Don’t Believe A Word I Say with Bob Segarini

The Monday Morning Mailbag reminisces about Montreal and Rene Levesque, Crescent Street and Thursday’s bar, The Dudes, The Beatles and much, much more.

The Monday Morning Mailbag

Mike Campbell: Hey Bob,

Finally subscribed to the FYI blogorama and am liking it. Good to see someone is giving things a good think…

Stones? Personally, if you put me on a desert island and only allowed me 4 Stones albums, they would be – in order of preference – Let It Bleed, Exile On Mainstreet, Sticky Fingers and Beggar’s Banquet. Unless I miss my guess, three of those records had Mick Taylor on guitar (filling the Brian Jones role). So, as much as I like the early Stones/Jones stuff, I don’t think Brian was the catalyst for the band’s best material.

As for “Classic” rock radio… Please! I cannot tell you how much I hate this format. Why not just call it “Oldies” because that’s exactly what it is. Jesus… I rue the day that regulators allowed conglomerates to buy up independent-minded radio and I can’t imagine an argument contrary to that. It’s turned the listening landscape into bullshit and radio only has its own greedhound self to blame.

How did we get here!?! Well, I’ll tell you… Two things are foremost in the mind for me… MuchMusic started to pay attention to radio/retail charts when thinking about adding videos instead of doing what they’d done in the past – ignoring the old media and making THEM react to what Much was doing (astonishingly true – I was there) and radio turning to fucking “consultants” to determine what the “public” wanted to hear. Horrifying…

Basically, it all comes down to allowing accountants to take over the creative process. I don’t know if you know any accountants, but I’m here to tell you that they have NO business telling anyone how to do anything other than filing shady tax returns. They’re accountants for a reason – and that should be obvious to pretty much anyone. Stupid, stupid, stupid and I don’t see any way back from this awful brink except allowing the whole lousy thing to collapse under the weight of its own bloated bullshit.

Greed has murdered what once was a pretty amazing art form. I thought that was pretty much impossible but I’ve been proven wrong and I can’t even imagine being a kid at this particular point in time, trying to find the “new” Beatles, Stones, Who, Zeppelin, etc. etc. of my own generation. Christ, if this paradigm had existed when I was a teenager, I’d still be relegated to listening to the Ink Spots, Doris Day, the various “Bobbies” and whatever else was “happening” in the pre-Beatles day. Jesus wept…

Why is it that, somehow, every advertiser on television is “targeting” a pre-pubescent demo and radio seems to be targeting a generation of folks who are inexplicably stuck in 1973? What is that? It’s like FM has turned a bunch of trailer parks upside down, found the people that fell out of them on the ground, and asked them what they’d like to hear for the rest of their hopeless lives and, ASTONISHINGLY, have decided that that’s what radio is going to become for ALL TIME!?!

Personally, I was tired of listening to all those “classic” records about 6 months after they came out. Because I bought them. I listened to them. I loved them (at the time) and I looked forward to discovering the next “gem,” the next “big thing,” the next cool NEW band I could turn all my friends onto…

Honestly… Thank God my iTunes is awesomely excellent and has music on it that was disseminated – in some cases – just last week!!!!!!!

SEG SAYS: Feel free to post anytime, Mike. Great email! See you at CMW next March…

Mike was at MuchMusic back in the day and is currently doing a lot in the music business out of his home town of Halifax.

Roxanne: Ah, the good old days! i remember wanting to try out as a VJ, as I’d done a few commercials and cable shows, and seemed pretty photogenic. We were just coming off the road (Performer), and our manager said that I couldn’t do it, as it might affect our potential label deals. Never happened, (though God knows we tried, right Bob?) and I landed up as a French host on the new Shopping Network. So there, Dinardo!

Nick Krewen: Bob,

My understanding is that SOCAN is no longer issuing checks, but paying direct deposit for amounts under $500. A big difference from “withholding” money…

SEG SAYS: Yes and no. I did forget that if you have direct deposit, SOCAN deposits your royalties quarterly, regardless of how much you’ve made. If you do NOT have direct deposit, they do hold your checks until the $500 mark is achieved or surpassed.

Nick is a fine writer and a great interviewer. Nice to get a post from him.

Mark Vukovich: Must have been very uncomfortable with the Frenchies violating your civil rights my man…certainly glad that you persevered through it all. Of course you’d have been well received back in NorCal and no doubt you’d have been just as successful here as in the Great White North…!

…and Bob…I sent an email to you yesterday…don’t know if you got it. Here’s the gist…the art community of Stockton is forming a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame…you my friend along with Dave Brubeck, Gil Evans, Dirk Hamilton, and a couple of others were mentioned as possible 1st year honorees…high time I say.

SEG SAYS: A Stockton Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Whoa…

Jaimie Vernon: Bob, did you ever cross paths with The Crescent Street Stompers who did “Judy Played The Jukebox”?

