right, and you guys were never punk rockers.
- Nope, didn't know the first thing about it.
- I don't know, to me it was more punk
to bring back the '80s against everybody's will.
It's more of a punk rock move than anything.
- Big time.
- And Dave, I remember having a conversation with you
where I was saying something about The Clash
and you said, "Nobody really likes The Clash, right?"
And I was like, "No, no, people like The Clash."
- Dude, we had this conversation with Ariel.
I know five songs by The Clash, tops.
- Right, but you would give it up for,
should I stay or should I go?
You'd give it up for the hits, at least.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would.
- And I imagine that you guys had basically zero connection
to the Guided by Voices, Pavement.
- Never even heard it, nope.
- Have you ever heard a Pavement song?
- Never. - Nope.
- What about late '90s, like Radiohead?
Would you listen to OK Computer?
- Never. - Nope.
- Because you just had zero--
- Only (beep) that was hip hop adjacent.
So let's say, for instance, only (beep) that had a break.
So for instance, the opening of Close to Me by The Cure.
(imitates beat)
That's a break.
- That's a Lindro muscle.
- So we'd (beep) with that.
Anything a DJ could play.
Anything that had a break beat,
even some of those R.E.M. songs,
they kind of have a break, so we like them.
Portishead we love, 'cause that was hip hop.
Love Portishead, love Portishead,
love Massive Attack, 'cause that was hip hop.
We kind of felt it was hip hop light,
but we still liked it.
Some Radiohead, like Kid A, we were like,
oh, this is cool, it's like drum machines.
It's like, we just were like,
oh, okay, they're doing Arthur Baker (beep), cool.
But the sort of like, that indie rock--
- Paranoid Android Left You Cold.
Do you even know that song?
- No, never, no.
I mean, now I know it.
I knew it.
I discovered all these songs in the mashups era, actually.
- Oh, right.
- Yeah, it wasn't for us, but anything that had a break,
like The Cure, Close to Me, or like--
- Great song.
(imitating drum beat)
You could bring that back as a DJ, and then that was hot.
- Right.
- We literally looked at everything in terms of a break.
Like, are there drums?
Is it a break you can backtrack and like loop?
Then cool, we like it.
- Or can you bob your head to it?
Can you sample it?
Also, can you sample it?
You know, like, can you sample it?
Is it just a break?
Like the beginning--
- Or is it soulful enough?
- Is it soulful enough?
Like, for instance, we would like--
- I would like Spandau Ballet for, you know,
just because it was sampled.
- But talking about songs that came out while we were kids,
like we loved Cardigans, 'cause that was like funky.
We were like, oh, this is cool.
- That was like the best song
on the old rock radio at that time.
- Yeah, Swedish.
- Not indie rock, just quality pop music.
- Deeply, deeply ABBA.
♪ Dear, I fear we're facing a problem ♪
♪ You love me no longer ♪
♪ I know and maybe there is nothing ♪
♪ That I can do to make you do ♪
♪ Mama tells me I shouldn't bother ♪
♪ That I ought to stick to another man ♪
♪ A man that surely deserves me ♪
♪ But I think I do ♪
♪ So I cry and I pray, I think ♪
♪ Love me, love me ♪
♪ Say that you love me ♪
♪ Fool me, fool me ♪
♪ Go on and fool me ♪
♪ Love me, love me ♪
♪ Pretend that you love me ♪
♪ Leave me, leave me ♪
♪ Just say that you need me ♪
♪ You ♪
♪ So I cry ♪
♪ You ♪
♪ And I beg for you to ♪
♪ Love me, love me ♪
♪ Say that you love me ♪
♪ Leave me, leave me ♪
♪ Just say that you need me ♪
♪ I don't care about anything but you ♪
- And then, you know, it goes without saying
that P, your interest in the TalkBox,
I mean, there's still barely anybody doing it,
although you might, it's probably--
- No, it's huge now.
- It's a familiar sound to probably
a young listener's ears, but--
- No, there's a TalkBox renaissance on TikTok now.
- Oh, wow, that makes sense.
- Big TikTok thing.
- But back then, late '90s, early 2000s,
nobody's playing TalkBox on stage.
- I mean, but yeah, but it's not true.
- Every generation has the one guy.
- Yeah.
- So when I was growing up, I grew up mostly with hip hop.
And when I was growing up with Blackstreet and then--
- Teddy Riley.
- Teddy Riley was the first after Roger.
They had a brief moment where they--
- Overlapped.
- Overlapped, maybe two, three years,
and then Roger died in '99.
So Teddy Riley took over, and then when Jodeci came in--
- No, but yeah, but then--
- When DJ Quik and Jodeci came in,
those were the next two.
- Okay, and then after that, California Love.
- And then after that, yeah.
- California Love, everybody knew TalkBox with that one.
- Right, they knew the sound of the TalkBox.
- California Love was earlier, Roger was still alive.
- Yeah.
- He did, so--
- But I'm saying, California Love,
well, Jodeci is before that.
Jodeci is '95.
- I'm talking about the, who came after Roger.
Every generation has one guy who pushes the TalkBox through.
- Right, but also, but it's worth pointing out--
- Roger came back.
- The kind of space that you guys ended up in
was kind of an indie space,
'cause you went on this kind of Canadian indie tour
that was you, the Unicorns, and Arcade Fire.
- Well, not in that order.
- Yeah, what was the order?
- We gotta get the language.
So Unicorns headline,
us, second of three, Arcade Fire opener.
- And when was this tour?
