November 13, 2025 • 26 mins
Last week on Encore - the CanConCore special edition - we focused on an absolutely absurd teeny-bopper anthem from the year 2000 - and a real crown jewel of obscure Canadian Pop Music - B4-4’s ‘Get Down’.
While it was a wild and wacky song (and video) in its own right - nobody would be rushing to defend it as ‘groundbreaking’ - the three super-tanned members of the group were very clearly chasing the sound of the boyband craze of the late 90s in to early 2000s that was just about to reach its peak.
This week, we’re pulling a full 180 to talk about a song that upon its release in 1997, sounded nothing like anything on the radio waves in that era of music - and quite frankly, still sounds nothing like anything but… itself.
While both super weird in hindsight - there couldn’t be anything more diametrically opposed to the sound of Get Down than this week’s hit: Bran Van 3000’s Drinking in LA.
Written by Clayton Taylor for iHeartRadio.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, my name is Stereo Mike, and this is the
story of Brand Band 3000's drinking in LA. You know
the songs, just making people feel something. It's been a
pleasure to work on this song with her, but do
you know the history? It's a struggle making any kind
of record. I don't always have the direction or concept.
This is Encore, an in-depth look at the stories behind
(00:21):
the music. Here's iHeartRadio's Ruby Carr.
Last week on Encore, the Can Concore special edition, we
focused on an absolutely absurd teenybopper anthem from the year 2000,
and a real crown jewel of obscure Canadian pop music,
B44's Get Down. Seriously, if you haven't listened to the
(00:44):
episode yet, you must. While it was a wild and
wacky song and video, in its own right, nobody would
be rushing to defend it as groundbreaking.
The three super jacked members of the group were very
clearly chasing the sound of the boy band craze of
the late 90s into early 2000s that was just about
to reach its peak. This week, we're pulling a full
(01:07):
180 to talk about a song that upon its release
in 1997 sounded nothing like anything on the radio waves
in that era of music and quite frankly still sounds
nothing like anything but itself.
While both super weird in hindsight, there couldn't be anything
more diametrically opposed to the sound of Get Down than
(01:29):
this week's hit Brand Band 3000's Drinking in LA. Seriously,
to give you a sample of what was on the
air during that period of music in which Brand Band
3000 thrived, number one singles in Canada included Mariah Carey's Honey,
Sheryl Crow's Every Day Is a Winding Road, and of course, Hansen.
Mbop a little bit psychedelic rock, a little bit hip hop,
(01:53):
a little bit neo-soul, and a little bit shoegazy electronica.
Drinking in LA was the first and by far most
successful song released by what can be best described as
a sort of an electronica collective of musicians founded by
Montrealers James DeSalvio and EP Bergen. The E in EP,
(02:14):
by the way, stands for.
Eric, but he's more commonly referred to as Electric Pierre
because of course he is. Masterminds DeSalvio and Bergen were
not strictly musicians by trade. They dabbled in writing, remixing, DJing,
and producing, with DeSalvio specifically also working as an aspiring filmmaker.
(02:34):
The two had struck gold in the music industry with
some fleeting work they'd done in the early 90s with
famed Quebec songwriter John Lelou.
The Lalot money afforded James and EP a sort of
slacker's paradise of creative freedom. They could kind of just
be the type of guys who call themselves artists, and
if you said, oh, what kind of artists, they'd just
(02:55):
be like,
Speaker 2 (02:56):
yes.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
They would attempt to explain this too much.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
What what was the conversation?
or was it like, you know, let's quit video and
let's make music? Yeah, he wanted to quit. He wanted
to go into music. Well, I didn't want to quit video.
I just didn't, I couldn't. I wanted to quit selling
people shit they don't, I wouldn't buy myself, which is
commercials or maybe songs that I don't believe in, you know.
So that's all I want to quit, but I love
the visual media still. And then probably like the funny
(03:21):
thing was you said, you said to me.
Man, yeah, I'm sick and tired of doing these videos
with these guys. I want to be a rock star,
and I was already like working on it, you know,
so it's like we got together and decided here that
I would say, yeah, let's do it, man. Let's be
rock stars. Yeah, is that stupid? Do you have a
(03:41):
background as a musician? No, DJ. So EP was was
the sort of catalyst musically for this whole thing. He helped.
I had all these, he knew that I had these
ideas and he helped with the, with what? What's so funny?
Are we disagreeing? I don't know? No, he was just
going help. No, but I mean you, you, I was,
(04:02):
I didn't say you helped. Oh man, this is funny. It's,
it's all.
Coming together now. No, I was just saying he helped
helped get a lot of those ideas out and, and, and,
and he, as I was saying before in the other interview,
he let me go with my mistakes and we've composed
a lot together too and everything. I don't know. I
don't know. You tell it then. Well, that's pretty much it.
(04:26):
showed you how it was done. He showed me how,
how it, but you also had, he had his own
music inside it like that was like embryos of melodies
with already the words and everything and a story, and
then you were teaching me stuff too. You were teaching
me how to focus and, and, you know, and then
all these different like.
(04:47):
Very touching. What? No, it's true, it's true. It was
a very I had to focus, how to manage my
time better, how to stop partying and get to work.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
And one way or another, before long, Grand Van 3000
was born.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
We knew there would be something called Brand Van. It
could have been a comic, a movie, a dirty movie.
We're actually thinking of getting into the dirty movie thing
at the time too, but like artful dirty movies. I
wanted us to believe in it. Like I knew like
I was living in Montreal and he was already down here,
so he was already exposed to like big time.
You know, like mentality or whatever, and I was in
Montreal where everybody thinks, oh, you can never get out
(05:23):
of Montreal, and I'm stuck there and, and the guy says, Man,
come down, man. You're wasting your time. You gotta check
this out. And I'm like, ah, OK, well, I don't
have any money. How about I sell you my keyboard?
Oh yeah, sure.
