Have you ever wondered about the transformative power of music? Join me as I sit down with Eric Alper, a major figure in the Canadian entertainment industry, for an engaging and thought-provoking journey through the world of music and beyond. We kick off with Eric's personal playlist, each song a life lesson. He gives us a rare glimpse into the music industry's inner workings and talks about his passion for running, including his distinctive approach to completing a half marathon at Disney World.
We navigate the murky waters of discrimination prevalent in the entertainment industry, discussing sexism, racism, and homophobia. Listen as we delve into the culture of fear that stifles individuals from expressing themselves freely. Our mutual love for various bands leads us back in time to our teenage years, reminiscing about how music shaped our formative experiences. We transition into the present day, discussing the shifting landscape of the music industry and Eric's work with Tears for Fears and his show on Sirius XM, "At That, Eric Alper."
In the final stretch of our conversation, we reflect on the pandemic's impact on live performances and the music industry at large. Eric dreams out loud about his vision of bringing back the iconic music channel, Much Music. It's a nostalgic journey, a testament to the power of music that touches on the past, present, and future. So, tune in for a memorable dialogue on music, culture, and life. We're excited to have you with us for this musical ride.
Check out Eric here
Watch the full episode on YouTube
Check out the Playlist on Spotify
Follow us Everywhere
Make sure to HIT that LIKE BUTTON and SUBSCRIBE to our Channel to be notified of new episodes!
We always have a new episode every Monday at 1 pm
Please share our page with your friends!
Rock on
Have you ever wondered about the transformative power of music? Join me as I sit down with Eric Alper, a major figure in the Canadian entertainment industry, for an engaging and thought-provoking journey through the world of music and beyond. We kick off with Eric's personal playlist, each song a life lesson. He gives us a rare glimpse into the music industry's inner workings and talks about his passion for running, including his distinctive approach to completing a half marathon at Disney World.
We navigate the murky waters of discrimination prevalent in the entertainment industry, discussing sexism, racism, and homophobia. Listen as we delve into the culture of fear that stifles individuals from expressing themselves freely. Our mutual love for various bands leads us back in time to our teenage years, reminiscing about how music shaped our formative experiences. We transition into the present day, discussing the shifting landscape of the music industry and Eric's work with Tears for Fears and his show on Sirius XM, "At That, Eric Alper."
In the final stretch of our conversation, we reflect on the pandemic's impact on live performances and the music industry at large. Eric dreams out loud about his vision of bringing back the iconic music channel, Much Music. It's a nostalgic journey, a testament to the power of music that touches on the past, present, and future. So, tune in for a memorable dialogue on music, culture, and life. We're excited to have you with us for this musical ride.
Check out Eric here
Watch the full episode on YouTube
Check out the Playlist on Spotify
Follow us Everywhere
Make sure to HIT that LIKE BUTTON and SUBSCRIBE to our Channel to be notified of new episodes!
We always have a new episode every Monday at 1 pm
Please share our page with your friends!
Rock on
Welcome everyone to Music Junkies, a podcast about people sharing extraordinary stories about how music has impacted their lives.
Speaker 2:Welcome everyone to Music Junkies. I'm your host, annette Smith, and today our guest. For the past 25 years has been the forefront of the Canadian entertainment industry. Eric has worked with some of the most famous and biggest important artists of all times, including Ringo Starr, ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis, slash the Wiggles, steve Earl, snoop Dogg like your list goes on Smashing Pumpkins, skinhead or O'Connor, and even Sesame Street, which is awesome. And I know you've worked with hundreds and hundreds of other artists, which is so impressive. So please welcome Eric Alper to the show.
Speaker 1:Welcome, eric, I'm so glad to be here, I have to welcome myself. Is that, is that how we go? Please welcome Eric Alper. Okay, eric Alper, yeah, oh, it's so good to be here, and I apologize in advance for people that that get to see me like this, all frazzled at night. Isn't it in the middle of night? It's like three in the morning my time. How dare you.
Speaker 2:No, I would love to do that. Just do that for fun.
Speaker 1:Eric, this is my only recording time.
Speaker 2:It's going to be 4.15. I need you there.
Speaker 1:The truth is never told between nine and five. You gotta do the interviews at like three in the morning, when they're tired and they're hungry and they feel like a hostage situation and they just want to tell the truth and go back to sleep.
Speaker 2:That is exactly how I like it.
Speaker 1:We can all dream big about how the podcast is going to go.
Speaker 2:So, before we jump into all your songs, what was your experience putting your playlist together for me today?
Speaker 1:It's funny, you know, like, like everybody else, we all have access to 72 million songs and 140 million videos out there, but we keep coming back to the same 35 songs over and over and over again. The songs that I chose are ones that tend to be a little bit older, but they've all taught me about something. They've all taught me and I'm not talking about, just like you know. This song taught me about politics. It's this song taught me about either the music industry and how it relates to life, teaching me life lessons.
Speaker 1:And when I got to meet and work with some of the people on this list, I got a real great insight to who not only they were as a person and what it took to make it, not only in the music industry, but again to translate it into any kind of walk of life. I realized how tough it was, how stacked the odds were, how it made some of them absolutely bonkers and how, in others, it was a blessing that turned their life around. So the list was kind of fun and I had a really good. I had a really good time making it.
Speaker 2:I love it. Well, we're going to start with your first song, shall we?
Speaker 1:tell them now that the 10 songs total equals six and a half hours worth of music. So they should just settle in. And, ladies and gentlemen, here is Bram's second symphony, that's right, no, I'm going to Buckle up.
Speaker 2:I actually that's the last one.
Speaker 1:It's the sped up version of it that you'll find on TikTok for 35 seconds.
Speaker 2:I actually had somebody actually send me like six hours of music one time and I was like, hey, this is awesome. But like, are you going to be good if I just like randomly scroll and yeah, yeah, yeah, or are you going to have some stories behind it?
Speaker 1:And he's like, no, I'll be good, I'm like okay let's just hours worth of music is essentially what I need to get through maybe five kilometers in a marathon. That I'm doing. If it takes me six hours to do all of that stuff then I'm good.
Speaker 2:Well, we can definitely share an iPod, but while we're doing it together like a really great runner myself, so oh, I don't run, I practice.
Speaker 1:I did, I did. I did the full marathon and everybody else around me was taking it very, very seriously. Actually, the first time I did, I did a half marathon, it was at the Disney run that they do a couple of times a year, where they closed the park at midnight and you start to run. And I didn't. I didn't train, I practiced. I practiced running in my little shorts and the main reason why I wanted to do it was because I found it was a really great way to meet all the Disney characters without a long lineup, because they were waiting for you at every mile so you can take a photo with them.
Speaker 1:But, of course, all the runners that were coming from around the world that were looking for the best time or the cash prize, or you know the speed to total up if they qualify for the New York one they all zip past. You know each of the seven dwarfs. I was right in there. So I think I think I did the half in just under four days. No, it took me. It took me a very long time to do it, only because I just stopped everywhere and doing selfies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it was all selfies. It was just like oh, if I lose two pounds, amazing, Great it's great, all right, first song.