- This was in 2000, it was in the fall of 2003.
No, no, no, no, no, no, I'm wrong.
It was in the-- - A year later.
- It was one year later.
It was in four, I think, our album had just come out.
Might've been in the spring 2004.
- You were playing to indie fans,
so that was really something different--
- It was hard. - With the TalkBox.
- I mean, I don't know why--
- I guess our job with the TalkBox
was to recontextualize it,
'cause it always had stayed in the realm of R&B, funk,
like the lineage, and we just took it out of that lineage.
- I don't know how, you know why we ended up being indie?
Because there were DJs playing techno or mashups,
but we weren't DJs,
and the only people touring were indie bands, were bands.
So we had nowhere else to go.
- And we're not R&B enough to play those circuits, so--
- And even those circuits--
- That barely existed, maybe for older people.
- Those big R&B bands, even of the 2000s,
Neo, they didn't even play shows.
They played radio.
- And then there was this burgeoning indie disco,
electro things coming together.
- Thank God.
- Yeah, right, and that-- - Thank God for that.
- You're in the right place at the right time.
♪ You wanna play yourself and no one else, all right ♪
♪ All right ♪
♪ And you wanna go out, wanna scream and shout tonight ♪
♪ Tonight ♪
♪ Want some space, like get out of my face, all right ♪
♪ All right ♪
♪ You want me back, put your life on track tonight ♪
♪ Tonight ♪
♪ You're a geeky girl ♪
♪ I can tell when I look in your big brown eyes ♪
♪ You want my world, but how can I do yours if I can't do mine ♪
♪ I try to change, but somehow it's real, I don't feel the same ♪
♪ It's all about what you want, what you say, how you feel ♪
♪ How you play, yeah ♪
♪ You're a needy girl ♪
♪ And you want my world ♪
♪ I try to change ♪
♪ But it's not the same ♪
- And then the kind of like neo-80s decade began.
It came back with a vengeance.
- Came back with a vengeance, and it's so weird
because we had predated it, you know,
a little bit with "Needy Girl" and our first album,
but somehow people really discovered us three years later.
And all of a sudden people were wearing neon again.
And, you know. - Wayfares are back.
- Wayfares are back.
And, you know, Keds and I guess our music fit.
- Modern mullets are back.
- Our music fit right in.
It was amazing.
It was perfect.
And we didn't even have to try.
- I mean, it makes sense that for such a long time
and for a certain type of, for a lot of like, whatever,
the critically acclaimed music,
the '60s represented this like gravitational center
that even decades later, the '60s was seen as the pinnacle,
the summer of love, what it represented culturally.
And eventually it did feel like the '80s became
the new center after really being denigrated.
And it still kind of is. - I think also like,
I wonder, I mean, we'd have to really delve deep,
but I wonder if mashups didn't help.
Even some of the indie hipster sort of dance floor friendly
stuff of the early 2000s, there's like an '80s,
a pre-sentiment of the '80s.
Like the Strokes had some '80s fonts.
LCD had disco ball. - And they ended up
getting very '80s.
- Yeah. - They started kind of
'70s and they went to full '80s.
- But they were already kind of '80s a little bit.
Like they, you know, the Converse, the tight pants,
that was kind of like Ramones '80s,
downtown New York '80s.
And then like a lot of fonts were already kind of '80s.
You know, it was like, you could feel it a little bit.
You know, even Andrew WK, who was like the king
of that kind of like early 2000s hipster movement,
he was kind of hair metal in a way.
- Oh, totally.
You know, he was doing a modern version of hair metal
with the same, like the big synths and like the same energy.
- So I feel like that and electroclash and all that,
that sort of paved the way.
We were still a lot more funk.
Nobody wanted to go near the word funk,
but people liked electro, people were into '80s,
there were 808s, there were four corners.
- Mostly came from new wave and, you know,
and we were not that.
- But at least it was close.
At least people understood our language.
- It was closer.
- People were doing like, okay, yeah, you guys are '80s,
you guys are just the whack '80s,
but like we intersect 'cause we intersect
'cause we like neon fonts that go like this.
- Right.
- And then as indie dance exploded
and the colors became more fluorescent
and people started looking to, you know,
Claxons and all those British and French bands,
somehow our brand of funky electronic music
just kind of got subsumed under electro, neo-electro.
- In a general sense of like alternative.
- Yeah, and then next thing you know,
Vampire Weekend asks us for a remix.
- That's right.
Kids Don't Stand a Chance remix,
one of our all-time best remixes.
- That's your all-time best remix.
It's actually, it might be our all-time best remix too.
- That's a really good one.
♪ Never standing back stroke ♪
♪ All the way to France ♪
♪ Shining, shining cufflinks ♪
♪ Should sleep doing hats ♪
♪ Been sharp man of morning ♪
♪ Coming for to dance ♪
♪ You're a dipshit goddamned ♪
♪ Kids don't stand a chance ♪
♪ Kids don't stand ♪
♪ Kids don't stand a chance ♪
♪ Kids don't stand ♪
♪ Kids don't stand a chance ♪
- Before we get into the top five,
just because it is time crisis,
I am just curious about like the food scene
growing up in Montreal.
I mean, I get the impression now
everything's the same everywhere,
but just like, you were saying back in the day,
the nearest Taco Bell was 90 minutes.
Is there a Taco Bell in Montreal now?
- Yes.
- Right.
But so back then, you know,
the foodies they'll talk about Montreal famously
as good bagels and there's poutine.