Bang bang, and we're down there and seeing it through
pen 1 year, 2 years, 1 year. I've only lived
(05:45):
here 1 year. There's something about the city that just
kind of was a catalyst to just explore all your
basic dreams, you know, and
I called a friend and I, you know, used him
and we used each other to have fun, you know,
he taught me how to use this electronic equipment and. Oh,
Speaker 1 (06:02):
and what does the band name mean, you ask? Well,
nothing really.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
I don't know. What do you think? I mean, I
don't know, it's just weird like, I mean, because you
and Mike, stereo Mike is his friend who lives in LA.
He's doing he's studying at UCLA and do it.
Movies and you guys were just saying stupid stuff one night, right?
And then and you were retaining rat rat cracker rat
(06:28):
rat and stuff like that. That was like the the bit,
the sound bit, and then we're like then trying to
find other names and saying other stupid names like Michael
Jackson's marketing department or the new Beatles or I don't
know like like just names, you know, like.
And then then Brandan would come, say it again and
(06:48):
then then I was thinking about like DVA or BV3
or whatever and and thinking about Whisper 2000 and then 3000,
you know, and then Brand Van 3000, yeah, BV 3, yeah,
I like the ring of that and then just before
like about a week before the record came out, we
wanted to change it to King Can 3000 but we didn't.
(07:09):
Because the art work had already been done but we didn't, yeah, actually, yeah,
but somebody was actually thinking, yeah, maybe you should change
it for King Cany 1000. I was like.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
I mean, let's face it though, the new Beatles would
have been quite the flex. Anyway, as the members would explain,
Brand Band 3000 was not so much a band as
it was this kind of open door art project for
like-minded friends and creatives.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Actually didn't start, started, um, started with one person, yeah,
and I thought I'd be doing because of the film stuff,
this like DJ Spooky type stuff and DJ Shadow and,
you know, Barry Adamson stuff, make the soundtracks to the
film I haven't film that I haven't shot yet.
And uh it just kind of morphed and it kind
of grew and working with uh you know, EP and
uh Jean Lelou and stuff like that, they said, oh,
(07:56):
grab the mic, tell your stories, this that, and then
the summer hit and there's this open door policy where
everybody just kind of came by and in that sense
it was a real like collective or a commune in
a lot of ways, it's like minimal gear, a classic,
and a that and some turntables and.
Cubase and you know, like I was saying, like whatever,
whoever came by, we'd make sure we'd find the contrasting.
(08:17):
And it really was that, like I remember walking in
one day randomly while they were recording one song and
I wasn't involved and then I walked through the room
and I was like, yeah, it would be good if,
you know, hm I was humming something, that's a great idea,
sit down, you know, and then boom, that went on
the track. I mean it was really, you know, 20
people in the room or something, it was really. And
you can hear like food cooking in. I mean you,
you present it as a cast of, of thousands.
(08:41):
In the liner notes, like you call yourself a collective
and uh
There's no real indication apart from the fact that your
name comes first, that there's anyone actually driving the thing.
Well, there is, there is, yeah. I don't know I
think there is, I think there definitely is, but it's,
(09:03):
it's just changing with time. When this happened, I probably
didn't meet three quarters of those people, you know, and
that's what's really interesting about it because now I get
to meet them after and then we get to make
this band and it's all changing, but there's still definitely,
you know, there's a core, there's a core and there's,
I mean,
You know, he's still saying, OK, this is a good idea,
you know, and then how about this and how there's
a lot of that stuff going on, which is good
(09:24):
because I think it's just a question of developing trust,
you know, of between all of us to get it
to be like really solid. And in a lot of
ways like I never planned to make an album. I
mean the core, I mean besides myself at the album
base there's an EP there, Electronic Pierre, who worked a
lot and who taught me how to use this MIDI
equipment cos I can't deal with manuals actually, I'm not
very tech technologically inclined. There was someone off to the
(09:46):
side in the video.
Insulting the manuals, yeah, yeah, that, that's EP, that's the, yeah,
EP
is, uh,
Speaker 1 (09:53):
all in all, on their eventual debut album Glee, Brand
Band 3000 featured no less than 30 musicians, including a
street performer James and EP ran into one day who
could play a mean clarinet. In fact, beyond James and
Electric Pierre, there aren't really any actual members of Brand
Band 3000, giving each and every song its own unique
(10:14):
feel and scattergun sound, which.
Based solely on the sounds of drinking in LA is
why you may have thought that Brand Band 3000 was
a female artist, but at the same time, if you
did think that, you might have trouble placing what that
artist looks like, and oh boy, we're going to get
into that. After blowing a considerable amount of the Jalulu
(10:35):
money and rather wisely investing in some proper recording equipment,
Drinking in LA was the last song created for the
aforementioned album Glee.
Recorded and produced in Montreal's Myland neighborhood after stints in
Los Angeles and New York City, the track really tells
the story of James and EP's creative existence of the
(10:55):
not so distant past, chasing a dream in Los Angeles,
being committed to the concept of becoming an artist, but
getting swept up in the more ethereal aspects of the
artist's lifestyle without having much definitive success to show from it.
The guys would tell much. What's
Speaker 2 (11:11):
the story behind that
particular song is it.
Is it based on the fact you were in LA
downtown pretty much it's loosely based on fact. It's a
celebration of, or it's just looking back at the moment
of writer's block, you know, like there's a lot of
people making in LA and there's a lot of people,
I'm not saying not making it, but struggling. There's something
(11:32):
big in writing a film and that is just looking
back at all those friends of mine, those kind of
the Bukowski children, you know, you know, because they're not
they haven't been around for.
50 years, but there's something about you take on that
form in LA and you're at the papaya bars in
the mid-afternoon hot sun when you get out and you're
like talking about your plot point in act two, and
(11:53):
eventually you take a step back and go this is
way more interesting than these people's scripts. The people are,
the situation is more absurd, you know, a bit of
an altman take, you know, like the player and it
was also in conjunction with a guy myself who just
kept on clubbing, DJing, spinning, and jamming with his friends.
