Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Moe Berg: Toronto Mike'd #384

Episode Date: October 15, 2018

Mike chats with Moe Berg about The Pursuit of Happiness, Love Junk, and being a Canadian rock star.

Welcome to episode 384 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery located here in Etobicoke. Did you know that 99.99% of all Great Lakes beer remains here in Ontario? GLB. Brewed for you, Ontario. And propertyinthesix.com. Toronto real estate done right. And Paytm, an app designed to manage all of your bills in one spot. Download the app today from paytm.ca and Census Design and Build, providing architectural design,

interior design, and turnkey construction services across the GTA. I'm Mike from torontomike.com and joining me is Major League Catcher and World War II spy, Moe Berg. No, wait. This spy, Moe Berg. No, wait. This is our Moe Berg, lead singer of The Pursuit of Happiness.

Are you aware of the other Moe Berg? Oh, of course. Yeah. He took your SEO, as they say, right? Like people Google Moe Berg and they end up learning about this. Exactly. It was very hard to get a domain name when the internet started. So did you always know about that Moe Berg?

Like even growing up, you heard? Not growing up, but for quite a while, I've probably known about it for like 20 years or so. He's sort of made a resurgence in the last 20 years. There was a pretty good book written about him about, I'm going to say 15 years ago. So he's kind of, and there's a movie now that just was released, I think based on that book.

And so, yeah, he's sort of made a bit of a resurgence. I don't think anybody really knew much about him before that. It's now like, yeah, because obviously anticipation, and I'm a big fan of yours. So maybe right off the top, I'll just let you know that on TorontoMic.com in the past, I've been doing this blogging thing since 2002. And I've listed my 10 favorite Canadian albums at some point.

And I listed my 10 favorite Canadian songs. And just so you know, Love Junk is on my first list there. And then I'm an Adult Now is on the second. So it's a pleasure. Thank you. It's great to be here. And you're not really a Mo. I got to call you out right now.

You're a Murray. That's right. So is Mo a natural nickname for murray i don't believe so you just uh how did mo come to be well i was a pretty young kid um and um and my uncle stan cut my hair and so it was a bowl cut he it was looked like a bowl cut and so i i went to the playground across the street from our house, and my sister, my older sister, Anne, took one look at me, and she said, you look like Moe from Three Stooges. That'll do it.

And literally from that second, I was probably only about nine or ten years old, maybe ten or eleven years old. And from that moment, everybody's called me Moe. It's one of those weird things. You'd think that would just, she'd say that and it would never mean anything, but it just like stuck. It stuck in a crazy way.

Now, it's funny. I just recorded this morning with Mark Hebbshire. He's got a podcast called Hebbsy on Sports and his opening theme and closing theme for every episode

is Do the Murray by Los Lobos. So I was playing Do the Murray and I told him, you're coming on and just, he wanted me to say hi from him. He just saw you recently. by Los Lobos. So I was playing Do The Marine. I told him, you're coming on. And he wanted me to say hi from him. He just saw you recently.

He's a big time, big Moe Berg fan, big Pursuit of Happiness fan. So hi from Hebsey. Yeah, hi back. Yeah, I saw him at the show. It was great to see him. And actually, let me give you some gifts here right off the bat. So you kind of earned your favor here. There's a six pack in front of you. That is yours off the bat so you can earn your favor here.

There's a six-pack in front of you. That is yours. Oh, thank you so much. Great Lakes Brewery beer. Fantastic. Right. I take credit for it. I'm like the big salad.

Who gave the big salad? George's girlfriend, I think, gave Elaine the big salad. But that's obviously courtesy of Great Lakes Brewery. And I have a note from them. This is kind of neat. Let me find. So there's a Christmas market at Great Lakes Brewery. And I have a note from them. This is kind of neat. So there's a Christmas market at Great Lakes Brewery on Saturday, December 8th. So they're going to have some good food,

local artists and vendors, Christmas trees loaded in your car by Gordy Levesque wannabes, and much, much more. So there's going to be more details released soon. But put, you know, Saturday, December 8th on your calendar for the GLB Christmas market. And I'm going to, I want to actually have a very quick hockey chat with you before we dive into the music. And I think a perfect segue is a question that Brian Gerstein is going to ask you in a clip I'm

going to play. Brian is a real estate sales representative with PSR Brokerage. He's at propertyinthesix.com. So I'll let Mo, sorry, I'll let Mo, I'll let Mo introduce this topic. I'm going to let Brian introduce this first topic here. Propertyinthesix.com Hi Mo, Brian Gerstein here, sales representative with PSR Brokerage and proud sponsor of Toronto Mike. I have VIP access to the hottest condo project going on in 2018, King Toronto.

Call or text me at 416-873-0292 so I can fill you in. I have floor plans and pricing before the project actually launches on Wednesday. Mo, I had ice level seats on December 26, 1977, when a scrawny 16-year-old kid who wore number nine at the time, in honor of his idol Gordie Howe, lit up the checks nine to three, scoring free goals with free helpers. It was such a thrill to watch his greatness when he was just coming on the world stage. How great was it to watch Gretz in the 80s on a regular basis? And do you see a little bit of him in Mitch Marner?

Which I do. So you're from Edmonton. Originally, yes. That's where I grew up. I grew up actually just outside of Edmonton, a place called St. Albert, Alberta. But yeah, then I moved into the city. So yeah, I got to see gretzky when he was still in the whl and um no that's not right is it wha wha why did i say okay then the wha so yeah so he was just a kid and you could just kind of tell he was already all over it like he just dominated the ice in this

very terrifying way i've imagined for most of the opposition players. And so it was pretty clear right off the top that he was great. He was one of those players where you didn't have that well, he needs a few years. Maybe he said he needed a few years when he was like nine or something like that. Well, he went pro, right? He played for Indianapolis

like 17-year-old pro. That's why he could never qualify for the Calder because he was never officially an NHL rookie because he had that pro year or whatever. But yeah, I mean, we talk about prodigies. You know, Crosby was a prodigy. There's been a few that we talked about. But like hearing Brian tell that story in 77,

and I'm doing the math in my head, and I think Gretzky's a teenager in 77, and he's playing this game against the Czechoslovakia, and he sounds like three goals, three assists, and a nine, whatever. Always unbelievable numbers put up by... By Gretzky, I'm going to play a bit of you, actually,

since we're just talking Gretzky here. So let's just get a taste of you, and then we'll return to chronological order. order but I like this. It's like autobiographical, like completely, because you're a Hawks fan. That's right. So how did that come to be? It came to be like probably a lot of people. You turn on Hockey Night in Canada, and there the Chicago Blackhawks were playing

probably the Toronto Maple Leafs. And I just liked their uniform, and I was a little kid, like I was probably four years old. Right. It's a great uniform. Yeah, and I just said, I like those guys. And again, just like the nickname, it just kind of stuck. Yeah. And I just said, I like those guys. And again, just like the nickname, it just kind of stuck.

Yeah. I was going to say, because like a lot of times that's true. Like I grew up an Oilers fan pretty much because they were amazing. They were amazing

when it was going up. And the Leafs were terrible. But I switched, the Leafs were my home team. And then I, you know, the Oilers was like a passing fancy.

But then of course the home team kind of sinks in. But the, your love of the Blackhawks is, like, this is real, man. Like, Hepsey was telling me a story this morning. Like, you were told, maybe you tell me this is true, you were told to stop wearing your Blackhawks jersey at Toronto concerts. Is there any truth to this?

Oh, I don't know. I think I was told, I think when I used to, I will occasionally be invited to go on Off? Oh, I don't know. I think I was told, I think when I used to, I will occasionally be invited to go on Off the Record, the TSN show, and they told me to stop wearing it. Maybe that's the story, but he's full of great stories.

So, I think Brian asked you something very specific there about Mitch Marner. He's such a young kid, and he's so fantastic. I've never heard him Gretzky-esque sounds a littlearner. He's such a young kid and he's so fantastic. I've never heard him Gretzky-esque sounds a little like. That's a lofty

statement to put on poor Mitch Marner. But do you see any when you watch Mitch Marner play, do you see any signs of the great one? I mean, I have to be honest, I don't particularly watch the Leafs all that much. If I'm watching a hockey game, it's usually because Chicago's playing. I mean, I think that when you think about Gretzky,

you're talking about someone who completely dominated the game. He was like, you know, like a LeBron James or somebody where it was just like he kind of won the game by himself. I mean, he had an amazing supporting cast, don't get me wrong, amazing. But it's hard to find a player that just so dominates the game. I mean, every once in a while, a season will happen where

Cindy Crosby will have an amazing season or that one season that Patrick Kane had about three or four years ago where he just like every time he touched the puck, he scored. But like, yeah, it's, I mean, Austin Matthews, quite frankly, is like burning it up, scoring goals. And it's almost more like he's dominating the game in a way that nobody else is currently. Ten goals in six games.

Yeah, that's Gretzky numbers. That's Gretzky-esque. Yes. I like it early in the season, you get the small sample size and people whip out their calculators. And, oh, Austin's going to score 230 goals this year. So that's fantastic. So Michael Coffey just wants me to ask you, since we're talking about the Blackhawks,

is Taves really back? This is from Michael Coffey. Is Taves really back? Well, I mean, certainly having a ferocious start to his season. And I think that it makes me wonder if he was injured last year because he was uncharacteristically absent. And even when he's not scoring a lot, he's still a real dominant player generally. I mean, I think he's one of the—him and Crosby are the two greatest leaders in the NHL, hands down.

You're right. You're right. And his disappearance last year is very weird. It makes me wonder if there was some personal issue or if there was an injury because he's just—he came out of the gate just flying. How old is he now? Like, not old enough to be, he should still be. Yeah. He's not ready to retire from hockey even in, I think, would he be like 29? Yeah, the way I look at it, so Crosby, I know his age always because he wears 87 because

he was born in 87. And I know Taves is older than Crosby, but not by much. So he's probably, I would guess, and I i could google this but i refuse to but i would guess like 32 i would oh maybe he's that old yeah but i mean holy smokes what a career and yeah again i'm a not a blackhawks fan but i'm a when canada's playing best on best like be it olympics or the recent world cup or something suddenly i'm a diehard taves fan you know what i mean so like he's fantastic yeah he's the kind of guy that can drag you across the finish line definitely so Olympics or the recent World Cup or something, suddenly I'm a diehard Taves fan. He's fantastic. He's the kind of guy that can drag you across the finish line, definitely.