Speaker 2:You ready, let's do it. Okay, the skin had her pounder right. Shanae O'Connor I absolutely love this artist. Is there a really cool story behind this song?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So Shanae O'Connor was somebody that I long adored and loved. From the very first time I heard the line in the Cobra, her debut album. And then, when I do not want what I haven't got came out, that was the album that just blew her up. And then, of course, when she tore up the picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live and just so hated for it, I knew early, early on in her career that this was going to be a woman that was going to not play the game of the industry.
Speaker 1:But in ripping up the picture of the Pope, even before I really got involved with the music industry I was working for a label at the time, so I was like five or six years into it already I knew it was probably going to save her career and, without getting very religious, I knew she was right. And in watching the hatred and the sadness and the anger and the frustration on people putting on to her and her holding up a mirror back to those feelings, I felt I felt very bad for her until I started working with her, and I worked with her for a couple of albums. First one was a theology album and got to hang out with her for about three or four days here in Toronto and I asked her about that time, like the 90th thousandth person that I've asked about it, and she said something that I don't know how much she would tell people in the media, but since her passing it's been brought out and that is that the you know. A lot of people have said that tearing up the picture of the Pope ended my career, but it only ended the careers of the record label presidents who couldn't buy another boat, and I found that utterly fascinating and she was talking about how doing that ended up saving her career and saving her life, because she didn't want fame, she didn't want money, what she wanted was the ability to continue singing and doing what she wanted to do.
Speaker 1:And she was treated so badly in the industry that when she passed away and we've kept in touch throughout and I spoke to her maybe about four months before she passed away and it's just one of those sad things and I do a lot of talking in the media whenever somebody passes away Usually they'll call me and say you know, can you sum up a career in four minutes and go on television and talk about it? And Sinead was the only one that I think my voice kept breaking because I just felt so sad for her that not only did she lose members of her family, but I shouldn't have happened that way and she was treated so badly because she was a woman and it made me kind of question a lot of things that were happening in the industry that wanted me to change them from within, and also other people and how they treated artists in general. So that song kicks off the playlist because I need to always pay tribute to her wherever and whenever I can.
Speaker 2:I love it. So you brought up a little interesting thing that I am curious Do you think it's harder for a woman in this industry or it's equal playing field? Female male?
Speaker 1:Oh no, it's incredibly hard. It's not. Even this industry is tough for something like one tenth of one tenth of one percent of the people actually make any money from this industry. But when you're a woman, you know you're, you're, you're working in an industry that is pretty much controlled by the male gaze, by male dominance, by sexuality, by not being able and wanting to speak out for fear of being a big mouth.
Speaker 1:You know I learned a lot from how the media treated Shanaid, al-qaeda and also artists like the chicks after they stood up.
Speaker 1:You know, just a flippant remark when they were in London during the time of the Iraq war and when Nali main stood up and said that that they were embarrassed, that you know their president come from the home state of Texas and seemingly just the throw away remark. In fact it all. It took them to come with three days for that remark to get back to America before social media and the way that they were treated. You know commentators on Fox News would say that they deserve to be slapped the next week on Saturday Night Live. They were making fun of, they got death threats, they got bomb threats wherever they played and there's no way that they would have had that happen to them if they were men, no way whatsoever. Yeah, it's absolutely hard when you know that if you're a teenager, young female pop singer, you've got to wear such little clothing and and I get it that you know it could be used as an empowerment. I'm not so sure all the time.
Speaker 1:I agree, I'm not so nobody, nobody's asking you to walk around and you know low cut bikinis.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, much to the chagrin of, I think, a lot of women that would like to see that. They just don't. They just don't. Nobody questions why. Mick Jagger, you know they can make fun of him, but from afar, but nobody asked him why he can still play at 80. But they'll still ask Madonna at 60. Yeah, you know, everybody was asking Tina Turner when she's going to give it up. Nobody asked Eric Clapton that you know. So yeah, there's always sexist, sexism, racism, homophobia, way more, I think, than any other industry, because it's entertainment and because it's supposed to be. You know, it's so, it's so dominant in our culture that and it's incredibly influential. So I guess why the people who want to stop certain people from singing about or looking like, like certain things? Why that they would want to stop it? Because they're just terrified that suddenly a whole new generation is going to wake up and suddenly discover sex for the first time.
Speaker 2:Crazy, that would be yeah, exactly. That's a great next song. So talk, talk. Life is what you make it.
Speaker 1:I love this song. This is the song that I'm going to have played on my funeral. I haven't written that down, but anytime I've ever asked this is it so if my wife suddenly plays something else, I'm going to be very mad and haunt her in my afterlife. This talk talk was a band that had a number of album. The biggest hit that they had was it's my Life.
Speaker 1:But they started off being a pseudo low key Durand Durand, very new romantic, very suit wearing hell hair gelling group and completely went off the road and really invented a form of free form, jazz, new Age, classical rock. For their last two records and I love, I loved everything that they did they took me on for a ride that I have never really seen firsthand, you know, except for you know, the Beatles, when they went from she loves you to a day in the life in four years. This was a band that I was at and present, watching them go from pop star to no commercial hits and maybe selling seven copies of their last album, and I think I bought six of them to give to friends. So or talk talk and I love that song.
Speaker 2:Do you remember the first album you ever bought?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was a Donnie Osmond superstar in 1976 with shut up, stop that laughing in the in the gallery.
Speaker 2:I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was a my my sister had all the team beat like team beat Tiger beat 16 magazines. So yeah, my whole, my whole pop culture was, you know, six, seven, eight years old. Looking at and reading about Christy McNichol and leaf Garrett and the Brady Bunch and every live action Disney and Adam Rich from is enough like it's all that. It's all gossipy stuff that I'm sure the publicist wrote everything in there. But yeah, so with my own money I you know doing chores around the house, for $2.99 I bought Donnie Osmond's Superstar album, which I still have you do.
Speaker 1:I got to meet Donnie and a couple of months ago and I brought it with me. It's a K tell album and I never I rarely get people asked to sign things, but that one I had to get Donnie Osmond to sign.
Speaker 2:What about on your walls? What kind of posters did you have on your wall?
Speaker 1:I have six albums on the wall. Three of them are from talk talk, one of them is from a. Four of them is from talk talk Look at me and one of them is from a band that we're going to talk about, and the other one is another band that we're going to talk about and the big poster of the album cover is a band whose album is named this, and it's the other at the end of the album, and I'm going to go back to the next song on my playlist. I love it.
Speaker 2:What about when you were growing up? Do you remember the posters you had and like who is your, your female crush, crush? Growing up, did you have any girl posters on your wall?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, you know, when I was 12, it was right in 1982.