And just saying screw it, I've outgrown the script that
(12:16):
was me and there's something about the immediacy of film
of music that I enjoyed more than the kind of
long development of and there's also something an easier way
to get pretentious about film, you know, that's just more acceptable,
whereas in music if you're not really being yourself.
At every moment it's not real music and there's a
there's a quagmire that you can get lost in the
(12:36):
scriptwriting process where the cerebral starts taking over the heart
a bit, so I just nipped it in the bud
and did something
Speaker 1 (12:43):
with music recorded and a potential sleeper hit in their arsenal.
DeSalvio and Bergen found themselves hustling the Brand band 3000
project to festivals and creative summits like Canadian Music Week
in Toronto and South by Southwest in Texas.
It was at Southby that James managed to pawn off
one of his demo tapes to Moby, who was on
(13:04):
an industry panel discussing the burgeoning electronic music boom of
the late 1990s, a match made in heaven for the
electronic leaning brand van.
Within weeks, major label Geffen Records got in touch with
James and EP. They liked what they heard, especially drinking
in LA. So of course, their next reasonable question was, hey,
(13:25):
when can we see your quirky little group play your
stuff live? For many bands, that question would invoke some
anxiety for sure, but would ultimately be a godsend, like, oh,
when can you see us play live? As soon as possible.
But as DeSalvio told the Toronto Star, it wasn't that
simple for Brand Band. He would say, I said 6 weeks.
(13:46):
We didn't have a band. The idea of a band
did not exist. Yeah, so as it turns out, and
this isn't a diss, by the way, when you kind
of just invite all the artistic-minded people, you know, to
come and record some loosely connected songs with you with
no real plan to perform them and no great distribution
platform to release them, you actually don't have a band.
(14:07):
Ultimately, James and EP would put together a core group
of about 9 performers who could be considered the members
of Brand Band 3000, including themselves, naturally, Sarah Johnston and
Jane Hill, the cooing angelic who are you verse harmony singers,
Steve Liquid Hawley, and of course the star of Drinking
(14:28):
in LA, singer Stefan Morai.
And yes, if you're counting, I know I didn't list
all 9 there. That's quite simply because it's unclear in
all my research, including in their own liner notes, who
else is considered a core member and who isn't. I'm
just gonna start telling people that I was a core
member of Brand Band 3000. They won't be able to
(14:49):
confirm if I'm lying, although I was 9 years old,
so that might give it away.
Brand Van would eventually settle on signing with major American
label Capitol Records. The domestic label Audiogram would release Glee
in April of 1997, while Capitol would beef up an
international release one year later. Now generally at this point
(15:09):
in the episode, we'd move on to talking about.
The music video and oh boy, is this one a
doozy and the kind of success and accolades that the
song received upon release, and we still will, but there's
an even deeper untold story behind the song that only
came to the surface about 3 years ago, if you
can believe it, that I think is super important to recognize.
(15:30):
OK, so like I've been hitting you over the head
with all episode, Brand Band 3000 was sort of this
wildly chaotic collective of musicians and artists, unlike anything we've
profiled on Encore before, and in a lot of ways,
unlike anything the music industry we're used to, period.
What was incredibly clear upon Drinking in LA's release was
(15:51):
that the song was a hit, and it was just
so unique, so weird, futuristic, and nostalgic all at once.
The lead vocals, a soulful narration of slacker meets dreamer confusion,
sung by the incredible Stefan Morai, were very much at
the forefront of the brilliance of the track.
Or to put it bluntly and obviously, it wasn't James
(16:13):
or Electric Pierre singing What the hell am I doing
Drinking in LA at 26, was it, uh, even if
it was technically their story. Stefan Morai at the time
of recording the song was a part-time singer and aerobics
instructor who was also attending law school. An acquaintance of DeSalvio,
much like.
All of the other musicians on Glee, Stefan told the
(16:35):
CBC that she was invited to jam with Brand Van
and specifically record vocals for drinking one freezing Montreal winter day.
She said it was the dead of winter, -40 degrees. Oh,
I've been to Montreal on those days, and it truly
is a different type of cold. Um, she said, if
I had a cell phone back then, I.
Would have canceled, but in the 90s, if you said
(16:57):
you were going to be at a place at a
certain time, you had to show up because there was
no other way to contact anyone. I show up at
the studio, James shows me like chicken scratch lyrics, and
then I hear the guitar riff. I'm like, wow, this
is going to work. I down a beer and then
I sing the chorus. Coincidentally, that's also my process for
recording an episode of Encore each week.
(17:18):
I'm just kidding, you can tell by my delivery, it's
actually 6 cups of coffee. As we mentioned, it was
drinking in LA that got Brand Van the industry attention
that they were looking for, and before long they were
signed to Capitol Records and being repped by management, who
had literally helped break Nirvana in America. Soon thereafter, one
of the first radio stations to play drinking in LA,
(17:38):
perhaps unsurprisingly, was legendary LA rock station K-Rock.
K-Rock was very much an alternative tastemaker back in the day.
And so if K-Rock played your song, chances are everyone
else would too. But according to Morai, it wasn't quite
that simple for this particular hit song. As sort of
a nameless, faceless collective, people were curious about who exactly
(18:02):
was singing this song, which is where I'm sad to
report racism, both the systemic and blatant kind, reared.
It's ugly head. In 2022, Morai would tell CBC a
lot of people like the song, but a couple of
people called to say the singer sounds a little urban.
The singer sounds a little urban. I'm like, Well, what
(18:22):
does urban mean? I live in Boucherville. It takes me
45 minutes to ride the bus downtown to Montreal. And
then when I finally asked enough, the answer was it's black.
It means black.