That's like the, you get it old school spots.
But like, was there like a unique
kind of chain restaurant thing in Montreal?
Or was it like, you were getting the same thing
as the rest of Canada?
Was there a Montreal McDonald's
or you just went to McDonald's?
- There was dope, Harvey's.
Harvey's is bomb.
- Right, so you mentioned, what is Harvey's?
- It was like a Canadian McDonald's.
It's like A&W, one of those guys, you know,
kind of an old.
- Mom and pop chain.
- Yeah.
- Kind of.
- It was bomb though.
- It wasn't a real mom and pop,
'cause it was a huge chain,
but it was the alternative to McDonald's.
- Better, much better.
I would die for Harvey's.
- Yeah.
And this is just like classic burgers and fries.
- Yeah, yeah, fast food.
But like-
- But in terms of like,
are you talking about cuisine,
like foodie stuff or just general?
- I guess I'm talking about regular people food,
not high end.
- Regular people food.
Greek food, lots of Greek.
Basically a reflection, correct me if I'm wrong, P,
but it was a non-pretentious reflection
of the ethnic makeup of Montreal.
- Yeah, so a lot of Greek food
and even all burger joints,
all like the dirty, dirty mom and pop burger joints
in Montreal are owned by Greek people.
- Well, same with Greek diners in New York.
That's sort of, that's universal.
- No, no, but it's not Greek food.
It's Quebec food.
- No, but Greek diners-
- But doing burgers and fries.
Right, yeah, a lot of Greek-
- Well, not all diners.
- A lot of Greek immigrants going
into the restaurant business.
- Yeah, that's just the thing.
But we had like-
- Could you find good pizza in Montreal in the 80s?
- Yeah.
- Pizza Yole, bomb.
- Yeah, but that was the only one.
I can tell you because my parents came in,
we opened a sort of a European product grocery store
in Montreal in the mid 80s.
My parents came two years before me.
So they started in 85, no, 84.
And at that time, people didn't know what Swiss cheese was.
They didn't know what prosciutto was.
They didn't know what-
- Well, there was a handful.
- A handful, but it was very bourgeois.
- It was very bourgeois.
- Wait, so in the mid 80s,
Swiss cheese was considered like very bourgeois?
- Swiss people knew.
No, no, maybe not Swiss.
- It was a bit like they would return the cheese
because it had holes in it.
They'd be like, "Yo, I've witnessed this with my own eyes."
They would come back and be like,
"This cheese is full of holes.
That's not okay.
I'm missing cheese in there."
- That's probably extreme, 'cause I remember it.
- Well, but your parents had a gourmet market.
And I was gonna say, I think between your parents' market
and a few others in Montreal,
Van Hoot, and there's a number of them
that my parents always went to.
One thing that Montreal had was the presence
of these kind of European-influenced, non-pretentious,
your parents' gourmet was non-pretentious.
Van Hoot was non-pretentious.
They were just kind of like European gourmet grocery stores,
but very reasonably priced.
It wasn't like-
- It wasn't like going to Dean and DeLuca.
- No.
- Well, actually, it was like going to Dean and DeLuca,
but not the price tag.
- But not the price tag.
Like super accessible, just quality products,
quality coffee.
- Imports.
- Oh yeah, wait.
And P, you said your parents' store
was the first, had the first espresso machine in Montreal?
- The first two espresso machines in Montreal,
one of them went to one that was
in Dave's parents' neighborhood,
which was called La Croissanterie.
And the other one went to-
- It was a coffee shop I grew up going to.
- And the other one went to us.
And we were making-
- It's like late 80s, right?
- Mid 80s, yeah.
85, 86.
And again, people didn't know what an espresso was.
They would throw, like they would spit the coffee out
in front of us because they were just used
to filter coffee, right?
If you take an espresso the first time in your life,
you're like, "What the (beep) is that?"
- But there was like, I have really fond memories though
of like us as kids growing up with food.
I mean, clearly, by the way, our French-Canadian friends
did not grow up without food.
But cosmopolitan families-
- We looked for it.
- Yeah, but it was not-
- Not only that, but we serviced it.
- Yeah, but it was not pretentious.
- Yeah, it wasn't.
For us, it was like, "Here's a taste of back home."
It's not like, "Here's the bougie thing."
It was just normal.
For my mom, for instance, when pesto came,
it was like, "Oh, Provence."
It was like south of France.
We just knew what it was.
It wasn't bougie.
And there was a few, like Pea's Parents Gourmet Market,
and there was a few other ones,
all started by immigrant families, mind you,
like Péa on Park Avenue.
All of them imported products from back home
or products from Europe to serve another ethnic clientele.
And we grew up around those.
It was dope.
It was really dope.
- It was like Queens, dude.
It was like Queens.
- Right.
Yeah.
- Right? - Yes.
True multicultural people from all over.
Food from all over.
♪ I don't wanna feel it for the second time ♪
♪ And I don't wanna call you up or wait for a sign ♪
♪ I just can't pretend I'm gonna make you mine ♪
♪ I never wanna be the last to know ♪
♪ So I guess I'll just go back to lay low ♪
♪ And I don't wanna feel it for the second time ♪
♪ And I don't wanna call you up or wait for a sign ♪
♪ I just can't pretend I'm gonna make you mine ♪
♪ I never wanna be the last to know ♪
♪ So I guess I'll just go back to lay low ♪
- It's time for the top five on iTunes.
So just for fun,
I decided we'd do a very special Evergreen top five
and we pulled the top five
from the 1995 Canadian year end charts.
