Q:First off, what finally broke the ice and allowed the
new CD to come about?
A:For years Martha and I had approached each new president of BMG Canada
trying to convince them to reissue their portion of the back catalogue on
C.D. or allowing us the rights to do so. Our efforts were fruitless until
Paul Alofs came in as the new head of BMG Music Canada. When we met with
him about a year and a half ago, he was the first president to understand
our position that it was unethical to not allow us licensing rights to our
own songs when BMG was clearly not interested in reissuing anything by the
band.
We came to an agreement whereby we would have the right to re-release
anything in the back catalogue for a period of forty years. He would have
actually returned the catalogue back to us forever but was prevented from
doing so by the restriction by the parent company in Germany forbidding any
sale of intellectual property. He did the best he could do for us and it
is, I believe quite an unusual and favourable arrangement.
Virgin Records U.K. who owns the first three albums was another story
however. I tried for a year and a half to procure licensing rights to our
own material and about a year into the process, Virgin inexplicably stopped
responding to our calls and faxes. In desperation, I phoned Deanne Cameron,
head of EMI Music Canada who immediately offered to procure the rights to
the Virgin back catalogue on our behalf or get the rights so that EMI could
put out a "best of" C.D. Martha and I took this offer believing it to be
the fastest route to getting a comprehensive retrospective out to our
listeners.
If it weren't for Paul Alofs and Deanne Cameron the whole project would not
have happened at all.
Q:If you could have fit just one
more song, what would you have liked it to be?
A:The song that would have likely been included had
there been room would have
been "One Day In Paris", although we were afraid of loading the C.D. with
too much material from "This Is The Ice Age".
Q:Everyone, of course, has their own idea of what favorite
song is missing on the compilation. And so there have
been a lot of questions regarding the possibility of other
items from the M+M catalogue becoming available. Do
you now have control over your back catalogue? Or might
this happen at some designated date?
A:As I mentioned earlier, we do have licensing rights over the BMG back
catalogue which includes "Danseparc", "Mystery Walk" and "The World Is A
Ball". We own the copyright to "Modern Lullaby" and are currently seeking
ways to exploit the first three albums that Virgin UK owns through
discussions with our London solicitor. (A very long drawn out process as
you can imagine.)
Our long term plan is to reissue all the BMG albums and "This Is The Ice
Age" if possible. Each album might include at least one bonus track from
the same era, perhaps a B-side or unreleased song. I think we'll have to
get as many releases for "Then Again" worldwide as possible to make further
reissues financially feasible. We're basically spending our own money for
all the legal and technical preparations for each project so it's going to
take time.
Another set of multitrack tapes that recently turned up comprises a live
recording of the Danseparc-era band at Ontario Place, recorded by Dan Lanois
in 1983. These tapes had been missing for at least ten years and were
presumed lost when they recently turned up in a closet of our former manager
Gerry Young's deceased mother's house. This might be something we could
eventually mix and release as a limited edition C.D. for hardcore fans.
Q:Do you plan any live performances (dare I ask, tour) to promote
the new album? (I guess the exchange rate makes any date
down here in the US prohibitive, sad to say.)
A:No full-fledged band appearances are planned for this
release mainly because
of the cost of mounting a tour. (Again a matter of spending our own money.)
Also our domestic situation with a small child means taking off on a tour
for a period of time unlikely for a while. Martha and I will be doing press
and television in Canada starting in a couple of weeks which means we'll
probably be performing one or two songs in a scaled-down format, ie. Martha
sings and I play guitar. (I actually just about sliced my right index
fingertip off three weeks ago in a shrub pruning mishap so that my immediate
ability to play guitar soon is still questionable. Needless to say, it
couldn't have happened at a worse time!)
Q:The EMI Canada website implies that you are under no contract
to them.
A:I'm not sure what this means... We've licensed "Then Again"
to them but we're
not signed directly to EMI or to any label at this time.
Q:Does Martha have a label lined up for the 2nd
children's album?
A:EMI Canada wants to re-release "Songs From The Tree House"
as well as put
out her 2nd children's album which we're still working on. It's about a
year behind schedule - we must be the slowest people on earth.
Q:Are you still accepting direct mail order for
Tree House and Modern Lullaby? Same terms?
A:Yes, as well as the compilation, "Then Again".
Same terms and price as well.
(Editor's Note: Check out the selection by clicking
here!)
Q:The new song "Resurrection". Any comments on its genesis?
(I remember from your January letter, about "resurrecting"
the band, but not having heard it yet, I can't make a guess!)
A:We have tons of song ideas on tape and we just developed
one of the more
recent ones lying around on a cassette. Musically, it started off as a riff
played on this electric guitar which I had all the frets filed off so it's
fretless with a slightly detuned swoopy sort of sound. Lyrically, it's
partially about looking around at a lot of people our own age and wondering
how so many of them have become "old", locked into patterns that they once
criticised their elders for. It's also about our own potential resurrection
as an active creative entity and includes a tongue-in-cheek reference to
"Echo Beach" in the last verse which I'm not sure refers to us personally or
our generation or both.