Despite the band being an organic celebration of the diverse
type of music you get when you have an open
door policy in your artistic vision, the easily scared and
(18:44):
often spineless record industry, quite frankly wanted the music of
Brand Van, but if it meant receiving incredibly bad faith
and racist criticism around their singer, they didn't necessarily want
the look.
According to Stefan, she was quickly pushed out of any
and all promotion of the song, including official album art
or promotional photos, and had heard that the label was
(19:07):
actually trying to convince James DeSalvio to re-record the hit
for the international release with a singer that sounded more white.
DeSalvio didn't do that, obviously, and Stefan Morai is in
the iconic music video, but the genie was certainly out
of the bottle on this one.
Morai was eventually told that her sidelining was simply a
(19:28):
business decision, one she says cut like a knife. She
would explain, Here you are doing everything right, and you
have the song and you have the voice. You're singing
every show perfectly, as perfectly as you can, and the
door still isn't open. With what the United States of
America was at the time and still is, and even
more so now, it made more sense for a businessman
(19:49):
to bet on white.
It may come as no surprise then that drinking in
LA was more of a cult favorite in North America,
while becoming a bona fide hit in Europe, hitting 2
in the Netherlands and Scotland, #3 in Iceland, Italy, and
the UK, and reaching the top 10 in Norway and Sweden.
It didn't chart in the US and surprisingly only went
to number 35 here in Canada, despite being acclaimed by
(20:11):
critics as a legitimate song of the summer contender and
scoring a Juno Award as part of Glee for Alternative
Album of the Year. Morai would work with Brand Van in.
Fits and starts over the years, as would many members.
The collective mindset endured throughout all of their albums, but
relations were fraught. DeSalvio and Mariai would clear the air
in 2022, with Stefan noting that the Brand V 3000
(20:35):
founder would tell her, I'm sorry for whatever happened. I'm
here for you for the healing, and I'm going to
be an ally.
Naturally, a song this far out needed a corresponding music
video that captured the weird and wonderful oral experience perfectly,
and oh boy, did Brand Van 3000 understand the assignment.
(20:55):
The DeSalvio directed uber psychedelic video is a little bit
creepy on first watch as we see an oversaturated and
warped video of the Brandan gang moving some recording equipment
into a studio apartment. The expressionless faces of Sarah Johnston
and Jane Hill greet us before James DeSalvio appears groggily
(21:15):
from a bed with all of his bandmates annoyed around him.
The group are all kind of dressed up as astronauts
or maybe.
Prisoners, I'm not sure, um, there's sparse, goofy choreography before
Mariah hits us with the iconic chorus for the first time.
I should note though, especially given the context we've just
explored now, the cast is almost entirely shone under blue
(21:38):
light for the duration of the music video, creating this
kind of alien bright skin tone to all of the
members and learning that story now, it kind of brings
a different meaning to that.
Brand Van continues to kind of lazily and quirkily drink
and dance with the best slash worst late 90s CGI
on display, obviously, as they sing about drinking in LA,
(22:02):
ostensibly playing their instruments, but they're kind of just touching
them and banging them around with soulless blank expressions. Eventually,
they completely trash the apartment and then just kind of leave.
OK, so honestly, my recap of the video, it doesn't
do it justice. The piece is altogether nothing and something
at the same time. Like it is really quite cool
(22:24):
because it's so weird, but it also definitely dines out
on the fact that because it's so weird, it can
kind of get away with being a little bit lazy,
all in the name of iron.
I don't know. Give the video a watch. Speaking of irony,
one last thing I want to touch on with this
song is the radio intro we're greeted with at the
very beginning of Drinking in LA. If you know the song,
(22:45):
you know it well, but since I am a radio professional,
I thought I'd reenact it for you.
Yeah, we got 3 tickets to the Brand Van concert
happening this Monday night at the Pacific Palisades. Now you
can call in if you, uh, want to answer a
couple of questions, uh, mainly what is Todd's favorite cheese? Uh,
Jackie called in and said it was a form of Rockfort.
(23:07):
Let's see about that. Give us a ring, ding ding.
It's a beautiful day and scene.
So hilariously, this little preamble at the beginning of the
track almost didn't make the cut for the final track,
as the guys explained too much, they felt so removed
from the potential of ever getting on radio with the
style of music that they were making. They kind of
just felt like poking fun at the whole concept of it. Like,
(23:30):
could you imagine if this song got on the air,
what would that?
Sound like.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Did you really want to also make some kind of
commentary on what LA is all about, car radio culture almost?
This is it's kind of cool and I mean it
was you wanted to cut it out and I told
you to keep it because I thought it was nice.
I like, I don't know why, but little things like that,
they hook my ear, so like the editing, you know, argue.
(23:56):
About it in the end, I'm glad you kept it.
We went to San Diego and did a radio interview
and the guy's name was Todd and he was giving
away tickets. This is, I think, and he's right because
I think there was something about it like it was
one of the last songs and, and I think a
hook is a hook, right, so you know it and
(24:17):
you're saying.
You know what, this is starting to smell like a hook,
and I think there was something about being shy about
making music still up to that point and being kind of,
you know, singing, my God, there might be a record
here that you come almost sabotaging going like this is
like a mockery of what a radio song hit is,
and it's really surprising to me that it actually became
(24:38):
a radio hit.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Well boys, it turns out it did get on the
radio quite a bit actually. Brand V 3000 in its
various shapes and sizes would release four more proper albums,
most notably 2001's Discosis, which featured the last formal recording
from the legendary Curtis Mayfield some two years after his
death on lead single Astounded.
(25:02):
A DeSalvio produced Brand band 3000 single called Kings of
Las Vegas dropped earlier this year, of course, with an
ever rotating cast of featured artists, while Stefanne Morai has
had quite the eclectic career. She passed the bar and
specialized as a media lawyer, released some solo music in
the late 2010s, and even ran a.
(25:22):
A federal candidate for the NDP in 2013, she is
just fascinating. Even more impressively, she currently sits as an
alternate member for the Canadian arm of the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization representing the Canadian Council for the Arts,
which I can't even say, and she currently does.