I think he is back. This is a great start, and if he can keep this up, he's going to have a career season. My friend Andrew Stokely has a question for you while we're on Hockey Talk here. Who were the overall ball hockey champs for their ball hockey league 20 years

ago behind the church slash school off of college? That seemed like an inside question, obviously. Yes. It was a pickup game. There was no teams. We would just get there and then we'd divide up the... Do you throw your sticks in a pile? Yeah, we threw the sticks in

and that's how we picked the team. So there was no champions. It was all just for fun. Oh, that's great. And pile? Yeah, we threw the sticks in, and that's how we picked the team. So there was no champions. It was all just for fun. Oh, that's great. And then to go to cause and have breakfast afterwards, that was kind of half of it, too. That's very Canadian of you. You're very good. By the way, I'm obliged to tell you my wife is from Edmonton.

I need to share that with people from the Edmonton area. Now, I want to get you to Toronto and then, of course, the formation of the Pursuit of Happiness. But can you share a little bit about your life and just a little bit about the bands you played in in Edmonton before you leave for the big smoke? You were in some rock bands in Edmonton. Sure, yeah, of course.

I mean, the experience of being in bands in Edmonton is what led me to Toronto, basically. So I always wanted to be in a band. I always wanted to make records. And that was ever since I was a little child. And so, yeah, I had some bands in high school and, you know, kind of cover bands, that kind of thing. And then I had sort of the whole punk new wave thing happen. And that was kind of my entry into the music.

And that was music really inspired me. And so I had a band called the modern minds and we we were kind of a big deal in our small little community of sort of punk world and so that that that was great and then i ended up our our bass player left and i i had a few other bands in the like for a while but the whole problem with Edmonton is the liquor laws at the time in Alberta were crazy. You could only sell alcohol in a bar that was attached to a hotel.

So hotel bars could... So that's where bands would play. And typically they would want cover bands. And it was really like there would be like a thousand fights every night. So it wasn't really suitable for the type of thing that we were doing. And then you could sort of... Some people would rent a hall and throw a gig and then the hall would get destroyed.

And it was just all of that. There was nothing really good happening. Even a restaurant, you couldn't go into a restaurant and just order yourself a glass of wine. You had to order a meal first and then you could order a glass of wine. Well, see, that all sounds crazy. And then my wife will tell me, you know, I got my,

I don't know if it was a learner's permit or what, but she was driving a car at 14. Yes, yes. And then that sounds crazy. That's crazy too. Yeah. So everything was crazy. And so, so there was, I'm saying all this because there was really no place to play. You'd play, you could hardly even find a gig. And so, and so I, at the end of this last kind of, you know, the last sort of band I was in in Edmonton, I took a trip to Toronto because a a whole bunch of my friends had moved to toronto and so i had place to stay and people to hang out with and so i came to toronto and i remember opening up a now magazine and saying you know what you know all these gigs like is this the gigs for the next month or something he said no this are

all the gigs that are happening like this week right and this would be as many gigs as there would be an entire year in edmonton so i was was like, I'm moving here. And so, yeah, so I went home and kind of settled my affairs and ended up moving to Toronto. Quick side note about the Modern Minds. The Modern Minds, I used to get mail like years later, 20, 30 years later, 20 years later, 30 years later from Japan and people would have found, we released the three song single and that was the kind of thing you always, people were, back in the punk days

you just make your own records and that was kind of one of the great things about it. And people would be saying, can I get the record? I heard it. It's like, you make terrible good music.

It'd all be this sort of broken English. And so I had a bunch of them and I just kind of would send them out anytime anybody asked for them. And then the record company from Japan

contacted me and said, do you have any more songs? We want to do a full-length CD. And so I had a bunch of demos. They were terrible. But I said, oh, here's what we got. And I sent it over to them on a pair of cassettes or something like that. And they made a record.

And so they released this record. And then very recently, but a little while ago, I got contacted by a guy here in Toronto. His name is Simon. He has a record label called Ugonto his name simon he has a he has a record label called ugly pop records where he finds old obscure punk stuff and he reissues it and so he just reissued it on vinyl get out of here so suddenly this whole record that we made like you know years ago back in the 80s has suddenly gotten this big huge life

so obscure like yes you never know what was the documentary the guy who uh he was like living in detroit and broke and then he was meanwhile he's famous i can't remember now the details south africa or something like that uh oh right right i never saw that yeah sugar man sugar man that's it you're searching for sugar man or something it's like the modern monks are huge in japan yeah that's too funny that's too funny and by the way i'm gonna this is on a personal note so i used to, I worked five years at the Galleria Mall

at Dufferin and DuPont. Okay. And I used to live at Charles Street and Young and I biked to work and I would always take like Davenport then DuPont

and I believe this to be you because I've told people for the last 25 years but you lived in this neighborhood. Yeah, I live in, yeah,

I have lived in that general neighborhood so I would because I would I was a huge Love Junk fan as I said and I'd be telling

all my friends Moe Berg was just walking along DuPont and I biked by him it was Moe Berg from the Pursuit of Happiness like this was a big deal to me

no I walk a lot and I used to walk a ton so I pretty much anywhere I went I would walk and so yeah I was for me I think a lot of people don't make a big deal I went, I would walk. And so, yeah, I was, for me,

I think a lot of people don't make a big deal about me because I'm just kind of part of the furniture and trauma. I saw Moe Berg, who cares? I saw him like five times last week, you know, I just got wandering around like a hobo. I saw some Twitter threads.

It was like Moe Berg spotting. Like, yeah, exactly. And that's too funny. But that's actually what I, I mean, that's kind of what I dig about Canadian,

like Toronto-based rock bands. It's like, I get a sense that you're just, you're just a regular guy. Like, I feel like you can go up to a Moberg

and have a conversation about hockey or whatever. There's no airs about you. It's a whole different paradigm. I'm not that big a star. Well, it depends on who you ask. I think you're a big,

big fucking star. Let me just give a shout out to the official painter of the Toronto Mike Studios. So he's downstairs right now. So don't be afraid. We're not being robbed if you hear noises downstairs. ChrisBrownPainting.com is where you go to hire Chris Brown. He's doing a kick-ass job of painting the Toronto Mike Studios. So I'm actually, just so you all know, I'm recording on my dining room table

just like we did with Mike Zeisberger last week. So this is the second episode on this table and the last because we're going to be downstairs tomorrow when Scott Moore, Scott Moore, the sports net, the head of sports net, he just quit actually. He's going to be here tomorrow, but I'm going to make sure we're set up downstairs for him. So thank you, Chris, for painting the studio.

It looks awesome. I'll take pictures once it's done, which should be later today. I also want to thank our sponsor, Census Design and Build. Census Design and Build provide architectural design, interior design, and turnkey construction services across the GTA. and turnkey construction services across the GTA. So what I urge you to do if you have any projects for your home in the GTA, you need to call them at 416-931-1422 or go to censusdesignbuild.ca

and schedule your zoning and cost project feasibility study. And if you want 10 bucks, everybody needs 10 bucks. Here's a very quick and easy way to get $10 and you'll thank me later because it's an amazing app. If you go to paytm.ca And if you want $10, everybody needs $10. Here's a very quick and easy way to get $10, and you'll thank me later because it's an amazing app. If you go to paytm.ca and download the Paytm Canada app for your smartphone,

you set it up very quickly. It took me seconds. And then when you pay a bill, like I just paid my bell bill for my internet and my TV. When you pay a bill and you use the promo code Toronto Mike, all one word, Toronto Mike, they give you 10 bucks right away in Paytm cash. And you can either use that to buy gift cards in the rewards section, or you can spend that 10 bucks on another bill. It'll save you $10 on another bill. So it's $10 they'll give you just for using the promo code Toronto Mike. So I urge you to go to Paytm.ca and download the Paytm Canada app. All right, Mo, we've got you in Toronto now. Share with me the origin story, if you don't mind. I'm

interested in the origin of the name, The Pursuit of Happiness, and how you guys came together and formed the band. You know, I honestly don't recall how we came up with the name. I came up with the name, and I had the name of the band before I even had a band. And I found throughout my early part of my career that finding the name of the band was the most frustrating part of even being in a band. So I thought, I'm going to think of the name first, and then I'll just say, do you want to join a band called The Pursuit of Happiness? And then I thought that would kind of cut down on a lot of fights and stuff. So yeah, I moved to Toronto because Edmonton was completely taking me nowhere. And I ended up moving here with my drummer, Dave Gilby, and he had been playing with my last band. And we weren't necessarily saying we're going to play together, but we moved together sort of about a week apart.

And then we eventually said, yeah, we should be in a band together. And then at this, and then a guy named Johnny Sinclair, who was in bands in Saskatoon and my bands and my Edmonton band used to play Saskatoon. And so he, some of his bands had opened and he sort of was aware of me. And so when I moved to Toronto, he found out. And so he just kind of cold called me one day, hey, I'm, my name is Johnny Sinclair. I used to see you in bands and in Saskatoon. When you were, when you come to Saskatoon, you want to just go get a drink. And I was like, sure, I'll go get a drink. And so I went and had a drink. And then we just became good friends.

He ended up getting me a job. And then he was in another band. And then he was unhappy at that band. So then he joined our band. Then Dave had two friends of his from Winnipeg, Tam and Tasha Mobley, who had also just moved to Toronto. And so we were looking for some harmonies for our songs and stuff. And so we said, let's call them.

So we called them. And so that was the band. And we were all transplanted Western Canadians. It was a really weird thing. We were all living in Toronto, but we'd all moved to Toronto. And so we ended up all ending up together. And that was the original band that recorded the first version of I'm an Adult Now that did the first original independent video.

