Episode 10 transcript

Note: this transcript is AI-generated, and as such, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.

Chad (00:01.654)
Hello and welcome back to the Aural Mess podcast. This week I'm joined by Fiona McQuarrie. Fiona is an author, a music journalist, and I understand you have a day job, Fiona. Would you like to introduce yourself and tell us a bit about what else you do?

Fiona McQuarrie (00:14.254)
Sure. Hi everyone. My day job is I am the Special Projects Officer at the BC Council on Admissions and Transfer, which is the government agency that runs the post-secondary transfer credit system in the province of British Columbia. So I spend my days working on projects around awarding transfer credit to students who go usually in the US, it's from college to university,

Fiona McQuarrie (00:44.229)
job. I enjoy it quite a bit.

Chad (00:46.586)
Oh, interesting. I'd love to talk a bit in a little while about how you got from writing about music to writing books to academia and then back again or concurrently. So I think that'd be great. Well, love to hear the Cliff Notes version, I guess. But I just finished reading your book, Mixtape, which goes over a bunch of songs between the years 1975 and 1985. And I have to say, I really enjoyed reading it.

Fiona McQuarrie (00:58.458)
It's a long and twisted story.

Fiona McQuarrie (01:14.378)
Great.

Chad (01:14.71)
um, learned a lot. Um, there were, you know, things that even some of the songs that I thought I knew the backstories or, you know, we're pretty familiar with, with the artists. Um, just some great little nuggets in there. And that leads me to sort of tell my listeners that, um, you and I really started to chat on Twitter probably about two years ago, and we've always been trading nuggets of wisdom. And, and, you know, I think we have a shared love for a few different artists, notably, you know, Steely Dan and Lloyd Cole and

Fiona McQuarrie (01:31.194)
Mm-hmm. Two years to go, yeah.

Chad (01:42.358)
Not sure who else. I think there were a few others that we connected on too.

Fiona McQuarrie (01:45.511)
Yeah.

Chad (01:47.682)
So tell me a bit about how you started writing about music and what sort of sparked that interest because from what I understand, you really started writing about music right out of high school.

Fiona McQuarrie (01:57.854)
That's right. I grew up in a musical household. My dad plays guitar and was a big music fan, and my mom was also a big music fan, and so was all of her family. So I grew up hearing a lot of different types of music in my house. And when I graduated from high school, I got a job working in the library of the local daily newspaper. And

Then I switched to working in the newsroom of one of the newspapers. There are two newspapers running out of the same building, and I ended up working at the evening newspaper. And Billy Connolly, the comedian, was coming to town. And the one of the columnists said, Are there any Scottish people out there who would like to write about Billy Connolly? And I will say that the Scottish part of my name is the least Scottish part of me. I thought.

And so I went over and said, hey, my name is Scottish White, you send me. So they did. And that was the first show that I ever reviewed. And then I started doing bits and pieces on the side, in addition to the regular job. And then the music critic left to go to becoming a political columnist, which he still is 40 years later. And so I applied for that job and I got it. And I did that full time for about

Chad (03:15.743)
Oh wow.

Fiona McQuarrie (03:22.662)
about two years and I ended up leaving it even though I enjoyed the work because my boss was not a good manager and it was turning into an increasingly unpleasant pace and then I moved to another city with my boyfriend who's now my husband and I started working at a trust company and I got really interested in

how people interact with money and how it affects how they feel and how they act. So I went to the local community college and took an accounting course which I was terrible at but it was

It was very interesting and I just kept taking courses and that sort of led into me completing a bachelor's of business administration and then an MBA and then a PhD and then I taught at universities for the next 30 years. I formally retired. I took a buyout in 2021 and back about 2015 I was marking one night and I will fully admit that I was thoroughly bored.

with the marking, with the terrible quality of the papers I was marking. And I went on Facebook to entertain myself and there was a message from the editors at Shindig, the music magazine in the UK, saying we're going to put more content on the website. Would anyone like to write it for us?

Chad (04:25.522)
Ha ha.

Chad (04:42.178)
Huh. Yeah.

Fiona McQuarrie (04:44.082)
And so I pitched them a story about Donovan's song, not Hurdy Gurdy Man, the other one.

Chad (04:53.081)
Sunshine Superman.

Fiona McQuarrie (04:54.666)
No, damn, sorry, this has just gone right out of my head. This is a long and complicated story. And they said, okay, go ahead and write it. And I did. And it was really weird going back to music writing after that long, because when I quit, there was no internet. I mean, we could send emails to each other at work. That was about it. There was no YouTube, there was no...

Chad (04:58.836)
It's okay.

Fiona McQuarrie (05:21.386)
secondhand songs, there was no blogs. So it was a completely new world and I don't say that lightly but it was so much easier to research things so it was nice. So I wrote that piece and I handed it in and they liked it so much they ran it in the magazine and here I am today. That's how it worked.

Chad (05:40.714)
Wow, super cool. So kind of like a first career that came back around as a second or third career actually, right? That's really neat. And it's funny, you mentioned like the whole business side of things and the accounting side of things and sort of how you went down that path. And I find so many people that are into music, whether they're actually musicians themselves or just people that are big fans, a lot of us have that left brain, right brain kind of thing where like you need that math

Fiona McQuarrie (05:47.047)
Yeah, yeah.

Fiona McQuarrie (06:07.136)
Yeah.