(25:42):
A long way from drinking in LA I'd say. I'm
Ruby Carr. Thank you so much for listening to Encore.
Make sure you subscribe so that you never miss an episode.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Encore is an iHeartRadio Canada podcast.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Download the free iHeartRadio app
Speaker 2 (25:57):
and subscribe. Thank you.
Thank you so much for coming.
Hi, my name is Stereo Mike, and this is the
story of Brand Band 3000's drinking in LA. You know
the songs, just making people feel something. It's been a
pleasure to work on this song with her, but do
you know the history? It's a struggle making any kind
of record. I don't always have the direction or concept.
This is Encore, an in-depth look at the stories behind
(00:21):
the music. Here's iHeartRadio's Ruby Carr.
Last week on Encore, the Can Concore special edition, we
focused on an absolutely absurd teenybopper anthem from the year 2000,
and a real crown jewel of obscure Canadian pop music,
B44's Get Down. Seriously, if you haven't listened to the
(00:44):
episode yet, you must. While it was a wild and
wacky song and video, in its own right, nobody would
be rushing to defend it as groundbreaking.
The three super jacked members of the group were very
clearly chasing the sound of the boy band craze of
the late 90s into early 2000s that was just about
to reach its peak. This week, we're pulling a full
(01:07):
180 to talk about a song that upon its release
in 1997 sounded nothing like anything on the radio waves
in that era of music and quite frankly still sounds
nothing like anything but itself.
While both super weird in hindsight, there couldn't be anything
more diametrically opposed to the sound of Get Down than
(01:29):
this week's hit Brand Band 3000's Drinking in LA. Seriously,
to give you a sample of what was on the
air during that period of music in which Brand Band
3000 thrived, number one singles in Canada included Mariah Carey's Honey,
Sheryl Crow's Every Day Is a Winding Road, and of course, Hansen.
Mbop a little bit psychedelic rock, a little bit hip hop,
(01:53):
a little bit neo-soul, and a little bit shoegazy electronica.
Drinking in LA was the first and by far most
successful song released by what can be best described as
a sort of an electronica collective of musicians founded by
Montrealers James DeSalvio and EP Bergen. The E in EP,
(02:14):
by the way, stands for.
Eric, but he's more commonly referred to as Electric Pierre
because of course he is. Masterminds DeSalvio and Bergen were
not strictly musicians by trade. They dabbled in writing, remixing, DJing,
and producing, with DeSalvio specifically also working as an aspiring filmmaker.
(02:34):
The two had struck gold in the music industry with
some fleeting work they'd done in the early 90s with
famed Quebec songwriter John Lelou.
The Lalot money afforded James and EP a sort of
slacker's paradise of creative freedom. They could kind of just
be the type of guys who call themselves artists, and
if you said, oh, what kind of artists, they'd just
(02:55):
be like,
Speaker 2 (02:56):
yes.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
They would attempt to explain this too much.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
What what was the conversation?
or was it like, you know, let's quit video and
let's make music? Yeah, he wanted to quit. He wanted
to go into music. Well, I didn't want to quit video.
I just didn't, I couldn't. I wanted to quit selling
people shit they don't, I wouldn't buy myself, which is
commercials or maybe songs that I don't believe in, you know.
So that's all I want to quit, but I love
the visual media still. And then probably like the funny
(03:21):
thing was you said, you said to me.
Man, yeah, I'm sick and tired of doing these videos
with these guys. I want to be a rock star,
and I was already like working on it, you know,
so it's like we got together and decided here that
I would say, yeah, let's do it, man. Let's be
rock stars. Yeah, is that stupid? Do you have a
(03:41):
background as a musician? No, DJ. So EP was was
the sort of catalyst musically for this whole thing. He helped.
I had all these, he knew that I had these
ideas and he helped with the, with what? What's so funny?
Are we disagreeing? I don't know? No, he was just
going help. No, but I mean you, you, I was,
(04:02):
I didn't say you helped. Oh man, this is funny. It's,
it's all.
Coming together now. No, I was just saying he helped
helped get a lot of those ideas out and, and, and,
and he, as I was saying before in the other interview,
he let me go with my mistakes and we've composed
a lot together too and everything. I don't know. I
don't know. You tell it then. Well, that's pretty much it.
(04:26):
showed you how it was done. He showed me how,
how it, but you also had, he had his own
music inside it like that was like embryos of melodies
with already the words and everything and a story, and
then you were teaching me stuff too. You were teaching
me how to focus and, and, you know, and then
all these different like.
(04:47):
Very touching. What? No, it's true, it's true. It was
a very I had to focus, how to manage my
time better, how to stop partying and get to work.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
And one way or another, before long, Grand Van 3000
was born.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
We knew there would be something called Brand Van. It
could have been a comic, a movie, a dirty movie.
We're actually thinking of getting into the dirty movie thing
at the time too, but like artful dirty movies. I
wanted us to believe in it. Like I knew like
I was living in Montreal and he was already down here,
so he was already exposed to like big time.
You know, like mentality or whatever, and I was in
Montreal where everybody thinks, oh, you can never get out
(05:23):
of Montreal, and I'm stuck there and, and the guy says, Man,
come down, man. You're wasting your time. You gotta check
this out. And I'm like, ah, OK, well, I don't
have any money. How about I sell you my keyboard?
Oh yeah, sure.
Bang bang, and we're down there and seeing it through
pen 1 year, 2 years, 1 year. I've only lived
(05:45):
here 1 year. There's something about the city that just
kind of was a catalyst to just explore all your
basic dreams, you know, and
I called a friend and I, you know, used him
and we used each other to have fun, you know,
he taught me how to use this electronic equipment and. Oh,
Speaker 1 (06:02):
and what does the band name mean, you ask? Well,
nothing really.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
I don't know. What do you think? I mean, I
don't know, it's just weird like, I mean, because you
and Mike, stereo Mike is his friend who lives in LA.
