English transcript of the episode with Danny and Vincent Peake Groovy Aardvark : Eater's digest (Part 2)
Please note : This is an English translation of an automated (yet perfected) AI transcript. It is provided for informational purposes only. While we did our best to capture the vibe, automated tools can sometimes twist spoken words—especially with our local Quebec slang! For official or accurate reference, please consult the original audio episode.
Hugo Lachance: We are here on May 28, 2026, broadcasting from the Salle des Tortues in Montreal. And today, it's the second part of the interview with the Peake brothers. So, last time, we didn't even make it to the album, actually. That's why we're picking it up again today. It starts right on the other side of the theme song.
Hugo Lachance: Hello everyone! Before continuing with this magnificent episode, I want to thank my sponsors. First of all, the Salle des Tortues. It's the place where we are right now. It's a green screen cyclorama studio, a room you can rent to shoot music videos, do tutorials, comedy shows, corporate events, anything. So I invite you to contact Véro and search for the Salle des Tortues on the internet. And it's fully equipped: cameras, sound, lights, atmosphere, everything is there. So thank you very much, Véro, for lending us your room. Also, I want to thank Vlad and his team over at Hopera because Hopera is a microbrewery located in the Saguenay region. They are a really cool and professional crew. A super good restaurant on Saint-Dominique Street in Jonquière, but also their brand-new factory in the industrial park where you can pick up their beers, do some tasting at the counter, and play a game of foosball. Plus, it's a crew that is highly involved in culture, in the Saguenay and everywhere else. They love building connections. So I'm really happy they are sponsoring this episode, even if we aren't drinking Hopera tonight. So thanks to Vlad and his whole crew. Thank you very much, Vincent and Danny Peake. Good evening.
Danny Peake: Salut Hugo.
Hugo Lachance: Shall we go for it?
Danny Peake: Good evening again!
Hugo Lachance: Yes! As I was saying earlier, last time we didn't even get around to listening to the album, so just to be sure, we're gonna start with that. Before we begin, did you listen back to the album to prepare for the interview?
Vincent Peake: I don't really need to listen to it. But yesterday I received the test pressings for the second vinyl run. My time is gonna be spent listening to the same album five times over to determine which one has the fewest scratches or pops in it. Because that specific record will ensure that the next 500 will be OK when they are pressed. So it's very important to find as few flaws as possible. So I received those yesterday, I went over to Slam Disques, meaning I have hours and hours of listening to do on this record to make sure I find the one with the fewest scratches, because no vinyl is perfect. When they press them, particles fall through the air. None of them are perfect. Do we have to live with the scratches? We have to live with as few scratches as possible. So my job over the next few days will be to find out. I made myself a chart: whenever I hear a pop, I put a tally mark. I choose the one with the fewest marks. So it's heavy work because it's important; the scratches you accept are the ones that will be on the final album.
Hugo Lachance: And you're the only one doing that in the band?
Vincent Peake: I'm the only one with a turntable.
Hugo Lachance: Really? That's classic.
Danny Peake: A turntable? And no cell phone, Vincent Peake!
Hugo Lachance: Oh.
Vincent Peake: I have a cell phone now. And it spins!
Hugo Lachance: So we're here to talk about the album because it's been 32 years since it came out, right?
Vincent Peake: Yes, it came out on November 24, 1994.
Hugo Lachance: And when will the vinyl editions be ready?
Vincent Peake: As soon as I'm done listening to this. We're doing it with Drummond Vinyle. They are there, they're just waiting for my call on the test pressings.
Hugo Lachance: So the episode will be broadcast in mid-July, will they be available?
Vincent Peake: We had 500 of them. It's not too bad, these aren't massive orders. One thing with Angine de Poitrine, they press their own vinyl because otherwise they'd be cutting in front of everyone else in Quebec. Well, I didn't listen back to the whole album, but earlier I was stuck in traffic and I had time to review almost all the tunes.
Hugo Lachance: OK, that's cool. What about you, Danny, how long has it been since you listened to it?
Danny Peake: I listened to it the day before yesterday.
Hugo Lachance: Ah yes, OK.
Danny Peake: I regularly listen to the two albums I was a part of, because those are the two records where I do the most backing vocals with Groovy when I'm not behind the drums. I listen to it regularly for my practice, to practice my vocals.
Hugo Lachance: OK. And do you perform in the live shows?
Vincent Peake: Exactly. That's it. In the dressing room, an hour before, Danny listens to Groovy's tracks on his phone to do the best job possible. Oh, cool, Danny! He takes it to heart and we're always happy to have him with us, always that matter of respect for those who come out to see us.
Hugo Lachance: Yes! And now, we start a marathon heading straight to the end of my playlist. We're going with a classic: "Y’a tu kelkun ?".
Hugo Lachance: On November 22, 2019, Alexandre Vigneault wrote for La Presse: "'Y’a tu kelkun pour m’allumer?' [Is there anyone to light my fuse?] roars Vincent Peake in the first song of Eater’s Digest. Groovy Aardvark had already been stirring things up for plenty of years when this record came out on November 24, 1994. But the Quebec music scene hadn't yet emerged from its 1980s pop slumber, and impatience was felt here. The question mark is actually a fist slammed on the table. It was a cry from the heart to which a lot of people connected. Many of us were feeling a sort of void, recalls guitarist Martin Dupuis, talking about the youth of the era. 'Y’a tu kelkun?' is a call, a way of screaming. Are there others looking for something else? adds bassist Vincent Peake. Are there others who think like us?'"
Vincent Peake: That's exactly it. This tune was born when my roommate at the time, Karéa Audette—who is a fan of Groovy because she came to see us every single Friday night when we were young—told me: "You should sing in French." It's my first tune in French, so it holds that special weight. And we listened to a lot of Charlebois back then. I was discovering Quebec rock right around that time, and particularly the 1972 Charlebois album, because it blew me away. OK, this is hot stuff right here! And she tells me: "You know, people would connect more if they could understand the lyrics," because before that, we sang in English, and we sang fast. Our band was called The Right back then. There were so many lyrics for the speed of the tracks. I was totally worn out. She finally was the one who pushed me to do the exercise.