Chad (06:10.058)
history and all the boring stuff in the one side of your head to keep you sort of stimulated intellectually but at the same time you've got this burning need to be creative somehow whether it's playing an instrument or writing about music or what have you. So I find that it's like, you know, so many people that are into music aren't doing that as a vocation, they're doing it just, you know, almost because they have to, right?

Fiona McQuarrie (06:22.334)
Yeah.

Fiona McQuarrie (06:31.546)
Yeah, and from my side of it, my area of specialization in my academic world is organizations. So I'm really interested in like, why did this record company do this? Or why did this management firm do this? And that sort of brought an interesting perspective to it coming back to it now all these years later, because I have that other intellectual framework to understand how things work.

Chad (06:54.958)
Sure. Oh wow, that's fascinating. I know you mentioned in your chapter in Mixtape that talks about Kid Charlemagne that you had once interviewed Jeff Procaro, personal hero, one of my favorite drummers. How did that come about? I couldn't find the interview online, so apologies if it's readily accessible, but I did Google for it and couldn't seem to find it. So what did you interview him about and how did that happen?

Fiona McQuarrie (07:18.39)
It was when Toto were playing in Vancouver and the opening act was a group called The Strand which he I believe he had produced their album and It was actually an interview an interview with both of them I spoke to the Strand first who were really nice guys and very interesting and then I talked to Jeff Picaro For a while in those days in those days back when the dinosaurs run the earth You know in those days dailies newspapers had a lot more

Chad (07:42.604)
hahahaha

Fiona McQuarrie (07:47.35)
than they do now. And it was pretty common when acts were coming to town to either have an interview with them on the phone beforehand or to interview them when they were actually there. And so the premise for talking to him was for him to talk about his work with The Strand, which we did, but then we kind of got off talking about, you know, his other projects. And that's when I asked him about Steely Dan. And I remember that interview really clearly because he was a genuinely nice guy. There are a lot of people you meet in those situations

Chad (07:48.398)
Sure.

Fiona McQuarrie (08:17.144)
that are nice and you can tell they're being nice to you because of your job, not because they're really that interested in you personally. But he was very easy to talk to and very thoughtful. He didn't just give the canned answers. He really thought about what he was saying and tried to explain things quite honestly and genuinely and that.

Chad (08:21.746)
Right.

Fiona McQuarrie (08:39.174)
was not always the case. That was pretty rare. So I was very impressed with him. He was very, very kind and very... And that night when Toto played, I was sitting in, I think, the second row of the audience in the theatre. And when they did their bows at the end of the show, he saw me in the audience and he waved to me and I'm like, oh, he didn't have to do that. That was nice. I was really sad when he passed away. He seemed like a genuinely good guy.

Chad (08:57.89)
Hahaha

Chad (09:04.854)
He did and everything I've read about him seems to agree with that, that he was just really a sweet person. So that's good to hear. Who are some other notable interviews that you've done and who are you the most excited to interview in your career as a music journalist?

Fiona McQuarrie (09:20.794)
Oh gosh, One that sticks in my mind, and I'm going to apologize in advance because this is before he went mad, was Ted Nugent. I met him, The record company set it up, and I met him at his hotel. And I went up to his room and knocked on the door. And he opened the door. He had all his clothes on, that's not what I'm going to say.

Chad (09:43.096)
hahahaha

Fiona McQuarrie (09:45.618)
We talked for a while, he was playing that night in Vancouver, And he said, well, I've got this in-store interview, do you want to come along? And I said, sure, I'll go with you for the in-store. So we went downstairs, there's this big-ass limo waiting in the in the parking area of the hotel, and we're gonna ride in the limo? Yeah, come on, that's good. So we got in, and it was such a weird experience from my perspective, seeing what it's like for an artist to pull up at an in-store with screaming people outside the building.

and he worked it. I mean, he wasn't being like, you know, I'm great and you're all peons, but he was like, yeah, yeah. And he got out of the car and he, yeah, woo, woo. And all the crowd is screaming, going, ah. He literally ran into the record store. And I think he signed albums for like the next two hours or so I left part way through because I had a deadline. But just to see that, and I.

Chad (10:26.412)
Ha ha ha.

Fiona McQuarrie (10:38.526)
He's, you know, it's sort of sad to me what he's become because I think he's a really smart guy. He's really, he knows what he's doing and it's calculated to a certain extent but it's also because he genuinely believes in that character for lack of a better word. And it's sad that he's turned into a Trumpie but you know people make their choices and that's what he's done.

Chad (10:43.064)
Yeah.

Chad (10:56.693)
Right.

Chad (11:05.931)
Yeah. Yeah, it is sad and it was really disappointing when that kind of started to come out and you started to see him go that direction. But I think, you know, there's a few artists that went down that path, unfortunately. Who was the worst interview? I guess, you know, on the flip side, who was the absolute worst person that you interviewed, whether they were rude or whether it was just like pulling teeth to get answers or, you know, anything come to mind?

Fiona McQuarrie (11:12.965)
Mm-hmm.

Fiona McQuarrie (11:17.513)
Yeah.

Fiona McQuarrie (11:31.422)
I can't think of a specific artist but that does, the way that interviews on the phone tended to work in those days is because I was in Vancouver and my colleague down the hall, we, if the artist was in the East, like Eastern US or Eastern Canada, they would schedule the interviews East to West. So by the time we got a person, they had probably

been interviewed already five or six times, sometimes more, and asked the same question. And sometimes it was very hard to come up with something original. Like they've been asked, tell me about your new album a lot. And yeah, generally, artists are not stupid, at least the successful ones are generally not stupid. They know that if they are rude or say something, or just say, huh.

