Michael McCarty

it's origin. And it was formed from the merger of KAPPAC and pro can which predecessors and they were literally asked Captain B and my Canada. Okay, a little bit slower. So the acronym stands for I'm not even sure, to be honest with you, it isn't a society, a society of Canadian authors, uh, composers and music publishers, but it's not really an acronymicist. Okay. So the word two yeah, and how well, how long ago do they merge into one?

Something like that? And we'll caused that. Well, I think it's just a realization that, um, it was inefficient to have two different organizations. You know, the US is an anomaly in the world. Right there there aren't many countries in the world that have more than one p R. Oh so, uh it was inefficient and uh so I mean needed scale and uh and get rid of duplication of efforts. So they emerged and it's been a very

successful thing. Okay, So, since we're talking about a worldwide business today, can you think of any other country that has more than one performing rights organizations? I think Brazil uh legendarily has about ten. Oh really, of course the US now has four or five exactly we'll get into that. Okay, what is the genesis of performing rights organizations? Were they in lockstep with the developments in the US because the law is not identical, but what is the development? Well, really,

another another substitute term was collective right. So really they've started as collectives by uh for the rights owners typically writers and publishers, and uh they knew that they needed to aggregate their rights together to blanket licensed radio and and other licensees. So it's really, you know, uh, parallel to the development of radio and technology that they started. Okay, Now, the big difference between the US and the rest of

the country is neighboring rights. Correct, Can you explain that from my audience. Neighboring rights really is the existence of the performing right in the master recording. So that means when the master recording, when the recording is aired, broadcast, stream, whatever, it earns royalties too because it's got its own copyright. UM. Neighboring. The nuances of why it's called neighboring rights, it's a European term, but we don't have to get into but

that's basically what it is. We'll get into it if you know it well. I don't know it that well. So you stepped in the hole. Let's if you can climb out of it. So basically the philosophy is the prime right is the copyright of the song of the composition. Uh and uh, and neighboring neighboring right was refers to sort of a secondary right or it's it's it's a neighbor of it. I did not know that. I thought it was neighboring right because the country to country they

were neighbors. I don't think so. Okay. So what we're basically saying is when the record is played, a payment goes to the copyright holder of the record right, and it's so can you collect that correct. We we collected for the composition, not the not the recording recording, Uh, the sound exchange in the US, right, Uh, Canada RESOUND which is a collection of other organizations and PPL in

the UK, etcetera. And um. Uh so it's all it's it's it's a paralleled system that's very similar to the to the copy I thought that in some countries they were unified, but they they may be, but not. Okay, So actually sorry, we just formed a joint venture with RESOUND to jointly licensed. Uh. What we call general licensing, um is the bars, restaurants, hotels, that kind of thing. Um. So that's called in tandem. And so now you in Canada you get one license if you own one of

those establishments, instead of having two parties coming at you. Okay, let's assume I'm paying. How do you guys with up the money? Uh, it's in relation to what what the license fees or the tariffs are. Okay. Now this is all controlled by the government in Canada. The government. Uh well, the government plays a serious role obviously creating the Copyright Act in the first place. Um. Canada has the Copyright Board, which is a quasi judicial body that regulates copyright realty

rates and secondary terms. Um. It used to be that all of our license fees were based on those those we call them tariffs. It's you know, it's a court case. You file it and you have hearings and evidence, et cetera. But since the digital age particularly, we've tried to um negotiate as many licenses license deals as we possibly can, rather go to the court of the rateboard, the copyright board,

because it's very long, time consuming, very expensive for everybody. Okay, but are there terrorists that are established in case you can't make a deal. Okay, we're there terrorists established for streaming music services. There are tariffs, yeah, um, but again, virtually all of our licensee arrangements are are negotiated and negotiated with the tariff in mind. But there's a lot of elements that the tariff doesn't talk about, which which are important to us, are important to the licensees. So

there's incentive to uh to uh to negotiate it. Not the least of which is it sometimes takes so long to get a tariff ruled on that the technology is dead by the time the tariff is settled. So okay, But just so I understand, they do establish standards. It's just if you want to argue with those standards, you would then go to court. Yeah, and increasingly it used to be that we would go to go to the Copyright Board file for a tariff, they would make a

decision and that would be it. Then then the next phase was we have had existing tariffs, we'd say to the parts, hey, let's instead of US file a revised tariff or a new tariff, why don't we sit down and negotiate it. And then most lately a lot of times we don't even go to the board initially. We just start the negotiations. The boards always a fallback if we don't like the way the negotiations are going. Okay, why don't you explain, because you're the expert, why there's

so many performing rights organizations in the United States? Well, I think you need somebody who knows more about the US environment than me. But my understanding is, um, it all started when ASCAP was declared UH a monopoly and anti trust in the was authorities, I guess, and you know my understanding of that is, um, basically, they went on strike. They didn't like the rates at radio. They pull the licenses. Radio didn't have the right to play

music anymore. So, uh, they push some buttons in the government. The government declared them in the monopoly and put them on antitrust consent decree, and radio said, um, never again will we rely on one source of repertoire, and so they start a B M I okay, But recently this

has been a growing area. We have global we have se sack Okay, what do you think accounts for let's say I'm an act okay, other than as off company which will say for a second, which only has a lead acts signed to it, But to go to ce SAC or another p r O, what do you think

the motivation would be? Well, look, the the downside of having so many pierros in the US is that, um uh, you know, there's so there's it's it's kind of a dog's breakfast in some ways, and there's and there's a it's a complexity and a lot of duplication, et cetera. The upside is this competition. And of course, you know

America is the land of competition. So if you look at it as a glass half full, um, it gives writers there's competition for writer's business and each one of the p r os has their different pitch as to why they think they're the best, and they make the pitch and sometimes it's really a lot of times it's relationships. Sometimes, Uh you know, there's a business side of the pitch. Um it's uh, you know, I don't I just want to speak for them, so I don't want to give

their individual pitches. But they've all got compelling pitches, and they've all got great organizations and great people. Okay, would be part of the pitch being that I can collect better than the other people. You know, I've I've seen every every element played, you know. I mean, I think they all believe that they're they're the best collectors. They're all believed that they do at the cleanest, the most thorough they all believe that they have the best staff.

It can help your career. Um, and um, you know that's the that's the pitch. And and they're they're great organizations. I mean you just think how how big they are and how much money goes through them. Uh, they're you know, basically the biggest piros in the world. And uh, we have great relationship with them all. Or what are the

main things that I was brought into so CAN. To do is to um reverse the situation where over the years are some of our members had a lot of a lot of our high earning members had drifted away and become members of ASKAP and b M I more than any of them. And uh, you know, we set out to reverse that because we want Canadians to be members of so CAN. Uh. The reason I came to so CAN was I thought it was a great opportunity to be one of the two or three people with

my hand on the rudder of an organization. I thought it was extremely important to the ecosystem in Canada, and um, you know, I could see where the future was going, and I wanted to try and help make sure that the institutions thrived and survived. And uh one of the main ways to do that was to get our members back and make sure that new new Canadian artists and writers were we're members of so CAN and wanted to

join so CAN. And it's done a pretty good job so far, because you know, as you know, Canada's killing it in music. Um To Toronto arguably is the hottest music city in the world, and we have almost every single person coming out of Canada. Now, okay, so what's your pitch. Our pitch is um, just what we said earlier, which is, I think we think we're great collectors. We think we have um, great opportunities when you're at least started your career to help you connect the dots and

help connect you into the ecosystem. And we're complimentary to publishers and labels and managers and agents. Okay, let's slow down. Let's let's just take the top level. I'm a big act, I'm Canadian act. I'm with b M I R as GAP. What's your pitch to them? Uh? What I just said, plus um, you make more money with us, all else being equal, because we don't charge um for foreign income. So are all the money coming from outside of Canada? We don't commission Uh and okay, so b am I

and ask they all commission that? Yeah, okay, And well how can SO can't get away without commissioning it. It's just a decision that they made quite a while ago as an attempt to try and convince people not to leave. And they said, you know, look at stay here and

we won't commission the money. So just the cost of it is embedded in the costs of running, so can we're one of the most efficient p r os in the world and um, it's it's it's a lot less costly to administer the foreign royalties and it is the domestic one. So um and that is because well because um, uh the foreign p r O of all, we have already done a lot of the work matching the you know, the repertoire and so that you know, we get statements from them and it's it's easier to go through those

than to do all the original matching ourself. I mean, don't forget. I mean these days, an organization like ours is we're tracking like two million performances a day now, so it's pretty it's pretty daunting. And so we think that we're one of the most advanced in the world. And in doing all that and that, um, we have high touch service. We have a whole team of people who are assigned to UH two members and they have a personal relationship with them. When we hear quite often

that people really appreciate that. And even if you're a big star, your business manager really appreciates it. Okay, So let's say you're collecting in Canada. People always say this, Oh my record was played whatever, I didn't get paid? How much is it digitized and accurate to what actually is being played? So I tell you a funny story. Um, I was on the board of so CAN for twenties. Wait, so canon is own by who? It's a it's a it's a for profit collective owned by its members, and

members are writers and publishers. Even though it's not for profit, we we try and adopt a for profit mentality in terms of, you know, not being a stay bureaucracy and feeling like we have competition, et cetera. But so for when when when BDS came along? A number of bds is a service from Nielsen that listens to radio stations. The computers listen to radio stations that identify the recordings

audio finger putting lections, AM and UM. So when that first came along, a number of number of from the board said, hey, so CAN should adopt this because you know, one of the main complaints you used to hear in the from about PRS back then wherever whatever country or that with everybody uses a survey system to figure out what's being played in radio and how could that possibly be accurate? So? Um, several years of discussion went on,

and investigations and and finally and there was nothing. There was no obvious argument why we should do it because we're gonna we're gonna make any more money. It wasn't gonna change the license fees coming from radio. It's gonna cost a lot more money than the survey. It's going to create a lot more data to handle. And the only question was whether it was more accurate or not. And intuitively we all fet I thought it has to be more accurate. So, um, we hired somebody to study

our survey. And this is back in the Yeah, yeah, hired somebody to study the survey, and um, they said your survey is the most accurate in the world amongst p r o s and that it's accurate within someone you know that the statistics of it, and um, and uh so the management is so kind at the time said see, there's no reason to to the ghost. So but a number of us, sort of the kind of younger ones, said, you know what, this is the digital era. The reason why we have to do it is because

it's stupid not to do it. And that's we said, Okay, that's gonna think on BDS. And then for a year, they ran BDS in parallel to the old survey, and the number one thing they learned by doing that was that the survey was incredibly accurate. Um now does it miss onesies and twosies wants? Well, yeah, the surveys do. So the there is there's no question that the that UM BDS and and that kind of type of audio fingerprint technology and digital monitoring is more accurate. Um. But

it's really the long, super long tail. Okay, but it's cheaper to do and and it also need the startup costs were heavier. But actually to do it, it's yeah. And the number one thing that it did for so CAN was they had to think about how to handle the orders of magnitude greater amounts of data. So they set up processes and technology to do that. That when the digital era came along and you look around the corner and oh my god, there's a tsunami of data coming.