Vincent Peake: OK, so you have to know before we start all this: there are a ton of tracks on this record that were part of the same long, long tune I had written at the beginning. And we really loved prog. So there's "Y’a tu kelkun ?", but there's also "Plasma Bells," "Recess," "Grimaces"... It was all one single song. I decided, after our prog period, to write a short tune. I am capable of making a track that's two minutes and 30 seconds. And that was "Y’a tu kelkun ?". Not only is it in French, but it's also like the first time we wrote a short track to say things directly, because I listened to a lot of Genesis back then, and they decided to make more pop music in the 80s.
Vincent Peake: I said to myself: "Christ, I think I can measure up to that too, and write a good one, but one that hits hard." Yes, "Y’a tu kelkun ?" written with "k's," it's in joual. It's totally joual [Quebec working-class French]. And that's it, it's an open call to everyone to know where we stand. We were experiencing a shift in rock music in Quebec and globally too, I'd say. Grunge was proof of that. It's like an SOS to find out. I thought I wasn't alone in my crew to think this way, so that was the question. "Y’a tu kelkun ?" standing with us? Are there others who have something to complain about too? Someone who has a problem?
Hugo Lachance: Yes, that's wild.
Vincent Peake: That was a line everyone used to say back then: "Does someone have a problem here?" The fact that we borrowed Quebec joual definitely propelled that song into the ears of a lot of people. It was the main riff that drove that groove. That's the tune I kept. And it was the first time too that I sang the melody. Usually, I liked being a bit like Rush or having a melody that's different from the bassline, and here we lock into the timing. We do everything at the same time. And the other big influence on this track is Jane’s Addiction. They had tracks online that became my favorite band, tracks that were short and packed a punch.
Vincent Peake: So it started thanks to Karéa Audette. I forced myself to write in joual. The only other example around back then was Banlieue Rouge. But Banlieue, they wrote more from a standard base. We talked about that the first time. So I wanted to detach myself a bit from that to go pure joual à la Charlebois, or à la Plume. And represent our generation, a continuity of what Quebec rock meant to us at the time.
Hugo Lachance: Yeah, because B.A.R.F. did that too.
Vincent Peake: B.A.R.F. did that, "Woah tabarnak" and all that. Yes, yes, exact, it's pretty much around the same time.
Danny Peake: Today you're gonna tell me, what on earth is "Néo-sorcière-maskarage-tondeuse"? What is that?
Vincent Peake: I used to hang out at the Foufounes Électriques back when I started going there. When Groovy started playing in '87, there was a barmaid. She had a cool mohawk, and she had her makeup stretched way out like that. Yes, she’s the witch, that "makeup-masquerade-lawnmower" look.
Hugo Lachance: Yes, yes, we talked about it in the last episode.
Vincent Peake: So it was an image of my new acquaintance with the Montreal underground, if you will, the Foufounes Électriques. And she was super nice, really she was beautiful, but she was like "Wow!" Personally, I didn't know anything about that world, I didn't have friends like that yet. So "néo-sorcière-maskarage-tondeuse." It came about because I spent a lot of time mowing lawns over there back then.
Danny Peake: You earn a living however you can.
Vincent Peake: I like to have wordplay and make people think a little bit.
Hugo Lachance: But since you're singing in French for the first time, you say it's in joual, but it's still quite colorful at its core, in that classic Groovy way. It had an identity.
Vincent Peake: Yes. And then, I realized that it was fun.
Hugo Lachance: But I hadn't picked up on the Charlebois connection, for example. It's true, now that you tell me, I'm making the links.
Vincent Peake: Musically maybe not so much. But lyrically, yes. We had no other example in our style of music. You had to look toward Charlebois or toward Offenbach. But we were pretty much among the first to dare vernacularize our rock. And, evidently, it worked out great because even back then, we toured quite a bit in the regions, and people didn't speak English all that much. So it truly connected heavily with a lot of people who finally understood a bit of what I was saying.
Vincent Peake: But despite lines like "Dans mes bras man" [In my arms, man], it felt like a reunion.
Hugo Lachance: That part took a long time before I caught on. I thought you were saying "Y’a pas de problème" [There's no problem]. And I just got it recently, too!
Vincent Peake: "Dans mes bras man." People still come up to tell me that. It's a beautiful line. And even with girls, it works just as well. It was definitive for us to take this francophone turn and it followed us for the albums to come.
Danny Peake: There are two things I take away from "Y’a tu kelkun ?". The first is when Claude Rajotte reviewed Eater’s Digest on MusiquePlus at the Cimetière des CDs [The CD Cemetery]. It seems we were watching that live together, because we knew he was gonna do it. And MusiquePlus helped us out a lot. Then Claude Rajotte said: "Well, it's the first track, it's the standout track of the album." We were so happy to get a positive review. Because he had massive influence, everyone listened to Claude Rajotte. And the other memory is the first time I heard it mixed and mastered. I felt it really hit hard! The drums sounded like a ton of bricks. I was genuinely happy. There are two distinct sounds on Eater's Digest: there are tracks with Martin Pelletier, and tracks with Martin Dupuis. Martin Pelletier, R.I.P. "Y’a tu kelkun ?" was done with Martin Dupuis, more recent, so the sound is reworked and it sounds a bit better. It’s a unique feature of this album.
Hugo Lachance: And plus, you were talking about joual, that continued onto Vacuum afterward.
Vincent Peake: Yes, that's it. When we saw that it was working, especially with the direct connection to the crowd, we told ourselves we were onto something. Like I was saying last time, every band in Quebec had international goals. There came a time when we said: "Alright well, it doesn't look like that's gonna happen," so let's go all out for Quebec. And we realized that we have fertile ground here. We have massive fans of punk rock and metal in Quebec, of off-the-beaten-path music, and it was a good decision we made.
Hugo Lachance: Personally, I remember when I was younger, when I heard that track for the first time, it always remained among my favorites. There's such a beautiful energy to it. What a beautiful album intro, too!