- Let me see if I know some of these songs.
- These come from RPM,
which was a Canadian magazine
that published the best performing singles of Canada
from 1964 to 2000.
So you picked 95 randomly.
Although you said before 95 was like,
that had something to do with the referendum.
- Dude, 95 was the year that Quebec
could have become a separate country.
- Okay, so this is a major year and you guys are--
- Big year.
I remember the train ride like it was yesterday.
I was sweating bullets.
- All right, so you know this year well.
(speaking in foreign language)
- We were going back from Toronto.
- Coming back.
- Coming back to Toronto.
- It was a Sunday night.
- Yeah, we were together in the train.
- And we just said that.
- It's a short term memory.
- The number five song for all of the year 95 in Canada
happens to be a Canadian,
a great man named Brian Adams.
Have you ever really loved a woman?
- Yeah.
- Oh yeah, that's a good one.
- Classic 90s Spanish tropes.
- Yeah, what was up with the Spanish guitar in the 90s?
Where did that come from?
- Sting.
- Oh, Sting, it kind of brought it back.
- Tears in Heaven.
- Gypsy Kings.
- Gypsy Kings.
- Right.
- This sounds like a Boyz II Men slow jam.
- Oh yeah, totally.
- Like Babyface could have written it.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, Babyface writes songs like that.
- This is produced by Mutt Lang with Brian Adams.
- Another Canadian.
Is he Canadian or Australian?
- I'm not sure.
Are you guys familiar with the movie
that this was on the soundtrack for?
Don Juan DeMarco?
- No.
- Mutt Lang is South African.
- Well, really?
- What movie was it?
- It was called Don Juan DeMarco.
I actually was thinking about this movie recently.
- What is that?
- Johnny Depp plays a guy who believes he's Don Juan,
like the historical Don Juan, the lover.
And Marlon Brando plays his therapist.
- Oh wow.
- And I think it's a thing where Marlon Brando's
trying to be like, "This guy's nuts.
He thinks he's Don Juan."
But then over the course of it,
he actually helps him to find the passion inside his life.
- He finds an attachment.
- Yeah.
- That's so cool.
- But this is a classic example of like,
the song is so much better remembered than the movie.
- Although the premise to that movie sounds really good.
- Check it out.
Early Johnny Depp.
Obviously not the production,
but this is also like a very,
this song could have been from the '60s.
- Not with those drums.
- Yeah, no, no, not the production.
- The writing, yeah.
- Picture Tom Jones doing a Spanish style song.
You love a woman.
Like you can picture the arrangement.
- I could have pictured a Beatles version too.
- Oh yeah, yeah.
- One of those kitschy Beatles show tunes-y things.
- They had a little acoustic Spanish song, I think.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Could be a Mama and Papa song too.
- Yeah, the variety music.
- Yeah, in a way, this is like a throwback song.
This song is like unusually...
- Oh yeah, it's very throwback.
For the '90s, this was like a stylistic exercise song.
Black and white video, most likely.
Bomb though.
- But also it's like, it's leaning into like
the kitschy Spanish vibes more than a lot of like
cool R&B songs with a little bit of guitar.
- Yeah.
- There's a huge French Canadian scene
from the mid '80s with music from that style.
- Oh, French Canadian music with kind of like
a castanet Spanish.
- Yeah, yeah.
- And French too, French fans.
Huge.
- What do you mean big Spanish?
- French and Spanish kind of,
there's a lot of shared stuff like in the South, right?
The shared border.
The Gypsy Kings are from France.
- They wish.
- Yeah, they wish.
- The French wish.
- They wish that they were Spanish.
♪ And helpless in her arms ♪
♪ You know you really love ♪
- Bryan Adams, he had like a very kind of weird career
'cause he started doing some like funk and disco
and then he became like the summer '69 guy
and then he moved into this.
- Oh, I don't even know his funk disco songs.
I gotta go back.
- I know the summer '69 songs.
- Yeah, that's him.
- Fabulous.
- His first single was like this like,
it's sped up kind of like disco song.
It was maybe before he found his artistic voice.
- Ben 10, what is the album?
Cuts Like a Knife I think is called.
That's like the Bob Clear Mountain classic.
- This is his Bon Jovi moment.
- Yeah, when he went Bon Jovi rocker.
- But it's so dope.
It's more, he's more sleeveless.
I mean, the hair was always short, which was great.
You know?
Yeah, he's dope.
- Is there anything about him that reads to you
as like particularly Canadian?
- Yeah, I mean, I remember watching Canadian music
video shows and like him and Corey Hart
were our two short haired rock ambassadors.
And Corey Hart was brown hair,
Brian Adams was blonde hair.
And Corey Hart was a little more 80s,
Brian Adams was a little more late 80s, 90s,
but they were both,
they kind of looked like Ying and Yang a little bit.
- I never knew what Brian Adams looked like
until much later.
I always confuse him with Kevin Bacon for some reason.
- He looks like the same.
- Oh yeah, similar type.
- He looks like a blonde Corey Hart.
- Yeah, similar type.
- They're dope.
- All right, the number four song.
Okay, it's another Canadian artist.
- Who?
- I don't know this guy, Tom Cochran.
- Oh, he's dope.
- Oh really?
- Oh yeah.
- Which song is that?
- I Wish You Well.
- Tom Cochran's dope.
- Do you know this song, I Wish You Well?
- Play it, I'll tell you.
- Tom Cochran from Manitoba.
- He's dope.