So can hat was already set up to handle it, so unlike some of its peers around the world, So that that was really the number one benefit of doing that was unintentionally preparing let's go a little bit slower. I'm a person, I have a song is played on radio? Once is that tracked A I get to get paid? It's uh yeah, it's track now get paid and I will get paid, although one one place won't. We probably isn't even a penny. Well on radio, no, it's approximately

a dollar. Let's let's let's say it's a dollar. Wait, one play is a dollar on radio? Yeah, it's really yeah, yeah, it's probably less than like seventy eight cents or something like that, but it's yeah, okay. How do you then extrapolate or do in terms of as you say, restaurants, cafes, etcetera. Yeah, well those are those are harder, so you know, um

various um. That goes back to the sort of survey mentality, right, so it's rough justice, it's approximations, and we we try and figure out um uh well actually these days, some of the music services that serve those places, they have the data. Um, they know what's being performed, so we get that data. In the cases where we don't have the data, we try and figure out, Okay, this money that we collect from those licensees has to be paid

out as fairly as possible, as accurately as possible. We have no data, so let's um, what data can we get. We can figure out, well, you know, most of them play popular music, so we'll take that music without their license fees and we'll put them in the popular music pools so that people who have music that's likely being paid played get paid. But increasingly we're doing things like um experimenting with putting uh you know Shazam BDS type

listening posts into into clubs. Uh. The d M world and the DJ world are very concerned about accuracy, and so we're working with them. We have what we uh working with Pioneer, where their further Cubo service where they have a they can produce a data stream of the titles that would be that the DJ's playing. So Pioneer, what was pioneers motivation? UM? I think they created a

thing called Cubo. I believe it was a social media platform, and they wanted to know what was being played, say in Lisbon, so that people dancing in London could see on their phone what their friends were dancing to and maybe requested that kind of thing. So they needed that

data stream. So we're really working really really hard to try and make sure that there's data every single place music is used we have a lot of big plans in live because one of our biggest problems in the same as all the pr os, is getting accurate set lists from concerts, getting the artists to to to get them to us. Some places in Europe the promoter is required by law to produce the set list or not in North America, so we have to figure out how

to get that set list. So, um, we're we have a were first pr O in the world to have a PI platform. So API is Application programming interface, so it's basically how one platform talks to another and computers talk and um. So we have a PI s basically for every capability of our platform, including sending us your concert stuff. So there's a We built up the APIs and thinking that would be a third party marketplace would spring up, that people would have services that they need

to connect with our platform. And sure enough a company in Calgary came along called Mazuka and they what they do is they connect all the parties in the live music ecosystem managers uh to agents, UM, venues, promoters, et cetera. And they share digital assets about a tour, videos, posters, uh whatever, the information on the tour and one of the byproducts, of course, is everything we need to know to pay a concert, except for the set list. So they use our A p I s so that you

can using their at Mazooka app. You're an artist or manager, whatever, you can dial up your catalog out of our of our database, create a set list and push a button and send all the concert information to us, including the set list. And that's really revolutionizing. How how we deal with the live concerts and successful okay, and venue? Well, how do they How is that fee established percentage? Well, unconscious percentage of the box office? Box office is three

in Canada. It's a lot harder than that in some of European territories and a lot lower than that in the US. And right, so it's not a flat fee in the US. Well, you know, of course, in our world, as you start to peel back layers, it gets more and more complex. And part of the reason for that is that, especially in the Copyright Board era, every single licensee thought that they're different and the rules shouldn't apply

to them. So they would go to the copyright Board, and the Copyright Board said, okay, we'll make an exception for you, and and then it just becomes very complex, but very simplistically, if you have a hard ticket, it's three percent of the box office. Okay, let's assume I sell my catalog like Mark is is buying up catalogs. How does that affect my soul? Can I saw Mark last night? Actually? By the way, UM, it doesn't affect

it at all. We're do we pay whoever the owner and uh an and or administrator is so um uh if catalog changes hands, we just take the hose out of one plug and put into another. So a writer can sell hes rights. Uh, great question. So can is historically um? Uh not allowed that? In the last few year years, Um, we've liberalized that a lot because realized that it's a different world now. Um, there's more information that people have. It was sort of to protect writers from,

you know, bad deals. I guess that would be the mentality that it was, And now I think it's a much more sophisticated world. There's more information out there, there's more advice you can get, there are more people wanting to buy writers share, and so we have situations where where we allow it some Every bureau around the world has kind of a different mixture of of rules around that. Let's go back to an earlier comment, why is Toronto

such an epicenter of music creativity? Great question. Um, Canada has always produced a lot of talent. Um, as you know. And and uh, I think that the sort of perfect storm that's happening in Toronto right now is a is a functional a lot of things. I think that, UM, the the support for Canadian culture that the government introduced

the number of years ago. In fact, this is the fiftieth anniversary of the Canadian Content Regulations on radio um profound effect on the ecosie them uh and uh, nowadays we've got um uh if you look at the people from Toronto are kind of killing it. So we've got Drake, the Weekend, Lessia, karash On, Mendez, et cetera. Um, those

are the above the waterline. Part of the iceberg below the waterline is actually to me a bigger story, and that is all the producers, beat makers, co writers that work with them, Like we have eighty members in the greater Toronto area that are co writers and Drake and Weekend Records not including Drake in the Weekend. And um uh the reasons for that are, um, if you look at all these people killing it. There's there's a number

of things that are have in common. One, they're disproportionately multicultural. They are disproportionately immigrants or first generation children of immigrants. It's a specifically in Canada, Toronto, Toronto. Yeah, uh, this is well, as you know, Canada is a very multicultural country exactly, but the real big clusters of that are

Toronto and Vancouver. Right, Well, don't I I had a cab driver once in Toronto said there are more more ethnicities, more cultures represented in Toronto than any other city in the world. Yeah. I think there's like a hundred and three languages or something. And and so these kids, Um uh, so there's that. There's that. Um like, look the Weekend

for instance, a great example. He's an Ethiopian Canadian. He's born in Canada as a mother, wasn't He's managed by a Lebanese Canadian born in Lebanon and an Iranian Canadian born in Iran. And uh, there's no better example in that. Um we did, uh my my head of a and R. Rodney Murphy and i Ax years ago did a made a word cloud of the artists were talking about and the beatmaker, co writer, producers and you put it up in the screen, and um, it's remarkable how multicultural it is.

It's just it's really the okay, it is multicultural. Why does the multiculturalism uh in gender's success. Um well, I think that all the usual reasons why immigrant communities, you know, have the drive, et cetera. But I think in this case also part of it. One of the reasons for the direction of the music, which is a big part of why it's so successful, the direction being a course hip hop, pop and and related music is because these kids they grew up um uh, they want to reject

their parents music. Um. Their their their household is not connected to the historic thread of Canadian culture, so rock folk whatever that they're not getting that at home. Uh. And so they get exposed to the music of the world coming through the major media through the and that's generally American music, and it's generally hip hop. So they kind of grew up in a in a more hip hop, urban music centric environment than than the people they're if

their friends were and their neighbors were. Um. And then another uh common thing is that they all make music in the box. Of course that's on the in the computer. Um. Live instruments play very little bit. Why is that, uh, an advantage that Toronto has compared to the rest of the world. I don't think it's advantage compared to the rest of the world. But there's a huge beatmaking community in Toronto, I think arguably I say two things that are kind of bold that you know, maybe there's a

slightly exaggeration, but I don't really think so. UM Toronto in many ways controls the sound of popular music in the world today because of all the people were talking about and success they have, UM and its indisputably the beat making capital of the world, I think. And one

of the reasons for that is community. And it's a community amongst the kids that are from these uh immigrant families and they go and they live in those neighborhoods or they live in the neighborhoods where um uh you know, they're passing around mixed tapes and you know, in the previous generation UM and UH. There's actually a guy named rich Kid who UH was one of the early doctors of what was then called Fruity Loops, which is a digital platform to make music and now called fl Studios.

And and he was a real leader in getting other kids on the platform and teaching them how to use it. There's been a couple of organizations, one called the Beat Toronto Beat Academy, which was started by two women who saw these young kids around them that we're really talented, but they might get lost in the street. And it's kind of like, uh, people in the neighborhood starting a soccer team or something. They started this thing called the

Toronto Beat Academy and they had beat battles. That was the primary activity, and but it became a community where they all shared. Probably ten years ago, so maybe maybe a bit a bit longer and fat um uh. One of the founders of it um was in the press about three or four years ago, uh, and the headlines were from homeless to Harvard. At one point she was homeless and she ended up crowd funding herself to Harvard

and UM. So the way the Beat Academy got these kids into international beat battles that gave them confidence um uh, you know, connecting to each other, some sort of structure. Uh. They taught each other tricks, they won most of the beat battles they entered. UM. And there was another organization called the Remix Project, which is a project in the Region Park area in Toronto, which is a challenging area for kids, and it was intended to keep kids off

the street. And one of the programs there was was a music program and actually some of Drake's people uh early on started teaching there and so this became both these things became farm teams for beat makers and arguably not to be clear, they get any government support. Um. The Remix Project might have. Um, we've so candids helps support these organizations with uh, you know, helping fly people to beat battles and and that kind of thing, um, but largely no, but um, we'll give me back to

the government support connection a little while. Um. Anyway, So that's one of the reasons why it's it's so huge. So we got you know, Frank Duke's boy one Noah shebib uh murder beats uh. Dr McKinney, uh Wonda Girl, one of the greatest female beat makers in the world. She came from the Beat Academy. And you know it's just because academy just like an after school program or is it something where there's actually courses. No, No, it's kind of like an informal after school program. Yeah. Yeah,

and uh. Um, so so you got that aspect. So that so you know, modern beat making became a really big thing in Toronto. And of course you know, all nothing happened if it wasn't for Drake, But I'll get to that in a second. So you've got their disproportionately. Immigrants are children. Immigrants make music in the box. Live instruments play virtually no role in making the records, and live they play like sort of a proper role. Um

and uh. They all made it through the internet, either they became popular with the public first and then got signed to a deal or vice versa. But the Internet played an incredibly important role. Don't forget the last two people. In fact, I think the two biggest music success stories on fine where Sean Mendez and Ruth b and um uh. You know, so that's an indicator of how I don't know why it happened in Canada, not nowhere else, but

it did. Um and uh. Then one of the most important things is that this is one of the most mind blowing things to me and had a profound effect on how I think about the industry now. When I realized this about five years ago, I was talking again to Rodney Murphy, my head of an arm. We're analyzing this, this group of people, and then I realized not a single one of them played a gig before they were famous.