Chad (11:57.326)
Sure.

Fiona McQuarrie (12:22.734)
it's going to show up in the article indirectly or directly. So, you know, genuinely most of them try their best, but you know, I think we'd all be a little cranky if we'd been asked the same questions for three hours in a row. So yeah.

Chad (12:36.886)
Sure, yeah, oh, I can imagine. I can't imagine. So, standard disclaimer, this is not a Steely Dan podcast. The whole sort of impetus for this, almost a year ago, I had this idea and I bought a domain name and I set up a website and I was like, okay, I'm gonna start a music blog. I've been wanting to do this forever. Just couldn't find the time and couldn't make myself do it.

And then I had this idea that, you know, hey, a podcast would be a really cool thing too, because, you know, I've encountered so many great people online, whether it's on Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, you know, wherever, even as people in real life. I thought it'd be really fun to just have a revolving stable of guests come on and, you know, ask questions about their backgrounds and their musical interests and to sort of have an open discussion about music and, you know, all things related. So, you know, almost a year went by, I didn't get anything done. And...

Fiona McQuarrie (13:20.369)
and

Chad (13:33.602)
The new year hit and I run this really stupid meme page on Instagram called memes of the Dan and you know I post 80% of what I post there on Twitter so I think you've seen a lot of it. Some of them I find to be you know I have fun with them, some of them I think are more clever than others you know if I can say so myself. But long story short is that I've gotten a lot of people on Instagram especially connected to me because of that and those are the folks that I've been you know sort of bringing on.

to that sort of stepped up and volunteered and said, Hey, I want to come on the podcast, right? So it's been great, but unfortunately the topic has always gone to Steely Dan. So this is why I'm giving this long drawn out disclaimer, because I'm going to ask you, how did you first find out about Steely Dan? You know, what sort of brought you to them and how has your interest or love for them sort of developed over the years?

Fiona McQuarrie (14:03.685)
Mm-hmm.

Fiona McQuarrie (14:17.65)
Good! Ask away! Ask away!

Fiona McQuarrie (14:31.03)
I was thinking about the first time I heard them and it was in high school. That's how old I am. And at my high school, it was what you would call, I guess, a regional high school. It had students from all over the region where I lived. And one of the regions that the students came from was in Vancouver where I grew up.

in North Vancouver specifically where I grew up, there's a road that runs along the shoreline and it ends. And where it ends there's also some islands and little communities that are only accessible by boat and people who live there have to take the boat to and from that road to get anywhere. And one of the students at high school that was in my drama group, his parents lived up

Fiona McQuarrie (15:26.376)
And so for him to get to school, he had this gigantic 1963 Pontiac Parisienne, I think it was.

Chad (15:33.983)
Oh wow.

Fiona McQuarrie (15:34.598)
that he parked in the parking lot at the end of this road and to get to school he would take the boat every morning to the parking lot, get in his car and drive to school. And his car had an eight-track tape player and one day I was getting a ride with him from school because where I lived was along the way. And he had, I think it was a camp bike thrill on eight-track and he was playing

Chad (15:48.532)
Yes.

Fiona McQuarrie (16:04.752)
the lyrics and going this is weird like what is this is so weird but it's good it's weird and it's good how is it how did this happen and I remember asking a bunch of questions like who is this band and he I he said I think he said he bought the a truck because he liked the cover art and that was the first time I heard Steely Dan so I got quite interested and

started buying their records as they came out over the years. And I just really, I think that same thing that drew me to them in the first place is what still draws me to them. This is really weird, but it's good.

Chad (16:44.335)
Yes. My wife calls it a cult among Steely Dan fans. It's pretty funny because I'm so deep into the band and the lore and all the things. I was playing snippets of one of the episodes that I just recorded with somebody. We were talking a bit about Steely Dan stuff. And she's like, I have no idea what you guys are even talking about. She said it's such... And my wife is really into music and she has a great ear.

Fiona McQuarrie (16:49.245)
Yes.

Chad (17:11.466)
You know, she has a very wide taste of different types of music, but for some reason she just doesn't connect with Sealy Dan. And when we start talking about like lyrics and some of the deeper things, she's like, yeah, I'm lost. You know, she's like, you guys are like a cult. It's pretty funny. We joke around about it a lot.

Fiona McQuarrie (17:23.688)
Mm-hmm.

It's interesting to being a female fan of Steely Dan because I know some women are really turned off by them because they don't like They think the women in the lyrics are shallow they don't like Donald Fagen's Preference obsession, whatever you want to call it with underage women and I'm like those guys are real they exist You know, they're not making these stories up because they're weirdos. There really are guys like that

Chad (17:29.92)
Yeah.

Chad (17:46.023)
Right.

Fiona McQuarrie (17:55.856)
of male experience. I don't know. So I guess you have to accept that as being part of what they do.

Chad (18:05.886)
Yeah, and it's funny because some of the characters in the songs, I think, are just thinly veiled, you know, self-referential things like cousin Dupree. I mean, you know, they say it's not, but come on. We all know. We all know. Yeah, well, that's great. And what else did I want to ask you about? Oh, so a few things in your book. Again, you know, it's fresh in my mind. I just finished reading it and I'll say it again. I learned a lot.

