December 23, 2024 • 13 mins
Join host Stu Jeffries as he delves into the stories behind some of Canada's most iconic tracks. This episode kicks off with Teenage Head's punk anthem "Let's Shake," featuring insights from bass guitarist Steve Marshall. Then, get ready to be inspired as Sass Jordan shares the creation story of her powerhouse hit "Make You a Believer." Finally, Ivan Doroschuk of Men Without Hats reveals how a quirky 70s tune led to the creation of their synthpop classic "Pop Goes the World." Tune in for a blend of nostalgia and musical discovery, and let the vinyl spin.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Careful clocking. So cool to be playing on, took the
record off guitar table.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Are you ready for this?
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Welcome to Behind the Vinyl. Here's your host Stu Jeffreeks.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
And away we go.
Speaker 4 (00:16):
Thanks for spending more time with us for another episode
of Behind the Vinyl of the podcast coming up in
a few minutes. Men Without Hats lead singer Ivan Drasschak
pops by to tell us about Pop Goes the World
and how it was going to be a song without lyrics.
Speaker 5 (00:28):
I was trying to get something like popcorn or that
type of sort of like wacky instrumental, electronic instrumental song.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
Going more from Ivan in a few minutes. Let's get
it started, though, with a tune from one of Canada's
first punk rock group's Teenage Head and their hit Let's Shake.
Here's bass guitarist Steve Marshall.
Speaker 6 (00:47):
Let's see here, we're gonna play this record here, you
are all cued up perfect, there it is. That's mister
Mark Ramon playing those drums. In case you were wondering.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
The song Let's Shake one of our more popular songs that.
Speaker 6 (01:13):
We recorded and this particular version. When I hear the
start of this it takes me back to Maple Leaf
Gardens actually know the Inner Canada Center, which we were
fortunate enough to have the Leafs pick this song as
a goal song. In twenty thirteen, we went down to
a game and my wife went to see the Leafs
(01:34):
beat the La Kings five to three. And every time
the Leafs scored, they played this song through the PA
system at the ACC and man, did it ever sound great.
It sounded so great.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
I have some memories of the song being written.
Speaker 6 (01:47):
We were stuck in a little rehearsal hall somewhere getting
songs prepared for our second album, which was Frantic City.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
And like a lot of songs, they start with riffs.
Speaker 6 (01:57):
The song started with a little riff that Gordy or
guitar player was playing in practice, and he must have
just done it and air and and I think maybe
Frank looked at me or and Nick looked at somebody
might play that again, Gordy. And I say that because
a lot of times guitar players don't know when they've
got that riff.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
They don't know when they've got that little hook.
Speaker 6 (02:16):
And he was like, Okay, I'll play it again, and
I mean it turned into this song and it's just
it was just one of those things.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
It's a simple song.
Speaker 6 (02:26):
It's it's not a difficult song to play if you're
a guitar player. Originally, when we had recorded it, we
had started it with the drum intro. We had a
drum break in the middle too, so before it goes
to the bridge, it was go.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Down, out, down out.
Speaker 6 (02:47):
And then we had another drum break, which we thought
we would be cool to have Nick continue that, but
for some reason he couldn't lock in when he lost
when the band dropped out. This is what they tell
me anyways, that his meter wasn't all there, and it's like, well,
(03:08):
we kind of want that drum part in there, that
that's how we wanted it. Well, unfortunately it didn't sound
to it, and they'll never forget them. When they cut
the song in the studio, the old analog tapes were spinning,
and when it came time to the drum part, which
was now ng, they cut the tape with the razor
(03:29):
blade and Nick's drum part. The tape just fell on
the floor and they just watched this pile of tape
piling up till it came to the part where the
song came back in and they edit it back together,
and now the drum part is now not there, and
there's no version of it anywhere except for that tape.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
That sounds difficult for drummers that there was no click
tracks back then. A lot of these things are done
with the click tracks.
Speaker 6 (03:57):
The drummer has a click track in his headphones, so
it's impossible for him really to go out of sync.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
But back in nineteen eighty it was difficult.
Speaker 6 (04:06):
It was sufficult for drummers to keep the time without
that click.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
So there you go. That's a little tidbit from Let's Shake.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
Let's Shake from Teenage Head. I'm behind the vinyl of
the podcast, I'm Stu Jeffries And if you can hang
on a few more minutes, Ivan Draschack from Men Without
Hats tells us all about pop goes the world. But
before that, Sas Jordan makes you a believer with her
side of the story on how that song came to be.