And you know, especially a country like Canada where the live you know, grinding out in the clubs and bars was such a big part of of having a career and it just blew my mind when I realized that. And when when when we first started saying this to people in the business, you have to wait, ripe the

brain matter off the wall and uh. But anyway, so that those are all common characteristics, right, and um there was a incredible um uh sort of boiling pot of water of talent in hip hop and R and B that was that was kind of bursting at the seams in Canada for probably ten years that couldn't get out of the country because, um, the American industry would not take that Canadian playing that music. Seriously. I spent a lot of money in my publishing trying to develop that

scene and uh lost most of it. Um and had a lot of support from my New York and l A compatriots, but they just didn't think that Canadian could ever do it. And then that manifests itself in a million million different ways. Either they said, well it's good, but it's Canadian, or it's not good, or but what it really was. It's kind of like Nashville, you know that. Uh, it's hard for nash people, Nashville people to imagine something

from outside of Nashville working in Nashville. Um. And in spite this is in spite of the fact that you know, the Brian Adams of the world and the guests who's the b t O s and the Rushes had broken through that barrier in rock music. But the barrier existed, It really did. And then so somebody had to break through in hip hop and R and B. So, um, Drake existed. I think Drake exists because A he's make a talented and incredibly smart guy, but b because of

the TV show Degrassi. Uh and uh. That's a really good example of the Canadian support system because there's Canaan content regulations in television as well. There's a grants just explain with Canadian content in radio and television. You have to play a minimum percentage of of your air time has to be Canadian content. Okay, let's just stop for one second. In the era of the internet. How important

is that still on radio? Great question, because um, we're that's okayn, We're really concerned about this because not so

much about radio, because that's long settled in UM. But it really in many ways this regulation saved Canadian culture because um, in the you know media eras in the fifties, fifties, early sixties, UM, Canadians were swamped with American media and it was very difficult for Canadian voice to be heard unless you moved to United States and got a record deal and became famous like a Gordon Lightfoot or nearly

Young or something like that. And UM, so they created the legislation and fact at that point, UM, Canada was not a very confident country in terms of its own identity and um uh, Canadian radio would not play you because you were Canadian. The guests Who was called the Guests Who because they tried to put out an independent record and when the the independent label realized that if

anybody guess their Canadian, they wouldn't play the record. So they wrote guests Who questioned Mark on the label to get the discocist the question to to guess it. Make it turn into a contest and they thought that was the name of the band, so they had to change their name of the guest suit. That's how bad it was. Um. And so uh, you know, you fast forward to now and and we have all this incredibly healthy ecosystem, very

much partly because of that Canaan content regulations. UM. But um it's we think there's a real discover ability problem in the digital area. So I'll get to that, back that in the second. But with Degrassi, so there was conconading content regulations on television as let's talk about the

development of Degrassi and how that happened with the government, etcetera. Yeah, So um it was created by um uh Lenna Skis Skyler and her husband Steven Stone, who was a well known music attorney, and um, they wanted to create a television show that um was uh positive role uh for kids and not the usual entertainment bs and talked about real issues the kids really wanted to know about and talked about at school and and and counter to school. So um, there's a very healthy grant system to make

television programs in Canada. So they got some grants and they just just just because I live in the US, obviously, you have these grant systems, you're supported by the government. How does the average Canadian feel about paying taxes to support that? Um, I don't see or hear anybody's talking about that. I mean, certainly, when when the legislation first came in, the content legislation first came in, and then when the grant systems propped up popped up shortly after that,

there was a lot of people saying that. But they take it for granted now that that that's what the system is. And and it's been a very just because we live in the United States, this is being need about. What is the top tax rate in Canada right now? Income tax? Well, I'm not an accountant, but it's more than it is more than. And also although Trudeau was just re elected, Uh, there is some conservative pushback and Canada, what do you think that temperature of the country is

right now? Well, you know, we obviously see what goes on in US and UK, etcetera. And um, there's Uh, there was a sort of a more conservative movement, as you said, but and it resulted in in Justin Trudeau having minority government. Um, so they didn't they didn't. It wasn't a change in government, So you're probably with every minority government, you're gonna see probably more governing from the middle. So there probably will be a swing towards more towards

the middle of Canada. But don't forget the left right in middle in Canada totally different than the US. Um. The US generally is I think a much more conservative country and and uh um, you know, some of our more left winging went left wing. Uh political leaders over the generations might have been considered communists if they were in the United States, and some of the more right wing people would have considered being considered middle of the road,

you know. Um, But that's that's just a general just just before we get back to the grassy. The fact that Canada is such a cultural impact around the world, has that ultimately affected the feeling that, uh or not that Canada is a second class environment? Right? So good question, So I can I can trace it certainly in my life. Um. I traced the rise of of positive self identity and Canadians and national pride with the after Canaan content regulations

came in. Before that, there was very few if no, there wasn't no music industry and there were very few artists that you could look up to as Canadians. There were role models or that talked about Canadian things or whatever. And again the ones that you you were aware of moved to the US and and came through the U S system. And um, the existence of groups like the Tragically Hip, I think are is in incredible success story.

Even though they never really had a lot of success outside of Canada, this level of success that had had inside the country was absolutely unprecedented. And really it doesn't matter that they weren't that successful anywhere else, because um, I don't want to underplay the success they did have, but they weren't as nearly as anywhere else. And that's that's an amazing thing because look at any other healthy

music ecosystem around the world, like Britain. We always talked about all these great stars coming out of Britain, all the great music. Well if you actually live there for a little while to see all the stuff that doesn't get out right, and like the madness the syndrome right from you know, decades ago, and you talk to Britain, what do you mean you've never heard of madness? You know? So same thing. And so I think that the existence of that kind of thing is as an indication of

a healthy music ecosystem, and Canada nerve used to have that. Okay, one more thing used to be if someone made it. You mentioned you know Neil Young, There's Joni Mitchell, Bryan Adams. They would basically base themselves in the United States. Do you think that's changing? Yeah, although I think you go, you go, rid of your business needs you to go. Um.

And so you look at Drake. You know, he's got homes here, He's got homes you know, in in Toronto still and a lot of them, you know, it's the Canada is their emotional home now more than it ever was before. And you look at Drake, how proud he is a Toronto and he's been multibillion dollars worth of ambassador branding for the for the city. Um. And that never used to happen before either, you know, I mean people were before Canadian content sometimes in some way Canadians

were kind of embarrassed to be Canadians. And then the first wave was they weren't embarrassed anymore. But they're quietly proud, and now they're very loudly proud. And that's been an incredible development. And and it's absolutely guarantee you very much driven by by Canadian artists emerging. Okay, so go back to the Grass. So the Grassy starts up, Drake's on it. Just to be clear, how many years is the Grassy run? Oh, I don't know, it's got to be fifteen. Anyway, Drake

wasn't on from the beginning. I'm not sure. I don't. I don't think he was whatever. But um, so fast forward to he leaves the show. It's my it's early, myself, let's stop it because it's important. It's like Trump. The Grassy was not only popular in Canada, was distributed certainly in the United States, right, and nobody in Canada other than people in the television business knew that it was a success in the US. And um was it also aired elsewhere? Oh yeah, all over the lot of countries

around the world. Yeah, but it was on Nickelodeon here. I think that's so funny story when um uh, shortly after Drake broke as an art music artist. Um, my wife and family and I were in l A visiting with some people I used to work with here and to two women that hadded families and they used to work within their sisters and uh um uh. Their kids were younger than ours. And we're all sitting in this big family restaurant, big long table. Are my family on

one side, there is on the other side. And the kids were really quiet. They were not talking at all, and they were just staring at us. And after a few minutes it got kind of uncomfortable. And and then the bravest one spoke up and said, you guys don't sound Canadian. And we said, what do you mean. They said, you don't sound like those people in the grass And I said, oh, you watched a grassy and Selene their mothers said, my friend Selene that their mother said, are

you nuts? This is the biggest thing amongst the teens and tweens down here, and nobody in the Canadian music industry anyway knew that. And that's one of the reasons why Drake was overlooked by the Canaan music business. Certainly, one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made in my

career was I could never, I can never. I'll never forget every week for a year in early my Space days, Barb Seten, who worked for me, you know very well, in Tanya Coglan and Mike Fox and UH, my staff and my publish in Canada would sit around and we'd have an a R meeting and we would filter the MySpace charts for Canada and Drake was number one and number two for a year and UM, but we didn't

know why this was. I mean, listen to the music with that was pretty good, and you know, and and but we just didn understand the entire picture because we had no idea that he would had, you know, hundreds of thousands of fans in America. So basically, his mixtapes are blowing up in America and we didn't know that.

And people who follow that stuff in the US, the little Waynes and then the people in the industry saw the happening and that was the That was the moment when everything became possible for Canadian music because they didn't care where he's from, because the American public was had spoken. And so from that point on it has not only has it not mattered that you're Canadian in those those genres,

but now it's cool to be Canadian. UM. A couple of years ago, UH, one of my publisher members, UM who's runs a multinational in Toronto, the Toronto office the multinationalist sent we were talking about this very issue, and he said, yeah, so and so the you know, the head of the us AT us off Creative Stuff just called last week and said, we're signing this girl in l A. Um looking at her bio material, turns out she was raised in l A but born in Toronto.

Would you mind if we said she's from Toronto? That

is really a switch. Let's mind blowing to Canadians, right to think that that anybody would ever think it's cooler to be from from Toronto than l a. But in many ways it's true now, you know, at least, I mean what it is is is that Canadians, don't they people growing up admiring Drake will now take it for granted that you can conquer the world and you can do it from Toronto, and you can do it proudly and there, and that you know, there's kids coming to

Toronto as tourists that want to stand in the street corner that he talks about in his songs, just like you know, used to happen to Canadians listening to American songs right come in l A Okay before the Toronto. See not that there always hasn't been a Toronto scene. The big scene was in Montreal. Broken social scene. What do you think cause that well, broken social scenes partly from Montreal. Well, I mean did Montreal see I don't want to make it about broken social Yeah, well Montreal's

tray will be vibrant city. That's one of the greatest um places in the world to go to school, for instance, and so and and you know it's it's a very European culture. That's the uh work to live culture more than the work they live to work culture. So you know,

they take art seriously. Um, they take culture seriously. And um, there's there would used to be a lot of clubs and and and it's a big call ug town so you get that that melting pot as well, and get arcade fire out of their for instance, right, um and um. You know it's also kind of the Quebec music scene is kind of her metrically sealed. It's sort of like almost like Nashville where um, or even in England in a way like I I look at those music scenes as places where you look at it as a sport.