Fiona McQuarrie (18:12.773)
Mm-hmm.

Fiona McQuarrie (18:16.838)
Yeah, we all know.

Chad (18:35.798)
the artists and some of the songs that I was already familiar with still learn some deep facts and some deep things about it, which is great. I always love to sort of get more background, and that's what fascinates me about music, is not just the music itself, you know, the music, the instrumentation, the production, the lyrics. For me, it's a whole package, but I love when, especially when I'm really deeply into an artist, sort of just going back and looking at, okay,

Fiona McQuarrie (18:55.187)
Yeah.

Chad (19:01.77)
When did they record this? Where did they record this? How did they write this song? Who produced it? Why did they make this production choice or whatever? And where I can find things on the internet, I just absorb it. You know, like I just go a little bit off the deep end sometimes I think, but you talked in your chapter about Kraftwerk's Trans Europe Express and how Africa Bambada and SoulSonic Force sampled some of that song in their Planet Rock, which was one of the first, as you know,

Fiona McQuarrie (19:04.919)
Yeah.

Chad (19:31.362)
huge hip hop hits, right? I mean, I remember being a kid when that came out and hearing it and it just blew my mind, but didn't know until years later because I didn't have the frame of reference for Kraftwerk, right? I didn't know it was from Trans Europe Express. I mean, years later, I got into that album and was like, oh, wait a minute, I've heard this before. You know? So I guess the question I wanna ask you, and we can trade some favorites, is what are some other notable samples?

Fiona McQuarrie (19:41.52)
Thanks for watching!

Chad (19:57.494)
that you like or what are some things that surprised you? Because one thing I find is that I'll know a song and I'll have known a song for years. And then at some point I will hear some obscure deep cut on an album and then I'm like, wait a minute, that was a sample of that song? Like I never knew that, you know? And you know it's a sample, but sometimes you just can't identify them, right? So I have a few, maybe I'll start if it's okay. And I'll tell you some of the ones that shocked me.

Fiona McQuarrie (20:25.331)
Yeah, go ahead.

Chad (20:27.946)
Back in the late 80s, mid to late 80s, early 90s, I was a huge hip hop head. I mean, I still am really. And when Ice Cube came out with, It Was a Good Day, you know, again, I wasn't really aware of some of the deeper Isley Brothers cuts, right? So come to find out many years later, that was the sample was from Footsteps in the Dark.

Fiona McQuarrie (20:41.803)
Mm-hmm.

Fiona McQuarrie (20:47.702)
Mm-hmm.

Chad (20:49.742)
And then when there was a remix of that song that was released and it was a whole different Musical backing track and had no idea what it was and then again years later heard the song Let's do it again by staple singers and I was like, wait a minute. That's the sample that I used in that remix So, you know, what are some examples of things that you've come across or favorite samples, I guess

Fiona McQuarrie (21:14.27)
Well, I think one of the classics is MC Hammer sampling Rick James. We can't touch this because I remember hearing that song on the radio and hearing the introduction and expecting it to go where it usually went and then this guy can't touch this all over. Tough, oh that's interesting. I was, I should mention that in addition to all the other things I do, I'm also a figure skater and I was at the radio on Thursday night and

Chad (21:18.807)
Yes.

Chad (21:38.018)
Oh, wow.

Fiona McQuarrie (21:42.518)
A lot of the playlists that we have at the rink are ones that the kids put together, but if there's a bad word that shows up, then the parents take over and go to Spotify and find something labeled clean and put that on instead.

There was a song and I couldn't get over to the iPad in time to tell who it was that sampled Wordy Wrapping Hood by the TomTom Club. And it was a woman singing over top of it. And it was a really interesting use of the sample. But I remember skating around and thinking, I remember this original song. And now someone has sampled it. Am I old?

Chad (22:07.752)
Oh.

Chad (22:23.914)
Hahaha

Fiona McQuarrie (22:26.167)
So yeah, I'll have to admit I usually don't go as deep as you obviously do when I hear a sample. To me, what I tend to focus on is that came from somewhere else. I know it because I kind of recognize it somewhere in my mind. But what is the artist doing with it now? And obviously now with the internet and...

you know, MP3s flying all over the place and sampling websites. There's so much more out there to choose from. So it goes to some very interesting places, I think, a lot of the times.

Chad (23:00.606)
Yeah, it does. I mean, the internet and just having all this stuff at your fingertips, I think just gave these artists and these producers such a broad palette to work with. It's fascinating. But even going back to the 90s.

Fiona McQuarrie (23:12.614)
It's kind of a shame though, I think, you know, back in the day, going to the record store and having to, you know, I think a lot of artists say something all in the lines of, I grabbed this record because I like the cover. And then I found this really cool sample on it. And I'm not sure that happens online.

Chad (23:31.402)
Yeah, agreed. Like there's something to be said for crate digging and I think people are still doing that, especially with the resurgence of vinyl. It feels like a lot of people are going back and just finding, like you said, going to a thrift shop or a flea market and saying, ooh, that's a cool cover. No idea who the artist is and then you get home and put it on and they find something they can use or something that sort of strikes their fancy. I feel like two examples of that maybe from older.

Fiona McQuarrie (23:34.419)
Mm-hmm.

Fiona McQuarrie (23:50.046)
Yeah, exactly.