Vincent Peake: Yeah. You bet! There are two bass tracks on that at the turn. I recorded two different ones. It started out well, but I found it wasn't powerful enough. It was the first time I down-tuned my bass to create an octaver effect.
Hugo Lachance: How old were you when you did that?
Vincent Peake: I was 27. Danny was 26. We've been following each other since that time. We're only 16 months apart!
Hugo Lachance: OK, but that's great. Because I was asking that since Groovy's compositions were quite complex compared to what else was being done.
Danny Peake: Well, "Y’a tu kelkun ?", like I said earlier, was part of a track that lasted, I think, 17 minutes. We chopped that up and it yielded "Y’a tu kelkun ?", "Grimaces," "Ike," "L'autre bord"...
Vincent Peake: It's cool because recently, Stéphane Vigeant sent me a video of Groovy at Terre des Hommes. We played at La Ronde, at the Jardin des Étoiles in '91 with Me Mom & Morgentaler. We start with that medley. He had that in his archives. It's wild! Stéphane Vigeant, the original guitarist of Groovy. He kept all of that too. I don't even know who was filming, but you see the whole old gang from Longueuil. We had opened for Me Mom & Morgentaler and we had done a block in D, a block in A, then a block in E. My roommate Julie Slater had cardboard signs with all the names written down, a bit like in boxing. Now we're in this style, now we've reached this track... it was hot! We were ambitious. Packing a lot of music into so little time. But the prog side, at some point, it's also because you want to reach as many people as possible. So I split that into four and "Y’a tu kelkun ?" became the two-minute track we know.
Hugo Lachance: OK. Wow! And that was an entry point for a lot of people to discover Groovy Aardvark as well.
Vincent Peake: Yes, absolutely. And we made a video for 3,500 bucks in a small barn in Old Montreal. It shows all the energy deployed around the band. Everyone who is in the video is a friend of ours, except for Georgette who was the drag queen. Everyone participated. It was chilly, I remember, but we had so much fun making it. We improvise, go, we shoot and we run with it.
Hugo Lachance: That's the punk DIY spirit right there.
Vincent Peake: Absolutely. It was our first music video, and MusiquePlus picked it up.
Hugo Lachance: Well, great! We realize how important MusiquePlus was now that they're gone. With hindsight, too.
Vincent Peake: What was cool with MusiquePlus was that there was no specific style, no niche. They played anything as long as the track was decent. We were part of the alternative rock wave in Quebec thanks to the know-how of MusiquePlus.
Danny Peake: In fact, they realized that something was happening in Montreal that year: there was GrimSkunk, B.A.R.F., Raid, tons of good bands coming out. If it had been up to radio stations, it would have flown ten feet over our heads. The only one who played us was Too Tall on CHOM.
Hugo Lachance: Yeah, you spoke about him.
Danny Peake: He was one of those who took an interest in what was new, always curious and on the lookout. Whereas the others were has-beens. But yeah. Thanks to MusiquePlus.
Hugo Lachance: Beautiful. "Y’a tu kelkun ?", yes. We move on to "Plasma Bells." Well, it's cruel but we can't listen to the tracks in full, so if you are curious to discover them, go listen to the full tracks. I say that because your songs are complex and shift a lot!
Vincent Peake: There's a lot to say on that.
Danny Peake: Right off the bat, it doesn't sound at all like "Y’a tu kelkun ?". The sound is completely different. Martin Pelletier recorded half of Eater's Digest. For me, "Plasma Bells" is one of the tracks I'm proudest of because the beat in the bridge is the beat I recorded with Groovy that I'm most proud of.
Vincent Peake: You learn something new every day!
Danny Peake: It's not easy. When you break it down, the right hand does this, then the left hand does that. Doing all that together... I find the bridge in the middle is what makes the song.
Vincent Peake: The genesis of that tune comes from my other roommate, Julie Slater, who was studying dance in downtown Montreal. Usually she listened to music on a loop. She told me: "My teacher thinks it would be cool if there were real musicians who came to accompany us while we do our exercises." So Danny and I went. Danny played the djembé and I had a riff that gallops a bit. So I wrote that riff for Julie Slater's dance class. It was the best job in the world: beautiful girls in leotards! So I wrote that riff in relation to a dance class.
Vincent Peake: I wrote the lyrics in connection to the dance class. And the lyrics are very gripping. We had a best friend named Andrew Garby. Andrew was the best friend of Marc-André Thibert in Saint-Lambert. Andrew was a guy who tripped on New Wave, he had a mohawk, he was super cool. He kind of jumped into hardcore with us because we were buddies. Andrew was our first videographer, the one who did our lighting. He went to Cégep Édouard-Montpetit. Then he caught cancer and died at 23. When I heard the news, I was in Montreal. Dave Boisseau reached me on the phone and said "it’s a sad day Andrew is dead." I arrived in Longueuil and we were a big gang gathering together to comfort each other. Above our toilet, there was a plastic box with a bell that was the doorbell, but it had always been disconnected, the wire was chopped. We get there, and the box rings! It rang again. I said to myself: "Andrew is saying hello, he's telling me bye."
Hugo Lachance: Yeah, OK!
Vincent Peake: And "Plasma Bells" comes from there. It's what you hear inside the walls. We don't know what it is, it's the plasma bell. Like ghosts. So that's the story. We aren't alone. Those things can't be explained. The bell was disconnected, but it rang anyway, like a bit crooked. It's inexplicable. Obviously, we did it for Andrew. We aren't alone!
Danny Peake: It’s impossible for it to ring, it never rang, the wire was chopped!
Vincent Peake: It's a tribute to Andrew, peace to his soul.
Hugo Lachance: You mentioned the djembé earlier, how do you handle percussion? Because there's a lot of percussion in almost all the tracks.
Danny Peake: Yes, well, the percussionist is Louis Bélanger. Along with Martin Pelletier, they came from a group called The Affected in Longueuil.