Speaker 1:So it was the beginning of MTV and much music. And so you know you rhythmics and Madonna and the gogos and Chrissy Heim from the pretenders, samantha Fox, was being played on the radio every four seconds, yeah, so, so, yeah, it was, it was all cool. I bought smash hits and all the magazines and and listen to pop radio pretty much all the time and then, and then, like most people, you kind of get into you know the, the little teenage hoods and you, you think that you're discovering Pink Floyd and the doors and Janice Joplin and Jefferson Airplane for the first time and the who, and you realize that, oh, I wonder if everybody else knows about this. And then you realize that everybody in the world knows about Sergeant Peppers. So yeah, it was, it was, but it was always one foot in the past and always one foot in the present. It was always trying to read up on as much stuff as I possibly can, not just because it kind of fascinated me with what was going on the world, but also where all of this came from. I had a real, I had a real passion for the sociology of music, and I know that's not the right way to say it and I don't care, because I'm the guest it's. It's trying to figure out why things are happening the way that they are. So if I was loving Durand Durand, it was not just trying to find out where they had come from, but what actually sparked that whole revolution for them to go from suddenly nothing to suddenly being everywhere. And that's what got me back to oh well, you know, they're influenced by David Bowie and Brian Eno and then Lizzie. And then it's like who are these people? And then you go back into that and you're like, oh, david Bowie is interested in datism. Oh, all right, well, what's that? And then you go read up on that. So it wasn't.
Speaker 1:Music to me was never. Once I got to Lake Junior High, it was never just like, hey, let's go put on a mix tape. It was, it was. It was really my life's passion. I got a subscription to Billboard magazine when I was 13. And it was the only thing I really wanted, because not only did I love just reading the charts and looking at who was on the top of the charts and who was bombing and who only cracked it at number 86. You never heard from again. But all the stories were about like managers and record labels and distributors and video producers and presidents of companies and it was all about the industry and the business of music and I loved that. That was my. That was my, that was like my business degree and and I wasn't I wasn't a geek about it. I don't think I was a geek. I know it was definitely unpopular, but so for so many other reasons other than that I knew, like nobody else cared about what record label this was on.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Or you know, looking at who produced this, like there were very few people in my circle or school who cared about it. They just cared that you know what Nick Rhodes' hair looked like in the new video. I mean, I like I cared about that too, but it was. It was always a sense of, of a pool of knowledge for me to just dive into and I loved, I loved it. I still do. I still music to me is never really about music. It's always about the things that are happening around that to make that thing happen, because chances are any favorite song, even songs here I'm going to talk about all these songs.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to mention once how much I love the chorus of it, because it's irrelevant, even though that that's why you like it. I can't even mention the lyrics, because half of it I think every single song on here. I have no idea what they're singing about, but it's all about the moments and the memories that were being created while that song was happening and that taught me a lot about politics and life and the economy and racial equality or inequality. Like I learned more from a bunch of Bruce Springsteen records than I did sitting in history class, you know. And then that just opened up the door to actually go and be enthused about reading the history book that was supposed to be reading.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So going back to high school, what were you like in high school? What was like? Were you kind of a rocker loner?
Speaker 1:I was, I was and I know people are going to like. I know people always kind of say this stuff, but I was literally everywhere. I was with the Stoner people. I was with the rockers. I dated the cheerleader throughout my high school. I was probably four foot 10 long ish.
Speaker 1:Hair shaving by 12 glasses, braces, hearing aids, horrible sense of fashion. I was just an absolute bloody mess and I don't understand how I wasn't beat up more than I did. It was. I can't tell you. If I look, I had a great childhood. I had a great teenage hood. I had no problems compared to so many other people, but I can't believe I got it through. I can't believe I survived it. Like, not just like, oh, I can't believe I survived high school. It was I. I'm just surprised I made it to 18. You know just a lot of dumb things. But it was also like I don't know. I don't really remember much, except for whenever the these socks come on the radio. That's like, oh yeah, I remember that and then I just kind of cringe and going you were just such a dork.
Speaker 2:Do you want to share? Maybe a dumb thing that you did in high school, maybe something that you didn't get?
Speaker 1:caught, like getting up on a Monday, yeah, no, just just regular, just regular stuff. Look, I just I can't, you know, I can't believe we had a smoking section in our high school, like I just you know, and that the gym teacher used to bomb. I was just, I was just an idiot and I wasn't troubled whatsoever, but I would just. I just look at these photos and I'm like how, how did you make it this far? I was like nobody would have bet. You know, I was small, I was, I looked awful I still do, but I, you know, at least now I don't care, then I care.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:Next Genesis Genesis I was a huge bill.
Speaker 1:Going back to 1981, that's advocate by Genesis, a song that I don't know what it means, a song that even the band doesn't know what it means.
Speaker 1:But they were the first concert that I saw without my parents In 1981, I went with my sister and I think I'm still chasing how excited I was to see my favorite band at the time and still is there still number one on my list of all time. I I can't tell you how much I love Bill Collins and the band and my brother for Antonio Banks and I just thought they were the greatest thing and the light show was amazing and they had smoke and I thought that was amazing and I've never seen that many people in my whole life of 20,000 people that may believe guards I've never heard anything as loud as that before and as high as that before, just catching a contact high from everybody smoking. And I still. I don't remember very much from that show, but I remember how much I I loved being at a concert and so when that album came out I asked my sister if she would go and I think tickets were like $4.50 at the time and it was the greatest thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 2:So it's not $4.50 anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, no. $4.50 would be like maybe 15 minutes of parking in Toronto.
Speaker 2:So I want to kind of go back to the Disney characters. So if you had to make out with a Disney character, who would you pick as the?
Speaker 1:make out. You know what. That's such a loaded question and I don't I'm not so sure I want to answer it, because if I choose a princess, somebody's gonna say what are you against brunettes?
Speaker 2:And then all of a sudden, I'm gonna pick a brunette and pick a blonde.
Speaker 1:Can I go the other way? I love to hang out with Bolt. Bolt's a very his movie kind of just didn't his movie like like he's a real person. It was a cartoon movie and the voice of her, john Travolta and Miley Cyrus and Bolt was awesome. I loved all the characters in it and it's one of my daughter's favorite movies and I think when she was, when she was growing up, we watched that movie hundreds of times and it's a movie that we will still watch together because I love it. I loved all that stuff. Yeah, I love, I mean everything, everything Pixar I love. So, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I love where it's kind of I miss watching. You know, my kids are older and moved out, so I'm watching all of that stuff. I'm excited for the day that I become a grandparent and then I get to kind of embed in all of that again, and I mean Mr Hoax, there was a thing. Yeah, I miss, that's okay, I'm okay, that's okay.
Speaker 1:That would have been absolutely mental. Even looking at it from afar, it looked way too much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just I don't mind musicals, but it's just like really every 30 seconds were busting out into a song.
Speaker 1:It was everywhere. It was like you opened up Facebook and there was a frozen meme and you opened up Twitter and there was a like. It was um, yeah, I can only imagine just being seven and I'm movie coming out and just blowing your mind about how how great it was. So I'm glad I kind of missed all that stuff.