Chad (23:57.91)
Older music, you know, 90s. Nothing can stop us by Saint Etienne. I don't know if you're familiar with that song or the band. Yeah. So that whole musical sort of underneath there is the sample is I can't wait until I see my baby's face by Dusty Springfield. Neither did I until literally a couple of years ago and that song came up somewhere on a playlist or something. And I'm like.

Fiona McQuarrie (24:16.586)
That I did not know.

Chad (24:25.254)
Oh cool, Saint Etienne. And then it gets past the intro and hits the first verse and I'm like, that's not Saint Etienne, that's Dusty Springfield's voice. Another good one around the same time is Sour Times by Portishead. Samples the Danube incident by Lalo Schifrin, which is like a really esoteric sample. And he's the guy that did all the music for the Mission Impossible stuff in the 60s, right? So.

Fiona McQuarrie (24:38.879)
Mm-hmm

Fiona McQuarrie (24:45.53)
Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Chad (24:50.278)
Yeah, and again, had no reference for that. Like, I mean, I think I saw reruns of Mission Impossible as a kid, you know, I grew up in the 70s and 80s, so Mission Impossible was a little before my time, but definitely was aware of it, but had no idea that, you know, some of that music was used later on.

Fiona McQuarrie (25:06.29)
Yeah, and that's that.

particular track, that's a brilliant use of a sample because you don't know it's a sample. Where I start to get a little bit iffy is if it's very obviously a sample and it's a very recognizable one. Obviously the artist likes the original track and wants to repurpose it but I think the best sampling is where you like with sour times where it's there

Fiona McQuarrie (25:37.464)
listening to two tracks at once because I'm expecting what happens on the original track and then I'm expecting what this version of it is going to do with it.

Chad (25:46.026)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I have a whole playlist and I'll link it in the show notes because I started to get a little bit obsessed with this whole concept. So what I did was I built a playlist and I put on the original song followed by the song or songs that have sampled it. Yeah, so I have, I'm up to like, thank you. I think I'm up to about a hundred and something songs which means about 50 source material songs and about 50 or so.

Fiona McQuarrie (26:06.997)
That's a great idea.

Chad (26:15.914)
songs that use the sample. So I'll definitely link that for everybody who wants to go check it out. Yeah, it's a fun listen if I say so myself. And there's some really interesting ones that you just don't put two and two together. And then there are the obvious ones like the MC Hammer or Vanilla Ice sampling under pressure by Queen and then denying it. He's saying, well, yeah, we kind of borrowed that, but it's not really their song. And we changed, you know, mine has an extra beat in it. And he was just such a jackass.

Fiona McQuarrie (26:19.446)
Great.

Fiona McQuarrie (26:26.429)
and

Fiona McQuarrie (26:32.526)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Fiona McQuarrie (26:39.879)
I'm so sorry.

Fiona McQuarrie (26:43.898)
Yeah, really.

Chad (26:47.704)
All right, so the other thing I wanted to mention, because again, it came up as I was reading your book, I love the fact that one of your criteria for including a song in the book was that it had to have been covered at some point. So another phenomenon that I'm really in love with is cover songs. I am a...

Fiona McQuarrie (27:06.811)
Mm-hmm.

Chad (27:09.202)
Really staunch believer that nine times out of ten the original is the better version But there are times when I can be swayed to admit that a cover was better Because it just reinterprets the song in a different way or you know sort of Is better musically for whatever reason but What are some of your favorite cover songs and why?

Fiona McQuarrie (27:13.206)
Mm-hmm.

Go.

Fiona McQuarrie (27:25.954)
Oh gosh, um, no, well.

Chad (27:27.578)
I'll put you on the spot.

Fiona McQuarrie (27:30.91)
I know that some Joni Mitchell fans absolutely get their shorts in a knot over this but I love Nazareth's cover of This Flight Tonight because it just takes a song and it turns it around and it works. That kind of reimagining is I'm just in awe of somebody that can do that. I think they also did a really good job with Love Hurts by Roy Orbison but they stuck a little closer to the to the original on that one

Chad (27:39.572)
Oh.

Fiona McQuarrie (28:02.005)
One of my favorite songs for covers, although there are some covers that don't quite make it in my opinion is John Hiatt's song We Ran

Linda Ronstadt does a gorgeous version of that. John Hyatt gets covered quite a bit as well, as he should because his songs are tremendous. Emmy Lou Harris's version of I See Blue Heart I honestly have trouble listening to because it makes me cry. Yeah, I'm really taken by those covers that just do something completely different with the song.

Chad (28:29.73)
hahahaha

Fiona McQuarrie (28:38.394)
and it's probably not the artist intended, but it works.

Chad (28:44.65)
Yeah, oh absolutely. And for a minute there I thought you were gonna say the Counting Crows cover of Big Yellow Taxi. Ha ha ha.

Fiona McQuarrie (28:55.804)
Yeah, I think the Mitchell fans probably get their shorts in the nod about that one too. Yeah.

Chad (29:00.286)
I think a bigger not than maybe the other one that you mentioned, yeah. I mean, Joanie's one of those artists that, you know, it's almost sacrilegious to try to cover her stuff, but you can't help it because her songs are just so brilliant. I mean, you know, the writing and yeah. So I have a few, if you allow me to share. I, for a long time, have been in love with You Keep Me Hanging On by Vanilla Fudge.

Fiona McQuarrie (29:09.263)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely.

Fiona McQuarrie (29:17.446)
Absolutely.