So that was the very birth of the band. Well, I got to ask you about the video, which is like a much music staple back in the day. And it's my first exposure to the band. I'm sure most people listening right now, it was the video from An Adult Now that Much would play. And it's kind of an iconic, it's a great way to see the old Toronto.

Sure. But maybe share a little bit of inside detail on sort of like, like where'd you come up with the idea for the video, how that came together? Cause you're not signed it yet. This is your independent. Oh yeah. The video shoot was, I mean, I often talk about how incredibly, how we just kind of fluked into our success basically because we, I had a friend, his name is Nell Lugieran, and he worked for the National Film Board, which most of you maybe know about, and, and so he, he was a director, and he said, I got a friend who's got some film and a camera, it's like, we should shoot a video, and this is when videos were still pretty young kind of thing, and we said, okay, sure, and so we'd gone into a

friend's basement and recorded four demos, just so we could get gigs on Queen Street. And so it was a guy named Scott Smith. And so it was just like basement demos. We weren't planning on doing anything with them other than playing for them to people to get them to talk them into booking our band. And so we kind of, me and Nell who listened to the tape we made and we said, which one of these do you think would make the best video? And so we had four songs

and we said, I think this one would make the best video, which is I'm an adult now. So okay, let's do it. And so we had no plan outside of just like, let's go on the street and just shoot. Like, let's just go and, it wasn't the conceptual or anything. Because it's a parking lot, essentially. What's the intersection there?

Is it Queen and, where's the intersection? It was just, it's just slightly east of Spadina. So it was like Queen and, right near where Much Music was, Queen and John. So it was near around there. And then we went out to Yonge Street and shot some stuff. And we didn't have a big plan. And then he invented this character, this guy in the white suit.

And he was going to be someone who stopped by and saw us. And then he was going to sign us to a record deal. Because it's all kind of like super lo-fi concept. So we just kind of shot it. We got all our friends to be the extras and uh you know there was but i had a friend uh belinda robbins who was a video producer she worked video producer so i had all these connected friends so she was able to cobble together a few people to work on it and that was it and we shot the video and we thought wow this is really great we love it and uh and and we had a video release party

even which was just like we just showed it on a tv set and we it and uh and and we had a video release party even which was just like we just showed it on a tv set and we just had our friends and we had a bunch of people like and a whole bunch of people like you know bruce mccullough and and calum renny came and just trashed the place that's amazing they just think well i don't think they came because that's they think hey there's a party let's go trash the place so so and then and then we handed in the video to like uh too much music guys Did you personally go to 299 Queen? I walked in. And this is when there was no security there.

No, the good old days, yeah. Yeah, and so I just walked in. And I handed it to this person. And I think we had a friend named Joni Daniels who had seen our band. She was working at MuchMusic. So she kind of told us, go, just go do it. And here's maybe a person you could give it to. And so we gave it to them thinking it would just get played on City Lim city limits which was the sort of alternative music show um and so that was kind

of the end of it it's kind of one of those things where you hand it to someone and then you kind of forget that you ever even made the video and then the next day the woman called me back i think her name was morgan and she said hey we're gonna put this into full rotation and it's like wow cool still not really even knowing what that even meant it's like wow i guess they're gonna play it and then you know and then you know we'd we'd like go somewhere and and turn and turn on the tv and hope we'd we'd see it and then you know watch and much music for like an hour it wouldn't come on it's like oh i never saw it so okay whatever and then and then we had booked a gig at the rivoli our very first gig we ever had was opening for the shadowy men on the shadowy and a shadowy yeah so they they uh they gave us our first gig because i sort of had known reed diamond their

their bass player before this and so when he found out i moved to toronto i said well you know if you get a band together you can open for us and so that which i was super grateful for so we had a great gig there so i i begged the guy who was booking that till like got us have our own show and he would not and then then I kept begging him, and this is not my personality to do this either way. So he said, oh, you can have a, if you get a co-headliner. So we got this guy, Chris Houston,

used to be in this band called the Forgotten Rebels. Oh, Hamilton Punk Band. Yeah, yeah. And so he was going to do a solo set, and so we did it as a co-headline. So we went away, and we were playing some shows that we'd set up for ourselves in Western Canada because we had friends out there who could get us gigs.

And so we came back and it was like, there's lined up outside the door of the Rivoli. And it was like, okay, so that video has had some effect. No, that's back in the day when, when having high rotation and much music,

that was a huge deal in my, my crowd. Like that was everything. You were at that point, you're a, you're famous. You know what I mean? Like you're on our,

you're in our living rooms. And remember, Much Music did that, repeated this. I think it was, I don't know, they had like a four-hour block or something, and they'd repeat it. So if you knew the video was being played at a certain point, you knew when it was going to be repeated. You know what I mean? That's right. Yeah. And then you had your VCR or whatever, and you could grab your videos that you wanted. But yeah, that's great. Great toronto i just had gordep in

here and i was the romantic traffic video which was recorded on the ttc right i put that one you had that one yours there's a there's a handful of these like uh spadina bus by shuffle demons that's exactly right iconic like 80s uh toronto videos if you will. But fantastic. But tell us how, so this is your indie cut of I'm an Adult Now, but for Love Junk. So does the success of the video and much lead to the record deal that leads to Love Junk?

Sure. Well, that got the ball rolling. So the next thing that happened was, I mean, I was an avid record shopper. And so I would go to record stores and then someone would come up to me and say, where's your record? Like, you know, I said, I don an avid record shopper. And so I would go to record stores and then someone would come up to me and say, where's your record?

Like, you know, I said, I don't have a record. So people are coming in here asking to buy. I'm an adult now. So you guys should think about maybe making a record, which never occurred to us, never even occurred to us. And so I said, oh, okay. Well, I guess having a video would maybe create a demand for a record. So we got a friend to do the design

and we got a thousand pressed and we a friend to do the design and we got a thousand pressed and we brought them to some record stores and they all sold out right they were just in local toronto record stores so then there was a guy who ran a record store slash record label it was called the record peddler and so he said look i can deal with this for you guys you guys can't handle this and so so he distributed the record for us and so he got it across canada and and uh and then and then warner brothers so this all led to like us getting a manager and an agent and all that kind of stuff and a bunch of record company interests and then warner brothers said we'll take it over now and so warner brothers canada took it over and then they got like a lot more radio play and stuff like that although we were getting played on like the edge they weren't

called the edge they were called cfny yeah spirit of music so they they started playing it really lot more radio play and stuff like that. Although we were getting played on like The Edge. They weren't called The Edge. They were called CFNY, Spirit of Music. So they started playing it really early on. And then I think Q107 started playing it a little bit later. Definitely. They both did. That's why I would hear QN done on CFNY. Yeah.

And then we were, you know, and we'd get played in college stations and stuff, especially around Canada, across Canada. And then some Warner Brothers was able to get it on stations kind of around the country. All right. I'm going to pause you there to play it. So I'm going to start playing the song we're talking about because I have a few more questions about this iconic cut from Love Junk, but let's hear it. Well, I don't hate my parents

I don't get drunk just to spite them I got my own reasons to drink now I think I'll call my dad up and invite him I can sleep until noon anytime I want Though there's not many days that I do Gotta get up and take on that world When you're an idol it's no cliche, it's the truth Cause I'm an adult now I'm an adult now you're an idol it's no cliche it's the truth okay this is the uh re-recording right this is the right right and i mean you're producing how'd you get todd ronk Like, I have so many questions. So what's it like working with Todd?

It was great. I mean, and again, the same stupid luck was we had, we were in our record company office in New York. So we got signed to Chrysalis Records, which was a British label that, you know, had a big American presence. Right, because Billy Idol was on there. Billy Idol and Pat Benatar and the Proclaimers

and Was Not Was, and they had all these you know, and so anyway, so we Jethro Tone. And so they and so we were touring around because we were able to sort of tour a little bit in the United States even with our

just the success we had because it kind of spilled over into America and we were being courted by a lot of American record labels and also knocking on the door of a lot of American record deals not all of them recording us we're courting them as well so anyway so we uh um so we're in our record so we'd been playing some shows we ended up in New York and we were playing we ended up um just in their office and they said well who do you want to produce a record I said oh Todd Runyon because he was like my hero I loved his productions and I loved his music. And so it was the same thing.

I just kind of said it and I was like, I forgot I said it like five minutes after we left. You took a shot. You went big. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go big or go home.

Yeah, exactly. And then we ended up in Winnipeg and we were at Soundcheck and I got a call. Someone said, there's a phone call for you. And I picked up the phone and said, hey, Mo,

it's Todd Rundgren. And I just, I mean, you have to, I try to imagine that moment like it was probably one of the most surreal moments of my whole life and then he just kind of started talking about you know he mainly talked about how crappy a lot of it was and then and that's kind of his style

he's not really there to praise you he's there to make sure that he cuts away all the crap so that was it that was my first conversation and then and then he was doing it it was pretty crazy when you hear this song now like i mean how do you feel listening to it now like you're proud of this because this is uh holds up i mean maybe i'm biased because i loved it way back when but it sounds great in the headphones here like uh you feel proud of this work? Oh, absolutely. I mean, what I like about it

was it was, there wasn't a lot of studio gimmickry. Todd just kind of set us up and recorded us live off the floor. Well, that's why

it holds up, I think, because there's not a lot of stuff that dates it. Yes, so that's what I'm grateful for is he didn't sort of like over kind of...

Sympathizers or something that would say, oh, that sounds so 80s. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or the kind of way that drums were recorded and a bunch of overdubs. It wasn't constructive,

put it that way. It was just kind of captured. And so I think that's probably why it still sounds pretty good. All right, Pepper, everyone had a good time pitching questions for you

based on the title of this song. So I won't bore you of all of them. But let me see. Which one should I start with? Rob Mandarino says, Do you still have the problems of an adult on your head and your shoulders? That was Rob's question for you. Quite obviously.

