Last week Win Butler from Arcade Fire opened up for a two hour lecture at the Red Bull Music Academy taking place all month long in Montreal.
Win walked listeners through his start in music, dissecting Arcade Fire’s discography, the people who have left much influence on the songwriter as well some social commentary where he takes stabs at Spotify and Trump.
If you don’t have 2 hours to spare, here are some notable takeaways:
On Bowie
“David came to some of our first shows, and he sings on Reflektor, and…talk about meeting your heroes. [He was] just such a deep, deep source of inspiration on so many levels. And I think when he passed away, I don’t think anyone was really prepared
Montreal vs NYC
“When I got to Montreal, culturally, it kind of had everything I thought that New York was going to have, but Montreal actually had the stuff that New York was going to have, which was, which maybe it was in New York, but when I was there, I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t find it anywhere. I went to shows every night. When I was in New York, all I found was like people not from New York, being like, “I want to be in a famous band.” I was like, “Your band’s not going to be famous.” I felt like I was in a never-ending showcase of, like industry showcase. I was like, “No, that’s not what I was looking for.” Then when I got to Montreal, it was like, all of our first shows were at weird modern dance shows and there’d be a band playing or someone’s loft and we’d play records and dance afterwards. Rent was so incredibly cheap.”
On meeting (his wife and bandmate) Régine
Yeah. When I met Régine, I was still looking for a drummer. It was two years later. She was going to McGill at the time and I would hang out outside the drummers rooms trying to find a drummer. She saw me in the cafeteria. It’s a very small program and I pretty clearly didn’t go there. We were talking. I was describing to her what I was looking for. She was like, “Oh, you’re not going to find it here but I might know someone.” Then a couple of days later just by complete chance I saw her singing jazz at an art opening at Concordia and she was just the real deal, like a real singer. I talked to her and I was like, “We have to play music together.” Eventually we hung out and pretty much the first time we hung out we wrote the beginnings of a song called “Headlights Look Like Diamonds” and maybe two or three other songs basically in an hour and a half and that was that.
On Trump
Fuck Donald Trump.
Please register to vote today everyone, please. I know that it’s not ideal, but Hillary Clinton will be a great president. Donald Trump is a complete fuckin’ nightmare and a clown and a joke. It really is an extremely important election. You don’t have to hang out with Hillary, but Jesus Christ, vote for Hillary Clinton and just everyone register. It could not be heavier. The consequences can’t be more dire.
Expect a follow up to 2013’s Reflektor sometime next year, but Win gave no further insight to the release.
Good morning everyone!
First comment, but still: ‘You are posting too fast’!!! FIRST COMMENT! And of course I hadn’t copied and saved it…
Good morning!
Hey ho!
Good morning!
Like, does Win B. like to, like, say “like”? Don’t like. ;-s)
It’s, like, a generational thing.
I heard a rapper interviewed, a little while back, who said “know what i mean?” just as often: “nowh’meen?”
9-10 times in under 30 seconds, nowh’meen?
…knowwhamsayin…
Russ, yeah, that was it, actually.
I’ve yet to hear an interviewer reply “um, no, what *do* you mean?”
Good Morning.
Good morning, t!
taken from a reddit “what was your “holy shit we’re living in the future’ moment”, this:
” I convinced my dad to buy a micro 3d printer so that he can 3d print a second one for me. He looked at me like i was crazy until i sent him the link for the schematics lol. “
Win wishes he was in the that 80’s movie “Valley Girl” , if you don’t know it, like, look it up!
Totally…
quiet around here today….
Wynn… nice (almost) hockey hair man….
pf/russ oooooh, like gag me with a spoooon!
Apparently, Frank Zappa’s daughter (a young Moon Unit) is to blame for part of the spreading of valspeak.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb21lsCQ3EM
I sure remember the Valley Girl Speak from my day and it was far less pervasive than the “like” and “ya know what I mean” of today. In my house we call it Emoji Talk; “add some words to your sentence that mean something and stop with the Emoji Speak” That was me talking in my Mom voice BTW;)
Good morning! Back to the grind stone till March 17th!
@funhug Your latest adventures look wonderful. In March, where will that next holiday be?
Playa Negra, Guanacaste, Costa Rica!
Now that is worth waiting for!
@justin, Well at the time I wasn’t playing hockey anymore, so no excuses for that hair, it is what it is!
a Zappa interview on Letterman. He hated the San Fernando Valley – they get into it at the 5:00 mark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TZk1gYj2xo
I may have seen this interview…
Live (taped).
Watching that video, it’s interesting to see the word “dick” get bleeped. Sign of changing times, I guess.
Morning all! Meet Me In The Basement came on my R3 stream, so here I am.
Hi Darbar!
two thoughts:
1. My resume is almost done which is aweeesommee because writing your resume is terrible.
2. I am REALLY enjoying not going into an office everyday.
@Tiffy – do you think your enjoyment of not going into an office will influence your next career step?
As a WFH, I can appreciate that.
@janet – it will influence it, but maybe not for the next step. More like strategically figuring out how I can make this a thing. I haven’t even started to pursue freelance yet online. I figured I’d get my resume up and running.