Vincent Peake: I went to school with Martin Pelletier in cégep. David Pelletier, Martin's brother, was recognized as the best bassist on the South Shore back then. He became a conductor for Cirque du Soleil after doing his program at Berklee in Boston, he was in composition. Them and DBC were my two favorite bands in Montreal. Even if DBC were less friendly, they were fuckin’ good! We loved them a lot, we went to see The Affected live. And that's how we recruited Martin and Louis. Particularly on this track, there are a lot of bells. We were five for a stretch. Louis and Danny were really close friends. Louis is the first punk I met in cégep in '84. He arrived in class and planted himself in the desks with a big mohawk.
Vincent Peake: He saw me with my Metallica logo and told me: "Man, you know Metallica?" That's how we became buddies.
Danny Peake: He was part of the crew from that era that drove around in a hearse.
Vincent Peake: We invited Louis to be a percussionist because he missed his band which no longer existed. We gave him a good helping hand to get known. We had the joy of having Martin and Louis with us. There's a lot of percussion on this record, courtesy of Louis.
Danny Peake: Louis helped me a lot because I am a self-taught musician. Louis did his college diploma in music on drums. When he arrived as a percussionist in Groovy, he showed me tons of practice techniques. We became the best friends in the world. In fact, he's the godfather of my oldest son.
Hugo Lachance: We shout him out! All good for Plasma Bells? We go with "Covert Action."
Hugo Lachance: We were saying last episode that Groovy wasn't afraid to play in major keys and make happy tracks.
Vincent Peake: The main riff, the first one you hear, is a residual riff from Marc-André Thibert's old band, Bad Results. It's a riff they played back then but never recorded. I asked him if we could use it because I thought it was good. It was based on a riff from another incredible hardcore band called Genetic Control. They had a track called "Urban Cowboy." Marc-André took the riff and sped it up. We were massive fans, so we were honored to be able to defend it. By that point, we were very experimental. After "Covert Action," there's the whole middle section that's more jazzy. At that moment, I had just acquired my fretless Precision Bass (Fender P-Bass). It was quite tough to record to get it to sound right. Groovy loved switching styles rapidly. This is a clear example of that. It flies along! Those are the first clean tones Groovy used. M.A. and Martin Pelletier could polish the sounds at the Plante Verte studio. We went as clean as possible.
Danny Peake: Four times the same thing. It's not over-complicating things, but it's perfect. Yes. Afterward, doing a kind of solo from four sides, chisel, chisel, chisel, it's because I wouldn't have been able to do a solo like that; I wasn't skillful enough yet to... OK, I understand, I understand the effect. Normally, you leave your hand on the frets, but with a fretless, you have to be right on it otherwise it slips.
Hugo Lachance: Otherwise it sounds out of tune.
Vincent Peake: Yeah, but that comes heavily from Pink Floyd's The Wall. There's a lot of fretless on that. Yes, it's true, there's a lot of that sound. We were massive fans of Floyd, obviously. So there, that shifts on its own, you know. And after that, we drop into B, it's cool. That was always, at the time, one of the highlights of the live show where we take you somewhere else entirely. And we come back with tant-tant-tant during the track.
Danny Peake: It's a track that mirrors our hardcore years when we started out. It's residual from those years, absolutely. Those are total punchlines right there. Yes.
Vincent Peake: And lyrics by Stéphane Vigeant.
Hugo Lachance: Ah yes, OK.
Vincent Peake: Meaning it's about covert actions by the government for things done a bit on the quiet, you know. Yes, yes, like they still do today. The word "covert" meant nothing to me at the time; Stéphane brought it to me. Stéphane wrote those lyrics, so it's a beautiful piece of teamwork.
Hugo Lachance: Ah, perfect. That's good. We move on to "Pace." Here we go!
Vincent Peake: Dan had 24 toms at the time, and I tried to use them as much as possible. For sure.
Danny Peake: In fact, I had reduced my kit; I just had the two small toms... one was like the other, I had three like that. Then yeah, two on top, but tiny on top. And those small toms, you hear them the best, they are part of the beat. You could hear us on that right there.
Hugo Lachance: Well, they are small toms that pack a punch like roto-toms a bit.
Vincent Peake: Exactly. Exactly, right on it, yeah.
Hugo Lachance: Marie-Christine Blais, La Presse, January 14, 1995: "In addition to the eclecticism of their musical influences, Groovy Aardvark (translate as cool anteater) have the distinct feature of composing in both English and French. The album also includes three songs in the language of Tremblay. I have a strong weakness for their French track—ah! the intro to 'Déraille'—but I must admit that the stories told in English are often more interesting. I'm thinking notably of 'Pace,' which tells the true story of this gentleman who walks all day long back and forth on Chambly Road, grunting, without pronouncing a single word."
Vincent Peake: Exactly.
Hugo Lachance: That's it.
Vincent Peake: She was cool, she is old-school. But yes. Indeed, we agree it's a track that was recorded later. It sounds a bit better; it wasn't there before the recording sessions for Eater’s Digest. It's a track I had in mind for a stretch, that I managed to place. And you hear that it's a bit fresher, different from the others. Yes, yes, yes, I love it a lot. In any case, the synchronization between the guitars... then Danny, you see that he is immediately able to accentuate the other outer guitar. Dan is a pianist in life, and a bit like Alain from GrimSkunk, he understands composition. Yes, there is a lot to feel out, to place. Accentuating in the right spot, that's important. So it was a track in tribute to this gentleman whom we heard grunting all day long. Because we lived near Chambly Road back then, it sounded like bagna bagna bagna. And we called him Baga baga. That’s why we called him Baga Baga. But the legend has it that he was a civil engineer who had designed many of the roads in Longueuil and that his wife and daughter were killed on one of the roads he had built and designed, and that he never recovered from it. That's the legend, I didn't invent that. I heard that because I did some research on this guy. Something happened to this man that made him break like that. We talk about his size, he was a big guy, but he was… a bit like the Great Antonio but smaller. He was a big guy, but with hair as if you had never cut it. He always had snot in his beard. Then he always wore his sort of blue coat. Then there, he would start off again, the entire length of Chambly Road. He wasn't really there anymore, and he was moving. I already tried talking to him. You know, he scared everyone, so you don't bother him, you watch him go and he is like unreachable. He broke in two like that.