I mean, I think that what's interesting about the song for me personally is that it's almost like my older self was in the future speaking to my younger self and saying, here's a good idea for a song. Because I don't know that I had that much of an idea of what I was even talking about when I actually wrote the song. It was sort of an idea that I was just climbing into terms with, like this idea of getting older and what does that mean. There's certain things that seem stupid now that seems like things I would do when I was a teenager

that I don't really feel like I could do as an adult. But quite honestly, I was probably still doing them. And it's not until now, you know, now that I'm older and I have kids and now I really have a real... How old are your kids, by the way, now? My daughter will be 13 in a month and my son is nine. Okay. I got a 16-year-old son, but I have a 14-year-old daughter, so that's pretty close to your 13-year-old. And I have a four-year-old and a two-year-old, but yes. Cool. So yeah, now the song means something different,

which just ties in nicely. Jay Reeves, he wrote, can you please discuss with him the irony of being an adult now? How has this view of adulthood changed since the recording of that very cool song? But you've kind of touched on that. Well, yeah, it hasn't changed even a bit. That's the part about it that's weird. How has this view of adulthood changed since the recording of that very cool song? But you've kind of touched on that.

Well, yeah, it hasn't changed even a bit. That's the part of it that weirds me out so much. Lee Eckley. Lee Eckley came up with Zeisberger. Zeisberger is a big rock fan. He writes about hockey for NHL.com now. And he came up the last episode. It's funny, he leads up again.

But Lee Eckley wrote a question for you. He says, he wanted to know, do you still stay in touch with Todd Rundgren? I'm in touch with him. I try to not, I'm trying not to be in his face. I try to keep my distance as a fan. But every time he comes to Toronto, if I'm here, I'll go to the show and then he'll very graciously hang out with me afterwards and we'll go have a drink and talk.

And the coolest thing that's happened recently was that he decided to make a record of duets called white knight and so he had gotten um a bunch of people like joe walsh and um uh joe satriani and daryl hall and um what's his name? Nine Inch Nails. Why? See, this is the problem with being in all these. You forget people's names that you know. Trent Reznor. Trent Reznor, yeah.

And a bunch of people like that. And so he had texted me. He sent me an email and said, hey, I'm making a record duet. Do you want to write a song with me? And it was really funny. He was like, pretty please. And then he had XOXOXO.

You can't say no to that. I was like, that's a weird message to get. Is this even him? Did his wife send me this email? And so I read it. And I was just, I was with, actually funny being an adult, I was with my family in an arcade in Niagara Falls, Ontario. And I kind of read it.

And I just thought, oh, this isn't really happening. And so then I just kind of put my phone down and then I thought I should show this to my wife. And so I showed it to my wife and she looked at it and she goes, and she started jumping up and down in the middle of the staircase. She said, this is unbelievable. And I said, it's kind of unbelievable. And I really, I see so many ways that this could go wrong for me. I just, I don't want to get too excited about it. And so anyway, so I got back to him and said, sure, I would love to do this. And I, so I worked on some stuff for a really long time because I was really afraid to send him anything and have him say that it sucked. So I worked on a bunch of different things and I sent him three things and two of them were more sort of electronically based because he's been doing a lot of more sort of EDM kind of stuff.

And then I'd sent him something that was more like a pursuit of happiness song. And so the next, like probably two hours later, he emailed me back and he said, that one is perfect. It's so Moe. That's the one we're doing. And I was like, wow, I could have probably just whipped that thing. I'm not saying I whipped it off, but I could have. If that was the idea to do that, I probably wouldn't have spent so much time on.

That's so surreal. That's amazing. And even then I was like, well, maybe he's doing this with like 50 people and only like, you know, a dozen of these are going to get on the record. So I still, even at the point, it wasn't until his manager contacted me and said, okay, we have to do the deal. So as soon as we did the deal, I was like, okay. I still told nobody. Nobody knew about this except my wife. And this was like probably eight months.

Wow. I sort of kept this to myself. And then finally, and then when I saw the artwork, I saw the artwork and I saw that my name was on it. That's when I started telling a few people that I had it. It's not just a dream.

It's reality. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, very, very cool. By the way, a million, million people. A lot of people. I'll give credit to Mike DeJong and Michael O'Riordan for being the first two guys

to come up with this. They wanted to ask, is he an adult now? So are you an adult now, Moe Berg? Well, yeah. I suppose I was when I wrote it and clearly quite a bit more so now. Man, a lot of silly questions came out of the title of that song.

I want to play something that's bothered me forever and I can't believe you're here now to finally tell me whether you agree or not. But I'm going to play a big radio hit I was into by the Offspring called Gotta Get Away. So here's Gotta Get Away. Okay, so I played

Gotta Get Away and I'm just going to go back to I'm an Adult Now. Okay, so Forever, when actually it was 102.1, I think it was the edge at this point, but Forever, when they would play the Offspring's Gotta Get Away, I thought I was going to hear I'm an adult now. This was my reaction almost every time.

Well, the funny thing is if you kept playing Gotta Get Away, the opening riff sounds more like hard to laugh. All right, let's go. Are you kidding me? Let's go. definitely I think this was the thing that got people it was the combination of the drum beat and also that riff sounding kind of like hard to laugh that made people think it sounded like that.

It does not sound enough like our sound song at all. It doesn't. But you must have wondered whether, was it Dexter Holland? Whoever wrote the song, let's assume it's Dexter, whether he was familiar with Love Junk. Well, yeah, I wondered. I wondered if they listened to it. And they may

have heard us almost even inadvertently because we used to get played. I think they're from Los Angeles. Am I right? California for sure. So we used to get lots of radio airplay. We'd be playing on K-Rock all the time. So if you were listening to the radio at a certain time, you definitely would have heard. And he would have been. He's about that age, yeah.

But I mean, I think, because I think someone kind of even approached him, like someone from our publishing company, and he's like, I never even heard that song, which, of course, that's what you say because you don't want to get sued. It's sort of like when you listen to The Strokes last night and you think, that sounds like Tom Petty's American Girl. So I guess I'm glad you you were i'm assuming others were aware

but it couldn't have just been me but i'll be in driving in the car and they'll start playing uh gotta get away on uh on 102.1 and i'm telling you every single time like you think i'd figured out like charlie brown kicking the football that lucy was holding from but every single time in my head i'm now advancing and i'm starting to sing i'm an adult now it's it was that close right well it's it's weird. See, because people were even coming up to me and saying, you know, we should sue them and I'll do this for you. And it's like, there's no lawsuit.

This is stupid. And I wouldn't even want to. It's like, music is going to be destroyed if we keep going down this path. It's like the whole thing that happened with that Marvin Gaye song. Right. At a certain point, if your song even sounds stylistically like something, are you going to be able to sue them? And then no one's going to be able to release any music. So, I mean, it's a drum beat,

and there's no way to... How many drum beats are there? That drum beat's probably in a hundred other songs as well. And the riff is sort of the same as Hard to Laugh, but not even... It's not the same riff. It's not a copy of the riff. But like you said, you probably would never even think twice about the riff being so

close to Heart to Laugh if the opening wasn't bang on, I'm an adult now. It's a combination. It's a combination of the two. There's no lawsuit in my mind, even if there was one legally. I think that would be a really stupid thing to get involved in. You know this, of course, but in January

1989, I'm an adult now. I guess because I had the new release, the new Todd Rundgren version for Love Junk. It hit number six on the Billboard's Alternative Songs chart. Cool. That was a modified Toronto hit for sure. A big Canadian hit, I should say, but pretty awesome. And next single, I'm just going to play a couple more cuts from Love Junk because, well, there's lots of Love Junk stuff I want to ask you about.

But let's play the second cut, which is this one. By the way, my daughter, who's now 14, when she was 8, she had a podcast. She called her podcast She's So Young, and this was the theme song. So let's hear this. As much as she'd like to believe She's leading a brand new way That uniform that she wears, I see it on the street every day She looks heavenward and struggles to find the right

Cliché, you've gotta find your own space Have a nice day She's so young, she's got the answer She doesn't need to question herself Like I do Like I do She's so young, she's got the answer So fantastic follow-up to the big hit, I'm an adult now, Acid Test. Do you remember Acid Test?

Sure. So they're back together now. I've heard this. I think I've seen their name on social media lately. Steve Fall, they came here on the show before they did their comeback tour. Where were they? The Garrison. They played the Garrison about a year ago. Gave me a t-shirt. Steve Fall,

I don't know who does the social for Acid Test, but I think it's Steve Fall. He says, she's probably not so young anymore. Does she still not need to question the world like I do? So everybody has a good time with your lyrics. But this was a great follow-up to

a great single. Yeah, I think this was actually the third single. Is it hard to laugh? Hard to laugh, yeah. It was weird because our record deal, our big single in America and the rest of the world

was I'm an Adult Now. But that song had already been played so much in Canada that they led with Hard to Laugh. That's funny. So in Canada, we were pushing Hard to Laugh, and now the rest of the world, we were pushing I'm an Adult Now. And then Hard to Laugh came out in the States, and then I'm an Adult Now came out in Canada,

the new version. and then we did a worldwide release of She's So Young you're right because you had like a Proclaimers thing going on remember they had the release like I would walk

500 miles twice yeah that's right they were label mates of ours yeah I like those guys because they sang in their accent you know what I mean

that brogue they weren't hiding that brogue no no they weren't hiding it it was great No, no, they weren't hiding it. It was great. It was great that they could have that degree of authenticity about themselves and still be a worldwide success that wouldn't just be a regional success. And there's one thing that you always hear from Americans,

American record companies, that you have to make people believe that you could be American or else you can't be successful. And there were so many rules about what you could do. Is that true? I'm overstating it a bit. But it's like, you know, we can't release a movie called Pret-a-Porter. It has to be called, you know, Ready to Wear.