Speaker 7 (04:31):
Yeah, okay, so it's classic rock time, ladies and gentlemen.
Who knew in nineteen ninety two a couple of years
later he'd be calling it classic rock? Not I said
the old laugh Anyways, So this My Loves is the
new version of an old record.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Now.
Speaker 7 (04:53):
The thing that is so cool about this new version
of this old record is that I actually he was
just telling the story of somebody a little bit earlier.
The great thing about this is that we thought, Okay,
what can we do really cool about this new version
of an old thing? What can we do to make
it interesting? And instead of doing the usual thing where
(05:17):
you take the old and you revamp at me, make
it all shiny and new and sparkly, and you do
it now, we thought, wouldn't it be cool to redo
it as if we were actually in the semis as
close as we can get to doing that, And that's
what we did. So instead of taking it from ninety
(05:37):
two to twenty seventeen, we went from ninety two to
like nineteen seventy six ish. So it's really cool in
that way. I really, I'm like, it's the most fun
I've had in a while. And there's so many people
who tell me all the time that this record means
(05:59):
so much to It's very interesting as an artist to
have people writing you and coming up to you and
telling you stuff about something, because you know, when you
make it, you're basically making it for yourself. Obviously, be
lovely people who liked it and etcetera, etcetera. But you
don't know anyone who's heard it yet because they haven't,
(06:21):
so you're making it for yourself and for your friends.
And then to have all these years later to have
people come up to you and say, you know this,
this record got me through this. It helped me with that,
and you know, it changed so much. It was like
the soundtrack of my life. Etcetera, etcetera. It's a pretty
(06:43):
wild and amazing thing. It's funny because this gal that
I know told me that she used to do this
song in church in her choir right in the South,
and she said, I wasn't even the lead singer. She
actually sings with Starshit now. Her name is Stephanie Calvert. Anyways,
(07:04):
she said, I wasn't even the lead singer.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
We had this fabulous black chorus.
Speaker 7 (07:07):
Going and everything a real awesome like church gospel singer
singing the lead. She said, I had no idea that
you wrote that song. I'm like, what you do this
song in church?
Speaker 4 (07:23):
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
It's like a song of faith?
Speaker 7 (07:26):
And then I thought, yeah, actually it kind of is
I will make you a believer, even though the words
I will make you believer in yourself right not I
will make you a believer in me, because Lord knows
I don't need you.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
To believe in me.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I need to believe in me, you know what I mean?
That kind of thing.
Speaker 7 (07:43):
So can you believe that this song is like a
song of faith in churches? That freaks me out. And
I'll tell you what, when I wrote it, I had
absolutely zero idea that that would ever be happening. Can
you imagine like it's kind of like a hymn come
on gospel?
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yeah, unbelievable.
Speaker 7 (08:02):
Anyways, I'm extremely flattered with that too. There's a lot
of flattering stuff that happens as a singer anyways. Yeah,
and this was a double platinum selling record. Not this version,
of course, but this version was Come on, people, let's
sing it out.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
Belting it out the only way SaaS Jordan can. That's
make you a believer. On behind the vinyl of the podcast,
I'm your host Stu Jeffries, Thank you so much for listening.
Men Without Hats is a Canadian new wave synthpop band
who had great success with the Safety Dance in nineteen
eighty three. It was five years later that they released
another song that saw relatively similar success in their homeland,
with the tune called Pop Goes the World. To give
(08:44):
us the background on the making of that song, lead
singer Ivan dras Check, I wrote, uh, pop.
Speaker 5 (09:03):
Goes the World originally as an instrumental I was trying
to get something like popcorn or that type of sort
of like whacky instrumental electronic instrumental song going. And I
wrote the song along with ten other ten or twelve
(09:24):
other songs, and I just tagged it on the end
of the demo as a as a little kind of
instrumental hook. Sent a demo off to Derek Schulman, who
was the A and R guy at PolyGram in New York.
Derek Shulman was also the lead singer of the prog
rock band Gentle Giant. And I sent him the demo
(09:45):
twelve songs and this little instrumental riff at the end,
and he phoned me and he said, Uh, okay, he says.