Fiona McQuarrie (29:26.547)
Yes.

Chad (29:27.21)
Another example of a song where they took the original by the Supremes, which by the way, it was a pretty heavy song in and of itself considering, you know, the, the era and sort of the genre, right? Like the Motown thing. It was a pretty deep, dark song, but they just took it to another level. And the musicianship, oh, completely over the top. Yeah. Right. Exactly. And they took it to a whole other level.

Fiona McQuarrie (29:33.065)
Mm-hmm.

Fiona McQuarrie (29:44.178)
Yeah, completely over the top, but it's no where the top song, so go for it.

Chad (29:53.254)
and the performance, I think my favorite performance of it, the album cut is pretty good, but they do a live version on the Ed Sullivan show and you can find it on YouTube, I'll link it in the comments or the show notes. It's just amazing, you know, a young Carmine, a piece who was just a beast on the drums and such a showman, like he stands up and he almost looks like Animal from The Muppets, you know, and this performance, like he's just flailing and holding his cymbals and bashing them and.

Fiona McQuarrie (29:57.787)
Mm-hmm.

Chad (30:20.618)
It's just great. And Tim Bogart on bass, just a brilliant musician. And that got me from Vanilla Fudge all the way through to Bogart back a piece because the three of them started like a power trio kind of thing. And it was just also great. They did a bunch of blues covers and a bunch of originals and just sort of took me from A to B. Another...

Fiona McQuarrie (30:40.158)
Yeah.

Chad (30:46.398)
I want to say it turns the song on its head because it's sort of faithful to the original, but it just gives it a level of soul that the original was missing. And it's Summer Breeze by the Isley Brothers off of 3 Plus 3. You know, the Seals and Crofts tune, which is, you know, a little bit lighter. The Isley Brothers just take it and make it like a soulful song like it should have been, I think, to begin with.

Fiona McQuarrie (31:00.305)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Fiona McQuarrie (31:09.298)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think with that song, if you can keep that sort of summer, light summer feeling, it works. And I think they did that, even within the context of their own sound.

Chad (31:19.404)
Yeah.

Chad (31:25.095)
Definitely. And then the other one I just heard again recently and realized how much I love it is the Cure song, Just Like Heaven, covered by the Watson twins.

Fiona McQuarrie (31:35.879)
I haven't heard that.

Chad (31:37.258)
It's sort of a, it's a very slowed down, almost country-fied version, very guitar heavy, but it's just like shimmery production and their voices together. It's just gorgeous. So again, you know, I usually make a playlist. Well, I do make a playlist for every episode. So any songs that you and I mentioned, I'll throw on that playlist and link it so we can see after the show. Yeah.

Fiona McQuarrie (31:55.972)
Okay.

Chad (32:01.174)
And then the other thing while we're still on the book is and this is what I sort of alluded to before we started recording but Your last chapter talks about Kate Bush and running up that hill which I have to say I was not a big Kate Bush fan in the

you know, growing up in the seventies and eighties. And I think I had a few friends that liked her in high school and stuff, but for some reason she just never did it for me. So with the whole resurgence of that song and the whole Stranger Things connection and my daughter was obsessed with that song as every, I think, teenage girl that watched Stranger Things was, you know, that year, it sort of made me go back and revisit some of her catalog. But I was having a little bit of a conversation with somebody on Twitter who is a prefab sprout fan.

And I find that there are a few artists that it's almost like if you like one of them, you like most of the others. And I wanted to see if you agree and if, you know, we can sort of divine the connection between them or, you know, like what's sort of related. And those artists are Prefab Sprout, Steely Dan, Lloyd Cole, either with the commotions or solo. I think, you know, maybe both is his whole career.

Fiona McQuarrie (32:57.364)
Mm-hmm.

Chad (33:14.942)
And Kate Bush was also mentioned in that conversation. So what's the common thread there, do you think?

Fiona McQuarrie (33:17.951)
Hmm.

Oh gosh, the first thing I would think is they're all very strong songwriters. And that's not to say that there's not a room in music for lightweight silly pop. There's space for that too. I would almost hesitate to put Kate Bush in that group.

mostly because what she does is so singular and it's really hard. I mean if you know if you read some of the background on the songs you know where the references to other artists are but somebody that I interacted with on Twitter said use the term her universe and I think that's really appropriate because she really is in some ways in a world of her own.

Chad (33:46.391)
Yeah.

Fiona McQuarrie (34:11.942)
I have to say that I have not heard many covers of her songs that I really like. And I think that's because she's so distinctive and so singular. But yeah, if I had to tie those four together, I think the strength of the songwriting and that the facility with words, not just being clever for being clever sake, but using the words and really appropriate and meaningful sequences, if that's not too clinical.

Chad (34:16.408)
Yeah.

Fiona McQuarrie (34:41.977)
is I think the thread that I would see between those four.

Chad (34:47.662)
I agree. And I think it's also just, especially in the instance of Steely Dan and Prefab Sprout, the chord voicings, the arrangements, just the way that the music comes across, it's funny. So I've told the story a few times on previous podcast episodes, but I'll just reiterate the short version. So Steely Dan for me has been a lifelong thing. Stumbled across them because of my sister when I was younger. My sister's a bit older than me.

Fiona McQuarrie (34:58.38)
Mm-hmm.