Like, it's just kind of an idea. And a lot of people say, well, your song had a reference to a Canadian city. And it's like, no one in America knows what that is. And we get little comments like this from our record company occasionally about stuff. And so it's more that. It wasn't like, I'm probably overstating it, but there's these little insidious little things that would happen periodically. Because I've had some pretty deep discussions with people like Chris Murphy,

who we're going to get to later, who's been on the show and stuff. And we talk a lot about, because he had some record company issues and some things conspired against them. But they're a big Canadian rock band, right? But they didn't have the success that maybe he wanted in the United States. And this week, actually, is the one-year anniversary of the death of Gord Downie.

I was going to ask you about the Tragically Hip, but there's probably your go-to example of a band that's massive in Canada but kind of failed to break in the States. And I always wondered, like with the Tragically Hip, for example, where the big lead single was New Orleans is Sinking, which has the name of like an American city in the title.

This isn't Bob Cajun, you know what I mean? Right, right. So I never really, I'm still kind of like head scratching why some Canadian bands, you know, why Bare Naked Ladies could have a number one hit with One Week, for example. But some other Canadian bands, you know, why Bare Naked Ladies could have a number one hit with One Week, for example,

but some other Canadian bands which failed to crack the market. I never understood why some do. No one understands why. I mean, the thing with the Tragically Hip is when people say

they didn't crack America, it kind of depends on what you mean by that. They could go and play shows in America. We opened for them somewhere near Minnesota at a huge festival, and they were the headliner.

So it's like they were as big as a lot of sort of alternative music bands of the time in America. They just weren't as big as they were in Canada. So I think this is the dilemma that they're in, is that because they were so gigantically big in Canada, then any success that was less than that would be perceived as them failing in some other territory. But they still, they could tour.

And quite honestly, even Sloan. Sloan just got back from a very big tour, where he toured a bunch of American cities. That's probably the biggest tour they've done in, I think they were saying, like, 20 years or something like that. Wow. So they can still go and play shows,

and they can play decent shows. But is it like border towns? Because Lois and Lo, for example, which we're going to close this show if Lois and Lo love those guys. But they can go to Buffalo right now and have a big turnout. They're huge in Buffalo. Right. They're so big there. I know.

But they would have difficulty playing in Texas, for example. Right, right. Well, I think Sloan played all over the place. And I also think that Tragically Hip did too. And Texas is great for Canadian bands because they like that kind of style of music, sort of like guitar-based music. And so I think Sloan played there and I think the Tragically Hip could go and play shows there and do really big business. And it's funny because I read Michael Barkley's book about the hip and I actually interviewed him for an event. And he said, and the book, what a lot of people say is the Tragically Hip were big

where people heard them. So the biggest problem that the Tragically Hip had, in my opinion, was they just couldn't get the exposure they needed. And so it's weird that Saturday Night Live thing that they did, you'd think that might have helped break them. But in all honesty, I don't think those songs weren't that great to me. You're 100% right. I don't, in all honesty, I don't think those are, those songs weren't that great to me. You're 100% right. I didn't love those two songs and I love a lot of their other songs, a lot.

And I'm just thinking, wow, if they'd played on the album they did before that or the album they did after that, I wonder if it would have been a totally different story. Okay, just, I was on a podcast yesterday

discussing In Between Evolution. It was discussing the whole album. But at some point, we talked about that where Dan Aykroyd introduced his score. And I discussing the whole album, but at some point we talked about that, where Dan Aykroyd introduced it and scored. And I made the comment that this is my feeling, because I'm a big hip fan. I actually love those songs. It was Grace 2 and Nautical Disaster, but they're not accessible songs. If you're introducing someone to the

Tragical Hip, you don't go, oh, go listen to Nautical Disaster. There's a lot of hip songs that are far more, I want to say poppy, but just more accessible for the mainstream or whatever. So they could have taken that opportunity to play something from Fully Completely or Courage or something.

There's songs that I think, you're right, but they played the two new songs off the album they were promoting, Day for Night. And that's typically what you do on that show too. So they might not even have had the option to even do what you say. And I don't know they would have had the inclination either.

But yeah, if they played Courage or even like you think about the next record, which I believe was Trouble in the Hen House, like Grace 2 and Head by Century. Head by Century is mainstream. Yeah, if those two songs had been played, my gosh, like who knows what would have happened. Very interesting. So do you have any words you could share with us? Yeah, those two songs have been played. My gosh, like who knows what would have happened.

Very interesting. So do you have any words you could share with us? So we're recording on, this is Monday, right? Oh, the week's already a blur. This is Monday. The anniversary of Gord's passing, actually, is Wednesday, I believe, so in a couple of days. What kind of guy was Gord?

You toured with him. Can you just share maybe briefly a little bit of? Well, yeah, I mean, I have a number of Gore Downey stories. I mean, we all, we kind of came up at the same time. You know, we would do shows. I mean, there was a whole bunch of bands, us and the Hip and the Cowboy Junkies, Blue Rodeo. Blue Rodeo was a tiny bit before us,

but we were on at the same time. And Grapes of Wrath, Northern Pikes, there was all these bands, Canadian bands. All of us got American deals. It was kind of a really cool thing that America was kind of interested in, in like this different idea of Canadian music. And what I feel like a lot of these bands have, that have allowed them to stay relevant is that there was no big music thing happening at the time. Like there wasn't a prevailing like grunge or punk rock or folk rock or electronica. There's no thing that was happening and everybody had to conform to that.

Everyone was just, it was kind of a wild west time for music. And so I think that's what was helpful. And so we would do shows with them. I remember, you know, playing opening for them on New Year's in Kingston. And a lot of these times, a lot of these shows, I'd be like, you know, we're still way bigger than them. You know, I'd be thinking this in my arrogant self.

And, you know, we did all these things. And then I remember we, we, and we always had this thing where no one could blow us off the stage. Nobody. And then we played a show with them in,

in Washington, DC. And they were, and so it was, it was July 4th, and they had a big joke for this radio station, thought a big joke

because a whole bunch of Canadian bands were playing on July 4th. So we all got into one bus, and we all drove down there and had a great time, and then we played, and we got,

it was in the middle afternoon, we got too drunk to play. And so we went up and played, and we sucked. And then they came on, and they just blew us off the stage. Anyway, so the story, the most vivid thing is, my most vivid story of his is that he,

we were in New York and we were doing some record company stuff and whatever. And so we were in this big suite and Gord just shows up at the door kind of thing. And he was there to have a meeting with his New York record company too. And so he walks in the door like right from the airport and i go like where's your bag and he goes i don't i don't there's my bag and he held up a little crown royal bag like you know that you get a bottle of crown royal and he said this is my whole bag i said what's in there

and he said and he took and he opened it up and he and he took out all the contents and he said there's i have a comb and he said i have a toothbrush and he said i have a fancy eating shirt and he pulled up a shirt like the kind of like the shirt i'm wearing right now like a button-up shirt but he had rolled it and so it's about the size of a cigar right and he said and he said and he said you know i'm not planning on taking off my boots so that's all i need right and he but the the expression fancy eating shirt i still use it to this day amazing i still and everyone in the band does. Everyone in the band, we were like, he said that

and we just killed ourselves laughing. And so anybody ever wore a button-up shirt, say, hey, you got your fancy eating shirt on. And that was it. So that was it. But anyway, he invited me. The band invited me over when they finished recording Road Apples.

And so they said, hey, you want to come over to our house and we'll play the new record. And, you know, this is when they were still, I still kind of felt like we were kind of the same. Well, just because I was there, Up To Here and Love Junk were two like staples in my collection.

But you're right, neck and neck. Yeah, yeah. I felt, I kind of felt that way. And then I heard the record and I was listening to it and I was like, you know, I think that's pretty good, but I don't hear like a,

like New Orleans is sinking or, you know, or, or especially like, whatchamacallit, the other big hit off that record. Blow It High Doe? Blow It High Doe,

yeah. And so I said, you know, I thought it was pretty good but I don't know if this is gonna like launch them or anything like that. Like I thought it was pretty good.

I thought this was so nice of them to have me over and they were so nice to me and everything was great and then and then we did our second record and it's like their record just little bones was a big single yeah and then it was just kind of like what that erased any doubt about who's a bigger band they were like they sold like a billion copies of that album it's like yeah that pretty much cemented them as the biggest band in canadian history man yeah man. Yeah, I mean, no argument there. That's a monster.

But I think you're right. Your memory, my memory is crap here. I had She's So Young, I had Hard to Laugh, but Hard to Laugh probably was the single. So let's hear a bit of Hard to Laugh here. Everyone who sees you thinks you should be smiling That girl, she's so pretty That girl, she's so big-eyed Everyone who sees you thinks you should be happy

Thinks you should cookuckoo or a star And then all of a sudden you're It's hard to laugh when you know that you've been cheated Had her hands around and she's been giving it a beating Well, it's hard to laugh when you know that she's been lying But you've got to laugh to prevent yourself from crying What production from Todd Rundgren Because these songs, I say they hold up to prevent yourself from crying. What production from Todd Rundgren because these songs,

I say they hold up and it's probably because there's no gimmicky stuff on them but they're just straight up rock songs and they're great. They sound great. Well, yeah. I mean, any sort of gimmicky stuff

you might hear is like sometimes you hear a kind of weird harmonizing on the guitar but that was because he said my guitar solos were so terrible that he was going to have to use tricks to make them sound good,

which he did. And all that harmonizing and the different sounds he got for those guitar solos kind of saved them. They made the sort of boring guitar solos sound very exciting. Oh, that's funny. Hard to laugh. And you're right, I now was thinking, why am I not hearing The Offspring's Gotta Get Away? Come on, what's going on here?

By the way, Avery, diehard listener of toronto mike was excited to hear you were coming on and he wrote has there ever been any kind of negative reaction to the lyrics of down on him well no i mean i see this is something that's been i wouldn't say it's a huge problem i may be an occasional problem that people had this sort of misconception of what i who i was and a lot of the lyrics that on the record especially the first three pursuit happiness records were very sort of sexual i guess and especially on on this record and but the idea was never like to was kind of to have like a wholesome message and so uh down on him was a sort of a true story of this woman I knew whose boyfriend was cheating on her and

had all these expectations of her and she was a sort of devoted girlfriend. And his thing was, his big thing was that he liked blowjobs. That was his thing. And she was candid enough to let me know that. So I wrote that about that. And so the funny thing is Mike Bone, who was the president of Chrysalis and then Mercury Records, which is our next label, he calls that the Me Too anthem of 1988 because it was kind of more,

it was supposed to be a very sort of supportive of women kind of song. And so this is also true of like a song like Looking for Girls. And people think, oh, that's just like, it sounds like some raving lunatic.