What I want you to do is I want you
to take that little instrumental song, that little two minute
riff at the end, and I want you to write
a song like that a whole song around. I want
you to put lyrics on it and and make a
real song out of it. And then I wanted to
(10:06):
take you to take those ten twelve other songs that
you wrote and throw those away, and I want you
to write ten more like that pop pos the world
song that you wrote. And I was like what, But
he was like one of my heroes, who was one
of you know, my prog rock heroes. And he had
also been in the band with his brothers. He was
(10:27):
he was the lead vocalist. I was he might know
what he's talking about. And so that's what I did.
I went back into studio and spent quite a while
building a song writing. It was actually one of the
first songs that I actually sat down and worked on
and wrote as a song and and tried to write
(10:48):
ten more like it and put the album together and
put it out and and this is what happened.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
And uh no, it was good advice. It was.
Speaker 5 (10:56):
It was great advice. And uh and yuh it s
it's it's advice that I give now that I that
I give to young musicians is sometimes you have to
put your your art in your back pocket. And uh
and listen to people.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Who who UH like like Derek, who who.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
Knew what they were talking about. And it's a sometimes
a question of pride. But in my case it turned out,
uh turned out pretty good. Turned out turned out good
for me anyway. It was good.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Whatever video was also really important.
Speaker 5 (11:33):
It was done by Tim Pope, who had also done
the safety Dance video, and UH we tried to incorporate
a lot of our Quebec roots in it with the
Bonum carme val and everything, and UH got.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
A lot of stairs walking the stairs.
Speaker 5 (11:47):
From uh border guards walking into different countries with UH
with the Bonum head under our arm. But uh, it
was all in good fun.
Speaker 7 (11:58):
Tell me.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Yeah. I introduced the song live. Also there's another thing.
Speaker 5 (12:08):
I introduced the song as the song that I wrote
the year that Rachel Ashmore, one of our keyboard players,
was born.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
So that's another fun fact.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
I can hear it now, especially after Ivan explains how
the cheesy seventies tune Popcorn inspired this song Popcorns the world. Well,
my friend, that's another edition of Behind the Vinyl of
the Podcast. I'm Stuve Jeffries with a huge thank you
for listening. We appreciate your support and are more than
happy to share these stories with you. They are just
too good to keep to ourselves. There's three other seasons
(12:40):
for you to catch up on if you're just finding
us for the first time, so feel free to do
some searching and give us a nice comment if you
feel in clve.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Thanks again, this has been Behind the Vinyl the podcast
hosted by Stuve Jeffries. Audio production courtesy of Doug Morehouse,
Derek Welsman and Troy McCallum. Thanks for listen.
Careful clocking. So cool to be playing on, took the
record off guitar table.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Are you ready for this?
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Welcome to Behind the Vinyl. Here's your host Stu Jeffreeks.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
And away we go.
Speaker 4 (00:16):
Thanks for spending more time with us for another episode
of Behind the Vinyl of the podcast coming up in
a few minutes. Men Without Hats lead singer Ivan Drasschak
pops by to tell us about Pop Goes the World
and how it was going to be a song without lyrics.
Speaker 5 (00:28):
I was trying to get something like popcorn or that
type of sort of like wacky instrumental, electronic instrumental song.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
Going more from Ivan in a few minutes. Let's get
it started, though, with a tune from one of Canada's
first punk rock group's Teenage Head and their hit Let's Shake.
Here's bass guitarist Steve Marshall.
Speaker 6 (00:47):
Let's see here, we're gonna play this record here, you
are all cued up perfect, there it is. That's mister
Mark Ramon playing those drums. In case you were wondering.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
The song Let's Shake one of our more popular songs that.
Speaker 6 (01:13):
We recorded and this particular version. When I hear the
start of this it takes me back to Maple Leaf
Gardens actually know the Inner Canada Center, which we were
fortunate enough to have the Leafs pick this song as
a goal song. In twenty thirteen, we went down to
a game and my wife went to see the Leafs
(01:34):
beat the La Kings five to three. And every time
the Leafs scored, they played this song through the PA
system at the ACC and man, did it ever sound great.
It sounded so great.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
I have some memories of the song being written.
Speaker 6 (01:47):
We were stuck in a little rehearsal hall somewhere getting
songs prepared for our second album, which was Frantic City.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
And like a lot of songs, they start with riffs.
Speaker 6 (01:57):
The song started with a little riff that Gordy or
guitar player was playing in practice, and he must have
just done it and air and and I think maybe
Frank looked at me or and Nick looked at somebody
might play that again, Gordy. And I say that because
a lot of times guitar players don't know when they've
got that riff.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
They don't know when they've got that little hook.
