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A Tale or Two about Day For Night
"Day For Night is for the fearsome and the catchy, the vice-ridden and the
retired, for the brooders and the bloomers."
Gord Downie
Sometime in the early summer of '93, while planning a European tour, and
idea popped into my head. We had an open period of four days between the
Halfweg(?) Festival (in Amsterdam) and the Glastonbury Festival in England.
Instead of travelling to northern England before Glastonbury (as was
proposed) why not remain in Amsterdam, find a small studio and work on
some song ideas? The prospect of hanging out in one of our favorite cities was
considerably more appealing than a few quick gigs across the channel, and,
fortunately, reason prevailed.
So, we found ourselves at the Sleep In-part nightclub, part youth hostel with a
small studio in the basement perfect for making demos. I don't know whether
this session was the very first for what would become Day For Night but, it
was one of the earliest and it and was certainly productive. Three or four days
is not a great amount of time to produce fantastic, spot-on recordings, but it's
just the right amount to get the ideas down on tape and that was the main
reasons for these sessions. Of course, some ideas were more complete than
others ("Nautical Disaster" was taking shape, while "Scared" was only a happy
melody on Paul's guitar) and some ideas never surfaced beyond the Sleep In
sessions. However, any idea, riff, tune or whatever, if on tape, is fair game for
future poaching, and a great deal of tape was run in those few days. Mark
Vreeken, our live front of house engineer, was at the helm and would remain
there for every session save those co-produced by the band and Mark Howard.
Dave Koster(?) (aka Billy Ray) acted as the ever-present studio assistant. That
allowed me to roam the streets of Amsterdam in search of musical supplies or
whatever else we may have needed. I did spend some time in studio each day
but, not being well-versed in the art of recording, it was best for me to stay out
of everyone's way.
After our few days in Amsterdam we spent another twelve touring northern
Europe, playing festivals for the most part. Schuttorf(?), Rosklide, Torhout
and Werchter(?); these are the festival that make Europe a fantastic place for
a good band to tour. Not a great deal of bullshit, just a group of smart people
doing a good job. European promoters, and certainly the fans, are
broad-minded enough that a bill featuring Sugar, Faith No More and Metallica
is the perfect gig for The Tragically Hip. One result of our European
experiences was the confidence to put on our own festival style tour in
Canada. We called it "Another Roadside Attraction", the name being stolen
from a Tom Robbins novel. The Hip headlined a bill that included Midnight
Oil, Crash Vegas, Hothouse Flowers, Daniel Lanois and on the west coast,
World Party and Pere Ubu. The twelve dates on that tour were twelve of the
best concerts anywhere, anytime. Some of the fun can be seen in a feature
length video directed by Gord Downie's brother, Mike. Called "Heksenketel"
(a Dutch word for witch's cauldron), it runs about 70 minutes. The title
comes from the original name of Another Roadside Attraction. Aside from the
filming and live show, the band was also jamming backstage almost daily and
new songs were taking shape as the tour progressed.
continued...
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