Hugo Lachance: And did your research lead you toward what you wanted to know?
Vincent Peake: That's what I learned, so that's what the story tells. A tribute to this gentleman. And he wasn't that old, he looked old, but he was a bit like us. But "Pace," it's like the cadence.
Hugo Lachance: Yes, like something a little bit…
Vincent Peake: A bit crooked, there, because he was walking. At some point, when you walk fourteen kilometers a day, your legs end up not following anymore. Your feet hurt. Personally, I live in the Centre-Sud now, and the people on the street, they all limp; they walk so much, their shoes are no longer good.
Hugo Lachance: I love doing the podcast for that, to truly know the little secrets. It really makes me trip out.
Vincent Peake: Like I say, we love true stories, stories that mean something that we lived or witnessed. That is important. So it's a tribute to this dear gentleman.
Hugo Lachance: But it's true that the drums sound great in there. It's sure that here, the drums have their full place because there isn't too much guitar.
Vincent Peake: But yeah, yeah, well it's more spaced out. So yes, yes, but it's the same sound as "Y'a tu kelkun ?" And there, this is the riff from Baker’s Pie, from the first demo.
Hugo Lachance: Ah OK, OK.
Vincent Peake: It must be the ninth track on the 1987 demo. A track by Steph, Stéphane Vigeant, is never far from us. There is always a major contribution because he left us a lot of interesting musical information. It was pretty much Steph who created that sound at the start without knowing it, and I ran with it when I got together with M.A. So it's trippy to go dig into the drawer of what's already there. Why not remake a piece from back then? It's a demo we picked back up, basically.
Hugo Lachance: Yes, of course. It belongs to you guys!
Vincent Peake: I remember that Franz from GrimSkunk loved this track a lot, he found it very interesting. So I was proud, it's a track deeply felt in relation to people to whom absolutely undefinable traumas happen.
Hugo Lachance: Wow! I'm really glad to see that. We continue with a classic, "Localvicie."
Hugo Lachance: You hear it? It sounds like a Rickenbacker a mile away! The bass really cuts through in this track!
Vincent Peake: It's perhaps my favorite from this album. Yeah, I find it's everything Groovy is capable of doing; it encompasses the whole melodic side and the rhythmic richness that this band has to offer. There are so many different rhythms in this train, but all of it holds together well. Very well written.
Hugo Lachance: Yes, yes, yes.
Vincent Peake: Another riff by Stéphane Vigeant. Yes, because when Stéphane left the band, he left me the cassette with all his riffs that we hadn't used, including this one which is representative of what Stéphane was composing at the time. It was completely new.
Vincent Peake: I'm there, and I did the bassline to be right at the very, very bottom. And I had already tuned down to D for "Y’a tu kelkun ?" I do the same thing for "Localvicie," the big note. It's not an E, it's a D, so a whole tone lower.
Hugo Lachance: OK.
Vincent Peake: So it adds a bit more bottom. Just the heavy string.
Vincent Peake: Then I started off with the verses, with the bass all on its own. This is the true story of an alternative rock band from Longueuil that has no other choice to survive during the long winter months than to engage in bacterial culture. That was Karéa Audette again who influenced me to sing in French. She made kefir. Kefir is when you put a few ingredients in a Mason jar, and you put it in the sun, it ferments, it rises, it grows. Yes, that's it, you eat it. It replaces meat well. It’s completely un-fuckin-eatable! You put a bit of molasses on it, it'll be fine, it'll go down easier. But everything you hear, this track, it represents Groovy at that time. When we practiced above the Delight Donuts that was there at the time, the toast... "Toast, toast, would you kindly tell me what it's doing in the sauce?" It's that we didn't have enough money to buy meat. So we put bread in the sauce so that it would swell up a bit more, to give us the impression of eating something more substantial.
Hugo Lachance: It went well. Yes, yes, yes.
Vincent Peake: That's it, we did it like that. I'm not the only one, I've chatted about it with people who told me: "Well, we did that too." It's an old recipe. It's like adding water to the soup.
Hugo Lachance: Away from Voivod told me the same story when he was staying in an apartment in Montreal. He had left the Saguenay. He said he had used the toaster and cockroaches came out of it.
Vincent Peake: Dinner is ready!! All those tracks tell exactly what we were living through at that moment. You have to know that during the week, everyone hung out at our place because Butch, our manager, was the cégep dealer. So everyone came to our place, we were a headquarters.
Danny Peake: I don't know how you guys did it, there was constant coming and going in that room. In fact, there was the apartment, and then there was the rehearsal space next door; you walked down three or four steps and it was the cellar next door. There was always, always people there, man! NEVER any privacy, never zero, none. Personally, I would have never been able to. The door was open. At one point, even man, the door was open, you guys were in your rooms. I walked in, I unplugged the TV and I walked away with it. I left it downstairs. Then, I walked back up and said: "Guys, guys, where is the TV? We got our TV stolen." Well yeah, but with the door open... Then I went back upstairs to check.
Vincent Peake: There was so much coming and going, the door never locked.
Hugo Lachance: But rent wasn't expensive, right?
Vincent Peake: But also, we trusted the people around us. That's clear. We only got robbed once, apart from Danny who stole the TV to show us an example. But for me, in any case, I had given myself body and soul to the music, and I liked being at the center of the eye of the storm, if you will.
Hugo Lachance: Yes.
Vincent Peake: It's true. But you know, we smoked a lot back then too. So I was in the space, I wrote tracks, I loved it, I stayed there. It was really different. It was all fun people too, generally there was mutual respect.
Hugo Lachance: Mutual.
Vincent Peake: Mutual. But I wondered when you walk into our place: you behave yourself. Yes, OK.
Hugo Lachance: You can smoke a joint, but it wasn't a shooting gallery either, you know.
Vincent Peake: No, no. First off, there are no hard drugs there, no heroin at least. And there were a lot of girls with us back then. So be polite, behave yourself. Be an ally in life, otherwise you're gonna be in deep trouble. I'll give you food, I'll give you sauce with bread in it, but be cool.