Speaker 2:How would your friends?
Speaker 1:describe you Again kind of loaded question, because then that's assuming that I have friends. I don't really have a lot of friends. I have a lot of clients but I, I guess loyal likes to tell really Bad jokes, doesn't like to talk about what he does for a living because he thinks that nobody is interested in it. Always a great recommendation for music and can always be relied on even at the last minute to get concert tickets. I love that I have a lot of friends that use me now that I Know that I brought that up.
Speaker 2:Now we're gonna go down, yeah the older I get.
Speaker 1:I mean it's funny. I just I read, just reconnected with a couple of friends from high school and like we really have a change that much. But it's kind of nice. But yeah, I, I'm a homebody, I work all the time, work seven days a week, 18 hours a day, and I love it. And my family all works in their own world too. So it's, it's great, you know. So I, I love, I love working, I love it.
Speaker 2:Well, you, you got to love what you do.
Speaker 1:Time for fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like during COVID and during the whole, like pandemic and the isolation. I know it was awful. I know death and destruction was outside of the doors. I know there was a lot of people losing their minds. I had the greatest time.
Speaker 1:No isolation it was. I didn't have to drive anywhere, I worked from home anyway. Business kind of exploded because everybody was working, everybody was creating music and videos. There was nothing else to do or else they would have gone crazy. So, without sounding insensitive, it was. There's a number of people that I talked to since then that that actually did okay during all of it, because they've realized that it's okay to be a little bit of an introvert and now we all have the the best part of it. And now, granted, I'm sure that nobody wanted to have three years of it or two years of it, but like, depends on who you talk to. Like in America I knew, talking to somebody from Cincinnati, ohio, they were like, yeah, dude, we were shut down from Friday to Monday and that was it, and then, like, the whole country opened up again, but meanwhile, you know, nobody was playing a show in Canada for two years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you got it. I don't know. I'm just a big believer. Hey, this is going on. I was able to create this podcaster in that time, right?
Speaker 1:So yeah, I got to do my.
Speaker 2:It was exciting. Yeah, that's awesome yeah why not like it?
Speaker 1:it I Do my show from my home. I used to have to go and slept in traffic for like an hour and a half and I loved it and I love seeing people. But, like it's right, here I can talk to people on zoom and, yeah, better, better guess and better sound and I love that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah right next song. Actually, remember when this album came out, which is kind of crazy, because I haven't heard this song forever.
Speaker 1:If you, if for for video people that are looking at this there. They are right there, bottom left hand corner, my left right I'm gonna point see this is. It's right there. That's them. That's tears for fears and the song shout from songs from the big chair, two albums that Absolutely not just blew my mind and I still listen to 35 years afterwards, but taught me a lot about psychology of people.
Speaker 1:Both the herding and song from the big chair are based on the psychological theory that Arthur Yanoff discovered and honed, which is that you are born in pain and when your parents don't give you the love and needs and attention that you need as a baby, you have to build up walls inside of you in order to stop you From essentially killing yourself or just going, you know, psychologically off the rails. So the herding and primal scream therapy. With the first album, the herding, it's all about that and that it culminates into a giant primal scream that you psychologically Break down and tear down the walls inside of you so you can live whole again. I had none of that. I Couldn't. I there is, there wasn't anything you might as well had said to me I, I Cut holes in the ice and fish for my food and I could say, oh, I understand, I don't. I Don't understand what that's like. I understood the theory. I loved reading about the theory. I didn't have anything close to a resemblance of that thought and but I was.
Speaker 1:I found myself very confused at what attracted me to tears for fears. First, two albums that I I started to question my own sanity of. Why am I dancing to this most depressing music and why am I so attracted to this music when I don't feel it? The greatest thing about being a songwriter is writing a song in complete isolation and then putting it out there into the world, going in concert and having fifty thousand people sing it back to you with fifty thousand different experiences. I loved tears for fears and I have zero experiences in what they're singing about. Got to work with them a number of times, got to talk to them up to the radio on the radio show. I got to ask them the biggest geeky questions that I've often wanted, like what on earth was that sound at the beginning of shout that Everybody just heard? So that was fun and so that kind of taught me that you know, I can just enjoy something for the sake of enjoying it, not necessarily thinking too hard about it. I.
Speaker 2:Love it. So I want to talk a little bit about your show, because you just brought it up. So tell me a little bit about your show on serious XM.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's called at that, Eric Alper. I've got those. Why they picked that name. But yeah, it's a whenever talk show featuring me talking to musicians and artists and authors of music books that I love, and we just get to basically run the gamut and not go to inside baseball at all, because I Completely understand that 99% of the people listening probably have no idea that this person has a new album out and may never buy it. So I try to kind of keep it light, keep it breezy, talk about what their life is like, why, what kind of went into making certain decisions and hopefully, for people who might not be fans of that artist, can learn something from it, just like I talked to people that I might not always be fan of not like I don't like them, but I don't listen to them, but they're. They've definitely have a story to tell them, something to teach, and I love I love that. And so it airs on Canada talks, child 167 and On the app anytime too.
Speaker 2:How did you start the podcast or your show like, how did that kind of come into fruition?
Speaker 1:The short version is I used to be, I, I used to and I still do so I kind of do-do-do. I used to bring the artists into radio stations and Television stations and media outlets were them to do the interviews. And then one day the producer for Canada am, which at the time was the, the national broadcast on CTV, kind of like the today show or good morning America, and they said, hey, why don't you come on and talk about box sets? Because it was a holiday season? I said no, because I'm a publicist, I'm not a television person. And she said, no, no, no, be good, you know everybody. Just go ask people for box sets and go in talk about it for a minute, you'll have a blast. Just go be really positive about everything, like you always are, and I'm like, okay. So I did the segment and I kind of dug it. And then they just kept asking me to come back over and over again about hey, let's talk about the top five Valentine's Day songs or the best five albums to buy for your mother on Mother's Day. And then that kind of led to talking about the Juno's on radio stations and the Grammys, and so whenever somebody died, people would call me and Then I used to bring in artists, among other places, to series XM, and then the director of talk radio Said do you want to do a show?
Speaker 1:And I said no, why, or why, why would anybody want to listen to what I have to say? And he's like no, no, no, just bring on your friends, just bring bring people that you like talking to and just have conversation with them. And I'm like no, like I stutter, like I'm the worst, I'm Listen to me now, I, I'm not a radio guy at all. He said I know, but like that's great, so just go do it. You know, if we want to somebody that spoke like this and yeah, talk like Casey, case them, then we would go get them. So, just go. And I was terrified and I think I threw up maybe four times.
Speaker 1:On the night before I had one of my best friends and and longest clients in, andy Kim joined me for the full hour and we just had a blast and it was like I was just Talking to him and not caring or not knowing and not realizing that anybody would be listening. And that's still how I do my show. So you know, do four segments of 15 minutes each. I get to hang out with them. I'm just so happy that they took the time to talk with me and and yeah, so I just kept saying yes to everything, yes to go on can't am. Yes to doing radio interviews, yes to talking about the music industry.