But again, the punchline of that song is, I'm going to give it to her 187,000 times, which would take you a whole lifetime. So the whole idea is to find someone and be monogamous for the rest of your life with them. It's funny you mentioned Mike Bowen, and I'll have another question about him soon.

But he's had his own Me Too challenges of late, Mike Bowen, I believe. Oh, recently? Yeah. Oh, I haven't heard this. I've not heard this. All right. Well, you can Google it when you get back on the desktop.

So this, okay, so that, hard to laugh. And then actually, let's get you to the next one. So Todd Rundgren also, and we're going to get back to Love Junk, obviously, because there's exciting news for fans of Love Junk, and there's a lot of us out there. But Todd Rundgren also produces One Side of the Story. Is that right? That's right.

So the second record. So let's just hear a cut from that. Two girls, two girls in one While she's still been hungry, she's never been poor But when you tell her what it's like, she seems to know a little more Yelling through the bathroom door, but I don't liberate the masses While she's putting on lipstick, and curling up the false eyelashes Cause she's two girls, two girls in one She's the woman that she wants to be, the woman she's become Don't even bother trying to figure it out, go figure Well, since my buddy Andrew Stokely is such a good friend,

he gets a second question. He wanted me to ask you where you came up with the track Food, because that's his favorite Pursue the Happiness track. Gosh. up with the track food because that's his favorite uh pursue the happiness track gosh i again it was just like you know i was just kind of crazy back then and i and i just thought it would be a great uh and i think a lot of people think about food the same way they think about sex where it's like this sort of like super uh sensuous kind of experience to eat something eat really great food and so i just i thought it was a pretty natural comparison. I want to ask

about expectations. A lot of times bands have this monster first album and then the second album. Maybe artistically it might be on par, but commercially it falls short. Is that at all the situation here? Did it sell as well as

Love Junk? No, it did not sell as well as Love Junk? Right. No, it did not sell as well as Love Junk. I mean, it sold well in Canada. It didn't sell as well outside of Canada as Love Junk did. And it's a funny thing. I think the idea that,

a couple of things conspired against us. One was that our record company changed during the recording of that record. Right after the record was finished being recorded, but before it was released, a whole bunch of people who were there for Love Junk were all fired. And so now we are dealing with completely different people who, and the thing is, the music business is very political. It definitely was back then.

Record companies, like, you were their band. And if no one had anything to do with you, then it was like, I didn't sign them, so I don't care about them. Or I wasn't here when they started. I hear this, yeah. And so this is a real thing. And so we're dealing with a bunch of strangers who are like, I don't care about you guys.

We have all these new bands that we're involved with, and so you're not our band, so we don't care about you. And that might be okay if you're like Bon Jovi or something and everybody has to care about you. But we were a band that, even Todd constantly lam us that the that even our our people our original record company didn't couldn't get us across the finish line you thought these guys should have been that should have been a million selling record not like what it did sell which was still fine but you know and so because we hadn't gone across the finish line go on our first record it was like okay well

you know we don't have we don't have to care about them. And so that, that would also undermines, I mean, you could say, well, there's no song like I'm an adult now on there. And that's like, but I don't know that there ever is. That's a one, like, it's kind of a novelty, one thing that just kind of happens maybe once in a career. And it's like, so it's a weird thing. I mean, some people don't even like I'm an adult now is their favorite pursuit of happiness song, but their pursuit of Happiness fans that say that,

not just your casual person. Right, exactly. Because you need to extend beyond the loyalists, if you will. And let's face it, and I had this discussion, but the loyalists, you could probably read the phone book to a beat and then the loyalists will be like, oh, that Moe Berg jam was great. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, that's the same. It's like the Ramones. No one's favorite Ramones song is Blitzkrieg bop, except people who don't know the Ramones. And then everyone who doesn't know the Ramones, Blitzkrieg bop is their favorite Ramones song. Oh, yeah, that's a great point. That's a great point.

Now, let's talk a bit more about this Mike Bone thing. So his name sounds like mine, so it's funny to say it. But okay, so the band, so your Chrysalis, you mentioned all your champions are gone, essentially. Right. But you follow Mike Bone

to Mercury Records. That's right. And so Mercury Records is where you release the Downward Road. That's right. And I mean, I'm just thinking now

of Andy Mays who came over and was talking about how they got, the Skydiggers got royally screwed by their record company to a point where they didn't even have...

Andy and the band couldn't access their own master tapes. They had to re-record their big album, for example. The whole record company... Do you feel you were well-served by Mercury? What happened at Mercury was the exact same thing

that happened at Chrysalis. So Mike Bowen signed us and we got this great record deal and we started working on everything and then Mike Bowen got fired from there too. So it was the exact same thing where we're in New Orleans

and it was like no one even wanted to, I got the feeling they were just going to just drop the band. And then when we went looking for a producer, every single producer

that we contacted wanted to work on their on the record and so the record company goes oh maybe we're wrong about these guys because like butch vig who just finished doing like never mind right and he's like i'll produce these guys and then ed stasium who was really hot at the time he just done um like living color and the smithereens and and a bunch of bands that were kind of like big alternative bands so he wanted to do it and eddie Kramer wanted to do it, and all these, Mike Klink, who'd just done Guns N' Roses.

And so we had like five or six producers who were all saying, we'll do this record. Massive names, too. Yeah, and so anyway, they're all, so then the record company says, well, okay, there must be something. But then, you know, it was the same thing. It's not our band.

We don't care about these guys. And so it was kind of dead on arrival. Well, the downward road did give us this jam, which I'll play now. Hey! Cigarette tangles Makes me hot Kidnap me Throw me in the vacuum car

Take me to your room Where the flowers hang like bats Poison me with liquor Then break out the party house Kiss me till you hurt me Then I can't until I'm not Burn holes in my party house Kiss me till you hurt me, then again until I'm numb Burn holes in my neck with a bit of money turned Remind me again how lucky I am right now

Love out my body, but then I turn off the lights and pull it out Cigarette tangles Cigarette tangles I wanna ride that wave Cigarette tangles So Mike on Twitter asks, do you actually want to ride the big wave? Well, yeah, I mean, that sounds like such a stupid thing now. It sounds like it's like a Pepsi commercial or something.

If the rest of the lyrics weren't so provocative, I kept thinking maybe that would be a good like ocean spray or something like that. Right, right, right. Mos Climato or something. Yeah, exactly. That's a great jam. I mean,

Cigarette Dangles, that's again, that was the video with the lyrics yeah yeah this was kind of groundbreaking video it was done by

Bruce McDonald who's like a big Canadian film director of course Highway 61 exactly in fact funny quick

turnaround Steve from Steve sorry Steve from Acid Test was in what was Highway 61 Revisited?

What was the other big one before, because he did the one of Keith Calamreni. Yeah, Hardcore Logo. Hardcore Logo with Hugh Dillon,

right. So we did a song for that, yeah. Right. Yes. Which is a great fucking movie. Yeah. You still friendly

with Hugh Dillon? You friendly with Hugh Dillon? I haven't seen Hugh in ages, but it's the kind of thing where if I passed him on the street, I'd start talking to him and have a conversation. I always thought he was a great guy.

He's a big TV star now, you know. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, yeah. So this video, you were talking about this video, but this video, I'm going to play this clip of that video, which is like my favorite reference here.

So that video, and it's kind of interesting, Bruce McDonald video with the, oh, he did, yeah. Bruce McDonald, he did the video for Mr. Skin by Acid Test. I think that's the connection there, if I remember correctly. But here's a show I used to love, Beavis and Butthead. That's right. What?

I hate words. Yeah. Words suck. If I wanted to read, I'd go to school. This is college music. Yeah. College music sucks. He said dangle.

Yes, yes. The angle of the dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of the meat. Whoa. That's pretty cool. You're pretty smart, Beavis. Yeah. I wanna rock that way I wanna rock that way Sing with me I wanna rock that way So that's pretty cool.

It was great. You know what's great about that? Is like, you know, everything they said is exactly what we wanted people to say about our band. That's kind of what we were. We were a college rock band. Especially in America, we were definitely a college rock band. And we were always sort of happy to be perceived as sort of like a smart band.

Like R.E.M. kind of. Yeah, yeah. And so we were like that. And the great line of that is, he said dangles. That's just killer. That's such a Beavis and Butthead moment. That's just something you just expect them to say. And so that couldn't have gone better for us.

Now, is there any at all cred that comes out of being kind of satirized on Beavis and Butthead? Does there any spillover? People love that. Everybody talks about that. That's one of the big moments in our career. Everybody thinks that. But was that all a fluke? How did that happen?

I have no idea how it even... I'm assuming the record companies always just feed them songs just with the idea that maybe they'll pick one. And so they must just get all the new releases and then they're just... They must have just randomly... I'm thinking it was the words on the screen

for the video because the great opening joke, of course, is it's like school or whatever. Right, right. I don't want to read. Well, there wasn't a lot of that at the time. This was pretty groundbreaking. The way that video was shot, there wasn't a whole lot of that and i remember bruce talking about so we got i've got these two guys to do this and it's

like it's they're using like cutting edge technology i mean this would be something you could do easily now but oh yeah now um yeah your kids could do it now yeah exactly but at the time it was very cutting edge and so we were kind of excited that that we had this sort of like very sort of current idea of video production in our video. Oh man, that's amazing. Now again Avery wants to know, was Love Theme from TPOH on

the Downward Road album inspired at all, even tongue in cheek, by Kiss's Love Theme from Kiss? 100%. It was inspired by two things. I loved Kiss but I didn't love them was inspired by two things. I loved Kiss, but I didn't love them when I was a kid. I loved them later.