Danny Peake: With a little bit of kefir for dessert.
Hugo Lachance: Looks like it!
Vincent Peake: Three times a week, to lose the belly, we’d crank up the heat in the space and sweat buckets. The Melissa restaurant downstairs, with pain and misery, caught forks mid-air. Because Georges, who was the owner of the restaurant and of about four kilometers of all the businesses on Chambly Road—an old Greek guy—said: "Ah, when you play, everything falls in the restaurant!" But he liked us fine anyway because we had taken over that space, we had totally renovated it. We redone all of that like champions. André, Butch and I spent the summer of '88 redoing our apartment. We asked our artist friends to paint the walls of the space. It was super beautiful. It's a genuinely calm and inspiring place where you could hang out. The door was open literally pretty much all the time. And "Localvicie" tells the story of that period of our life.
Hugo Lachance: Super. I just want to say that for me, "Toast, toast, would you kindly tell me what it's doing in the sauce," are my favorite lyrics. I'm glad to know that's just what it is, but at the same time, it's everything.
Vincent Peake: Yes. It can be told. And once again, it comes a bit from "Y’a tu kelkun ?" There are people who throw themselves into an apartment alone, they don't have a cent, and instead of stealing or doing bad things, you organize your life with friends. So it was a beautiful period of roommate living. We were all pretty new to taking charge of ourselves as adults. And plus, we offered music three sets a night on Friday nights, it was an exchange.
Hugo Lachance: Yes, it's a good way to build a solid fanbase.
Vincent Peake: All those people are still our friends to this day. We continue with "Recess."
Vincent Peake: Martin Pelletier's little handbook. It's a bad note at the end, I don't know how it slipped through anyway, but it's clearly a bad note.
Vincent Peake: Martin Pelletier and all his wah-wah wonder! But that was part of the famous 13-minute prog track from the start with "Y’a tu kelkun ?", "Plasma Bells," and "Recess" is the 3rd. I had taken the decision to make it a short track too because the riff is very good, and I found it got lost in the windings. You hear all of Martin Pelletier's expertise on that, all the solos. Martin loved his wah-wah. It can be annoying, but he used it incredibly well, he made it sing.
Hugo Lachance: It's true.
Vincent Peake: And we weren't into wah-wah for five cents back then. So it was truly a new sound for Groovy. Martin had a swing, that guy, he knew his scales like an absolute champion. He was so gifted like his brother David. He has a lot to do with the sonority of this record, of this track. Plus lyrics by Stéphane Vigeant, a kind of cryptic text like the late race to zero which means nothing but sounds good.
Hugo Lachance: Yeah.
Vincent Peake: Steph was good at that, unlike me who told stories. He rhymed well, he was super talented. For a guy who had never played guitar in his life when I met him, to be able to write beautiful music like that and create lyrics... The track was called "Recess Of The Mind" at the start. On the album Fast Times at Longueuil High, we do the original version which is much more complex. Personally, I had taken that riff to make a track in its own right. This is a track where Martin Dupuis doesn't play. Pelletier had a Hiwatt amp, which sounded a bit like a razor. His right hand—damn, was he funky! You hear Martin Pelletier's riff. It sounds a bit like a razor. Martin doesn't give a damn. "Recess" is a form of what Groovy called funk. We play it less often, but we do it sometimes in shows. You, Danny, do the backing vocals because the vocal line is low and Martin has trouble doing it. Personally, I feel super comfortable with it. It's one of Groovy's good riffs. We play it less often. It's a good riff by Groovy.
Hugo Lachance: Question for you: you've been saying for a bit that everything was just one track at the start. What was it called?
Danny Peake: It didn't have a name.
Vincent Peake: It was the "track in D." Personally, I had taken a lot of those pieces for the Jardin des Étoiles show at Terre des Hommes. I had decided to do a medley of all that since we did a block in D, a block in A... We opened for Me, Mom and Morgentaler. We had so many tracks that we decided to put that together. It looks almost like Angine de Poitrine.
Danny Peake: But less well played! On my end in any case.
Vincent Peake: It's a good rock n' roll track, a bit with a pretty simple riff, then beautiful vocal harmonies. We were starting to be comfortable singing clearly and more melodically.
Hugo Lachance: Cool. We move on to the next one, "Ear Throb."
Vincent Peake: This is the tracklist that still reflects the fretless.
Danny Peake: It's about creating moods.
Vincent Peake: Marc-André Thibert had access to a B3 and a…
Hugo Lachance: A Leslie? Yes, OK. I hear it.
Vincent Peake: There was a B3. We had to literally crank it up by hand all the way to get the wires spinning.
Hugo Lachance: [Laughs]
Vincent Peake: A riff by Marc-André Thibert. It was so clean. That was part of the long track, no?
Vincent Peake: There's organ in there.
Hugo Lachance: We listened to it in full! The harmonic peaks at the end.
Vincent Peake: Yeah, yeah, yeah, M.A. was good at that.
Hugo Lachance: So that is truly a damn good edit on your demo, huh?
Vincent Peake: I don't think so. What a riff by Marc-André! It's the kind of thing where we didn't really know what to do with it to make a track out of it. Much to the dismay of Martin Dupuis, there is this piece, but it's a beautiful studio track we crafted together. Yes, it's an album track, we can do what we want with the B3. Then for me, the tam-tam, I was inside a cut-up two-liter plastic Coke bottle, I sang into it with the microphone inside.
Hugo Lachance: OK, you do that with a cut-up two-liter, then?
Vincent Peake: Hahaha, we were probably smoking. Then you spoke of metallic percussion. We went to get pieces of metal from a scrap yard that Louis Bélanger had all hung up with rope.
Vincent Peake: A bit like chimes.
Hugo Lachance: Yeah, OK.
Vincent Peake: Then we had set up a kit. There was that, his percussion kit at the time. Louis was surrounded by it like that, including those sticks. So that's what he slammed on that.
Hugo Lachance: I understand better.