- Oh wait, oh he's the Life is a Highway guy.
- Whoa, he had another hit?
- Yeah, like the Canadian Springsteen.
- He's a Canadian blue collar rocker, dude.
He's sleeveless.
He's also very sleeveless.
- 'Cause I think in America he's a total one hit wonder.
- No, he had hits in Canada.
There's no one hit wonders in Canada.
- 'Cause you support the Canadian.
- Even Cronio.
(laughing)
♪ Gonna write a new resume ♪
♪ Gonna write you off the page ♪
♪ Gonna take what we might take away ♪
- I don't know if I know this song.
I mean, I know it, but I don't know if I--
- You might have to hear it in progress.
♪ Oh, and in another year ♪
- I know this sound, okay.
♪ We'll look back on this life as if it were a scene ♪
♪ Maybe ♪
- So this is classic to you guys.
- Love it.
- Yeah.
- It wasn't a big song, but I know this song.
- I mean, it must have been pretty,
this is the number four song of the year.
- Yeah.
- Okay, yeah, to me this reads as like,
yeah, like 90s Tom Petty.
Classic rock, just a touch of pop grunge.
He's a Canadian Tom Petty?
- Canadian Springsteen, Canadian Tom Petty.
The guitar behind the back with the strap going like this.
You know, like you take your acoustic
and you wear it to the back.
- Yeah, right.
- And then you wear a sleeveless shirt.
- And then get into the distance.
- Dope, he was dope.
- I just figured "Life is a Highway" is some one-hit wonder,
but okay, so he's like a real songwriter respected person.
- In Canada, he's dope.
- Wait, let's throw on "Life is a Highway" for a second,
just for the people at home.
And what's your take on "Life is"?
So you always respected "Life is a Highway"?
- Who doesn't like that song?
I mean, that's just like guilty,
that was guilty pleasure.
- The production is amazing on this song.
- It swings, I forgot how much it swings.
- Yeah, it's a good groove.
- Dude, it's blue collar,
this could be a four non blonde swing.
- It's 80s still, like the little guitars and shit.
- Yeah, I don't know, it made me think of like...
- Spin Doctors.
- Yeah, it's a little Spin Doctors.
♪ We won't hesitate ♪
♪ Break down the guarded gate ♪
♪ There's not much time left today ♪
♪ Life is a highway ♪
♪ I wanna ride it all night long ♪
- Oh, nice, nice aphorism for us.
♪ Life is a highway ♪
♪ I wanna drive it all night long ♪
♪ Through all these cities and all these towns ♪
♪ It's in my blood and it's all around ♪
♪ I love you now like I loved you then ♪
- I never noticed he's out of pocket,
his vocals are, they're rushing.
- He's in power for a rock guy.
- Doesn't it kind of sound like
this song invented like modern country?
Like so much modern country from the 2000s
ended up sounding like this.
- True.
- Like I'm sure when this song came out,
nobody thought this is like a country song,
but a lot of country music headed towards this place.
- No, the video is still very like '90s, '50s.
There's like probably a Cadillac in there.
And actually his outfit in this video is fire.
- All right, I'm gonna look that up.
It also weirdly, it's a very different feel,
but makes me think a little bit of like,
she drives me crazy with like the (imitates guitar)
- The snare. - The guitar coming in
and the snare.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That snare.
- And the (imitates guitar)
- The octaves, yeah.
- Octave guitar.
All right, this song is a banger.
Okay, Tom Cochran.
All right, now I got more context for Tom Cochran.
And "Life is a Highway."
Beautiful song. - What else?
- Okay, number three.
Okay, this is their first American artist.
The number three song on the Canadian charts in '95,
Madonna.
Can you guess what a big Madonna song
from '95 would have been?
- '95 would have been like a, no.
"My Love," "Justify My Love."
- It's later.
- Hmm.
- '95.
- '95 was-- - "Dog" or "Justify My Love."
- No, no, no.
'95, wasn't that the--
- The album came out the year--
By the way, the album came out in '94
that this is from, I think.
- So that's after like a prayer.
- It's ballad-y. - I think she was--
Oh, isn't it Evita?
- Oh, Evita.
- Isn't it that? - It's not Evita yet.
It's off of bedtime stories,
written and produced by Madonna and Babyface.
- Oh, it's the one-- - "Take a Bow."
- It's the bomb one with the beat.
It's the one that's got the little hip hop--
- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- It's a--
Oh no, I don't know this one.
What's this one called?
- "Take a Bow."
You don't know this?
- Is that a train? - Maybe, but--
- This pairs really well with the Brian Adams, actually.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
It's an R&B song.
- But with that touch of like '60s--
- It's got all the little--
♪ Take a bow ♪
♪ The night is over ♪
♪ This masquerade is getting older ♪
♪ Lights are low ♪
♪ The curtain's down ♪
♪ There's no one here ♪
♪ Say your lines ♪
♪ But do you feel them ♪
♪ Do you mean what you say ♪
♪ When there's no one around ♪
♪ Watching you, watching me ♪
♪ One lonely star ♪
- This also has like a, could have been a Beatles song.
You know, like-- - Yeah, well,
Babyface writes--
- Babyface is connected to just that true
classical songwriting tradition.
- Yeah, it's some David Foster (beep)
- Yeah, yeah.
- That's all David Foster writes.
Another Canadian, by the way.
- Major Canadian.
- Major Canadian.
- Also, I gotta say to the Time Crisis community and you,
I was doing some research.