He's doing he's studying at UCLA and do it.
Movies and you guys were just saying stupid stuff one night, right?
And then and you were retaining rat rat cracker rat
(06:28):
rat and stuff like that. That was like the the bit,
the sound bit, and then we're like then trying to
find other names and saying other stupid names like Michael
Jackson's marketing department or the new Beatles or I don't
know like like just names, you know, like.
And then then Brandan would come, say it again and
(06:48):
then then I was thinking about like DVA or BV3
or whatever and and thinking about Whisper 2000 and then 3000,
you know, and then Brand Van 3000, yeah, BV 3, yeah,
I like the ring of that and then just before
like about a week before the record came out, we
wanted to change it to King Can 3000 but we didn't.
(07:09):
Because the art work had already been done but we didn't, yeah, actually, yeah,
but somebody was actually thinking, yeah, maybe you should change
it for King Cany 1000. I was like.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
I mean, let's face it though, the new Beatles would
have been quite the flex. Anyway, as the members would explain,
Brand Band 3000 was not so much a band as
it was this kind of open door art project for
like-minded friends and creatives.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Actually didn't start, started, um, started with one person, yeah,
and I thought I'd be doing because of the film stuff,
this like DJ Spooky type stuff and DJ Shadow and,
you know, Barry Adamson stuff, make the soundtracks to the
film I haven't film that I haven't shot yet.
And uh it just kind of morphed and it kind
of grew and working with uh you know, EP and
uh Jean Lelou and stuff like that, they said, oh,
(07:56):
grab the mic, tell your stories, this that, and then
the summer hit and there's this open door policy where
everybody just kind of came by and in that sense
it was a real like collective or a commune in
a lot of ways, it's like minimal gear, a classic,
and a that and some turntables and.
Cubase and you know, like I was saying, like whatever,
whoever came by, we'd make sure we'd find the contrasting.
(08:17):
And it really was that, like I remember walking in
one day randomly while they were recording one song and
I wasn't involved and then I walked through the room
and I was like, yeah, it would be good if,
you know, hm I was humming something, that's a great idea,
sit down, you know, and then boom, that went on
the track. I mean it was really, you know, 20
people in the room or something, it was really. And
you can hear like food cooking in. I mean you,
you present it as a cast of, of thousands.
(08:41):
In the liner notes, like you call yourself a collective
and uh
There's no real indication apart from the fact that your
name comes first, that there's anyone actually driving the thing.
Well, there is, there is, yeah. I don't know I
think there is, I think there definitely is, but it's,
(09:03):
it's just changing with time. When this happened, I probably
didn't meet three quarters of those people, you know, and
that's what's really interesting about it because now I get
to meet them after and then we get to make
this band and it's all changing, but there's still definitely,
you know, there's a core, there's a core and there's,
I mean,
You know, he's still saying, OK, this is a good idea,
you know, and then how about this and how there's
a lot of that stuff going on, which is good
(09:24):
because I think it's just a question of developing trust,
you know, of between all of us to get it
to be like really solid. And in a lot of
ways like I never planned to make an album. I
mean the core, I mean besides myself at the album
base there's an EP there, Electronic Pierre, who worked a
lot and who taught me how to use this MIDI
equipment cos I can't deal with manuals actually, I'm not
very tech technologically inclined. There was someone off to the
(09:46):
side in the video.
Insulting the manuals, yeah, yeah, that, that's EP, that's the, yeah,
EP
is, uh,
Speaker 1 (09:53):
all in all, on their eventual debut album Glee, Brand
Band 3000 featured no less than 30 musicians, including a
street performer James and EP ran into one day who
could play a mean clarinet. In fact, beyond James and
Electric Pierre, there aren't really any actual members of Brand
Band 3000, giving each and every song its own unique
(10:14):
feel and scattergun sound, which.
Based solely on the sounds of drinking in LA is
why you may have thought that Brand Band 3000 was
a female artist, but at the same time, if you
did think that, you might have trouble placing what that
artist looks like, and oh boy, we're going to get
into that. After blowing a considerable amount of the Jalulu
(10:35):
money and rather wisely investing in some proper recording equipment,
Drinking in LA was the last song created for the
aforementioned album Glee.
Recorded and produced in Montreal's Myland neighborhood after stints in
Los Angeles and New York City, the track really tells
the story of James and EP's creative existence of the
(10:55):
not so distant past, chasing a dream in Los Angeles,
being committed to the concept of becoming an artist, but
getting swept up in the more ethereal aspects of the
artist's lifestyle without having much definitive success to show from it.
The guys would tell much. What's
Speaker 2 (11:11):
the story behind that
particular song is it.
Is it based on the fact you were in LA
downtown pretty much it's loosely based on fact. It's a
celebration of, or it's just looking back at the moment
of writer's block, you know, like there's a lot of
people making in LA and there's a lot of people,
I'm not saying not making it, but struggling. There's something
(11:32):
big in writing a film and that is just looking
back at all those friends of mine, those kind of
the Bukowski children, you know, you know, because they're not
they haven't been around for.
50 years, but there's something about you take on that
form in LA and you're at the papaya bars in
the mid-afternoon hot sun when you get out and you're
like talking about your plot point in act two, and
(11:53):
eventually you take a step back and go this is
way more interesting than these people's scripts. The people are,
the situation is more absurd, you know, a bit of
an altman take, you know, like the player and it
was also in conjunction with a guy myself who just
kept on clubbing, DJing, spinning, and jamming with his friends.
And just saying screw it, I've outgrown the script that
(12:16):
was me and there's something about the immediacy of film
of music that I enjoyed more than the kind of
long development of and there's also something an easier way
to get pretentious about film, you know, that's just more acceptable,
whereas in music if you're not really being yourself.