Vincent Peake: It's super heavy, it's not practical to carry around, but we used it live. It's truly a track we produced together. We had a lot of fun doing that, you know. Late at night when we did it, we were all a bit inspired and all, and we wanted to make an album track that is well produced, that has plenty of different sounds, then create that mood on the main riff by Marc-André. Heart Throb is like when you fall in love, Ear Throb is as if your ears fell in love.
Hugo Lachance: Cool! We continue with "Burning Rubber."
Danny Peake: This part isn't tight… It bugs me.
Vincent Peake: Another very good riff by Marc-André.
Hugo Lachance: Yes, yes.
Vincent Peake: Yes, you hear his clean side in there.
Hugo Lachance: Like you say, the picking really... even if the drums aren't tight!
Danny Peake: It's true, I hear it more.
Vincent Peake: That's when we invited Claude Lamothe.
Hugo Lachance: Yes, yes.
Vincent Peake: Yes, facing you right there. Yes, we had done a showcase in New York
together.
Hugo Lachance: Ah yes, OK.
Vincent Peake: The first Polliwog that Martine had organized, it wasn't a festival yet, it was to bring bands from Quebec to North by Northeast. And then to the New Music Seminar in New York. And we had therefore invited—there was a goddamn Oblivion, Groovy, and Claude Lamothe.
Hugo Lachance: Ah yes, OK, it dates from his solo album. Yes, that was the name of his album, playing with distortion and everything. That, but the title escapes me.
Vincent Peake: We became friends on the bus that time. Then we had the idea to invite Marc to spice up this track with his cello expertise, then add a very grating touch. Yes, and the track, at the start, is in French. It was called "Services" which we put on the compilation Sévices rendus. We quickly realized that we had already done it, OK, OK. Then that spoke of a matricide, of someone we knew who had killed his mother. In fact, we knew three people who killed their mother! We have strange friends…
Danny Peake: Friends we put in.
Vincent Peake: Him, we didn't know. He was a pen-pal of Groovy, he wrote to us constantly, constantly. Then there, he had confessed to us how he was gonna do it beforehand. It was like... it's almost a confession, then finally we learned that he had done it, so I had written the track "Sévices" in relation to that. But even then, we still had international goals and we found that this one had something, it had potential, yes. So I had written "Burning Rubber" in relation to when there was the tire fire in Saint-Basile.
Hugo Lachance: Saint-Basile-le-Grand.
Vincent Peake: And since we lived in Beloeil at the time.
Hugo Lachance: All of that.
Vincent Peake: And we knew the area by heart. And it's a toxic cloud that caused havoc. They lost control, everyone kept as far away as possible there, you know, and they lost control totally. At Mont-Saint-Bruno, there are orchards and the apples weren't eatable for years. The cloud crossed the mountain. It burned for days. It made the front page of the Journal de Montréal, I still have the article at home. I had written a track called "Burning Rubber." Toxic to the bone.
Hugo Lachance: An environmental disaster.
Danny Peake: It was very close to us because we stayed in a village right next door.
Vincent Peake: What a super beautiful riff by M.A. and what a cello solo by Claude Lamothe! We were so proud listening to the mix.
Danny Peake: Unfortunately, there are parts that are not quite tight because I was experimenting with a new technique that I hadn't mastered yet.
Hugo Lachance: But that's just you noticing it, if you hadn't mentioned it nobody would have noticed!
Danny Peake: Every single time I hear it!
Hugo Lachance: How did you do the cello in shows?
Vincent Peake: We did it a few times live with Claude, but he became busy and he fell ill afterward and we lost touch.
Hugo Lachance: We continue with "The Whole Gang."
Danny Peake: Ah yes!
Hugo Lachance: Yes, another classic.
Vincent Peake: Mixed by Claude Paré.
Hugo Lachance: Yeah.
Vincent Peake: That's a drop passage where you guys split in two, you and Louis. I remember.
Danny Peake: Not when we recorded, but live together. Yeah, in fact he hopped into the second portion of the passage. Well yeah, yes.
Hugo Lachance: Yes, but we were talking... you spoke of recording. We just have to recall that for this album, you recorded all your drums all by yourself?
Danny Peake: Not that much. That one was mostly Vacuum. Just with the metronome, OK indeed.
Hugo Lachance: Yeah, but it's a damn fine job on drums this album, it's really cool with the percussions there, it's perfect.
Danny Peake: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm well pleased. The drums don't sound quite the same, I find. Personally I find that the drums sound better on Eater’s, the tracks with Martin Dupuis like "Y'a tu kelkun ?", "Localvicie." This one, "Whole Gang," that's just a matter of personal taste.
Hugo Lachance: Personally I hadn't really made out the difference, I told you. Because often those first albums, since they are recorded like in different sessions, at some point, it's not always the same sound..
Vincent Peake: Indeed. Which is enriched over several, several months. So the premise of that is that I was coming back from the Rainbow Gatherings.
Danny Peake: Yes.
Hugo Lachance: Damn, it’s been a long time since I heard about that.
Vincent Peake: I'm a big fan of Rainbow, I really liked that. If I have plenty of fun sharing and living in a world without money that is based on the four elements, you know: water, fire, wood, then air. So "Whole Gang" speaks of that like "Sky is my father, the earth is my mother." I have a bit of a Grateful Dead side that I liked a lot, but with a good slam. Then I hung out a lot in the tam-tam jams at the time, so all the time, that's what animated me a lot in those days, with a percussive track on top. Then I liked it, the line had to be always too, too, too to this day, tough to play. Then Martin Pelletier with your funk, that guy! So a hippie track that brings us back to the earth, yes, mixed by Claude Paré. Because for you, the bass, it sounds driven a bit more than the others. Because Claude, he liked it a lot when it drove hard in the mix. And Claude, he was of a turtle-like slowness. It took him like three days for one mix.
Danny Peake: You know. Yeah, it's incredible.
Vincent Peake: Then there... but a good thing we had the Plante Verte studio at our disposal because it would have cost us a lot per hour. But no, it was at their place. Have fun. So there, when we arrived with the final mix, Claude... wow, what a beautiful job! The beautiful harmonies with Dan, so that was my Rainbow side.