David Foster, when he first moved to LA
before he became a super producer,
and, you know, producing Celine Dion and Chicago
and all these things, was just a session keyboardist.
And one album he played keyboards on
was like a kind of random Bob Weir solo album.
So there's one-- - Fire.
- There's one intersection of the Grateful Dead
and David Foster in the history of music.
- That's just for you.
- That's just for me.
I'm like the only person who,
I saw that on Wikipedia, I was like, no.
♪ All the world loves the job ♪
♪ All the world loves the club ♪
- This song was featured in the season one finale of Friends
when Rachel discovers Ross is in love with her.
Were you guys watching Friends in the 90s?
- No.
- We didn't love it.
- What about now?
Have you seen the complete series?
- No.
- Now it's Friends.
- I mean, I watched it here and there,
but like secondhand, you know?
- You were watching Seinfeld?
- Yeah, Seinfeld is where it's at.
- We watched a little bit of Friends.
I didn't think it was that funny.
- This song also, it's like,
it's also very classic, like a classical pop song
in that it's like, it just takes this one metaphor.
That's like, we were two people on stage tonight.
The show's over.
The masquerade is done.
Take a bow.
It just sticks with it.
- Yeah.
- The show's over, say goodbye.
They just stick to it the whole song.
- Yeah.
- Like Frank Sinatra could have sang a version of this.
- But Toni Braxton too though.
- Right, yeah, exactly.
I guess baby face bridges the gap.
- Boyz II Men also.
- It's Boyz II Men, but it's also,
who wrote Killing Me Softly again?
- Joni Mitchell?
- Well, Roberta Flack sang it.
- And who wrote it?
- It was like some songwriter team.
- Who's the big female songwriter of like the 70s and 80s?
- Well, there's Carole King.
- Carole King.
- Yeah, I don't think she wrote that song, but she was.
- It's not, but Carole King writes songs like this too.
- Right.
- Not this production.
Maybe Roberta Flack wrote Killing Me Softly.
- She did the first hit version of it.
- She did the first hit version.
- No, somebody else wrote Killing Me Softly.
- That was a beautiful song.
- Yeah.
- That's a very solid Madonna single.
Okay, the number two song, also an American act.
I wonder if this meant anything to you at the time.
You definitely know it.
- Randoms.
Okay.
Ooh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Okay, sorry, go ahead.
- Charles Fox and Norman Gimble wrote Killing Me Softly.
They were like a-
- Yeah, I just saw that.
- Okay, so the number two song,
this was an American band that had one album
that just like went bonkers huge.
They never quite recaptured the success.
They kind of became the butt of jokes,
although they really-
- Black Crows?
- No.
- Nickelback?
- No, they're-
- No, no, this is from, they were big in '95.
- And it's not the Spin Doctors.
- No.
- Well, actually, Spin Doct-
- No, this is actually, in America at least,
and probably Canada too,
this is one of the biggest albums of the '90s.
But they kind of became the butt of jokes,
but they really, they did their thing.
- And it's a rock band?
- It's a rock band with an unusual name.
- Counting Crows?
- It's an unusual name.
- A rock band with an unusual name from the mid '90s.
- Okay, I'll give-
- Chumbawumba.
- Chumbawumba?
That's a good guess, China.
- Is that Chumbawumba?
- Okay.
- Wait, wait, Sixpence, None the Richer?
I mean, there's so many with weird names.
- No, but this is a big, big album.
This album, I'm pretty sure it went diamond.
- Pearl Jam?
- No, they didn't have songs on their radio.
- But you're right, Pearl Jam did go diamond.
Okay, the first word-
- But they were in the top 40 albums.
- Okay, I'm gonna give you the first word
in the band's name.
- Okay.
- It's Hootie.
- Hootie and the Blowfish.
- Hootie and the Blowfish.
- Right.
- You were referencing them in the sessions
for the last album.
- Oh, many times.
I wanted to go full Hootie, but I dialed it back.
- I know.
- Yeah, sad.
- I did get a sick Hootie and the Blowfish
long sleeve t-shirt that I had to buy from Malaysia.
I don't know why I ended up in Malaysia.
It was vintage.
- I only wanna be with you.
- Classic.
- I like the feel.
- That's the quintessential 90s drum,
funky rock drum pattern.
- Yeah, yeah.
That snare sound.
- And then layered with a G chord on the guitar.
- Whoa, you guys will appreciate this.
I'm looking at, I got some notes.
So the album, this is off Cracked Rearview,
became the biggest selling record in the history
of Atlantic Records, who you've put out some records with.
- Well, I was just gonna say,
you know what the backstory of this is, right?
So Hootie and the Blowfish was one of the first times
that major labels started paying attention
to what was sold by local distributors.
And there's one A&R in Atlantic, I forgot his name,
but he was like, where are they?
They're from Virginia, right?
- South Carolina, yeah, down south.
- So the local indie distributor was carrying their CDs
and selling a (beep) load of them locally.
And this A&R at Atlantic was like, you know what?
If this is blowing up in South Carolina,
it's gonna blow up all over the world.
And that person was met with huge pushback
and they ended up signing Hootie and Blowfish
and blowing them up nationally,
following the blueprint that they had in their local kind of,
they were like a local Friday night blues band.
And in a way, Cash Money, Master P,
all the regional hip hop that ended up blowing,
nationally followed the same model.
- 'Cause back then people probably used to be like,
oh, it's just a regional thing.
Don't even, nobody's gonna listen to this New York City.
- Nobody's gonna listen to this blues band
from this cheesy blues band.