As I got older, I liked them, which is weird. This is a completely random story to accompany that. There was an artist named Takano, and he was one of those guys. He was a Japanese artist that was produced by Todd Runger. I would buy any record that Todd Rundgren produced.

And so he had this great record and half the songs were instrumentals. And I was like, wow, it'd be cool to write an instrumental. And so I kind of thought of the love, and I definitely named it after the Kiss song. That was 100%. And then it was like, I was very inspired. And we actually had another instrumental

that we were going to record for the Downward Road that we just didn't make the cut. We had so many songs. We ended up recording 15. We probably shouldn't even have recorded that many. But yeah, it was going to be like two instrumentals that were just didn't make the cut. We had so many songs. We ended up recording 15. We probably shouldn't even have recorded that many. But yeah, it was going to be like two instrumentals that were going to bookend the record. There was going to be one at the beginning

and one at the end. Yeah, very good question, Avery. Doug Eastick, who I met at the Toronto Mic Listener Experience. So hi, Doug. How important, this is for you, Mo, how important do you think CanCon rules were to your success? So I'm curious what your thoughts are on the CanCon rules and how much you think that attributed to your success in this country, at least.

I think it contributes at least something to almost any Canadian band's success. I mean, I think that's... When we were talking about the Tragically Hip, we were talking about their music just being heard. If their music was heard, and I guess the guy I was talking about was pointing to towns that that they were popular and it was all towns where where they would get they were getting some exposure so i think getting your your record played on the radio there's especially back then in the 80s and i see even i guess even till today today there's no it's it's

gigantic promotion you can't beat that and for me can con rules are are fantastic because um they they've basically created the canadian music industry which probably wouldn't be anything like it is without it and the other thing is it's like people say well you know we're songs you just get played because you know it's a good song and it's like that's just nonsense that's not you know that has nothing to do with how the music business works music business is not a meritocracy, not even close. We all know bands that are fantastic or great writers or great musicians that never got anywhere. We all know people with albums, no talents at all,

that are gigantic, huge superstars. And so here's Canada. Canada's music without CanCon is basically just more of another rotation of Madonna, another rotation of Bon Jovi, another rotation of all these other bands, instead of hearing the Tragically Hip, the Cowboy Junkies, Blue Rodeo, all that. And then later on, yeah, then later on bands like Rusty, Sloan, all these bands. And then, you know, now, and so that's what I, that's how I was looked at. I feel like the Canadian music listener got something great for that.

So they gave up almost nothing and they got exposed to all this amazing music, which gave people jobs in the Canadian music industry, which gave all these bands jobs and they were allowed to make money and they ended up getting American record deals often because they were getting so successful in Canada. There's no loser for CanCon.

There's no... And people say, well, industries that are subsidized, it's like someone loses. Not in this particular case. You're a record producer yourself. You produce music for other bands. And you enjoy that. Yes, I do.

Because you do... Obviously, you're a musician. We all know what The Pursuit of Happiness has done, obviously you're a musician. We all know what, you know, we all know what The Pursuit of Happiness has done, but you're also a record producer. And here's a little note here from Andrew Ward.

And I'll read it all because he pumps my tires at the beginning, so I need to read that. But similar to Toronto Mike, that's me, everybody. Mo has a passion for the written word. Can you ask him about his background

in literature and literary criticism? A great songwriter, he is also a published author. Can you ask who inspired his writing? And he puts in parentheses, I can see Brian Moore and Morley Callahan. No? Like, that's him in parentheses. So you write, tell us about your passion for writing

and who inspires your writing. Okay. Well, yeah. as I was getting to the end of the my time with the pursuit of happiness um I was completely disillusioned with the music business and and I just thought I I was starting to develop stage fright and so I released a solo record and it didn't again I had no support at my record company for it and it just like it was really weird too it was a very weird record and so it was like it wasn't a very commercially accessible record and so and so anyway i was just kind of i and i thought you know what and i started writing short stories just for kind of for the fun of it and i started

writing and i sent one to a to a publisher and he published it i thought oh my gosh i just sent it and that was the first time i'd ever even tried to do that he said i want to do a whole book so i thought well this is fun i really like doing this i'm completely disillusioned with the music And that was the first time I'd ever even tried to do that. He said, I want to do a whole book. So I thought, well, this is fun. I really like doing this. I'm completely disillusioned with the music business. Why don't I just channel all my energy into this? And so for like a couple of years, I just wrote stories.

And I basically sat in front of my television. I watched every single Blue Jays game on TV that year, that whole season. Which season do you remember? So this would have been 1999-2000 season. So another one of their terrible seasons. Delgado and Halliday, but nothing like that. Nothing much happened. And so anyway, I did that and I released a book. And at the same time, I was

getting offers to do book reviews. And so I was doing book reviews for the Edmonton Journal. I had friends back there. And Amazon.ca was getting started. And so they had all these books they needed to review to get up on their site. And so they sent me tons and tons of books.

And then I also went and the Globe Mail would occasionally ask me to review a book. And so I actually reviewed Gord's book, Cook Machine Globe, for them. Which, thanks to Gord, it was the first time I was on the front page of the Globe reviewing books because I was reviewing such a popular book. So anyway, so yeah, I did that and I really enjoyed it.

But then it was kind of like once I got away from music, I was still producing a little bit at the time. And then I realized it's like I just miss music too much. And I guess I had no real designs. I didn't think, wow, I'm going to be a gigantic, huge author. I didn't really think that was probably going to happen. And I thought, you know, I'm doing this and I like it, but it's, I'm really, I'm a musician and I need to sort of grab a hold of myself and realize that. Well, Tuesday noon, that's his handle or her handle. Somebody's handle on Twitter, uh, says,

did anyone or any band that appeared on your show master, go on to bigger and better things. He loved watching you make demos come to life. Master Tracks, tell me about this. I'm trying to think of who we did that was... I mean, a lot of those bands were pretty young when we... And so a lot of them just ended up breaking up because they were just, you know, they're new bands and they went all... Some of those people went on to do other things

that probably did well. There's a band that we did called Diamonds who have had a pretty big, good career since then. So they're, they're, they, they've sort of had Juno nominated, you know, records and that kind of thing. So they did, they've done really well and they have a new record out. But like, like I said, yeah, a lot of those bands kind of like we're just kind of getting going and that

was the kind of band we were looking for anyway. We weren't looking to really record established bands. We were looking to sort of, where a day in a recording studio would be like a really big deal to them. That was kind of the idea behind it. Well, Acid Test again wants to know if you have any plans for new episodes of Master Tracks.

Well, no. I mean, it was done for the Ox Network, which I don't even know what the status of that network is anymore. That was one with the voiceovers were Alan Cross, right? It's possible. Yeah, I just remember. When they first started, they had all this original programming that they were doing.

And so I think our show was kind of wildly expensive to create. And I think they realized they could just buy programming for way less. Which is too bad because I do remember the initial period with Ox of thinking, what a cool station. This is what I'm looking for. And it had a lot of great content like that. And then, like most things nowadays like that, it doesn't last very long. I mean, I don't

know. I wish it had become more popular because if it had, probably that same kind of program could have endured, I guess. And I mean, I mentioned that Chris Murphy came by. He came by because he was promoting this thing called the Trans-Canada Highwaymen. And it featured a few...

And of course, I love my CanCon, I call it. I have a big thing for... 90s Canadian alternative music. I'm all in. That's why I mentioned Rusty. Rusty is like my Rolling Stones, okay? Amazing. Rusty is an interesting band

because they're the kind of band... I DJ once a month at just like a dive bar in Toronto. And like it's, a lot of young people come there but you throw on a Rusty song and get everybody's interest. Like it's so weird

you throw on like Misogyny. Yeah, like Wake Me or Misogyny. Yeah, yeah. And all of a sudden everybody's kind of like Well, they've all been here. They've all been here. Groovy Dead is just

Groovy Dead, yeah. Yeah, just kills, yeah. Speaking of the much music, Canadian singles, so yeah, I'm all in on that stuff, but let's name the members here, and you can tell me how this came to be, but Chris Murphy from Sloan,

Stephen Page. Did you know he was with the Barenaked Ladies at one point? I don't know. Right. Craig Northey from The Odds. By the way, I have an odds. Let me quickly do this odds question, then come back to the TransCanada

Highwaymen. Mike Grigoski wants me to ask you how you ended up in Eat My Brain. You're in the video for Eat My Brain. We knew them, and we'd done tons of shows with them. So we were kind of like contemporaries. We toured a bunch of shows with them, and so it was just kind of, they just kind of asked us for that, yeah. And we're doing a show

with them in Toronto next month. Not next month, next year. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. Danforth show, right? Yeah, yeah. Very exciting. Yes.

Andrew said he's excited for that. So tell me how did you end up doing shows with the Trans Canada Highwaymen? Well, this was put together by a guy named Jim Milan. And Jim Milan is a theatrical director, producer. And he's done like the Kids in the Hall and did the Alton Brown show and the Mythbusters show and he does these big these big sort of productions so he said I think it'd be great to do a show with Canadian artists from a certain era right that you could go out and sort of tell stories about what it was like and play your songs and so and so he contacted me initially and we talked a bit about who being and he's you know

so he talked about getting Craig who he knew from working with the kids in the hall, and also Chris Murphy, because Chris is great, and I'm a huge Sloan fan, so I thought Chris Murphy would be great. And then Craig was working with Stephen, so Stephen also became kind of an obvious choice. And so it all came together very quickly. And so the idea was to do a theatrical production. So it wouldn't be just like a concert. There would be multimedia and all this kind of stuff.

And so anyway, so that's how it came about. It was just like that. And so we got together and played and we loved it. It was really fun. So hopefully we'll get to do some more of that. And it's interesting because like Chris Murphy's not going to, like Chris Murphy's from a band where there's like four songwriters in that band, right? So he'll only perform his songs, if you will.