At every moment it's not real music and there's a
there's a quagmire that you can get lost in the
(12:36):
scriptwriting process where the cerebral starts taking over the heart
a bit, so I just nipped it in the bud
and did something
Speaker 1 (12:43):
with music recorded and a potential sleeper hit in their arsenal.
DeSalvio and Bergen found themselves hustling the Brand band 3000
project to festivals and creative summits like Canadian Music Week
in Toronto and South by Southwest in Texas.
It was at Southby that James managed to pawn off
one of his demo tapes to Moby, who was on
(13:04):
an industry panel discussing the burgeoning electronic music boom of
the late 1990s, a match made in heaven for the
electronic leaning brand van.
Within weeks, major label Geffen Records got in touch with
James and EP. They liked what they heard, especially drinking
in LA. So of course, their next reasonable question was, hey,
(13:25):
when can we see your quirky little group play your
stuff live? For many bands, that question would invoke some
anxiety for sure, but would ultimately be a godsend, like, oh,
when can you see us play live? As soon as possible.
But as DeSalvio told the Toronto Star, it wasn't that
simple for Brand Band. He would say, I said 6 weeks.
(13:46):
We didn't have a band. The idea of a band
did not exist. Yeah, so as it turns out, and
this isn't a diss, by the way, when you kind
of just invite all the artistic-minded people, you know, to
come and record some loosely connected songs with you with
no real plan to perform them and no great distribution
platform to release them, you actually don't have a band.
(14:07):
Ultimately, James and EP would put together a core group
of about 9 performers who could be considered the members
of Brand Band 3000, including themselves, naturally, Sarah Johnston and
Jane Hill, the cooing angelic who are you verse harmony singers,
Steve Liquid Hawley, and of course the star of Drinking
(14:28):
in LA, singer Stefan Morai.
And yes, if you're counting, I know I didn't list
all 9 there. That's quite simply because it's unclear in
all my research, including in their own liner notes, who
else is considered a core member and who isn't. I'm
just gonna start telling people that I was a core
member of Brand Band 3000. They won't be able to
(14:49):
confirm if I'm lying, although I was 9 years old,
so that might give it away.
Brand Van would eventually settle on signing with major American
label Capitol Records. The domestic label Audiogram would release Glee
in April of 1997, while Capitol would beef up an
international release one year later. Now generally at this point
(15:09):
in the episode, we'd move on to talking about.
The music video and oh boy, is this one a
doozy and the kind of success and accolades that the
song received upon release, and we still will, but there's
an even deeper untold story behind the song that only
came to the surface about 3 years ago, if you
can believe it, that I think is super important to recognize.
(15:30):
OK, so like I've been hitting you over the head
with all episode, Brand Band 3000 was sort of this
wildly chaotic collective of musicians and artists, unlike anything we've
profiled on Encore before, and in a lot of ways,
unlike anything the music industry we're used to, period.
What was incredibly clear upon Drinking in LA's release was
(15:51):
that the song was a hit, and it was just
so unique, so weird, futuristic, and nostalgic all at once.
The lead vocals, a soulful narration of slacker meets dreamer confusion,
sung by the incredible Stefan Morai, were very much at
the forefront of the brilliance of the track.
Or to put it bluntly and obviously, it wasn't James
(16:13):
or Electric Pierre singing What the hell am I doing
Drinking in LA at 26, was it, uh, even if
it was technically their story. Stefan Morai at the time
of recording the song was a part-time singer and aerobics
instructor who was also attending law school. An acquaintance of DeSalvio,
much like.
All of the other musicians on Glee, Stefan told the
(16:35):
CBC that she was invited to jam with Brand Van
and specifically record vocals for drinking one freezing Montreal winter day.
She said it was the dead of winter, -40 degrees. Oh,
I've been to Montreal on those days, and it truly
is a different type of cold. Um, she said, if
I had a cell phone back then, I.
Would have canceled, but in the 90s, if you said
(16:57):
you were going to be at a place at a
certain time, you had to show up because there was
no other way to contact anyone. I show up at
the studio, James shows me like chicken scratch lyrics, and
then I hear the guitar riff. I'm like, wow, this
is going to work. I down a beer and then
I sing the chorus. Coincidentally, that's also my process for
recording an episode of Encore each week.
(17:18):
I'm just kidding, you can tell by my delivery, it's
actually 6 cups of coffee. As we mentioned, it was
drinking in LA that got Brand Van the industry attention
that they were looking for, and before long they were
signed to Capitol Records and being repped by management, who
had literally helped break Nirvana in America. Soon thereafter, one
of the first radio stations to play drinking in LA,
(17:38):
perhaps unsurprisingly, was legendary LA rock station K-Rock.
K-Rock was very much an alternative tastemaker back in the day.
And so if K-Rock played your song, chances are everyone
else would too. But according to Morai, it wasn't quite
that simple for this particular hit song. As sort of
a nameless, faceless collective, people were curious about who exactly
(18:02):
was singing this song, which is where I'm sad to
report racism, both the systemic and blatant kind, reared.
It's ugly head. In 2022, Morai would tell CBC a
lot of people like the song, but a couple of
people called to say the singer sounds a little urban.
The singer sounds a little urban. I'm like, Well, what
(18:22):
does urban mean? I live in Boucherville. It takes me
45 minutes to ride the bus downtown to Montreal. And
then when I finally asked enough, the answer was it's black.
It means black.
Despite the band being an organic celebration of the diverse
type of music you get when you have an open
door policy in your artistic vision, the easily scared and
(18:44):
often spineless record industry, quite frankly wanted the music of
Brand Van, but if it meant receiving incredibly bad faith
and racist criticism around their singer, they didn't necessarily want
the look.
According to Stefan, she was quickly pushed out of any
and all promotion of the song, including official album art
or promotional photos, and had heard that the label was
(19:07):
actually trying to convince James DeSalvio to re-record the hit
for the international release with a singer that sounded more white.