You're in the stadium and the game is unfolding on the field in front of it. You can understand the game. You can see the prep with the ends of the box. Right, So cabecs like that and US and and uh it's um it's got a star system and um uh and it's kind of it's never easy to get careers reving, but it's probably easier there than some other places. To what degree do you believe Canadian social safety net boost

music development? What's huge? Because um uh you know of Canadian content and the government grant supports and other other other encouragement of the arts. Um and uh, that's all tied to the same mentality, right, and you know your Canadian musician doesn't have to worry about going to the hospital and if it's going to bankrupt them. Uh, you know which is you know a huge thing. Let's say I'm a I'm a twenty two year old person making beats in Canada. Can I get money from the government

just to live? Uh, They'll give you a check to live, but um, you can You've got organizations like factor forgetting music organizations. I'm not even in the music business. To what degree you know you don't get paid by the governments. That's what squee is their welfare well, it's like welfare like there is anywhere. But our musicians living on welfare these days not so much now because there's a lot of employment. You know, it's it's a healthy economy people have.

It's a gig economy. So people they'll have a day gig and you know, and they uh spend their evenings and weekends banging away at their at their art and eventually I could give up the day gig if they're lucky. Okay, Vancouver was historically a rock town. Is that still true Vancouver? Um, there's a lot of people talked about the Vancouver music scene. UM. In some ways people say it's dead. Um, certainly the rock side of it because the club scene has disappeared

a lot. UM. But you know, we had so canon in our in our staff. We truly believe that, UM, Vancouver could be the next biggest place because again you talk about multicultural it's amazing and we just think that people aren't fishing in the right ponds and we're making big strides and making connections in the you know, South Asian communities and uh places where you know there's somebody in their bedroom that's making something incredible, and UM, we

just got it. They're not connected to the business because they're growing up not knowing. Right, Okay, the story and you were part of it. The story twenty years ago, years ago was how publishers were starting acts and then they graduated to the labels. To what degree is so can involve in development and what place in the game.

So twenty three years ago, if you set out to be a creator, music, creator, artist, writer, um, one of the first two or three thoughts that came into your brain was, oh, I gotta joined so can or if the America asked CAMP B M I or pr S in England. One of the reasons for that you see it on record credits and you wouldn't necessarily know what it is, but you see it relationships in relationship to being a pro. So I got to join that. And just to be clear, if I'm an American, can I

join so can? Uh? There's no rules, but we we do not We don't want our members to leave and become members of the U s p r os and so therefore, and we don't want to sign people that the U s p r O S would want to sign in their own countries. So and I could do it if I wanted to. There's no law that says you can't. Um, but we we we respect their Okay, So I go back to your point. Yeah, so, um,

what was my point? You're talking about Vancouver, right, Yeah, so you're talking about development of acts, right, so me thirty years ago we left it right, So when you first started out years ago, you thought of joining. So I can ask my whatever, um we're trying to do now, is trying to get that little logo back in the brain of somebody who was sitting in their bedroom and they're fourteen years old and saying I think I want to make music because there's a lawful lot of other

logos crowding it out. Okay, in the digital era, how do you get that logo? See? Yeah, so um uh, we want to treat We want to implant the thought that your career starts here. Right. So, um, we have what we call the new member value gap, which we identified which is okay, if I joined, so can uh, what what do I get? And well, you get royalties? Yeah, but I don't have any music ding royalties yet? Right, So so you get joined, so can even though you don't have a record out? Yeah, yeah, we have five

or six thousand people you're joining. We have about a hundred and sixty thousand members and UM, so we try and create programs to UM. We look at as it's like ecosystem. It's a pond. We want to be the sunshine in the pond. We want to you know, there to be more planked than you know, more guppies and that kind of thing. And so uh, it's it's a less targeted than a than a publishing company or record label would do it. UM. You know, we have program

we have it. For instance, we have an educational program called Cooking Beats where we have a famous beat maker will set on the stage and it's like the motif of a cooking show on TV. Instead of the cameras and the ceiling looking down in the stove, we have their laptop, laptop hooked up to a giant screen and they tear apart one of their famous beats and then we'll trought to set a community music week or conferences

like that, and and they're very very popular. Kids love it. Uh, you know that gets the brand own, it gets it educates people. We have song camps. Now, how about literally giving an act money to develop or literally trying to make in roads in a label or a publisher. So, um, you know, again we're complimentary to what the publishers and labels do. We think we're at the stage pre when,

prior to when people are ready for them. So if we can do something to keep somebody alive for another year, get them to a showcase, uh, get into a song camp, get some craft development, and get them some confidence. When we have a song camp, the number one thing that

comes out of it is self confidence. Yeah. You know, every camp usually yields one song that gets cut or something, but it's kind of they're always sequestered and people are living together for a week and they come out of it feeling like they just had a week's worth of incredible group therapy. You know that they did make them make the right choice in their life and they and they have now a group of people that that they

know that think like them and et cetera. And so just the boost of self confidence, um, keeps them alive and and and and and working at their craft for another year and then they're ready to get a record deal or a publishing deal. Okay, So people thought hip hop would die and today they would say it's like rock and roll it's forever, but rock and roll seems to have died. So as someone who's a big observer of the scene certainly where it's happening, you know, what

is the runway, what is the roadmap into the future. Well, it's somewhat controversial when I say this, and I don't say it because I wanted to be this way, but this is my own personal opinion of what the future holds. Is that I think that the guitar is dead and rock is dead. Uh, And then that's an exaggeration. They're not dead, they're never going away, but they're never going

to be the primary yeah, like jazz um. And one of the reasons for that is that's the unstoppable march of technology, in the unstoppable march of the democratization of music, the democratization of the making and music. So look back, say um electric guitar wasn't was a great example itself of of incredible democratization the creation of music. And so

before that you had big band era. You had to bus loads full of really sophisticated people could read music, write music, and we're well trained their instruments, and they can only record if they went into a thing called a studio owned by a record label, and um, that was a very elite, closed group of people. Uh. Then an electric guitar comes along and say, Buddy Holly's hands right, three chords, just not doesn't know how to play his guitar like a you know, famous traumpa player of Benny

Goodman knew how to play his clarinet or whatever. He wasn't trying. He just knew three chords. And he recorded in a garage, which is also democratization of recording. Where

is you know, um, what's his name, Norma Petty? Yeah, yeah, this producer probably bought used gear from one of those big New York studios that you couldn't get into anymore and and put it in his garage and and that was you didn't they didn't need permission from anybody, And they went toured with three guys at the station wagon,

hugely forward, you know, sampling, same thing, right. So I think that, um, that march of technology that democratizes creation of music is unstoppable, and and it puts creation of music in the hands of people who don't have any training, and every generation, people who are most interested in making music pick up the tools of their generation, which today

is a laptop or a phone. Um and uh, and starts to make music with those tools, and the very best of them, in the most motivated and driven, you know, end up becoming successful and make a difference, and that

becomes their generations music. That's what's happening now. And I think personally the next wave of the democratization of the creation of music is artificial intelligence, because I think I think the the future of creation of music will be how people humans create art by mucking with the technology a little bit deeper. So some examples. UM I started as a recording engineer and UM, I watched the introduction

of the drum machine, and uh. First of all, drummers, of course were horrified, and they had every excuse in the world. Why was no good, It didn't feel like a human blah blah blah. And of course people try to use it to make it sound real. And and then the smart drummers said, well, they bought one and they became a percussion solutionist instead of a drummer, and they still had the same producers would hire them, and now they hire them to make that drum machine thing.

And then um, eventually people started using a drum machine, uh in ways that people couldn't play drums, to take a high hat and go you know that kind of thing, and and so that's what it got its real value because it's doing something in the person can't do. Then I watched the sampler come in the fair Light, was the first commercial digital sampler, and um, I remember the very first reaction people was always, although now we don't have to hire a cello player, I can sample a

cello and played on the keyboard. And then I attributed to may not be true, but I personally in my life attribute the breakthrough commercial breakthrough of the art of using a sampler was owner of Lonely Heart by Yes, Trevor Horne produced it. And I remember where I was when I first heard. I was driving along the freeway in Toronto and I had to pull over because I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I'd never heard anything

like it. And of course what he did instead of trying to emulate something real, he said, gee, I won if we put the entire Lenon Symphia orchestra on on each key and then went, you know, but right, and he created something that humans couldn't do, so I think that that's the same thing with artificial intelligence. Another example of technology like that would be the auto tune. So the guy invented auto tune, I've read interviews with him.

He invented auto tune to tune vocals um And yet you know, the breakthrough for auto tune was the share record and I believe and the guys were in the studio I'm sure with her and they said, oh, it's she's slightly out of tune. How what do we do. I've heard this new thing called auto tune. Let's go rent it. They rented it, They plug it in, and what do you do when you plug it in a piece of gear For the first time, you turn it all the way left and then all the way right.

And when they turned it all the way right, it went and invented that over auto tune sound. And then the next wave of music I remember seeing was I think we might have been Farrell or one of those producers, and maybe a timble in Farrell. When the height of when auto tune first came in widely, they said, even if it's in tune, I auto tune it because that's

the sound of music today. And now You've got kids growing up who were one of us to be singers, and they're listening to auto tune records and they naturally sound like their auto tune. So all you look at all those kind of developments, and then I think it's really easy to look at artificial intelligence. Okay, that's certainly democratizes creating music because anybody un initiated describe what artificial intelligence is and how it would apply in the music business.