Yeah, that's right. So Craig Northey the same thing he's there's other songwriters who did hits and stuff uh and of course stephen page too so but you of course you you are you could play anything from the well yeah i guess that's true but yeah is there any plans like to do something again with these guys i think we always plan to i believe we might be doing that andy kim christmas show know, it's funny. He was supposed to be here Friday, Andy Kim. And I guess this is how rock stars are or whatever. But he's now in L.A. and has to postpone.

He's in L.A. right now. I just got this note yesterday. So he was coming in Friday. I know for many, many decades he lived there. So, yeah, I don't know. But, yeah, you're right. He's got the big Christmas. So I believe we're doing that.

I may be mistaken, but I believe we are. Okay, now we talked a lot about Love Junk, and I didn't mean to overshadow the other releases. You must be sick of that. Everybody just goes to Love Junk because it's a big album. It's timely, though, because we just re-released it. It's a deluxe package, so I don't mind that right now. All right, so tell me everything you can about this deluxe package of Love Junk.

So yeah, Universal Records. Warren Stewart from Universal Records approached me and said, you know, it's getting to the 30th anniversary of the release of this record. We should do something. Let's make a deluxe edition. So he kind of just said, you know, go find some old tracks, some stuff,

unreleased stuff from the era, and, you know, find some old stuff that we can give to the art designer, and let's put this together. And so that's exactly what happened. So it's a two- vinyl and two cd uh with so it's the original i'm sorry original love junk record remastered and then there's a whole other disc of rarities this seems to be the thing right now because uh i mentioned lois is low earlier but ron hawkins

is coming in in november because they have a shakes Shakespeare My Butt thing coming out. So this is this whole reissue thing. You're tapping into that potent drug. I can't get that nostalgia. Right? Like we're all teens again. Right. Well, yeah. Sloan has done it with Twice Removed and with One Chord to Another. I believe they're about to do it with

Navy Blues, if I'm not mistaken. I don't know if I'm supposed to say that. Okay. Well, that's an exclusive. I needed an exclusive. I don't think that I'm supposed to say that. Okay, well, that's an exclusive. I needed an exclusive. Tell me no sincere gifts. I don't think that's a big secret, actually. I doubt it is. Andrew, on the Love Junk reissue, he says he loves the Love Junk reissue, including the booklet.

How did David Wilde get involved? David Wilde is someone that we've known for ages because he wrote our original Rolling Stone piece. So the first time we were ever in Rolling Stone, he wrote an article about us stone piece so the when we uh the first time we ever in rolling stone he wrote a an article about us and he so he came and hung out with us i believe we're in florida doing shows and so i'd known him since then and so i i'd kept very loose touch with him like i was you know i follow him on instagram and twitter and stuff like that and so so it was a kind of the same thing with odd rengern where where warren had said hey we should get someone

to write some liner notes who should we get and? And I said, let's get David Wilde because he's still writing and he's still writing with a lot of celebrities and that kind of thing. And so I approached him and fortunately he was still very jazzed about the record. He still was really excited about it. So he wrote great liner notes. It was awesome having him on that. Any plans to release Wonderful

World, Downward Road, and Where's the Bone on vinyl? Well, no plans to do that um i mean we're kind of we're more passive in this it's like if someone comes to us and say hey we think we should do that then we'll do that but yeah we don't have any particular pursuit of happiness has no plans just generally that way you can't uh disappoint uh have no expectations. It's brilliant. Michael Moniz wants to know why no more solo work? He loved your last and only solo record, Summer's Over.

So he was the guy that liked it. Oh, good, good. It was, yeah, you know what? I write songs with other people, but I'm not particularly driven to write songs at this point in my life. I wrote a few songs with a guy named Pat Robitaille that are on his new record. And so that's kind of fun. It's almost like I like helping people take their song over the

finish line more than I like to just sit and write my own songs. Interesting. Interesting. On that note, a young singer songwriter, I don't know how young he is actually, but he came over here. It was great. Sean William Clark. And he just wants me to say to you, he wants to know if you would ever sing a song with his Canadian pop rock cover band, the Kim Campbells. They only do Canadian power pop from 1986 to 1996. Oh, wow. So on behalf of Sean William Clark,

that invitation is extended to you. That sounds like a very cool band. The Kim Campbells. That's great. Yeah. Let me see. Do you still teach at the band. The Kim Campbells. That's great. Yeah. Let me see. Do you still teach at the Fanshawe College? That's right.

Yes, I will be getting up tomorrow morning and getting on my on the VRL to head out there. I do two days a week and teach music production, which is very fun. It's great sort of being able to impart all the knowledge I've acquired over these years and be able to impart that on young kids. It's fun. Do you get the title professor or you don't get the... I am. I am Professor Berg. Yes, I'm a college professor.

Can you imagine being a student? Oh, that's Professor Murray Berg, right? By the way, Brad Barker liked a tweet I tweeted about you coming on, so I just want to point out that he's like the main survivor of Jazz fm i think

yes yes yes that's a whole other well he i mean the thing about brad is funny because he was not the bass player on love junk but he has been in the band way way longer than anybody else except for me and and and chris and dave so he he's been in the band for like 28 years. Wow. So yeah, he's really the bass player of the Pursuit of Happiness. He's the real bass player of the Pursuit of Happiness. And he's been Jazz FM since the beginning, in 2001, I think. Yeah, yeah.

He's done an amazing job for that. I have an episode. I got to promote an episode on the 25th. So I guess, is that next week or the week after? I think it's the week after. But Dani Elwell is coming on Toronto Mic'd. Who's also legendary, too. She's back from CFNY.

Yeah, I've known her for a few years. Reiner Schwartz. And she resigned on air. Oh, this I don't know. I'm going to play the clip of this when she's on. This sounds all very controversial. How often do you hear the DJs quit on the air? They read their resignation letter.

Actually, she's doing a lot of voiceover work now. But yeah, she's caught up in that Jazz FM thing. Because was like a musical director. She had a big title there or whatever, but a lot of shit went down. You can ask Garvia Bailey about it all. Yeah, I don't know much, but I mean, I know Brad has been an amazing thing for that station. He's really, really done a lot of work for that station. They know they owe him a lot. All right. Last question is from a twitter uh from the straight is it good for you uh the music industry has changed so much since the pursuit of happiness started if you were just beginning your music career now what would be your strategy so he

asked a question which might have an hour response here but uh and can you succinctly kind of package what maybe in a couple of bullet points here like if you were right now starting the pursuit of happiness and you're a young man again? It's so different from when we started. I mean, there was no internet when we started. There was no YouTube. There wasn't Twitter or Facebook or any of that, Instagram. So, I mean, the unfortunate, what's great about that

is you immediately have a worldwide audience the first time you utter any musical note. But the bad part is so does everybody else. How do you cut through the noise? It creates this idea of the music business even being more random than it was back then, which was still pretty random. What was great about when we started was that you'd had a record company. There was lots and lots of money.

And so it was easy to take a chance on a young band. And so i don't think that really happens anymore it's like if you can prove to us that you can already make money like we can you know none of the bands who got signed in the first 60 years of the of the recording age could prove they could make money they were just raw talent they were just potential raw potential right and the market companies were able to take them over the finish line or not. And so now it's like, well, once you're already famous

and great, we'll sign you and then we'll just make all the money off you. And that's kind of how it is now. And I mean that not even disrespectfully to the music business. It's just the reality of things now. All the money just left the music business. Just because he asked a question

and he's the one from the Kim Campbells, but Sean William Clark is an independent singer-songwriter in Toronto-based and I listened to his music and it's gorgeous. Like, this is beautiful music,

but I don't know how a Sean William Clark, just using you as an example, Sean, but how does he, I don't know how somebody like that who's got immense talent, how they can ever cut through the noise in 2018.

I just think you're almost drowning, and so much of it seems to be marketing and a little bit of luck, a little bit of marketing. Building your own fan base, hoping people show up at your shows and playing a lot of shows and trying to build an audience that way, and also hoping people start watching your YouTube videos

and doing something in your YouTube video that will create some attention for you. And I mean, people say, well, if you'd put I'm an adult now on YouTube, it would have been a viral video. And maybe it would have, and maybe it would have. I don't know.

But I'm sort of glad we had much music back then because I don't know what else would have happened. Well, everybody in the country was glued to the same channel. And now it's all fragmented. Right. There's no shared experience anymore. And I think lot of it is uh my point last point is expectations of what it is to be a rock like if you're able to feed yourself and pay your rent now it's like you're

i can you know and most people of course have other jobs like most canadian even the famous canadian musicians most of them have another job to help pay the rent and or mortgage and uh maybe put gas in the car and food on the table but i think uh the perception back in the day at least we saw like the american rock star and their rolls royce and their mansion like if that that that's a whole like oh forget one percent but that's a whole like a justin bieber phenomenon like these this is not a realistic right there's some bands still like that but it seems like the whole middle class of rock kind of just disappeared.

I mean, and this may be just kind of a symptom of our society just generally, that's kind of happened. It seems like the gap between the sort of rich rock stars and poor rock stars just got a lot wider. And a lot of this is because of the technology of music now, because the technology companies are so much in charge of how music is distributed,

and so they don't pay anything. So they pay even less than record companies used to pay, and record companies would pay the least amount that they possibly could, but it was still enough that everybody made money, whereas the technology companies don't pay enough for anybody to make money. Like the Spotify's of the world.

Yeah, or YouTube. Anybody who's providing music, none of them pay anything. Man. The Love Junk Deluxe. Is that what we're calling this? The Deluxe Reissue? Get it. That sounds amazing. And Moe Berg,

thank you so much. I'm so honored you took some time out of your busy schedule to chat with me for 90 minutes. Thanks so much. My pleasure. Great to be here, Mike. And that brings us to the end of our 384th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at

Toronto Mike. Mo is at MoTPOH. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Propertyinthe6.com is at Raptors Devotee. Season starts Wednesday. I know Brian is psyched. And PayTM is

at PayTM Canada. See you all next week. I want to take a street car downtown Read Andrew Miller And wander around And drink some goodness From a tin

Cause my UI Check has just come in Ah where you been Because everything Is coming up Rosie and Greg