- And you know what?
I wonder if this is the same guy.
This guy maybe is a legendary A&R
because I read this story that part of why he signed them
in the first place is he must've been a real data guy,
a 90s data guy. - That's what I'm saying.
- Because even before that,
he was looking at catalog sales
and so that he would see that,
okay, it's the nine, whatever, 93, 94,
Nirvana's crushing it, Tupac's crushing it, whatever.
And then this guy would notice
that Bob Seger's greatest hits
would just stay in the top 100 always.
And he just had this insight where he was like,
this (beep) feels so old and it doesn't feel relevant,
but there's somebody discovering Bob Seger
and buying Bob Seger every week.
I wanna sign a new band that same person will buy.
And that was part of why he thought Hootie had potential.
And clearly he was right.
♪ Well there's nothing I can do ♪
♪ I only wanna be with you ♪
♪ You can call me a fool ♪
♪ I only wanna be with you ♪
♪ Yeah I'm tangled up in blue ♪
♪ I only wanna be with you ♪
- So Hootie was like, you know,
the same way that Obama and then subsequently Trump
were the first social media presidents
where their teams were really looking
at the numbers and stuff?
Hootie was probably one of the first big data bands
where somebody looked and said,
by sorting through like the trends of all this information,
I see something.
- Hootie is very Canadian too, I find.
- Yeah, he could have been in a Very Naked Ladies song.
- Yeah. - Right.
- It's like a little goofy, very easy.
Acoustic guitar was huge,
but with that drum beat you described,
it was kind of just big drums.
So what's number one?
- Wow.
This actually ties in with something
we were just talking about.
This is so weird that this song ended up being so big.
The number one song for the whole year of 1995 in Canada,
and honestly, very easily could have been,
might be the same for the US,
but we're looking at Canada,
is the Friends theme song,
the Rembrandts' I'll Be There For You.
- Oh, wow.
Very Canadian too.
- Yeah, this is Canadian in a way.
♪ No one told you life was gonna be this way ♪
♪ Your job's a joke, you broke ♪
♪ Your love life's the old way ♪
♪ It's like you're always stuck in second gear ♪
- The theme song of Friends was originally going to be
Shiny Happy People by R.E.M.,
but the band rejected the offer.
Warner Brothers Television instead decided
to recreate R.E.M.'s sound,
and asked the Rembrandts to write an original theme,
which became I'll Be There For You.
- Wow, this is supposed to be an R.E.M. song?
It's so weird just that there's this huge TV show,
and then the theme song was just on the radio
at the same time.
It was like--
- It's weird, that's like out of the '60s almost.
- Right.
♪ I've earned your breakfast so far ♪
♪ Things are going great ♪
♪ Your mother warned you there'd be days like these ♪
♪ I'm reaching in, I'll tell you where the road's from ♪
♪ You're telling your niece ♪
♪ I said I'll be there for you ♪
- It's funny, 'cause it's got like,
the chorus could have been like a power ballad,
if you slowed it down.
- Could be a Beast Boy song too.
- Yeah, it's weird.
You've got these surf elements,
and then you've got like a power ballad chorus,
and then you've got a '60s beat.
♪ No one could ever know me ♪
- Wow, I have no memory of the bridge.
- I never got to the bridge.
- Pretty Beatles, the bridge.
I was just gonna say the stock Beatles bridge.
♪ I'm going to face the day ♪
♪ Making it all my best ♪
♪ So I'll always love you ♪
♪ Even though I'm worse than best friends do ♪
- '90s guitar.
- All right, they're letting the guitars play for a minute.
♪ It's like you know we're stuck in second gear ♪
- This song really hit it big.
- It's dope.
- It's very literal.
- Yeah.
- You're my friend, so I'll be there for you.
- You're right, it's funny, 'cause it's also just like,
how many huge songs are like, almost-
- Everybody knows your name, cheers.
- And you know, almost every big hit song
isn't either about sex or romantic love.
And this could be, I guess, about romantic love,
but you know, maybe it's the "Friends" song.
It's really about friendship.
What does the show "Friends" signify to you guys?
Obviously you're not fans.
- Well, no, I thought it was, like, to us-
- Oh no, I always-
- I mean- - You're always anti-
- The associations, so let's not talk about like,
the proto, you know, Karen, white privilege thing
that is now the modern read of the show "Friends," but-
- There was no humor.
It was, she was like, mid-brow humor.
It was funny.
- Yeah, we always felt like there was a dichotomy
between "Friends" and "Seinfeld,"
and you could like, judge people by what camp they were in.
- Yeah, how do you compare, you know,
it's supposed to be a sitcom.
How do you compare, you know, "Seinfeld's" humor
and "Friends'" lack of humor?
- I thought the women on the show were really hot.
I thought that their styles were cool.
And actually, to be fair-
- Beautiful people.
- Beautiful people, and for me,
like being this kind of nerdy guy,
the first time a girl ever gave me a compliment,
she told me like, "Oh, you've got to,
you kind of have a thing like Ross from 'Friends.'"
- Ah, that's why.
- And I, that was like the first time-
- So you can't fully hate on the show?
- No, I can't, I can't.
'Cause I think there's a part of me in there, you know?
- Yeah, it made you a bit of a type.
- Yes, Archie, Archie type.
- An Archie, yeah.
- I wanted to be Joey.
I prefer Joey.
- You're more of a Joey.
- Dude, there's so-
- Is that the Italian guy?
- Yeah, yeah, he's the Italian guy.