I'm not intelligent enough to aren't describe artificial intelligence, but you know, it's you program the computer to the point where it can imitate human behavior and then hopefully go a little step. Well yeah, and uh and some machine

learning is another another term for it. So there's already platforms out there that make music that um that either have no intervention from a person or you you interact with it in different ways like you type in purple or something and um uh, so that I think that's the future right now. Way, just to be clear, because based on all your things, you've said, there's a technology

and the human plays with the technology. Do you believe that ultimately AI will create its own music or what the human will do with the tools of a the letter so well. First of all, AI is making music right now. But again, just like those examples I gave, um, they're using people are expecting regular sounding music to come out of it, and people are saying, well, it's not very good, or it's not you know, it's there's no

soul or whatever. But I think what's gonna happen is that somebody will interact with it and come up with something the equivalent of taking the high hat and going They'll do that with words, they'll do with melodies, they'll combine, you know, um, different strains of music that people have never done before. They'll do it in a way you can't before, and they'll do it without any knowledge of

how to do that because they're just interacting computer. Okay, how comes certain sounds have their window and faith Like in the late seventies it was the syndrome, right, but the fake hand clap of the t R O eight O eight lives on. Why do you think that is? I have no idea, I mean doing what I hear that, I go remember that two. So it immediately makes it me feel like these people are not testing the limits,

which brings me to the next question. Irrelevant of what instruments or how this music is created right now, A lot of the popular music's lacks melody. Do you believe melody will come back? Well, I don't even say it. I don't even think it lacks melody today. I think that, Um, you know, it's really easy to say, oh, today's music sucks in whatever way, either that sucks generally or that has no melody or whatever, and I think that we have no perspective on it. I think that every generation

has always said that about the following generation's music. Um, I hear lots of melody cooks on record. Generally there are somebody a featured singer and a rap record or there, or there are an instrumental part. But I hear lots of melodies. There's no question that records today, the production it forms more of the of the core of the of the record than in the in the past. But again that that's just a um, the march of time.

That's progress. I mean that there's more technology involved with making a Well, I would say a lot of the be driven records, melody is secondary, tertiary or there at all. So just like the same thing. You know, there's a steampunk movement which drives me nuts, but one would anticipate it somewhere down the line. There's gonna just like with vinyl, which is really amplified beyond the reality. Don't get me started exactly, We're on the same page, it sounds like.

But the UM there will be people who would probably return to acoustic instruments just as a reaction. Yeah, there's no question the pendulum always swings. But I think that the real instrument backlash will be upward peaks of downward curve. Okay, so do you anticipate any changes imminently? I think that, you know, the next few years, whether it's two, three, five, we're gonna see UM great records come out that have astonishing things about them. They are there because of the

AI and have with the way the person screw with it. Again, I can't, you know, I'm not smart enough to involved in enough to imagine exactly what it is. But very simplistically, you know you're gonna get somebody who takes Bob Dylan a lyric program and turns Bob Dylan to ten, takes a melody program and turns you know, McCartney to minus five and hooks up the digital of delay in a phaser between them or something. You know, that's a very

uber simplistic way of describe. You believe that's within the next two or three years. I think two to five years. Okay, let's talk. Spotify is the dominant player in streaming music, even eclipses YouTube at this point. Uh. But if you look at the Spotify Top fifty, unlike if people who grew up in the air of Top forty radio, it is pretty monochronistic, if that's even a word, monochrome, and then it's all basically hip hop, maybe a little pop

thrown in. This is a unique thing because there used to always be a filter saying no, we're gonna put in these other elements. And to agree there's radio radio to a great degree replicates that. To what degree is that evidence of what people really want? Or do we need an opportunity for other styles of music. That's a great question. And I sort of alluded to it earlier that we're concerned about that when it comes to say the existence of Canadian content, right, UM are very early

on in our studies. We're going to refine our data, but our data is showing that, um, the consumption of Canadian music by Canadians is disturbingly low in the in the digital space compared to the traditional broadcast media. And if that's the case, um our next thinking is that it must be a discover ability issue, because there's no

availability issue. Everybody's got the music on those platforms. And an example of and so basically they're unintentionally biased, perhaps in favor of of cultures from large countries or large populations,

or you know, certain genres of music or whatever. It's it's an unintentional and biased and um a good example that would be you know, the it was that Martina McBride into last year since she tried to create an automated playlist and she seated it with a Rebend McEntire track or something like that, and then uh, nineteen of the other tracks that were automatically generated for we're all men. Uh you know so, and these aren't There's nothing evil

about all this stuff. These are an unintended consequences of the mecha describing mechanisms. And I think these these platforms genuinely a want to make music as discoverable as possible and and and please the customer that way, and be they want to localize their products for different territories and different cultures. I just think that we're not there yet to the point where it's done done well enough. And uh so that's a concern of ours in terms of

Canadian content. But if you could insert any subgenre or small genre or of music there that I think everybody should be as concerned. Uh, because um of what you're saying. Okay, you started out as a drummer. Okay, drummer. When did you start playing drums? It was about five. My dad was an amateur drummer and he your father, and so it's in the family. Yeah. He was a big jazz fan. Uh and um uh. He would played in little jazz combos and um. And he actually taught me how to

listen to records. We'd sit around on a Saturday afternoon and you'd have a beer and from in front of the big gold console stereo that's as big as a couch, and he'd be listening to you know, Benny Goodman and Count Basie and all those people, and uh, he'd say, listen to this, listen that secks, so listen to how that got drummer did this? And uh so that really got me both intrigued and and interested and be able

to listen, right and uh. And then I played in a town marching band that my dad was involved with to keep the kids off the street. We had no music in schools. But I was the youngest kid ever in the band. And I would we'd be on the march and I'd be playing the symbols and um, I would hit them so hard that they they'd stick like

a suction cup, but to go clang, clank. And then so the leader of the band would mark time and make for the band to catch up, and he'd take them out of my hands and unstick them and hand them back to me. And then we also played uh. Concert was a concert band to like forty kids, right. You know, I was probably ten when I joined, but

there was maybe the oldest seventeen eighteen. And um, the leader of the band, his name is Frank Banks, was really a progressive guy and he and he was trying to keep the kids interested in and this is the air at rock era. So he did an arrangement of Tommy's overture that we were playing in this you know forty person Bank. Yeah, and then and then he let myself and the other drummer bring our drum kids in and we did dueling in a god at avita solos

in the middle of this you know, horn orchestra, um. Yeah, and then you know bands and everything. But I wanted to be um. I didn't think you could you could. I didn't think you could be from my town and and and and be successful in me it's just to be from my audience. Where was your it's called Lindsay was about an hour and a half from northeast to tron On and uh and in the entire existence of the town, nobody ever made anything out of being a

music career. And talk about Canadian content impact um uh. At our work show that's coming up in the end of March, um, we're probably there's probably half a dozen or more awards going to people from the area of my town. Okay, so you're growing up, Are you like a music fanatic, buying the records, listening to the radio or is just one thing that you do? No? No, I was fanatical about it, and I was fanatical about records. I was. I just mesmerized by what I called my

magic records. And everybody's got them in their life. There's those records that you know when your girlfriend leaves your something that saves your life by listening to it, or just takes you to another world transport you and I had records like that, and and what would you remember a couple of those records? Um, well, certainly Dark Side

of the Moon uh. And in fact that record um and the guests who I get that the minute, but they guess who to me are the big bang a Canadian music and and and before them you didn't think that you could be Canadian and you could do this. And after them, they made people realize that you could be Canadian, you could have world success and and and not have to move to the US. And even in my life, bigger story was behind the scenes, you could do that. And Jack Ridgards and the guy who discovered

and produced them, became sort of my hero. And I wanted to Uh. I wanted to find him because I wanted to find what the secret of making a magic record was. And so I was in the technology and electronics and and when you know, you're the era of Pink Floyd and all the flying echoes and things like that, and I thought, Okay, it's technology that's the secret to

making a magic record. And so I wanted to become a recording engineer, and um, I wanted to thought you could must be a school for it, because you look at a picture of a recording console, it was a thousand knobs on it. And there wasn't any schools in the world. And I looked for two years and finally the first world's first credited chorus for recording engineering record record production sprung up in London, Ontario, Canada, called Music

Industry Arts at Fanshaw College, and I found it. It was amazing moment in my life when I realized there is a school and my goal was to find the school, get into school, graduate, find Jack Richardson and go work for him. And that's exactly what happened. Okay, how long were we in the school? Three years? How did you find Jack Richardson? Um? He came down to the guest lecture one day because his son, Garth was a new student in the first year and I was in my

third year, and I thought, this is it. My heroes come I this is my day. And I basically falled him around like a puppy dog and basically hung onto his ankle, wouldn't let go all day, and finally at the end of the day, he turned his son and he said, who's that kid? And uh Karth said, well, he's actually the number one student in the school. And he said and and he said, he's not crazy, he just thinks he's said you're just his hero. So Jack turned him and say, if you're ever in Toronto sometime,

give me a call and come into the studio. Yeah, exactly. And they basically never left. And I graduated and he got an internship. Didn't call it that then, but he and he's hired me for the summer. And when I graduated, and the very very first day, my other hero was bob Ezman and the very very first day was bob Ezman session. So it was like, what was your role was in turn? Okay? And you remember what the session was? Uh? Tim Curry her picture Schaces first solo record. Okay, So

how did you graduate? Up the ladder in the studio? Because I had been to school and and I was in the first generation of people had been to school,

nobody knew what I knew and U uh. One day Jack was producing a vocal and the head engineer UM couldn't for some reason, couldn't get sound working and Jack and the and the singer got up pretty upset of chorus after about five minutes of no sound, and uh singer said, I'm going to get a coffee and and Jack turned to the engineer said I'm gonna get a coffee too, And if when I come back, if it's not happening, you're done that kind of thing, right, So

he was just shaking, right. And because I knew how to work the board. I knew how to work the board because when I was hanging out there before they hired me, I would talk to the maintenance guy and he would give me a photocopy of the schematic of the board and then a photocopy of the front page of the manual. So I built a life size cardboard cutout of the board when I was in school, and I used to pretend to work it was sitting in bed.

So by time I started there as a gopher, I knew how to work the board, eve though I've never touched it. What kind of board did they have? There's a highly modified auditronics And what was the name of the studio then Nimbus nine. Yeah, so um, anyway, so they I knew what was I knew why the guy would couldn't get the sound, but I didn't want to embarrass them in front of Jack. And so as soon as Jack left the control and I said, Jim, try the red button over there, and he looked at me like,

who do you? Who are you? What do you know? And uh, Finally, just before Jack came in, and he knew he had nothing else to lose, so he tried the red button in the sound came on right. So from that moment on, they trusted me to do things. And then I happened to be lucky enough to be asked to engineer a demo for a band called the Kings because they're managers. Life was a receptionist in the studio and she talked Jack into give him the band downtime, free time, but he said, only if you can get

one of the guys to engineer it. And nobody wanted to do it, and again I said I'll do it, and they looked at me. He said, you you don't know how to do anything, and I said no, I went to school, remember, And they had no choice. They had how long have you been working there at that? Three or four months? Maybe six months? And um, and so they said, well, I. I I guess it's the only the only choice. So they let me go in that weekend and I worked with this band and and they

went off to try and get a record deal. And about six nine months later they couldn't get a record deal, but they came to the father they got guitar player's father had died left him a lot of money, so they said, we want to make an independent record and uh, we would have blockbooked the studio for a month. We want Mike to engineer and produce it, and they said, but he's only ever done your demo. And then we also said, um, nobody's ever had any success with independent records.