Speaker 1:And I was in a rarefied position because I get to talk about my industry While being in the industry, but I don't do anything negative except maybe say that sentence. But I don't talk about courts stuff. I don't talk about lawsuits. I don't talk about bad stuff that's happening, won't talk about what Kanye said this week no interest, there's other people that do that better and Quite frankly, I just there's enough negativity in the world so I don't need to to bring that with me on my radio show. So, and hopefully people like it.
Speaker 2:I love it I think it's awesome, Thanks right, I think it's awesome and I think you are.
Speaker 1:You're the one listening. That's so great. If we can just get my parents listening again, then I'll have triple the amount of people listening.
Speaker 2:I'm just like all day downloading, downloading. I go through my four or five different computers just to make sure that Thanks. Ip addresses.
Speaker 1:I think I think that's when my parents slowly understood what I did for a living. I think it only took them 20 years to realize it, but that's that was the moment where I think they got it.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. This band that we're going to play next is on a lot of people's playlists Depeche Mode. Lots of people love that. I've interviewed that have a Depeche Mode song on their playlist and it was one band. Honestly, I'll be honest, I never really got into too much. I was never really exposed to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's kind of how we feel about the cure.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Same thing the cure gets played everywhere. It doesn't really do much for me. I dig them, I'm happy they're around, they can survive Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but it just emotionally doesn't do it. I'm looking at this list now and what I'm realizing is that they all have really cool beginnings to songs.
Speaker 1:I can't tell you how popular Depeche Mode was in not only in my life, but for a number of years in high school, where they were selling 70,000 seed arenas. They were doing record store signings in Los Angeles and they thought maybe 120 people would show up and 15,000 people showed up knocking down Sunset Strip and they looked cool. They sung about really sexual things that I didn't quite understand. They played really great music. You can dance to them and the girls loved them. I mean, it was almost.
Speaker 1:There were a couple of bands that in high school and keep in mind, like I don't, and if anybody is still listening, why but if anybody is still listening my best years of my life was not spent in high school, even though so far I've talked a lot about it. There's always studies that the music that you listen to between the ages of 15 and 21 are the music that essentially is going to revolutionize and shift and mold the rest of your life and I kind of believe that. So with Depeche Mode they were just the biggest thing on the planet when I was, and if you didn't like Depeche Mode, annette, we really couldn't be friends. And I'm kind of second guessing appearing on the show now.
Speaker 2:Well, here's the thing If we were friends, you would have introduced me to Depeche Mode.
Speaker 1:I would have that's right, that's right, nobody ever introduced me to them.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:So anybody?
Speaker 2:ever was exposed to them. The only time I've ever been exposed to them now has been doing this show. Because I'm like Jesus, I need to start listening to this band because, like 70.
Speaker 1:That's a fascinating point and it's just such a true point. I mean people who are, when you grow up in Toronto with a station like CFNY and the Edge playing a lot of UK bands, from the Cure to the Cult to Depeche Mode you're exposed to a whole bunch of music, as opposed to if you were living in a city or a town that played idol contemporary hits, easy rock and classic rock and you would have no idea until something like much music and MTV come into your lives of what a big world it is out there. So I can definitely understand that.
Speaker 2:I love it. So you've worked with hundreds and hundreds of different artists. Who is somebody that you haven't worked with yet that you would love to meet in an interview?
Speaker 1:I would love to meet Paul McCartney only because it would be one of those situations where I would just look at him and not and have nothing to say. It would be. I mean, I think him and Phil Collins would probably be two people where I can really only say I think I know more about you than you do and I don't need to know anything, except I would just say thank you. But both those artists I think I've listened to and thought about more than any other ones, and you've been doing this show for a long time.
Speaker 2:Have you ever had somebody that you're getting ready to interview, that you're maybe a little bit nervous about? You're like holy shit I.
Speaker 1:Oh everybody, yeah, oh my gosh, everybody oh yeah, thanks for being honest.
Speaker 2:That's good, I love that. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:Oh, whatever, not a big deal, not only do you want to not screw up, but you want them to like you, for no other reason that you're never going to see these people again. But you never know. And so you just want to not screw up, not think about. Look, I never think about who's listening. I can't, because I have no idea. I don't even, and it's not like that. I don't think about it. It's just that, quite frankly, I don't care Like.
Speaker 1:I will do the show as long as they want me to do the show, but it's not my life, it's not what I do. I do it but it's. I'm a publicist, so this is that's my job. Yeah, it's like being on Twitter or social media. I have a million and a half followers on there. I know how to get them all excited. I can just post pictures of the Beatles and get more. I can just post pictures of memes all the time. I want to post about Taylor Swift because she is breaking records every moment of the day. I want to post about Drake because, no matter if you don't like his music or if you do, he's demolishing the sacred idea of what we think charts or songs or culture is, and for a guy who loves all of this stuff. It's fascinating to me, it's amazing to me and so I get it when I post something like Taylor Swift has eight. This week Taylor Swift has eight of the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. I'll go and post that the moment that we finish talking and I will get 17 likes on Twitter.
Speaker 1:I have a million followers. I'm going to get 18 of them but I don't care, because, primarily for two reasons One, I'm fascinated with just all things good and two, I kind of want to show the world that I can talk about things other than classic rock or the Peshmo and Jirfor viewers and talk to I can say I'm a god, so it keeps me young, and my daughter thinks I'm hip, so it's funny because that's where. So when I ask goofy questions on Twitter, I'm not data scraping. I don't care who's really reading it, but I love the fact that people are just talking about music there and I'll go through some of the answers and stuff and they're hilarious, or that they're just songs I never or bands that I didn't know about. That that's how I find it about new music. So it's there for me too. I'm here for my own entertainment.
Speaker 2:That's right. So you mentioned your daughter. What is one thing that you've learned from your daughter?
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, everything. She truly is an all encompassing, unquestionable love and good. She has taught me to. I knew this, but it was the first time that I actually hit me about sticking with her passions and because she started her blog at age nine and I told her that she couldn't write a blog about Justin Bieber because she wanted to do a blog and my wife and I just said you gotta find something that you're passionate about. What do you care about?
Speaker 1:And she cared about animals and she realized that the environment affects the animals and that we affect the environment. So she was going to do a blog about how we can all start in our neighborhoods doing good for the earth and with shoreline cleanups and garbage cleanups in the park and saving the bees and doing all of this amazing stuff. And that led to her being on we Day for just under 50 times across their tours Over a number of years. She wrote a book at 15 called Momentus and she interviewed a lot of change makers, including Malala, and she just taught me that you have to continue to work really, really hard and be really, really super passionate about what you do, because what we do is it's hard work, because it just never ends what she does, and what my wife does, and what I do, and what you do, and for a lot of listeners it doesn't stop at five o'clock, it just keeps going. It never ends.