- There's so much crazy Canadian music
that we could have delved into,
like specifically Canadian music.
- Well, yeah, what's the stuff from Canada in the '90s
that was only huge in Canada?
- The Jeff Healy band.
- That was a big band?
- Dude, the Jeff Healy-
- I'm not making fun of it,
just that when you don't know the name,
that just really sounds like-
- Dude, Jeff Healy-
- Oh, my dad's band is playing on Sunday afternoon,
would you come through?
- So what's it called?
- Jeff Healy.
- What's it called, the Jeff Healy band?
- He's a blind guitar player.
- Blind blues guitar player.
- He plays with, he plays like a-
- He plays like this.
He plays flat like that, like a piano, basically.
He lays the guitar flat.
- Oh, like a slide guitar, yeah.
- But he bends with his fingers
and he would play the guitar flat
and he would have like, he would have like a power trio.
So it was him, just drummer and bass player.
- Yeah.
- And it was blues,
but he was this white dude with a blonde mullet,
blind, playing, sitting down and shredding on a strap,
but basically like flat.
- And he would have like hits?
He was big?
- Yeah, he was like, he was big in Canada.
- John Cougar Mellencamp is another one.
- Well, he's American.
- John Cougar Mellencamp.
- He's American.
- Yeah, he's American.
(laughing)
Don't take him away from us.
- No, I mean, he's got, I guess,
maybe for you he's Canadian in spirit.
There's a guy called Colin James,
who was like, Colin James was interesting.
He patented his look after pompadour era John Lennon.
- Okay.
- So he kind of had like, he had a fuzzy pompadour
and like also a strap.
And he was kind of like a guitar blues guy,
lots of guitar, kind of a sexy boy,
but he had the whole John Lennon live in Hamburg look.
And he was big and obviously--
- Corey Hart, obviously, he's Canadian.
- Yes.
- I wear my sunglasses at night.
- So much real.
- But he's, Corey Hart's another person in the US.
- But he's international.
- But in the US he was seen as a one hit wonder.
A novelty song.
- In Canada, he's got another hit called "Never Surrender."
- Yeah.
- But then he quickly pivoted and became a huge songwriter,
moved to the Bahamas and wrote hits
for like Celine Dion and stuff like that.
And then there's the Tragically Hip, who are like,
they're--
- Oh, I know Tragically Hip, I love it.
And the guy died recently.
- Yeah, but that's a beloved, beloved Canadian institution.
- They're the greatest modern Canadian rock band.
And there was another Canadian band called the Tea Party.
- Don't know.
- And they were a Led Zeppelin knockoff
with a guy who sang like Eddie Vedder.
- Okay, so grunge.
- Huge.
Grunge, more classic rock.
Like--
- Yeah.
- Canadian, like a Canadian Pearl Jam.
- No, but yes, but--
- Kind of.
- But more, but less open,
Canadian Pearl Jam, but more Zeppelin.
They had heavy riffs.
- Like full riffs.
- And they had the little Arabian,
they were doing a lot of Arabian--
- A lot of mandolin.
- No, a lot of that sitar, guitar, cashmere thing,
which Pearl Jam doesn't go near.
- Right.
- But he sang like Eddie Vedder, sorry.
- Oh, it's just so wild that, you know,
the US and Canada, so much in common,
share this insanely long border.
So there's people coming back and forth every day.
And to think that there would be these significant
cultural holes where like people just really,
the average American has never heard of the Tea Party.
And I guess--
- By the way, the average, I hate to tell you this,
but because of Canadian quotas, right?
'Cause there's Canadian music quotas.
So there's bands that like,
the bands that like beat us every year at the Junos,
they're a lot of the times,
they're bands that couldn't sell out Barry Ballroom.
But in Canada, they crush.
- Because they're supported by the Canadian media.
- Yeah, but I don't want to paint them
as like industry plants or whatever.
They're just, you can have a really healthy career
in Canada, you are supported.
- No, I mean, it's amazing.
- You can have a career in Quebec.
- In Quebec, yeah.
- I'm saying at the end of the day,
when there's so much cultural monotony globally,
the fact that these two countries
that share this long border could still have--
- Very interesting.
- It's cool.
- In the 80s, there was bomb Canadian glam,
new wave hair metal bands
that I only realized were Canadian much later.
I thought they were ubiquitous.
And I was like,
you guys have never heard of the Thompson twins
and Platinum Blonde?
Like what?
- Heard of the Thompson twins, not Platinum Blonde.
- Platinum Blonde is crazy.
That's a dope name.
- Yeah, that is a dope name.
- I was shocked the first time I learned Rush was Canadian.
- But they were internationally huge, right?
Huge.
- And they had to go to the American Midwest to break.
If you ever watched the Rush doc,
they had to go tour,
do like 15 shows in different parts of Ohio.
- Yeah.
- That's rock country.
- Whereas Tragically Hip could just stay.
They're huge.
- Right, they could just do their thing.
All right, what's your favorite
Tragically Hip song to go out on?
- My favorite Tragically Hip song is Little Bones.
- You remember when this came out?
So this is from 1991?
- Yeah, and it reads as grunge.
Listen to it.
It's kind of dope.
I don't know how you would analyze it.
I really like this song.
- Thanks so much to Chromio.
We'll have you back on soon.
This is the Tragically Hip with Little Bones.
(laughing)
- Time Crisis.
- With Ezra Koenig.
you
View on TCU Wiki | Download Episode | Download CSV | Download Transcript