Don’t Believe A Word I Say with Bob Segarini

The Rock Files: The Segarini Band-Phase Three, Part 3

The plot, like good gravy, thickens…

So where were we? Oh yeah…The band is complete, A&M have bailed out, I no longer have Rita Coolidge or Graham Nash’s, or anybody else’s phone numbers anymore, (my phone book, clothes, smokes, and everything else I had with me had been stolen in Detroit when I went there to produce The Romantics), which is why I never called anyone I had met prior to 1978 ever again.

Phase One, the studio where we had been recording what was to become Gotta Have Pop, has informed me that I can pick up my tapes, which A&M has so graciously let me have, I have been entrusted with finding distribution or a label for The Romantics EP that Greg Shaw sent me to Detroit to produce, and I am half way through recording an album that I cannot finish until I find another label for The Segarini Band, which is now set to be a six piece group with Mark Bronson on drums, Phil Angers on bass, Mike St. Denis on lead guitar, Peter Kashur on 2^nd guitar, Drew Winters on keyboard, and me playing my standard chukka-chuka-chuka rhythm and cracking wise between tunes. A band that will be stillborn unless I solve a series of conundrums, wrapped in a puzzle, hidden in a riddle, bound in a query, enigmatically spirited away and hidden in a tree…by squirrels…probably.

In other words, my dear Watson…

The game is afoot.

As soon as I’m done with this, I’m going to make sure Michael Bolton never makes another record…

There have been times in my life when challenges were welcome. Obstacles that would make lesser men quit or turn back, insurmountable odds that would render most men impotent and unable to overcome the Walls of Negativity, the Locked Doors of Oppression, or the Bureaucracy of Fools, I relished those battles, and engaged in them head on. I would face these problems and cut them down like a 3 year old with a nail gun.

This was one of those times.

Armed with an album that needed finishing, a band that would be ready to play live soon, and a great EP by a band many of us thought could be the linchpin of a great new ‘wave’ of pop music…and even though the Canadian majors had shunned the Romantics tracks, I knew that one of the new, upstart Indies would hear what Shaw, Mackowycz, and I had heard, and leap at the chance to release their EP.

I wanted to get another major label to finish and release Gotta Have Pop, after all, how hard could it be. I had been on RCA, Elektra and CBS in the states, and A&M in Canada. Surely, it wouldn’t, couldn’t be that difficult to sign with another powerhouse. Toronto radio had played my EP, the press and disk jockeys had rallied around and I had done numerous interviews both in print and on the radio…I wasn’t worried about getting another deal, I had the impetus, the tools, and the determination and confidence of a drunk frat boy in a strip club, to get everything on track.

Of course, I also believed that, if given the opportunity, I could nail Kim Bassinger, and Tuesday Weld.

“Vot else do you haff dere, Bob…Vass is DOT?”

When I go to pick up the tapes from Phase One, I realize I can’t carry reels of 2 inch tape around with me all day, so I ask them to keep everything in the lock-up and I just grab a 7 inch reel of the rough mixes to take with me to listen to when I get home.

With the Romantics tape and the roughs of Gotta Have Pop under my arm, I made my first stop, a funky warehouse that was the home of a record import business known as PJ Imports. Maybe someone out there remembers what the PJ stood for, but I don’t.

I walked through rows and rows of shelves full of LP’s and picture sleeve 45’s. Shiny British, German, and Japanese releases of well known albums, but with different covers and sometimes, different songs lined the walls and were stacked high everywhere. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen the Spanish cover of Goat’s Head Soup, or a German boxed set of Buddy Holly albums and rarities, or the fold out British cover of Electric Ladyland.

The more I noticed, the slower I walked, until I stood in an aisle, looking through records by bands I’d never heard of. I had to have some of this stuff…

Just about then, a guy about my age and height with a little more girth, and the kind of hair that is best described as ‘wispy’, or ‘baby hair’, came up to me and, after watching me for a minute, cleared his throat and said, “Can I help you?”, with an accent right out of Hogan’s Heroes. I looked at him through glazed over eyes. I wanted to spend the next 2 weeks camping in here, going through all these albums.

“Uh…maybe. I have an appointment to see Wolfgang Spegg about a band called The Romantics”.

“Ah yes!” Zat vould be me, undt you must be Bob!”

He appeared to be very jolly.

A big grin and a hearty handshake later, we are sitting in his tiny office at the back of the warehouse.

“Vell, let’s hear zeez Romantics”, he says, his wispy blonde hair falling over one eye and causing a cold chill to race up my spine. I’m wondering who his dad is…or was.

“Yeah, okay”, says I, and hands him the tape.

Wolf threads it onto a brand new beautiful Revox tape deck, the first one I have ever seen, and cranks up the sound system.

He plays the tape all the way through, actually listening to the songs. Well, that’s interesting, I think, being used to record execs listening to 30 seconds of a track before moving onto the next one. This guy is alright.

After the last tune, he rewinds the tape and hands it back to me.

“It’s good”, he states, and continues, “Let me think about it”.

I spend the next 10 minutes telling him how good the band is live, how cool they look, how much the audience responds to them, and all the while he listened, leaning back in his swivel chair, fingers laced together, nodding as I spoke, and clearly taking in every word. I am even more impressed. Between his obvious enjoyment of music and his easy manner and ability to make you feel like he is really paying attention to you, I keep thinking about how cool it would be to be able to ransack this place and cart off an armload of those wonderful imported records in the warehouse. I shake off the urge to knock him unconscious and pillage the place. That would just be wrong.

I thank him for his time and he asks me to leave the tape, and tells me to call him in a few days. I shake his hand, pick up the Gotta Have Pop tape, and turn to leave.

“Vot else do you haff dere, Bob…Vass is DOT?”, he says, pointing to the tape box in my hand.

“Oh, just some rough mixes of an album I’m working on”, not wanting to discuss my major label calling card, “nothing’s done yet.”

“Could you leef zat vit me too?”, he says, holding out his upturned palm.

“Uhh, sure, but I’ll need it back in a couple of days…I have some meetings next week.” He scoops the box out of my hand and puts it on his desk, shakes my hand again, and walks me to the door.

“It vas nice talking mit you. don’t forget to call”, and with that, turned back to his office, walked in, and shut the door.

I click my heels together, salute the door, and begin to goose-step out of the warehouse.

As I’m marching through the aisles, I hear a voice behind me.

“Oh yes, I see you’ve met Wolfgang.”

I wheel around and see a thin man carrying an armload of albums, punk albums from England. In a lilting, South London accent that reminds me of an upper class character from a Monty Python sketch, the voice continues…

“ Hello, I’m Wolfgang’s partner, Phil Lubman. Were you here about Bomb?”

“Bomb?”, I ask.

“Yes. Bomb”, says Lord Album Boy.

“What’s Bomb?”

“Why, it’s our new record label!”.

Bomb? What a stupid fucking name for a record company.

Continued next Wednesday in The Rock Files…

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, The Segarini Band, and Cats and Dogs, 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.