Would be nice to find a role that has flexibility to work from home a few days a week though.
@Tiffy – makes sense. I hope you’re able to find something that will allow the telecommuting flexibility. I work from home now, though I’m pretty terrible at it, and go into an office more often than not, just to feel like I’m actually working.
hello. 🙂
great article Tiffy; I liked the pull quotes from the vid as I didn’t watch it, but read the words.
Working from home is maybe easier when there isn’t as many things calling you to do them? I like going to an office because otherwise the garden, the laundry, dog walking, even dishes… they all call to me and it’s hard to sit down and ignore all those things.
Chores never call me. Or maybe I am just really good at ignoring their shouts.
I’m definitely a chore answerer. It’s the only time I get them done 🙂
Listening to The Drunken Scoundrel, on the shortywaves, and he’s a-playin Chuck Berry!
zzzzzzzzzz
My son is interested in getting into voice over/voice acting and has taken a couple workshops. It was suggested that acting/improv classes would be good experience for him. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of options for it in Regina but we are looking. There were some auditions for a play the community theatre group are putting on so we went to check it out. Since I was there we both auditioned and it was a whole lot of fun. Now I am anxiously waiting to see if we got parts. If not, there is always stage crew!
Break a leg to you and your son DarBar!
Thanks Janet!
Spotify Free has some adware/malware issues right now. CBC R3 cut out again on me. KEXP wasn’t doing it for me this afternoon. Switched to my good old iTunes. Remember OX? Nice to hear them again.
Jenn Grant then Imaginary Cities. Nice.
yaay for good ol’ itunes. You inspired me Darbar, to go listen to CBCR3. Their app has been crap, so I haven’t been listening. but from a desktop it’s working this afternoon. 🙂
I can’t remember the last time I listened to R3
@fresh ginger – Good luck! I keep trying R3 and it mostly works but does crap out on me from time to time. My old OS is primarily to blame. They are playing quite a bit of music I like on there these days.
I had a big job in the kitchen today so I was able to listen to quite a bit of the interview with WB. I found the interviewers style quite boring and irritating for most of it but he loosened up in the second half. It sure made the redundent kitchen work easier. Thanks for sharing this with us all @tiffy.
also nice to go back and listen to some old arcade fire!
I hope to listen to/watch that Arcade Fire Interview later.
We are having a mix of rain and snow here today by the way. It was above 20 on the weekend and now snow. Geesh.
Darbar, hang onto it for a while, would you?
@morgana… whatchya doing in the kitchen… peeling tomatoes? I’ve finished dealing with almost all of my tomato harvest (finally). Canned my ass off for a couple nights this week.. till 1am. but 30 pints of red hot salsa, 12 of tomatillo salsa and 12 of green tomato and apple chutney are all in the pantry now. Well technically they are still on the counter, but soon they shall migrate.
SNOW??!!
It’s no wonder you middle earth (errr… middle Canada) folks are so good at winter sports.
@fresh ginger Wow! that is a lot of work you did there!!
I have been making sauces and putting them on kale and dehydrating.
@fresh you must have one heck of a “fall harvest” play list to get you through those late night canning b’s.
I don’t have much use for tomatoes any more other than a few in salads so i don’t can them any more.
S N O W!
I am not ready.
Speaking of which, I should get outside and do more yard clean up … also a bit more garlic to plant.
@morgana
I love dehydrated saucy kale. Are you using soaked cashews? (one of my faves).
I have been too busy dealing with plums, tomatoes and apples to do anything to the kale other than admire it’s sturdy greenness. I also do not have my garlic planted yet. But I’ve been selling seed garlic this year because I have so much, and it’s really nice and big (if I do say so myself. heh).
Podcasts are my friends on those late nights. I’ve been binge-listening to Criminal, among others.
@fresh well you could be my not so secret santa this year and share some of your garlic bounty!
here are some of the recipes I use for the kale
http://www.dehydratorreview.net/articles/kale-roundup-six-recipes-dehydrated-kale-chips
I supported my daughter through canning apple sauce a few weeks ago. Many hours but we have fun too. We only argued over whose turn it was to pick the music 😉
@darbar it is a very long interview and i ditched when it came to question period but I may get back to it later.
It made me realize that I need to fire up some old Wolfe Parade, Chromeo and … ug, when you watch it please keep your ears open for the names of bands that inspired him early on in the band.
I did find it odd that he did not mention Owen Pallet at all …
I will try to pay attention to that morgana. I wish I lived in Montreal sometimes. I love the music that comes out of there.
I am hopeful this snow will not be sticking around.
@darbar did you end up uninstalling the free Spotify?
I noticed a name in this write up about the malware that I recognized from the R3 blog “tonyonly”
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2016/10/spotify-delivering-ads-infested-with-malware-say-multiple-users.html
but I thought he went by “onlytony”. do you remember?
I don’t remember onlytony or tonyonly. No I haven’t uninstalled Spotify yet. I am waiting a bit to see what happens.
I just broke the housemates thermos flask 🙁
If it’s a real Thermos, you can probably replace the inner vacuum sleeve. Bummer, but it’s not an arm…
I think it’s an off brand flask but I just bought a replacement on ebay and it’s due to arrive on Monday