DeSalvio didn't do that, obviously, and Stefan Morai is in
the iconic music video, but the genie was certainly out
of the bottle on this one.
Morai was eventually told that her sidelining was simply a
(19:28):
business decision, one she says cut like a knife. She
would explain, Here you are doing everything right, and you
have the song and you have the voice. You're singing
every show perfectly, as perfectly as you can, and the
door still isn't open. With what the United States of
America was at the time and still is, and even
more so now, it made more sense for a businessman
(19:49):
to bet on white.
It may come as no surprise then that drinking in
LA was more of a cult favorite in North America,
while becoming a bona fide hit in Europe, hitting 2
in the Netherlands and Scotland, #3 in Iceland, Italy, and
the UK, and reaching the top 10 in Norway and Sweden.
It didn't chart in the US and surprisingly only went
to number 35 here in Canada, despite being acclaimed by
(20:11):
critics as a legitimate song of the summer contender and
scoring a Juno Award as part of Glee for Alternative
Album of the Year. Morai would work with Brand Van in.
Fits and starts over the years, as would many members.
The collective mindset endured throughout all of their albums, but
relations were fraught. DeSalvio and Mariai would clear the air
in 2022, with Stefan noting that the Brand V 3000
(20:35):
founder would tell her, I'm sorry for whatever happened. I'm
here for you for the healing, and I'm going to
be an ally.
Naturally, a song this far out needed a corresponding music
video that captured the weird and wonderful oral experience perfectly,
and oh boy, did Brand Van 3000 understand the assignment.
(20:55):
The DeSalvio directed uber psychedelic video is a little bit
creepy on first watch as we see an oversaturated and
warped video of the Brandan gang moving some recording equipment
into a studio apartment. The expressionless faces of Sarah Johnston
and Jane Hill greet us before James DeSalvio appears groggily
(21:15):
from a bed with all of his bandmates annoyed around him.
The group are all kind of dressed up as astronauts
or maybe.
Prisoners, I'm not sure, um, there's sparse, goofy choreography before
Mariah hits us with the iconic chorus for the first time.
I should note though, especially given the context we've just
explored now, the cast is almost entirely shone under blue
(21:38):
light for the duration of the music video, creating this
kind of alien bright skin tone to all of the
members and learning that story now, it kind of brings
a different meaning to that.
Brand Van continues to kind of lazily and quirkily drink
and dance with the best slash worst late 90s CGI
on display, obviously, as they sing about drinking in LA,
(22:02):
ostensibly playing their instruments, but they're kind of just touching
them and banging them around with soulless blank expressions. Eventually,
they completely trash the apartment and then just kind of leave.
OK, so honestly, my recap of the video, it doesn't
do it justice. The piece is altogether nothing and something
at the same time. Like it is really quite cool
(22:24):
because it's so weird, but it also definitely dines out
on the fact that because it's so weird, it can
kind of get away with being a little bit lazy,
all in the name of iron.
I don't know. Give the video a watch. Speaking of irony,
one last thing I want to touch on with this
song is the radio intro we're greeted with at the
very beginning of Drinking in LA. If you know the song,
(22:45):
you know it well, but since I am a radio professional,
I thought I'd reenact it for you.
Yeah, we got 3 tickets to the Brand Van concert
happening this Monday night at the Pacific Palisades. Now you
can call in if you, uh, want to answer a
couple of questions, uh, mainly what is Todd's favorite cheese? Uh,
Jackie called in and said it was a form of Rockfort.
(23:07):
Let's see about that. Give us a ring, ding ding.
It's a beautiful day and scene.
So hilariously, this little preamble at the beginning of the
track almost didn't make the cut for the final track,
as the guys explained too much, they felt so removed
from the potential of ever getting on radio with the
style of music that they were making. They kind of
just felt like poking fun at the whole concept of it. Like,
(23:30):
could you imagine if this song got on the air,
what would that?
Sound like.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Did you really want to also make some kind of
commentary on what LA is all about, car radio culture almost?
This is it's kind of cool and I mean it
was you wanted to cut it out and I told
you to keep it because I thought it was nice.
I like, I don't know why, but little things like that,
they hook my ear, so like the editing, you know, argue.
(23:56):
About it in the end, I'm glad you kept it.
We went to San Diego and did a radio interview
and the guy's name was Todd and he was giving
away tickets. This is, I think, and he's right because
I think there was something about it like it was
one of the last songs and, and I think a
hook is a hook, right, so you know it and
(24:17):
you're saying.
You know what, this is starting to smell like a hook,
and I think there was something about being shy about
making music still up to that point and being kind of,
you know, singing, my God, there might be a record
here that you come almost sabotaging going like this is
like a mockery of what a radio song hit is,
and it's really surprising to me that it actually became
(24:38):
a radio hit.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Well boys, it turns out it did get on the
radio quite a bit actually. Brand V 3000 in its
various shapes and sizes would release four more proper albums,
most notably 2001's Discosis, which featured the last formal recording
from the legendary Curtis Mayfield some two years after his
death on lead single Astounded.
(25:02):
A DeSalvio produced Brand band 3000 single called Kings of
Las Vegas dropped earlier this year, of course, with an
ever rotating cast of featured artists, while Stefanne Morai has
had quite the eclectic career. She passed the bar and
specialized as a media lawyer, released some solo music in
the late 2010s, and even ran a.
(25:22):
A federal candidate for the NDP in 2013, she is
just fascinating. Even more impressively, she currently sits as an
alternate member for the Canadian arm of the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization representing the Canadian Council for the Arts,
which I can't even say, and she currently does.
(25:42):
A long way from drinking in LA I'd say. I'm
Ruby Carr. Thank you so much for listening to Encore.
Make sure you subscribe so that you never miss an episode.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Encore is an iHeartRadio Canada podcast.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Download the free iHeartRadio app
Speaker 2 (25:57):
and subscribe. Thank you.
Thank you so much for coming.
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