Chad (35:16.29)
and she was really into them early on. So one of my first memories of playing a record that was mine was Josie, the 45 for Josie, off of Asia, and I was a little older. It wasn't a current at the time, but and then getting more into their stuff as I got older. But when I was really out of college and sort of my musical education was, I guess, really beginning as a young adult.

I had a couple of friends from Belfast that were working in the Jersey Shore for the summer and the one guy that I was friends with and I haven't seen him in years and Donal McCoy, if you're watching, reach out please. But Donal was like a major source of music discovery for me those couple of years that we used to hang out all the time because he had such a deep eclectic taste in music, but specifically he brought this.

UK slash Northern Ireland set of artists that I hadn't really been exposed to. So I had never heard of Free Fab Sprout, right? They didn't really break that big over here on the radio or they weren't super popular. Same thing with Lloyd Cole. So when I started and the other group that he turned me on to was The Laws, who had that one gorgeous, brilliant album and then sort of like never recorded anything again. And, you know, they've had other side projects and things since then. But having him.

Fiona McQuarrie (36:21.222)
Yeah, that's right.

Fiona McQuarrie (36:30.962)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chad (36:40.814)
Play Me, Prefab, Sprout, and I think the first song that I was exposed to was Cars and Girls, right, which totally takes the piss out of Bruce Springsteen. Right, which. But he played it for me and I was like, you know, I'm from Jersey all my life, I have a love-hate with Bruce, you know, more love now and I respect his early work a lot, I love it. But at the time it was like, you know,

Fiona McQuarrie (36:46.101)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. But he didn't play that one down at the Jersey Shore too much.

Hahaha!

Fiona McQuarrie (37:04.228)
Mm-hmm.

Chad (37:11.13)
had sort of had his heyday of like, you know, born in the USA and all the big, you know, pompous, you know, go America type stuff or, you know, so people thought that that's what it was. So it was kind of funny to hear, you know, like a different perspective. And it wasn't just about Bruce, the song obviously, but it had the reference. So, you know, there are things like that. And I just couldn't believe how well written the songs were like on

Fiona McQuarrie (37:16.746)
Right.

Chad (37:37.978)
first or second album rather, Steve McQueen, there's the track. Oh man, I can't think of the name of the song, but it's the one that goes, life's not complete till your heart's missed a beat. And they miss a beat on the music side of things, like they sort of stop when they say that line and I'm like, wow, that's really clever, right? And again, not clever for clever's sake, but just, it fits the song, right? So...

Fiona McQuarrie (37:41.142)
Mm-hmm.

Fiona McQuarrie (37:50.466)
Hmm

Fiona McQuarrie (37:56.222)
That's so cool. Yeah, exactly.

Chad (38:01.362)
It was just a whole new world for me. And the same thing with Lloyd Cole. I had never heard such literate songwriting before. And I'm the type of person where if I hear a reference or I hear something mentioned in a song that I'm not familiar with, I immediately have to go look it up. And there was really no internet. We're talking 1990, 1991 when this is happening. So I couldn't really go Google,

Fiona McQuarrie (38:09.578)
Mm-hmm.

Fiona McQuarrie (38:20.842)
Yeah, yeah.

Chad (38:26.546)
Eve Marie Sont had no idea who that was, found out later, you know, finally ended up sitting on the waterfront because it references that movie and the song. So I think that music really gave me a whole different perspective on what songwriting and lyricism could be.

Fiona McQuarrie (38:41.028)
Yeah.

When Lloyd Cole, I think I first was introduced to when I was living in residence at university when I was doing my PhD and him and the Go-Betweens. There was someone on my floor, I'm still not quite sure who it was. He used to play Rattlesnakes and 13 Lovers Lane all the time. But that was okay because they were really great albums. And yeah, so him sort of writing lyrics that were influenced by his college days.

hearing that in residence in university that kind of clicked you know.

Chad (39:16.33)
Yeah, definitely. And I've been a big Lloyd Cole fan ever since. He's he's got a great Patreon page where he posts. He did this whole project, excuse me, called the notebook project. And he's been digitizing all of his old. He just keeps like these fastidious notebooks full of song ideas and original lyrics that he wrote, you know, as he was sort of like shaping.

Fiona McQuarrie (39:23.472)
I love you.

Chad (39:40.574)
new songs and things and he went all the way back to the beginning because he had all this stuff, I guess, you know, in his attic. So for the people on his Patreon, he's publishing all this great stuff and it really opened up a window into sort of how some of these songs came about. And he's also doing, you know, memories as he can. So he found, like, for example, a receipt for when, you know, he bought a suit or something. And he was like, this is the first suit that I bought after, you know, we got paid the first royalty check because I wanted to look really cool on top of the pops or, you know, whatever, right?

Fiona McQuarrie (39:49.799)
Mm-hmm.

Fiona McQuarrie (40:07.707)
Oh, yay.

Chad (40:08.61)
That kind of stuff. And it's so neat because, you know, with Patreon and with Twitter and everything else, you really get to see the human side of artists that, you know, most of us, besides reading about them in magazines, you know, years ago, like you really don't get that, right? So.

Fiona McQuarrie (40:18.636)
Mm-hmm.

Fiona McQuarrie (40:24.722)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that makes me think too of Mike Scott's autobiography where, and I know he's been doing some of that archival work as well, but in his autobiography he has pictures of the pages of notes that he wrote for This is a Sea and just to see how the song developed and how the words developed. I'm just fascinated by that and it's nice to see that people who come up with really great songs sometimes the songs start out really badly and that makes me feel so much better.