Speaker 2:This is a good segue to this song.
Speaker 1:Devil Inside you know, when I first logged in, I was like there's no way that I'm going to talk for more than a half hour and we're not even half right through. I just realized this now.
Speaker 2:Are you going to be okay with going a little bit over?
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, I got all night Devil Inside by Inexcess. The absolute sexiest man I've ever laid my eyes on, and I am completely heterosexual. I saw this band play and it made men around me scream. I can only imagine what it was doing to the women and it taught it didn't teach me about sexuality, but boy, this was sexy, groove, funk, adelic music that I still love. And, yeah, I just love this band. I love everything that you've ever done.
Speaker 2:Whose leather pants would you rather wear? His or Jim Morrison's?
Speaker 1:Ew, those leather pants have both. Both those leather pants probably smelled like eight day old cigarettes and planes like airplane. I never found Jim Morrison sexy, I found him a little bit aloof. But Michael Hutchins, good Lord, was that a good looking man. Just astonishing really. Yeah, Very sad when he died.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was very sad. So you know a lot of music Without putting down a musician or a song. What do you think could be potentially one of the worst songs that you have heard?
Speaker 1:Um, doesn't make for very good radio. When I'm thinking, you know you can't argue with the success, but the easy answer would probably be Baby Shark. But as a record label publicist I would gladly take those eight billion streams. That's right.
Speaker 2:Mine. I'm happy.
Speaker 1:I don't know why.
Speaker 2:I just can't handle the song.
Speaker 1:Happy by Pharrell Williams.
Speaker 2:I just, I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1:You miserable kid.
Speaker 2:I know I just can't handle it. We were in Las Vegas.
Speaker 1:Nobody tells a net Smith what to do that is exactly it. We're at my bachelor party, yeah, cause everybody else is happy. I'm kind of happy, yeah.
Speaker 2:Put song this jam, and I was like yeah, you need to turn that fucking song off, like right now we're not having any of it, we're all not happy, we're not at a bachelor party having fun.
Speaker 1:If you have 100 people, what the word, what their unfavorite song is? It would probably be a thousand people's favorite song. That's the whole beautiful thing of all of it. Like the easy answer is to say well, you know, let's go with the one that keeps getting mentioned, which is we built this city, but do you realize how brilliantly structured we built the city is? It's like it's, it's. It's such a catchy, unbelievable song that songwriters look at a song like that and bow down to the writers Bernie Toppin, who wrote with out, and John and bow down and say you did it. You created something that four billion people know and everybody's got an opinion on it, which is what you kind of want to do as a songwriter. And, quite frankly, as a songwriter, you know every time that they watch a video just to be mad is still a video that they get paid for.
Speaker 2:That's right, I love it All right. Next tune I think that's called wet leg apparently I don't know. I have not heard, since it was on your playlist and it was very interesting to listen to.
Speaker 1:I don't think that that's it. I think that you actually are playing a French radio, CBC Radio Canada.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Beginning of the show, but wet leg. So, going back to the whole isolation COVID period, every song that I got to work was a ballad downtrodden songs about loneliness, songs about breakups, songs about isolation, and it absolutely reflected the time of the moments that everybody was feeling. There were no party songs to work, there were no concerts to work. People didn't know. I mean, when we all got shut down back in March, I went outside. I mean it happened really super quick, yeah. So depending on where you are in the world listening to this, hello. But wherever you are, I mean in Toronto in Canada, we were watching the NBA get shut down, the NHL being shut down, and then the airlines and the live nation said we're shutting down all the shows around the world. And that was a mind freak, yeah. And so I remember in the morning watching it on the television, went outside, had a cigarette, came back inside and then I wrote to all the bands I was working and all the artists I was working and the labels. I said, look, I don't know if we're all going to die. I don't know if we're all going to survive this. I don't know who's going to survive this. I don't even know what any of this is, but I'm going to still be here working away because I don't have anything else better to do and carry on. So if you need me, I'll be here.
Speaker 1:Then all of these artists started releasing music and they were all very, very sad. And I heard a song on KEXP, the station I listened to all the time and it was Wet Legs song and it absolutely gave me so much faith and so much happiness that I knew we were going to be OK. And it showed me that, throughout all of the most depressing times that we could ever imagine politically, socially, black lives matter me too. Covid, all that stuff happening within a short period of time, the music will be the one that ends up saving me from not going clinically insane at the end of it all. And that song, that song did it for me. That was the one that I knew that everything was going to be OK.
Speaker 2:That's interesting. So you've had obviously tons of experience in the industry. Do you have like a memorable moment?
Speaker 1:Sorry, I missed that first part.
Speaker 2:You've had obviously tons of success in this industry. You've been around for a long time. Do you have like a memorable moment?
Speaker 1:Oh, talking to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1:Just being no, really being here, hanging out, meeting somebody like you, working with somebody like you, getting to talk to somebody and then getting to talk on the air about anything that comes out of my brain. It's astonishing to me, like, yeah, moments all all day long, some professional of just like hey, we got this interview, that's amazing, we got the cover of that, that's a stupendous. But it's really just the people that I've long admired that I get to talk to and and like I know that they're looking at me, going like who is it? Like I don't have to, I don't have a very high self worth. Anyway, it kind of puts me in my place and it keeps me very, very comfortable.
Speaker 1:So, you know, wet leg or tear to fears, or should I? Like they don't need to be nice to me, you know, but I get to have those moments and so that's what it's all worth. I mean, I bought these people's records when I was a kid and a teenager and then to sit in the car with somebody like a Bob Geldorf or Midge Ur or the Wiggles, knowing how happy they make everybody feel, and hanging out with Jerry Lee Lewis and hanging out with Ray Charles, like these are people that I look at them and I think I bought your record and that, to me, is just the most amazing thing out of all of it. So yeah, I have. I have mind blowing moments every day.
Speaker 2:Who's a better piano player? Ray Charles or Jerry Lee Lewis?
Speaker 1:Oh, you know what? Jerry Lee Lewis will completely tear apart the house. He will. He will not only, he will not only destroy that piano, but he will steal your girlfriend and make you pay for the cab ride home. Ray Ray Charles will just kind of blow you out of the water with his piano playing in the songs.
Speaker 1:And yeah, I shot Jerry Lee Lewis at the 50, at the 40th anniversary of his career, back in the early 1990s at a show in Memphis, tennessee, and it was at a hotel and we snuck in because we just happened to be staying there at the time at a music conference and it was a big black tie affair and his face was on all the plates and up there on the stage with Jerry Lee Lewis for the third or fourth hour that he was being that he was playing just drunk as a skunk, smelling that you could smell it from the first row, and on their on stage he had bodyguards beside him with guns and I didn't I didn't know if that was to protect Jerry from the audience or the audience from Jerry. And that's when I knew why they call him the killer, because he's just dangerous, as as anything that I've ever, ever read about and seen and he's got a great story and yeah, so he married his second cousin removed back then. That's what you did.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, different.