Speaker 6 (02:16):
And he was like, Okay, I'll play it again, and
I mean it turned into this song and it's just
it was just one of those things.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
It's a simple song.
Speaker 6 (02:26):
It's it's not a difficult song to play if you're
a guitar player. Originally, when we had recorded it, we
had started it with the drum intro. We had a
drum break in the middle too, so before it goes
to the bridge, it was go.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Down, out, down out.
Speaker 6 (02:47):
And then we had another drum break, which we thought
we would be cool to have Nick continue that, but
for some reason he couldn't lock in when he lost
when the band dropped out. This is what they tell
me anyways, that his meter wasn't all there, and it's like, well,
(03:08):
we kind of want that drum part in there, that
that's how we wanted it. Well, unfortunately it didn't sound
to it, and they'll never forget them. When they cut
the song in the studio, the old analog tapes were spinning,
and when it came time to the drum part, which
was now ng, they cut the tape with the razor
(03:29):
blade and Nick's drum part. The tape just fell on
the floor and they just watched this pile of tape
piling up till it came to the part where the
song came back in and they edit it back together,
and now the drum part is now not there, and
there's no version of it anywhere except for that tape.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
That sounds difficult for drummers that there was no click
tracks back then. A lot of these things are done
with the click tracks.
Speaker 6 (03:57):
The drummer has a click track in his headphones, so
it's impossible for him really to go out of sync.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
But back in nineteen eighty it was difficult.
Speaker 6 (04:06):
It was sufficult for drummers to keep the time without
that click.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
So there you go. That's a little tidbit from Let's Shake.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
Let's Shake from Teenage Head. I'm behind the vinyl of
the podcast, I'm Stu Jeffries And if you can hang
on a few more minutes, Ivan Draschack from Men Without
Hats tells us all about pop goes the world. But
before that, Sas Jordan makes you a believer with her
side of the story on how that song came to be.
Speaker 7 (04:31):
Yeah, okay, so it's classic rock time, ladies and gentlemen.
Who knew in nineteen ninety two a couple of years
later he'd be calling it classic rock? Not I said
the old laugh Anyways, So this My Loves is the
new version of an old record.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Now.
Speaker 7 (04:53):
The thing that is so cool about this new version
of this old record is that I actually he was
just telling the story of somebody a little bit earlier.
The great thing about this is that we thought, Okay,
what can we do really cool about this new version
of an old thing? What can we do to make
it interesting? And instead of doing the usual thing where
(05:17):
you take the old and you revamp at me, make
it all shiny and new and sparkly, and you do
it now, we thought, wouldn't it be cool to redo
it as if we were actually in the semis as
close as we can get to doing that, And that's
what we did. So instead of taking it from ninety
(05:37):
two to twenty seventeen, we went from ninety two to
like nineteen seventy six ish. So it's really cool in
that way. I really, I'm like, it's the most fun
I've had in a while. And there's so many people
who tell me all the time that this record means
(05:59):
so much to It's very interesting as an artist to
have people writing you and coming up to you and
telling you stuff about something, because you know, when you
make it, you're basically making it for yourself. Obviously, be
lovely people who liked it and etcetera, etcetera. But you
don't know anyone who's heard it yet because they haven't,
(06:21):
so you're making it for yourself and for your friends.
And then to have all these years later to have
people come up to you and say, you know this,
this record got me through this. It helped me with that,
and you know, it changed so much. It was like
the soundtrack of my life. Etcetera, etcetera. It's a pretty
(06:43):
wild and amazing thing. It's funny because this gal that
I know told me that she used to do this
song in church in her choir right in the South,
and she said, I wasn't even the lead singer. She
actually sings with Starshit now. Her name is Stephanie Calvert. Anyways,
(07:04):
she said, I wasn't even the lead singer.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
We had this fabulous black chorus.
Speaker 7 (07:07):
Going and everything a real awesome like church gospel singer
singing the lead. She said, I had no idea that
you wrote that song. I'm like, what you do this
song in church?
Speaker 4 (07:23):
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
It's like a song of faith?
Speaker 7 (07:26):
And then I thought, yeah, actually it kind of is
I will make you a believer, even though the words
I will make you believer in yourself right not I
will make you a believer in me, because Lord knows
I don't need you.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
To believe in me.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I need to believe in me, you know what I mean?