Chad (40:55.547)
Yeah, that's not all just sheer genius all the time. For sure. And I've seen Lloyd Cole play a few times, most recently, right before the pandemic started. He played at a small venue not far from me in New Jersey, and it was just him and his guitar and it was just wonderful because it was so intimate.

Fiona McQuarrie (40:57.335)
Yeah, exactly.

Fiona McQuarrie (41:07.999)
the

Chad (41:18.994)
Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to meet him after I had to run out at the end. I couldn't sort of hang around, but it was just great. You know, I mean, just seeing him sort of unwind these songs and strip them down to an acoustic version and they held up, you know, and that's, that's the thing to me that the mark of great songwriting.

Fiona McQuarrie (41:33.222)
Yes. Yeah, I think it was probably that same tour that I've seen him to at a local venue that's a movie theatre part of the time, but a concert venue part of the time. And it was wonderful. It was so good. There were some ass clowns in the audience who kept yelling out for particular songs, which I don't think he really appreciated, but he did a lovely show nonetheless.

Chad (41:52.863)
Nah.

Chad (41:57.666)
Right, and did you ever see him with the commotions back in the day?

Fiona McQuarrie (42:00.634)
I did not. I think the only time I saw him before that was when he was playing bass for Matthew Sweet.

Chad (42:05.694)
Yes.

Fiona McQuarrie (42:08.17)
I don't think I really knew who he was then. I went with my friend, my fellow music critic Tom Harrison, who's now passed away. And I was interested in the drummer, not in a baby kind of way. But I kept asking Tom, why is the drummer doing that thing? And he was trying to explain to me how the drumming was working. So I wasn't paying a lot of attention to Lloyd at the time.

Chad (42:31.638)
Who was the drummer at that point for Matthew Sweet? Was it Fred Marr? I think he, yeah, he's interesting as a drummer. I don't know much about him other than the fact that he played on a bunch of Matthew Sweet stuff. But yeah, definitely. And I think he played on some of Lloyd Cole's solo albums too, I believe, the first one. Yeah, okay. So what's your favorite Lloyd Cole solo work, whether it's song, album, or both, I guess. Really?

Fiona McQuarrie (42:35.726)
I believe it was, yeah. Yeah.

Fiona McQuarrie (42:43.69)
and

Fiona McQuarrie (42:48.286)
Yes, he did. Yeah.

Fiona McQuarrie (42:55.742)
Oh geez, love story. I would take, love story would be on my desert island list. It's just so atmospheric and the songs are so beautifully produced and the songwriting is just, yeah, I think it's perfect.

Chad (43:16.018)
Agreed, I think that was peak Lloyd Cole. I really liked when I was younger, and I still love it, Bad Vibes. And I know Lloyd himself apparently hates that album and said it was like the worst thing he ever did. But, you know, whenever he says that online, I always comment and be like, stop. You know, it's great. Yeah, it's one of my favorite albums and he never answers me. So, you know. Hopefully, one can hope.

Fiona McQuarrie (43:25.438)
Mm-hmm.

Fiona McQuarrie (43:34.374)
It's good really.

Fiona McQuarrie (43:40.444)
He may change his mind one day.

Chad (43:44.918)
Great. So is there anything else that you wanted to talk about or anything that you sort of this came to mind since we've been chatting?

Fiona McQuarrie (43:51.846)
Um, no, not really. I guess I should put in the commercial plug and ask people to buy my book. Um.

Chad (43:58.858)
Yes, they should. It's fabulous.

Fiona McQuarrie (44:02.554)
I really enjoyed writing it. It took place over the pandemic, so it took a lot longer than I thought it would because other things happened. But writing is a very solitary occupation, and I've been doing it long enough that I think I have a reasonable sense of what will fly and what won't. But you never know until the book gets out there and people react to it. And the reaction has been really positive, which is very, very gratifying.

Chad (44:15.776)
Yes.

Chad (44:31.874)
That's great. And you wrote a book before this one that was sort of like the previous decade, right? It was 64 to 74, is that right? Okay.

Fiona McQuarrie (44:36.699)
That's right, yeah.

That's right, song book. That came out of a feature that I ended up doing in Shindig. Some of the chapters are expanded versions of what I wrote in Shindig and others that I did, that are original for the book. And I found doing that book that I really like that format of one song per chapter and taking a really deep dive into that song, which is why my publisher was gracious enough to let me try the same thing with a different decade.

Chad (45:09.622)
Cool, and are there plans to make an 80s to 90s... sequel?

Fiona McQuarrie (45:15.167)
I've thought about it but I'm sort of chronologically reaching the end of the era that I know really, really well. So doing an 80s and 90s book would be a bit more of a stretch than the first two were. But it's not out of the realm of possibility is where I'm sitting with it right now.

Chad (45:35.01)
Good, well let's hope that you decide to do it because I would love to read it.

Fiona McQuarrie (45:39.126)
Good.

Chad (45:40.514)
Great, well Fiona, thanks so much for being on the podcast with me, I really appreciate it. And yeah, absolutely, and hopefully you'll come back, especially if you write another book, or even if you don't, we'll have you back on again. Excellent, well thank you. All right, take care. Bye.

Fiona McQuarrie (45:44.966)
Well, thank you for asking me. This is a lot of fun.

Fiona McQuarrie (45:54.012)
Great. Thank you.

You too. Thanks. Bye bye.