SEG SAYS:Sure did. Walter Rossi and Jack (August) Geisinger were underfoot at Thursday’s and everywhere else musicians gathered. Great times with them and other band members from The Rockers and Moonquake. John Hagopian, Derek Kendrick…lots of great times with these guys, a bunch of seriously crazy fucks…

Here’s a link to the track you mentioned:

Ask Martin if he knows where Doug Pringle is these days. There’s a 1/4? tape of something he did at Andre Perry’s place in Montreal that I’ve got sitting in my basement. Maybe he’d want it back.

SEG SAYS: Yes he does, but he ain’t talkin’. Doug likes his privacy, but he is our West and consulting up a storm. That 71/2 reel of tape belongs to me. There are a couple of them that Doug and Rand did, and one that channels a bunch of classic rock tunes that I worked on.

Oh, and those Dudes demos that predated the catastrophic “We’re No Angels” debacle that caused you to go solo are here in all their 192kbps glory:

SEG SATS: Excellent! Those Dudes demos were some of my favourite tracks. Still partial to “Sugar”, Meet You After School”, and “Linda”.

I actually found the “We’re No Angels” album on the intertoobz…apparently we were a disco group, but we didn’t know it.

Keith (Keef) Fraser: “Stay away from fatty foods, quit smoking, cut back on the stress, and learn to relax. You know who you are…and get well soon.”

Listen to the man ‘you know who you are’, and I know who you are. After 7 months of cardiac rehab my therapist told me I’m 30% healthier then I was after my cardiac event.

It works ‘you know who you are’, it works.

Jim Chisholm: Got Abbey Road today and love it. Tried Beatles Guitar Hero at the store. It’s baffling why people wanna spend bucks on this when I could teach them to be real guitar heroes…for their money. LOL

Got bless The Beatles

SEG SAYS: Love the remasters, but the Rock Band thing still rubs me the wrong way…aural paint-by-numbers…beautiful, but lame.

Jaimie Vernon: Interesting you should pick an AMBUSH track for A & R Online this week. That’s the band my brother-in-law founded back in the ’90s. He’s since moved on but it’s good to see them finally getting some success.

Martin Aston: Vive L’Anglais (‘ow’s me French comin’ along )

SEG SAYS: About as good as mine…

Carla Lockhart: This just keeps getting better and better. I am addicted.

SEG SAYS: I’ve been told I’m a cross between a Pink’s Chili Dog and a Quaalude…or was that a bottle of Annie Greensprings Apple Wine and a valium?

Linda Dawe: You RAWK Bob……loved the new article on Marty and Doug and Montreal and Rene Levesque…..It is a walk down memory lane for me as I was spending a lot of time in Quebec during that period of time…..

Martin Mehuish: I got quite dewy-eyed when I saw the picture of Cheryl and Amy from back in those days. And am I right in recalling that with all the other stuff she had to put up with, there was a bloody huge pool table in the middle of the apartment? For some reason my mind drifted back to those days in Montréal when John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas related the story of one night being at his home with a friend and telling his first wife (Mackenzie’s mom) they were going out for a bit and would be right back. He was gone for months. They had gone to Cuba to drink some Cuba Libres and experience the revolution first hand. Cheryl was Joan of Arc and Florence Nightingale all rolled in one as far as I was concerned. Funny, I was married at the time too… and we wonder why it all went pear-shaped? Thanks for the kind remembrances, Bob.

SEG SAYS: There are many more to come, Martin…Montreal in the ‘70’s was a city of great music, and the best nightlife in North America. I was seduced by that city more than any other…and Cheryl was and is, a lovely and wonderful woman. I did not deserve her then, but I’ve learned from my mistakes. She is remarried and very happy in California, and I am very happy for her. She deserves all the happiness, love, and respect, she can get.

Nanci Malek: Mr. Segarini, Reading through your column this morning….loved it. Remember the days when I was your phone call “wake up” lady at City….lol. I will also never forget the cat and cat food incident as I had to answer all the complaint calls the next day. I welcome the chance to get involved in a Much get together as prior to Much we were doing Toronto Rocks which rocked!!!! I was there from 78 to 88 and am still in touch with peeps including Dini, who is now my neighbour.

SEG SAYS: You did so much more than just wake me up, Nanci. I seem to remember you were working all over the building…and yes, the cat/yogurt incident. There’s a story for another time…

Thanks to all of you who wrote and shared your stories with us. That’s why we’re here. See you all on Wednesday…

That’s enough for now. Email me at segarini@fyimusic.ca with your comments, complaints, and thoughts, and remember…don’t believe a word I say.

Bob “The Iceman” Segarini was in the bands The Family Tree, Roxy, The Wackers, The Dudes, and The Segarini Band and nominated for a Juno for production in 1978. He also hosted “Late Great Movies” on CITY TV, was a producer of Much Music, and an on-air personality on CHUM FM, Q107, SIRIUS Sat/Rad’s Iceberg 95, (now 85), and now provides content for radiothatdoesntsuck.com with RadioZombie, The Iceage, and PsychShack. Along with the love of his life, Jade (Pie) Dunlop, (who hosts and writes “I’ve Heard That Song Before” on RTDS), continues to write, make music, and record.