This is nineteen eighty let's say anyone and m and we tried to talk about of it, and they finally said, look, we're trying to block book your studio for a month. Do you want the business or not? So they said, yeah, you can do it, but Mike has to work with the other engineer named Ringo Ringo Hersina, who was how many rooms were there in the studio just one, but

actually that factors into the rest of the story. So we we so Ringo and I the next day started making this record with this band called the Kings, and uh, you know, thirty days go by and we make the record, and we're starting to do rough mixes and and and they had a new song was actually two songs and one it's called this beat goes on and switch right

and and they had. But but in our really triumphant moment during the making the record was figuring how to connect the two songs because it recorded separately, right, and they were so much Why did you decide to connect them? Well? That they did that was that was the bands and and there and one of the managers was I thought was an r and our genius. They had decided to do this, and they had they had realized by playing it live that they didn't work very well independentalty. But

you put them two together. And that was one of the biggest lessons I learned about hit songs was from this, because I asked the manager, I said, why did you guys know that this was the only way it works? You said, very simple. Hit records are rhythm melody hooks. One of them's got the melody hook, the other has got the rhythm hook, you know, and that kind of thing. Right. So, anyway, we were had the rough mixes together and Bob, I know he got the credit on the record. I bought

the record. Yeah, well he so he came around, uh, trying to measure. He was thinking of buying the place, and he was measuring one of the rooms to see if you could build a second room, second studio. And when the band heard the Bob was there, they said, oh, you got to bring him in and hear the stuff, and and Ringo and I said, on, I don't know, you know, he doesn't probably want to hear this stuff. And Ringoes and said, you know, he hasn't worked with

an unknown band since Alice Cooper. And we've tried all these excuses. We didn't want to bother Bob. And finally the manager said, inter just me to him. So okay, so we go introduced them and then they talked for a while and and he brings Bob back in the control room. Bob says, let me hear it. So he pressed. We pressed playing on the tape, and the first thing he hears is this. He goes on switching the guide. He stops it at the end and he says, there's

a hit record. I'm gonna get you guys a record deal. Seven days later, he had them to deal with Electric Records, and he came in the in the studio waving a telex or something and uh saying, great news. You know, We've got the record deal, and I'm gonna produce and reproduce the record. And Ringo and I sat during it, where does that leave us? And Bob looked at us like, oh, you guys are gonna engineer an associate produce. We said, okay, fantastic, and so we just the next day we started remaking

the same album. Did he remake it from scratch? Oh? Yeah? And and and and you know, it was an incredible example of Bob's genius because he made some subtle changes that, in my opinion, made a huge, huge difference and and

um uh so it was good. But although that was the punk era and um, and the band was not really a punk band, but they were trying to adopt a few the ethics of punk, and Bob was really into punk, and and he decided that he didn't want to uh spend any time making getting the sounds, so um it was basically, you know, put the microphones up in a roll tape kind of thing. And and to this day I figured I might have still been an engineer if they would have given us time to get

better sounds. But I don't know that record was a hit, at least in Los Angeles. How come they could never follow it up? Why? Why do most people not follow it up? Because it's lightning, you know? I guess they Also they kicked the manager out of the out of the whole situation, and UM and I really felt that he was an incredibly important part of the of the

creative dynamic of the band. And so after I left working for Jack Richardson and then left after we left working for Bob too, UM, I went back and found that guy and we started our own company. We called ourselves the Producers. Uh. Inspired by the movie and UM went around finding bands, take him a studio and make records and UM UH did a lot of great stuff, but couldn't get arrested. And eventually, UH Frank Davies was running a TV Canada offered me a job as created

person there. Okay, let's go back. So what was your How long were you an engineer after that King's record? A couple of years, I guess. And you worked with Bob Yeah, yeah, I worked with him on the next King's record and then Kiss record the elder. So you were Bob's guy, one of them. Yeah, right, how did it end for you? Um? So you know, when you're working a studio, it's twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, thirty days a month, right, And UM,

I had treated my schooling that way. So three years of seven school, uh, probably three years seven in the studio and I was about at the end of my rope and I didn't really realize it. And um, and Bob had taken for some reason, I guess with the timing of the Kings or the or the Kiss was working out the way it was supposed to be, and we had to do both records at once basically, so he had we do two weeks with Kiss, two weeks with Kings too. Was Kissed Kings and it was just

driving me crazy. And finally, uh, um, one day Bob was really late for the studio and UM, we got tired of waiting for him because we had decided that if we had worked ahead, he might not like it, and uh, we be working for nothing and if and so W do W that we decided not to decided to go out to dinner and uh, soon after we left, he arrived and uh he was upset that we weren't there, and so we got back to the studio. He said, Okay, just because you guys have done this, we're gonna have

to work the weekend. And that was gonna be the first weekend I'd had off in months. And somebody said work the weekend. It literally heard of spring my brain go boing. I turned around and walked out the door. Uh. The studio was the edge of in the edge of Toronto. Um. I walked in the countryside for probably two hours. Bob and his wife and it was just getting dark. They

came in looking for me. People thought I'd like jumped in the river or something, and uh uh I turned down the offer to drive me back to the studio. I got back to the studio, I went in and tacked up a sign on the wall said gone fishing. And a friend of mine worked for a wholesale travel agency, and I said, caled her and said get me on the beach tomorrow. So I went to the Bahamas for a couple of weeks and two or three weeks and sat of the beach, just staring at the beach. During

an that was the end. No, what happened was I met a Rastafarian. Uh, this is a true story. I met a Rastafarian on the beach and u and started smoking joints with him, and he said, uh, you know what your problem is. I don't want to take the accent, but he said, your problem is you've spent too much time working on your career and basically, give you've atrophied

as a person, like a three legged stool. You know, you've got the physical mental and uh and and and spiritual legs and a couple of have fallen are short, you've fallen over. So I thought that's a great thing. So I came back and I didn't care about my career for a while. And uh then kind of stuff started to happen, and I found got the partner with that producer with the Manka. But when you came back, you didn't work in the studio anymore. Did nothing for

a while. And then and found my partner and we found and we started, um, you know, finding gods in the studio. But when you walked for good, they were cool with that. Today the people are lining up to work. Yeah, Bob was incredibly understanding about it. I mean, you know, he knows the pressures of all that stuff, and and so you know, I I learned more about balancing myself. I think, you know, with that and and it's I think that's a good, good lesson for anybody's life. You know.

So you go to work for a TV publisher, how do you end up running E M my music Publishing Canada? I was so I was really lucky that. Um Uh. Shortly after I got there, um I met with one of the writers of a band called Toronto that had been signed there and at a TV Canada and it was it was the biggest outlet for Canadian talent. Um. They had Aldo Nova, they had Eddie Schwartzer wrote me Hip Hippie with your best shot. Um they had a

big had chili whack um a lot of success. And they had this band called Toronto that was on Solid Gold Records and Neil Dixon's label, and um uh, the good Brian Allen, the guitar player me and writer called me up and he said, you know, our deal is up with you guys, and you only published the stuff that was on our records, and I have some stuff that wasn't on the record. I don't know if you

want to hear it? I said yeah, sure. So he came in and played me a bunch of demos and one of them was a song called what About Love and it was a little cassette port of studio demo and I said, wow, that's a great song. I've only been on the job for about a month. I already know that I can't sell that song with with that bat of a demo. And uh, then he called me

a week later, so I found Uh. We actually tried to record it on the album the Jim Valence produced for us, and Jim Valence co wrote it and I got left off the last minute, so I have a rough mix of the produced version one it here. I said, yeah, sure, so I brought it in. It was just I thought

it was a total smash. Got it to Don Gerson, who was ahead of in our capitol, who wanted songs for Heart, and UM he picked it for Heart and they had a giant hit with it and basically resurrected a career, and um gave me a career in music publishing because all of a sudden, now I had I scored a big goal, right And that was right before Michael Jackson bought the company. Just stop there that the original rough mix. How close was that to the finished

hard version? Unbelievably close. It was my first lesson in that almost every nine times out of ten, when somebody uh gets a demo and and and and cuts a record of it, it's it's just like the demo. And that's a big lesson for me and publishing in some song plugging is that nobody has any imagination, right, Okay, So Michael Jackson then buys the label, but he buys it to get the get the songs and fires everybody

in the world. Um. And just as we're turning out the lights, I got a call from a journalist music journalist named Nick Cruen who worked for a Maga trick Natie mag trade magazine called the record David Farrell and David now has f y I music, which you've probously seen, remember the record and uh, And he had assigned Nick the job of trying to get somebody in a TV to talk about the fact that everybody's losing their jobs. And he called me up and he said, you're my

last chance. You're the lowest guy in the poll in the world. And I've tried to get everybody talking, nobody will and so I had this vision that if I was going to go down, I might as well go down in flames. And I thought, well, I'll just be honest,

and that I actually honest to God. Had a vision of a Star Trek episode where um, they were lost in space and they and they couldn't get a hold of anybody, and there was a ship passing a few light years away, so to get its attention, Spock jettison to the last bit of anti matter and blew it up. In of course, the explosion caused the ship to come

and find them and save them. So I thought, I'm gonna create an explosion, So I I said, you know that, how I talked about how important a TV had been to h to Canadian talent and getting an outlet to the world, And um, Michael Jackson was just going to mothball the whole thing. And he presents an image of being a caring religious person. He just turns out to

be another ruthless muggul. So he printed it and everything and never thought anything else of it, And um went off of my were Mary Wade and I actually got a job at Attic Records, uh Elamaire's company doing A

and R and UM. Unbeknownst to me, this got picked up by an American wire service, and I was being quoted on radio stations and newspapers, calling Michael Jackson and Ruthless Mugu and also unbeknownst to me, he was reading all this should be making a commitment to all these writers and things, and and they go, okay, what do you want to do? And what Branco told me was

that he said find this guy and how room. So I'm working for Almayer and I get a call from the head of CBS Songs in Canada because CBS Songs had had the adminised administration of it, and he said, there's an airport. There's a plane ticket at the airport for you're going to New York to talk to the

head of CBS Songs. I said, okay, So I went to the airport and got it picked up by a car at Lagority and they took me to see Mike's Stewart and Harvey Shapiro iran CBS Songs and and they said Michael Jackson's read your comments and then just stared at me. And I thought I was getting up with the Hudson River. And finally I just I looked up, I looked down and left right, and I just you know,

it was really really awkward. And so finally Mike Stewart goes, he wants to give you a chance to put up a shut up and uh, he said, So I said okay, And he said, all right, so go back to Canada and uh work for CBS songs. So that was that was the negotiation that I went back to downstairs, got in the car that was waiting for me, went back to the airport, and and what did you tell Al Mayor? Um?