Speaker 2:You know you get over it. You know what I mean. Like that's the one part I hate about this industry. It's always.
Speaker 1:It's always so hard to put night you know, 2023 context, yeah On to something that happened in the 1950s. Yeah, things were bad. Don't get me wrong, don't, don't, don't send me letters about like well then, you know what about this and what about slavery?
Speaker 2:in the Holocaust. We just got to get over it. Like like they spend their whole entire career now getting over this. You know a picture that they put out or something that they did. I just don't think that's fair.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like look, just you know, if you're upset that Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13 year old cousin, don't marry your 13 year old cousin now. An example for everybody out there. Right, learn from Jerry Lee, that's right. Yeah, apology to certain states in America where that is still legal.
Speaker 2:That's our disclaimer 17 and going under.
Speaker 1:That's that 17 going under by Sam Bender. He is probably one of the greatest Writer songwriters I've heard In decades. I was working for the Oceaga Music Festival in Montreal. I knew pretty much all of the bands, at least by name, not necessarily always by music, which is sometimes happens when you're working at a festival, because there's just too much to wrap your head around and I didn't know Sam Bender with music at all and I turned it on and I love the song 17 going under. I love his Growing up in the projects and in very, very poor situations in in England where his mother really couldn't afford surgery and Sam Bender went to become a musician playing in places that maybe he shouldn't have been playing in yet but he was doing it just to make money to pay for his mom's.
Speaker 1:And when I saw Sam Bender live for the first time working Oceaga I there's not too many moments where, if I'm standing in the back with my arms folded like an idiot, not being able to show emotion because that would be uncool, even though that nobody's watching, he was. He was one of the very few people that made me go literally up to the front of the stage and just watch with my mouth open. If you love Bruce Springsteen, If you love the killers, you will love Sam Bender.
Speaker 2:That's a great introduction to him. I love that. Are you in like? Do you sing, do you play a musical?
Speaker 1:Oh God no.
Speaker 2:What's your go to karaoke song?
Speaker 1:I do, I do a wicked and I will say this with all honesty. I could do all the voices and do they know it's Christmas by Band-Aid. Really, really well, wow, that's. And if people want more information, they're just going to have to play me with the Jagermeister around the Christmas time. But yeah, I don't sing. I sing horribly. I was in the worst cover band in existence.
Speaker 2:What was the name of the cover band?
Speaker 1:Oh, probably something ridiculous like windowpane, or we were a four piece band that played covers of Super Tramp and yes, and I was the drummer and I had a kit that was made up of 17 other drum kits. My parents only let us deal with why I was in the band. I think is because my parents let us practice in the basement of the house. I was atrocious. I was so good on the steering wheel in the car when I, can you know, hit the the. I'm great at that. I really good coordination, but if you put me in front of a real jump kit, I have two left feet and zero coordination. And everybody else in the band went on to pretty good fame and fortune and success in the music industry performing. And I went the other way and worked behind the scenes.
Speaker 2:I love it. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that though, yeah. All right. Next song Right. Who doesn't know that song?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the number one song in 1969 and the year of the Beatles and love and peace and happiness and CCR and Vietnam, was a sugar sugar by the Archies, co written by Andy Kim, a guy that I've had the nothing but complete honor and pleasure to work with for the last 1213 years or so. I adore Andy. I've done a lot of really cool things that I would never get to do with anybody, including not only kind of working with him in terms of the publicity and stuff, but we were working together a lot with you know, kind of getting him more recognition than I think he was then. Then I think he was kind of given you know, the last couple of years he's really had a spotlight on him that I'm so proud of him with getting the Order of Canada and 2024, being on the Canadian songwriter's Hall of Fame, getting on the Canada's Walk of Fame and just watching all of that happen for him makes me so happy and so proud.
Speaker 1:And it all started with, really with sugar sugar by the Archies, a song that is still one of the greatest pop songs ever written. In them I am I still can't believe that a human being wrote songs like this because you think that, like they're like hymns, like they just came down from the heaven. It's virtually impossible for me to wrap my head around that somebody, that somebody wrote life, what you make it, or somebody wrote a song like sugar, sugar, sugar.
Speaker 1:Yeah that is so, so sweet and so perfect that it even influenced the next band. 40 years later.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do you have any pet peeves, eric? Things that drive you crazy.
Speaker 1:What sorry?
Speaker 2:Any pet peeves.
Speaker 1:I hate it when, when artists miss an interview, wow, I don't like it at all, but that's, that's just because it's more work for me, yeah, and so I find it to be. It's not just more work, but it's like it's a little bit disrespectful, I think, for the people who who are on the other side of it. So I try to make sure that they do everything they can. But, yeah, I don't have a lot of pet peeves, but that's the one that I I'm just so passionate about because I just want everybody to be happy.
Speaker 1:And when somebody misses something that I know that nobody's happy.
Speaker 2:So you love my happy, so nobody's happy yeah you love driving in Toronto, then yeah, yeah, I'm not a big fan of driving in Toronto. My grandma, my grandma just passed away recently, but we would go visit all the time. Oh, wow, I mean I've been driving there quite a lot and I was. It's very different than driving in Calgary, like we have three lanes right, that goes super fast. You know, it feels like you guys got 15 lanes. That goes super fast. That are kind of very, very, very.
Speaker 1:And in Toronto we have 15 lanes and nobody goes anywhere. And then you complain about traffic until you realize one day that you are traffic and that's the reason it's like when people complain about where is all these people going, it's like someplace you're going. Where are?
Speaker 2:you going?
Speaker 1:exactly where are you going? You think you're so special and Mr.
Speaker 2:I just seen these guys. Just probably it's like death leopard poison. Motley crew and Joe.
Speaker 1:That's great. Yeah, we could have been friends. Yeah, absolutely yeah, we could have. We could have exchanged hair gel, hair gel and stuff. Um, death leopard, you know it, it.
Speaker 1:There was a time when all those band that you mentioned, it, it, it didn't click for me until much, much later on. But in the last couple of years, new artists don't have the same visions and dreams as the artist that came before them. The artist that I grew up listening to wanted to sell out arenas. I mean, first they they not only wanted to just get a gig, but they wanted somebody. They want to have more people watching them than the bartenders you know. And then they toured, coast to coast, country by country, city by city, earning, you know, earning fans, one person at a time, hoping and bring that much music or MTV play their video, hoping that radio plays their song. And then suddenly, if you've made it, that's the success, that's the dream. Then you win the Juno, you win the Grammy, you win the Brit, you get the gold albums.
Speaker 1:None of that and I'm going to paint a lot of brushes with this None of that really matters to these people that are coming up. They have very different goals and very different dreams. Few of them will play live. Few of them cannot imagine playing live. They have no interest in playing live. Their friends wouldn't probably come out and see them because they're smoking less, they're drinking less, they're staying at home more, they're playing more video games, they've got way more social media than most of the bands that we grew up listening to and their goals are in the neighborhood of. I love five million fans. I love a million streams on Spotify. I want influencer campaigns, I want to hang out with the Kardashians and Bieber and Selena Gomez, and it's just very different. It doesn't mean that it's bad or worse or better, it's just different.