That kind of thing.
Speaker 7 (07:43):
So can you believe that this song is like a
song of faith in churches? That freaks me out. And
I'll tell you what, when I wrote it, I had
absolutely zero idea that that would ever be happening. Can
you imagine like it's kind of like a hymn come
on gospel?
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yeah, unbelievable.
Speaker 7 (08:02):
Anyways, I'm extremely flattered with that too. There's a lot
of flattering stuff that happens as a singer anyways. Yeah,
and this was a double platinum selling record. Not this version,
of course, but this version was Come on, people, let's
sing it out.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
Belting it out the only way SaaS Jordan can. That's
make you a believer. On behind the vinyl of the podcast,
I'm your host Stu Jeffries, Thank you so much for listening.
Men Without Hats is a Canadian new wave synthpop band
who had great success with the Safety Dance in nineteen
eighty three. It was five years later that they released
another song that saw relatively similar success in their homeland,
with the tune called Pop Goes the World. To give
(08:44):
us the background on the making of that song, lead
singer Ivan dras Check, I wrote, uh, pop.
Speaker 5 (09:03):
Goes the World originally as an instrumental I was trying
to get something like popcorn or that type of sort
of like whacky instrumental electronic instrumental song going. And I
wrote the song along with ten other ten or twelve
(09:24):
other songs, and I just tagged it on the end
of the demo as a as a little kind of
instrumental hook. Sent a demo off to Derek Schulman, who
was the A and R guy at PolyGram in New York.
Derek Shulman was also the lead singer of the prog
rock band Gentle Giant. And I sent him the demo
(09:45):
twelve songs and this little instrumental riff at the end,
and he phoned me and he said, Uh, okay, he says.
What I want you to do is I want you
to take that little instrumental song, that little two minute
riff at the end, and I want you to write
a song like that a whole song around. I want
you to put lyrics on it and and make a
real song out of it. And then I wanted to
(10:06):
take you to take those ten twelve other songs that
you wrote and throw those away, and I want you
to write ten more like that pop pos the world
song that you wrote. And I was like what, But
he was like one of my heroes, who was one
of you know, my prog rock heroes. And he had
also been in the band with his brothers. He was
(10:27):
he was the lead vocalist. I was he might know
what he's talking about. And so that's what I did.
I went back into studio and spent quite a while
building a song writing. It was actually one of the
first songs that I actually sat down and worked on
and wrote as a song and and tried to write
(10:48):
ten more like it and put the album together and
put it out and and this is what happened.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
And uh no, it was good advice. It was.
Speaker 5 (10:56):
It was great advice. And uh and yuh it s
it's it's advice that I give now that I that
I give to young musicians is sometimes you have to
put your your art in your back pocket. And uh
and listen to people.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Who who UH like like Derek, who who.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
Knew what they were talking about. And it's a sometimes
a question of pride. But in my case it turned out,
uh turned out pretty good. Turned out turned out good
for me anyway. It was good.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Whatever video was also really important.
Speaker 5 (11:33):
It was done by Tim Pope, who had also done
the safety Dance video, and UH we tried to incorporate
a lot of our Quebec roots in it with the
Bonum carme val and everything, and UH got.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
A lot of stairs walking the stairs.
Speaker 5 (11:47):
From uh border guards walking into different countries with UH
with the Bonum head under our arm. But uh, it
was all in good fun.
Speaker 7 (11:58):
Tell me.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Yeah. I introduced the song live. Also there's another thing.
Speaker 5 (12:08):
I introduced the song as the song that I wrote
the year that Rachel Ashmore, one of our keyboard players,
was born.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
So that's another fun fact.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
I can hear it now, especially after Ivan explains how
the cheesy seventies tune Popcorn inspired this song Popcorns the world. Well,
my friend, that's another edition of Behind the Vinyl of
the Podcast. I'm Stuve Jeffries with a huge thank you
for listening. We appreciate your support and are more than
happy to share these stories with you. They are just
too good to keep to ourselves. There's three other seasons
(12:40):
for you to catch up on if you're just finding
us for the first time, so feel free to do
some searching and give us a nice comment if you
feel in clve.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Thanks again, this has been Behind the Vinyl the podcast
hosted by Stuve Jeffries. Audio production courtesy of Doug Morehouse,
Derek Welsman and Troy McCallum. Thanks for listen.
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