I don want to embarrass him, so uh, but but I'll h had actually said to me, I don't want you to take this job, just waiting for a job from Major to come along, right, And and there was some things about the job that I didn't think we're as advertised and and and um, so I didn't feel so bad about it other than I did feel bad about it, but I felt like it wasn't what I thought it was gonna be. Right, And and so I said, well, you don't have to you don't have to pay me

for the week I've been here. And he said Okay, okay, so you gotta work for CBS. How does that morph in the E M R sp K bought it? And um, by this time, you know, I'm doing pretty well as a song plugger. I'm getting songs and Joe Cocker records

and things like that. And uh um, I guess Marty Bander, Charles Koppelman and Steven swid were doing their due diligence on the office and they had me condend to New York and meet them, and I think I gave a pretty passionate pitch about Canadian music and and how the how the future could be and how um you know this government support and all this kind of thing, and and they so they seemed to like me, and they empowered me, and and then actually moved me to l A.

So mid eighties, UM, my wife Sam and I and my oldest, my then only child, t J packed up and moved to l A and worked for EM Despicat down here initially, and then they sold the E M. I became M I and uh um. While that was down here. Um, one of the things that did was he introduced me to Charles Koppleman and Marty Bander and induced me to Artie Mogul. You must know, Artie the biggest, most unforgettable character I've ever met in my life inside

or outside the business. Brooklyn Street hustler, you know, gambling addiction. Uh he was the Forest Gump of the music business right where almost anybody you wanted to name that was huge. He had some sort of association with them or the deal or whatever. Right And um so he said, Uh, okay, kid,

who do you want to meet? And I said Richard Perry, as I was fascinated by producers, and uh so he he literally picked up the phone and dialed his number from memory and Richard answered and already said Richard, already lunch the Dome tomorrow and then hung up and uh dome was right next to our offices. And uh so the next day we're walking over there, and he said, we have to think of some excuse when we're meeting Richard Perry. He doesn't want to meet you're you're just

a schmuck from Canada. And so he said. At this time, we was right after we had Tracy Chapman was a big case of success story, and all the labels wanted to have a production deal with That's b k so he said, um, we'll we'll tell him we need some acts for the production company. So we sit down and having lunch and he's telling us the different things he's

working on, and none of them seemed that interesting. And then he could tell he wasn't getting a spark from us, and so he kind of like reached down into the bottom of his mental bag and said, well, it's one of the things that when working on it's the Daughters of Wilson of but beach boys and mamas and papas as. So as he said that, he could tell all they got a big rise from. Marty and I were looking each other eyes bugging out, and so he switches in

the uber sales pitch mode. So already slammed the table and he said, we want them. And then the entire restaurant went silent, like you see in the movies, right, and everybody's staring at us. And I said, Alartiy shouldn't listen to some music first. He said, no, we want them, and I said already, and we gotta listen to some music, and he's all right, sending over some music. So we go back to the office. An hour later, a messenger

rise at the cassette. We put it in. The very first song of the cassette is hold On, and we look at each other we go, I can't believe it. So we said it to Charles Coppelman and the next morning he calls from his car on the way and he said, this is amazing. I'm going to sign them. So again, we had all these output deals, right, had production deals with all the different labels, and we had to hand them. We had to pitch them certain number

of acts a year. So Arty says, watch this kid, I'm gonna get the biggest record deal for a new artist the history of mankind. So we've got to go to dinner with all the heads of all the labels and and uh, and we'll Phillips and uh watched the wind up and he wound it up to six hundred fifty dollars for the first record. And then bang, SPK is sold and now it's SPK Records, and uh, Charles, I'm in already's office when day Charles called and he said, I got good news and bad news. The good news

is we want the girls for SPK Records. The bad news is we're not paying them six hundred fifty grand and you have to tell them. He said, watch this, kid, I'm gonna wind it down. Only already could have done this, and and but what he did was promised them that SPK will stop at nothing to make the record successful. And of course that's what was the case. Now were you at the first SPK convention in the desert when

they debuted? Yeah, I was there with Hysteric and Michelle Phillips, etcetera. Okay, how come Glenn Ballard ended up producing the record because um uh Richard to develop the group had brought in Glenn to do the demos, and so Glenn and co written everything and produced the demos. The demo hold On was phenomenal, you know. Okay, so it ends with an E M. I. Ultimately when there's another corporate transition and then you go to work for only and now you're

so kept. Who are you? Are you as a drummer, a recording engineer, a publisher, a guy on performing end of it performance rights. I'm a guy who was a whole career was in search of the secret of making a magic record, and one day I found I figured it out and it wasn't um anything. The technology was doing it wasn't anything about guiding the performance. It was about what they were singing. It was the song that's

secret to making a magic record. And so I'm a song person and I had a incredibly fortunate to to exercise that love of song and songwriting as a publisher, and now I'm doing that as a as a you know, chief membership officer at so can UM. We're protecting writers, protecting their rights, getting them paid, We're stimulating their creativity. It's all the stuff that i've i've already has ever done. Okay, are you as excited about music today as you were

back then? Yeah? I think I think that, Like I said earlier, I think every generation picks up the tools of a generation and starts making music. But one can argue that certainly in the sixties and seventies music drove the culture. There was music and radio. Certainly, for the last twenty five years there's been technology, and as big as music is, I will argue that technology drove the culture. What is music's place going forward? Well, you know, you know,

of course, I've I've seen you. You're right that a lot, and I agree to a large degree. Although, by the way I said to Dug the engineer. When I came here today, I feel like I'm in the Abbey Road of podcasting because you know, to me, this is not about me, this is about you, because I'm so inspired by everything you're right, and and I listened to every one of your podcasts. But okay, okay, but um, you know, yes, I think that more kids grow up today idolizing tech

entrepreneurs and want to be an tech entrepreneur. Probably then idolize, you know, so called rock stars and want to be so called rock stars. But I also think that you know, the historically, the people of our generation, uh and and the music that we're we're into. It's easy for us to say that music is not driving the culture anymore. But I don't know if you could say that if you're a hip hop fan, you know, and if you know, I would say, with hip hop, and this is not

only about hip hop. To the people it's important to it's huge. But prior to the last fifteen years, last ten years, if you were as big as Drake, everybody in America knew Year's songs. This is not a reflection on Drake. It's just a reflection on society. And it's not only music, it's hard to get that level of mind share, and I don't believe the business is adjusted. And what I also believe is the result of that. However, much of the mind share of music hip hop gets.

The press and the major labels are focusing only on that as if it were the last century, when all these other things who that may never graduate to that level have a greater impact, impact or more self sustaining than ever. No, I don't disagree with that. I mean, the amount of noise out there is incredible and and as you say, if you're inside the bubble, you think that something everybody knows about something and they and they don't really right. But in terms of the influence, mean,

look at the influence of hip hop's head on fashion. Absolutely, but it's a language, yeah, but a little long in the tooth, yeah, for sure. You look at the opinion of always swings and that there's going to be something that that that replaces the So the interesting thing is twofold. We we lived through so many ears. Let's just call it the MTV era, and it was to a degree driven by MTV, where they promote one thing and then

that would be over. The sound would change completely and certainly since the beginning of the century, the sound has been hip hop. Okay, not that it hasn't evolved. So for those of us who lived through the previous decades, we constantly expected something to else to come along, and it has not happened. Not granted, hip hop embrace the Internet long but for every other genre, if the other

genres have, you've been embraced there. But speaking of hip hop, one thing you've maintained, and we've talked a lot about, is you believe with songwritings. Yesen's but you also believe it's about collaboration. Okay, and certainly that's what hip hop is. Why don't you tell my audience your beliefs about collaboration. Well, I always I always write your nasty note every time you should on collaboration. Uh, you know the the the

knock on collaboration is it's committee songwriting, right. Well, that well, it's one thing to have too songwriters, the other thing to have nineteen Yeah. Well, look that that could be overboard. But often sometimes that's because there's there's samples in corporate and I'm talking about how many people are in the room. Well, like I think about this a lot and for one thing, and maybe they go overboard. Now. I mean, there's a joke that people say, if you deliver pizza to the

session and you get to UM. But on the other hand, if you take the Motown era, right, which you know, my one of my mentors, but Marty Bander, used to say, arguably was the greatest era, uh you know, or the greatest the most successful UM creative music scene in history. And there's a lot to be said about that. Um. You know, you had great records where UM would ended up being the biggest hook in the record was a guitar part that the guitar player made up in the

studio as they're recording it. And a lot of times they never got in your writing credit, right, So you know, maybe the pendulum was too far that way. Maybe it's gone too far the other way. But at least there are people are being inclusive as to people, you know, who's important in the making of the record. UM. But I will I will stop there though. But the differences, especially those records, they were essentially cut live, whereas today

many of the hit records are. We worked and we worked every other people polishing it to try to make it a hit record. Well, I think that, Well, look, who knows what goes through the minds of everybody when they're doing this. I think it's there's always the gamut from people sitting down to make a hit record for all the way from that to people are sitting down to make great music and it happens to be a hit.

So whichever way, I think that people are just trying to have be great, and they're trying to make great music, and they're trying to make a lot of money at the same time. Um, most great music, to me has been the result of collaboration of one sort of another, whether it's co writing or not writing. Look The Who, for instance, probably a great example, right. I can't imagine Pete Townsend having a successful career as a singer songwriter

if he hadn't been in The Who. Can't imagine Roger Dalter having a successful career as an artist if he wasn't in The Who. And back in those days, um, the first rung in the ladder was so high that you couldn't get to it. You had to try to scheme how to get to that first rung. And so you know, the visual metaphor would be well, one of this group of people get down in all fours and I'm gonna stand on their back, and then somebody can stand on my shoulders and they can grab the first rung.