Speaker 1:And when I talk to older artists who do want to play live, who are frustrated by, since COVID, a lot of the venues have shut down and never coming back again. In Toronto here, we lost over 45 venues. They're not coming back. Cross Canada music festivals aren't coming back. Folk, blues, classical festivals are shutting down, not coming back, whether it's the people don't want to go out anymore or that in some cases, they died. The older generation that died from COVID were the ones that helped and supported a lot of the folk in blues and jazz and classical and roots festivals, and some of them still are scared to go into large places. Some of them just financially can't go. So when I talk to older artists about playing live and we talk about the fact that you can do records, you can do playing live from your basement and go reach to the world, have the philosophy of a 16 year old pop singer. Now just go play to the world.
Speaker 1:It took me a long time to realize that. The reason why Death Leopard, poison, bon Jovi, guns N' Roses, motley Crue, warrant, kiss all of these bands made videos of them performing live, because at the end of it all, you want the people to not just buy the ticket, but they want to see the body. That's what it always comes down to. You are paying a ticket to go see the body in real life, in 3D form, and that song pours some sugar on me. There's a remix of the video of them playing live and when you watch it it looked to me like they were the most exciting band on the planet. And it still never left me that all those bands are doing the same thing selling a ticket. And that's what you do in entertainment you sell a ticket to the movie, you sell a ticket to go and get a subscription to Netflix or this, or just selling something away in music than just the listening experience, which that's a whole other thing. But to me, watching those videos were like that's what it's all about.
Speaker 2:I agree, I was totally in 80s here.
Speaker 1:The longest run on answer I think I've ever given anybody. Congratulations.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much, for I think you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1:Did you ever see those bands live when you were growing up?
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I'm going to see Kiss on Sunday.
Speaker 1:Amazing right.
Speaker 2:I'm super jacked.
Speaker 1:Just to look at everybody watching them.
Speaker 2:But it's fun, it's like people watching.
Speaker 1:It's like look at all of us that made it.
Speaker 2:And they're excited about performing and there's Pyro and it's like an actual show, like it's an event. It's cool. You go to somebody now. It's kind of like all right, they're just kind of standing up there. It's like what's going on?
Speaker 1:Backup dancers.
Speaker 2:Although I did, for 900 bucks a ticket. You better freaking, do more than stand there with the mic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did see Taylor Swift's Aeros Tours in the theaters though last weekend. That was pretty amazing. That exhausted me. I don't know how she can do anything.
Speaker 2:She would put on a great show, though right, she has that mentality.
Speaker 1:Right Beyonce.
Speaker 2:Beyonce Pink is phenomenal.
Speaker 1:Pink was amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like those types of people just get it. And then you have other people like I'm just going to sit here, like I I love the chili peppers. I went and seen them. They literally just stood there. This is years ago, this is in the 90s. I was like what's happening, dude? Like why aren't you flipping your hair?
Speaker 1:and you know you're not, yeah, come on, anthony.
Speaker 2:Let's see what you got. That's right, all right. Next song Coming out, the last wire here, my bloody Valentine. I haven't heard these guys for a while. My bloody Valentine. It's not a scary the title, but the song is called soon. This song, the album Loveless, is probably one of my all time favorite album.
Speaker 1:It is lush with guitars. I don't know Understand any of the lyrics. I don't understand what any of the instruments are. I don't understand what the instruments are. I don't understand what the instruments are. I don't understand what any of the instruments are. I can clearly hear the drum and then everything else just blends in with it. It is euphoria to me, and probably the greatest drug trip I could take without actually taking drugs is listening to this album. So whenever I'm doing real bad grunt work away from everybody In my work day, or usually on the weekends, when I'm doing something that I just grueling, I put on that album and it just makes everything else disappear. So I love that album and I love that song.
Speaker 2:I know we talked a little bit about kind of the 80s era and videos. Do you have like a favorite, like much music video that you're like? That? That's phenomenal.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I have a favorite video, but like the whole era when much music first started and it was the perfect I mean so much of it is so based on luck of being the right age for the right thing to something and no matter how old you are, you were always the right age in your teenage years to discover something that no other generation previously before then had discovered.
Speaker 1:So when I was 13 and 14, when much music started, it was like culture club and your rhythmics and Michael Jackson and Platinum, blonde and the spoons and Blue Rodeo and pursuit of happiness and all of these bands that were like literally from my neighborhood not my neighborhood, but like in my own city, not realizing that I can't wait until I'm older and I get to see these bands. And like the tragically hip and like I can't get into bars but I want to go see this. So so much of it is just those moments. But yeah, that was when like even the garbage looking videos, like even now you look back and I'm not saying that like take on me, or money for nothing is garbage but or sledgehammer, because there's still three great videos. But like you pick them up against Pixar and they're like what's this you know? So, yeah, yeah, so everything you bring that back.
Speaker 2:I don't know if our new generation would like it, but I think our old generation would be all over that again.
Speaker 1:There's a documentary called 209 Queen Street West that I'm working and one of the idea and it's about. It's about, like the early days of much music and how it all started and all that stuff and one of the ideas that I want to do with just bring back much music for 24 hours. Bring back Erica and Michael Williams, rick Campanelli, bring back Steve Anthony, bring back all of these amazing VJs and have them go through the best videos that they remember playing in the best moment, but 24 hours.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I really thought just it's a lot more expensive than.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll pitch in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, that'd be awesome.
Speaker 2:Well, Eric, we're on your last song. Are you ready? I'm ready to go. All right, let's go. So, Wolf Alice.
Speaker 1:That's Wolf Alice. Don't delete the kisses. That is a song I can't say enough about how much I love this song. I would marry this song it is. It's got a great opening. It has a great verse. It's got a great chorus. The spoken word aspect is so great. I just think that they're one of the coolest bands around and, again, one of those songs that you know I will never, ever get tired of listening to and I still get excited whenever I hear it on online radio or KXP. Even though I have it in front of me anytime I want to. To hear one of your favorite songs on the radio is still I still get. I still get a little bit of a perk out of it. So I just love this song I can't get out of my head now.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, Eric, for joining us today on Music Junkies. I hope you had a blast.
Speaker 1:Thank you for sharing, being real, raw, honest and then just being yourself, right, Thank you so much and I had such an amazing time talking to you, and thank you for asking me to do this. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I so appreciate it. Like follow, subscribe. I will send you where he lives so you can stalk him if you want to.
Speaker 1:I was once shopping at the Longos near me and the cashier said you're Eric, and I said yes, and she said I've been following you for ages and I said oh, on Twitter. And she's like what's Twitter? So then I had to quickly pay for my packages and get out, and now I have 24 hour security.