And so they coalesced into self organized groups of people to make something that was better than any one of them could do. The whole was great than some of the parts. And that's what I think all collaborations are. So, whether so whether it's songwriting, whether it's uh, you know, okay, well we haven't discussed it quite this deep before, or maybe I haven't gotten it, And I certainly agree with

that overall philosophy. Let's just say the song now, let's of course the point being was the lick part of the song? Whatever? But literally, as a publisher, I guess they're coming in with demonos. They come in with a song. Do you believe that there are multiple people in the room, let's just say even two or three, it's better than having one. Well, if it's the right dynamic, sure, you know you have you can't have somebody who's a bullying

you can't have. You have to have. There has to be an OD tour, has to be an O tour. And then whether that's the artist themselves, which in case, in the case of most of these people were talking about, I think it's the artist that's the tour who's you know, um, But somebody has to be the creative brain. It's like a movie that movies have hundreds of people working on them, but you will go to see a Quentin Tarantino movie, you know whose movie it is, even though he's got

a several hundred people working in the movie. Right. So I think the most all the great music out there has that person. And they're and if they're if they're doing their job right, they're bringing in ideas from everybody, and they're they're rejecting the shitty ones and they're accepting the great ones, or you're they're rejecting the ones that will fit their vision and they're and they're accepting the great ones. And uh um. So how could you have

too many good ideas? I don't think you can. And I think it takes it's very very, very very rare. You have one human being who has enough great ideas and is a good enough I meanipulating all the elements of music themselves and can sing or wrap it themselves. How many human beings in the face of the earth. Are that good? They can do it all by themself, not not not many prints Todd Roun, Grant, etcetera. Okay, so here you are, You've had a storied career. What's

your personal dream and your time left? I'm talking about business ones which may INTERESTCT with personal Um, yeah, that's a good question. UM, I just want to keep doing. What I'm doing was just to help inspire, help um protect uh and songwriters and and and have create environments where they can succeed. And I think, UM, I want to see so Can continue with the path it is, which is becoming a globally competitive p r oh because in the world, that's you know, going back to why

did I go to so canus? Because I wanted to see it become globally competitive, because um, all the new licensees are the most powerful companies in the history of the world. And UM, sooner or later you're gonna get completely lost and nobody will talk to you if you're not of a certain size, not a certain body of repertoire that they need certain capability with the back office. So so Can's on that path, and I want to

help it continue in that path. Um and UH. I just want to, you know, as I said, help people make get from pointing to point B. And I've always been most interested in working with people who had nothing going on career wise and helping them have a career. That I was interested in in finding people who had a career going on and helping them get to the next level. It's it's okay, who was someone you worked

with well, you thought had it didn't make it? Um multiple depends on the definition that didn't make it was not did not turn out to be financially successful, have a sustained career, and the people paying attention didn't know who they were, um I was My answer is going to be not um not as dire straits as you're just described, but somebody who didn't get their due commercially

would be a stero um. Those of you that that have I ever heard of her, No, how incredibly talented she is and she still still works in the business, and she's a great person and has um um you know, a lot of good stuff going on, but she should have been a super duperstar and uh um uh. And I think that's just one of the things. But the

gods didn't let it happen. Her her original collaborator, DC McKinney has gone on to become uh one of the most important influential, you know, producers in the in the world. And he was a big part of the Weekend. Uh sound when the Weekend came out. Um, but she's just mega talented. Um. Look, I don't I don't know. Uh. Even though I've had a career where, you know, my job was the green light things, I really honestly don't really know how why some things work and why they

don't right. Uh, I'm fascinated by it, like I always studied, tried to study green light stories and other industries to

try and apply it to me, you know. But I mean, I think the two greatest green light stories in the history of the entertainment business for George Martin signing the Beatles and UH twenty century Fox Ellen Ladd Jr. Or Giving the green light to Star Wars, and they're both followed the exact same thing, which is they just had a gut feeling about the people and standing in front of them, and there was no science, no math, no data, um,

no thinking, just uh. In the case of of Star Wars, alliad Jr. Uh after um um George Lucas has been turned down by every movie studio. And after he presented his treatment and his pitch to Ellen Jr. Ellen Jr. Said, Uh, I haven't got a fucking clue what you're talking about, but you're the guy who made her made American graffiti

and that's good enough for me. And I was lucky enough to meet George Martin a number of years before he died, and I asked him about, you know, the Beatles, and I said, look, I've read every single thing you've ever written, every interview you've ever done, but I gotta know, standing in front of you, what was going on in your in your head, your heart, and your gut. And you made that decision. And he said, uh, there's three things. Three. He had three reactions. His first reaction was that he

thought they were pretty crappy band. His second reaction was there's no evidence they could write songs. But a third reaction was when they walked in the room together, they had so much overwhelming charisma that he felt like they changed the molecules in the room, right, And um, I think that's you know, that's sort of what it's about. And uh, that's a that's a fun part about what we do too is that you just never really know.

And okay, who you most proud of being a midwife to success of Um, there'd be several some forty one would be one of them. Um uh we again in my publishing. We signed them when they were still in high school and they they were brought to our attention by getting Mark, guy named Marx Costanzo, who was from a group called Len and they had a hit with

still My Sunshine Love that record. In fact, Mark would be another one because Mark was Lynn was a group that uh um, they had a um it was a brother and sister market Sharon and and and the number of other people, and they had this reputation but I didn't know they had a reputation of being impossible to deal with. And in fact, when I just when I signed them, I got calls from all the record people in Toronto who said, we heard you just signed Lynn.

And he said, yeah, why and they said I kicked that guy out of my office, you know, and uh so to deal with them and then to help nurture that through um, okay, talk him. They could never follow that up. Uh it's lightning, you know how many how hit by lightning. I mean, uh, and where are they today, the brother and sister. Um, Well, Mark still is in the business and he's it spends a lot of time in Nashville developing a creative scene around him and down there.

I'm sure he's going to break through with it very soon. Um. Still, my sunshine had half a dozen unbelievable sinks in the last couple of years. Uh, so I think he's doing pretty well off of it. Um. But some forty one was cool because so he kept saying to us, there's this group that his friend Greg Norri had befriended, and we got to hear them. When we say, okay, how do we hear them? Well, they don't play any gigs during Stone High School. Well did you have a demo? No,

and have a demo. So, after a lot of back and forth, we dectarted to go to their basement in a suburb of Rontical a Jackson and Derek Wilby's basement and uh we went down and heard them played two or three songs and we said, this is amazing, you're signed and um. And then what happened was Greg Norri, who was from a band called Trouble Chargers was the

connections between Mark and the band. Uh. Greg thought he was the manager and he came back off the road and found his band now had a publishing deal and um and uh he and Mark had a bit of an argument about it. So Mark left the scene. And then so we strategized with Greg what to do. We said, well, since they never really played any gigs, they need to play gigs in order to play gigs. Didn't meet an independent record, so let's make an independent record. So they

got some factor money, one of support systems. We put in some money, made a record and which we liked it so much we decided to change the strategy a right to the shop a record deal for them, and everybody in North America turned them down except for an independent label from Montreal called Aquarius Records. They didn't want to sign to Aquarius for the world, so they kept

that interested in the back pocket. And then we kind of just stumbled along for a long time, and we got all got really dejected, and finally the band came to us and said, we think we know what the problem is, and we said, what's the problem. They said, everybody just listens to our demo and they think we sound like Link one Nity two. They don't understand what characters we are, so we have to present that dimension. That's pretty smart. What do you want to do about that?

While we want to make an independent ePK. And they used to uh yeah, they were the kind of kids that had at those days of camcorders. They had a

camcorder welded to their forehead wherever they went. They made all this footage we would now called jackass type footage, but it didn't exist in and and these guys would have been monsters on YouTube if if it had existed them And so anyway, they took all that jackass type footage they added together in a seven minute masterpiece that was to this day probably the funniest thing I've ever seen in my entire life. So we got that to the labels and everybody changed turned around because of the

rest in the band. They now understood that their characters. Remember one time, Lee Lust and our guy from Electro came today. So he was a great guy. So he came to Toronto. He was the first day and our guy that flew to the Toronto just to meet the band. And so I told them, I said, listen, guys, where this guy's coming in. We're gonna go to dinner selfishly. It's going to be near my house. It's an Italian restaurant.

It's a little bit she she and I was just kind of beating around the bush and then they go, you mean you want us to not dress like slobs? And said, well, yeah, if you could, no problem. So the next day I picked Lee up the airport. We go to this restaurant, Italian restaurant, my neighborhood, and we're waiting and waiting, waiting and finding the band shows up. You could tell they showed up because it was a

commotion at the front door. And they had gone to the good Will store and bought these like mafia don junior suits, pinstriped suits and that trench coats. And they walk into this Italian restaurant that dressed like mafia dons with the trench coats hanging off their shoulders, and the everybody in the restaurant just stopped what they're doing to stare at them. They and there was a big commotion. Then the maitre d like took their jackets and them up and they sit down and then what do they do.

They reached into their suit jackets and they pull out toy gun and put them on the table and the waiter almost dropped entirely a tray of drinks. It was the funniest thing I've ever seen, you know. And that's the kind of guys that that was pretty satisfying to see. That happened in the lens thing. And in three days, Grace, I suppose would be another one because they learned how

to write songs in my office. Um. Gavin Brown was the writer producer that I had signed, and uh, we had a new studio that we built in the office and he said, like, found this band, there's nothing worth listening to him, I want to take them in to see what we come up with. That said okay, sure, So it took him in the studio and they had they had like a sound and a vibe, but they

didn't really have a you know, great strong songs. And so every day they would emerge from the studio that come my office, play me the songs and I said

it's okay, And they looked dejected. And they go back in the room with Gavin the next day and you can see the look in Gavin's face that he was trying to tell them they weren't ready yet either, And eventually it came in with something that was really good, and I said, wow, that chorus is amazing, and they started high fiving each other and I said it'd be good enough to be a verse and they said, well, what do you mean. I said, well, it's good enough to be a verse. Now you gotta write a great

chorus that's even better than that. And they said it has to be that good and I said yeah, and Bob, I'll never ever forget this. You could see the lightning bolts go from between person to person, and from their eyes you could just feel the energy in the room that the switch had been flipped. The next day they went in the studio with Gavin and they wrote I Hate Everything about You, which is the deal that got them the record deal song and got them the record deal,

made their career happen to this day. They just they broke last year. They broke the record of Val van Halen had I think fourteen number one rock records in America. They got sixteen now and it's all driven by the song because they got the whole songwriting thing right. Michael has has been wonderful. We got great insight into Canada your career. They more the plum, but for now we're done. Alright, well thanks, okay, until next time. This is Bob s