Hugo Lachance: OK, but it's sure that no album sounded like that at that time, that's clear.
Vincent Peake: Indeed.
Hugo Lachance: Everything I know. But you know, it's truly an album that has a truly unique sound and which probably comes from the mix of all that, the expertise of a lot of people. Oui, you know, because it's an album that you guys look like you had so much fun making, you know, time to do it, then because it's rich, it's complex.
Vincent Peake: Well yes.
Hugo Lachance: It's joyful. You guys look like you had fun.
Danny Peake: It took us time to hatch an album. We were the band for eight years before we put out Eater’s Digest. So the tracks, before appearing on this one, had time to pass through several modifications, so despite it being a first album, it's still tracks that were fermented for a certain period.
Hugo Lachance: In the fermentation.
Vincent Peake: It’s a kefir album! That's it, indeed.
Hugo Lachance: It's good for "The Whole Gang," but…
Vincent Peake: And also "The Whole Gang," the end, it's like... I speak also of my grandfather who had passed away during that time, it's "This jam's for our grandads Hear what's become of us Friends lost in shock Shock 'em back laughing now Bring 'em back to life." It was like a reminder of our deceased loved ones. "The Whole Gang," we gather together around a fire, and we celebrate those people.
Hugo Lachance: Yeah, we go with "Déraille." We're gonna see the intro that Marie-Christine Blais appreciated so much.
Danny and Vincent: [In harmony] Compte tenu des déraillés. / Climb aboard du train ailé / Y'est là pour t'emmener où tu veux ben aller / Accroche tes bobettes on décolle / Le monde en bas sur le sol / Des p'tites fourmis au matin / S'entre-déjeunent, j'me sens ben plus loin.
Danny Peake: That is one of my favorite tracks. Right after the two guitar riffs exchanging one after the other, there. That's one of my favorites.
Hugo Lachance: Thanks for the backing vocals! Wow!
Danny Peake: That's what's fun in this track, the exchange precisely.
Vincent Peake: We can't help ourselves. But I was listening earlier. So it's six-six-five, six-six-six-five, six... the five-sixes like... at that point, how can we make this as complex as possible without it showing?
Hugo Lachance: Yeah, that's it.
Danny Peake: Personally I even wondered what time signature this track was in, seven-eight? We just went with the riff, you know, we went there move, hitting the accents of the rest.
Vincent Peake: And that's what was cool with Dan, he caught on right away.
Hugo Lachance: Yes.
Vincent Peake: Yes, yes, because it's more complicated than we think. Heck yeah. Then there, we grab the timing, from time to time, all the time. That comes from a track that was called "Buzz deux," Buzz un was Recess and it started. The famous prog track we were talking about earlier started with that. I had just written that riff in '91.
Danny Peake: We had started a show at the Foufs with that.
Vincent Peake: A track "Buzz un" that starts... a riff completely that we don't have, which remains to be developed to this day. And finally, we entered into "Buzz deux" when you don't cut everything, so I arrived with the two guitars that follow you like that. By that point, I was heavily involved in how the guys are capable of playing just about anything. I can sing it to them, I can feed them anything. And they came up every single time with a solution quickly, so it was a track of guitar exchange, then drum-bass. Personally I saw Groovy as North-South, that's me. And Dan, it was the other guitars. This is a very good example. The cardinal points.
Hugo Lachance: Yes, yes, it's true, it makes total sense.
Vincent Peake: Yes. And "Déraille," because it's... it already has a bit... because you don't really know where it's going. But I had the confirmation that it was a good track when David Pelletier, once again, the bassist from The Affected, had come to see the first time he heard live one of our Friday gigs. And man, he says: "When did you write that? Well, it's been a couple of weeks, I think." Damn that's good. I had David's approval. He wasn't a guy to give compliments all that much, but he comes to see me right after. He shook my hand. Wow, this one I like a lot. So I said OK, it's perfect. So it's a track we do, that Pierre Koch has already tried to do, but it's complicated for him because you have to learn it by heart whereas that's it. It's a Groovy track. We mix the time signatures.
Danny Peake: That my son Jérémie has already played often with the others. Ah yes OK, yes indeed, hours and hours in the rehearsal space helping him learn it. But he made it, then super comfortable with it!
Hugo Lachance: What does he play again?
Danny Peake: Drums? OK, OK, good.
Vincent Peake: I've always really liked the composition of that song. An album track completely, then the crowd doesn't really know which foot to step on.
Hugo Lachance: To dance, yes, that's what's good.
Vincent Peake: It's a practice.
Hugo Lachance: You guys managed to make a track groove that isn't in 4/4?
Danny Peake: Yes.
Vincent Peake: Yes, exactly like Soundgarden.
Hugo Lachance: Like Angine de Poitrine. We've been talking about them for several months, right?
Vincent Peake: There you go. Perfect example!
Hugo Lachance: We continue with my track, "Ants have no chance."
Vincent Peake: Big track.
Hugo Lachance: It's far. Yeah. Ants have no chance. An epic track.
Danny Peake: An emblem track. A bit, a bit like you were saying earlier to Hugo. You were saying earlier that Localvicie represents a lot. Ants, it's as if there is a fast part, there is a smooth part, there is the percussif part in the middle, it encompasses everything that Groovy was at that time, I think anyway.
Vincent Peake: We made our first t-shirts from it, "Ants have no chance." It's kind of our creed. Yeah, it was like representative of Marc-André's talent, once again, with a collective effort from everyone. That's the fourteenth track.
Hugo Lachance: Fourteenth?
Danny Peake: Track. Yes.
Vincent Peake: OK, reached fourteen it was Ants. And damn did it... the crowd from beginning to end, they were enveloped by this track, you know. It looks like nothing else, this one.
Hugo Lachance: Yeah, that's it.
Vincent Peake: That's what's cool. And it defined also... what's the idea behind all that. At the start, it was that he is a free spirit looking at modern and controlled society. We made a parallel with modern society which, like everyone, has its little job to do without asking questions.
Danny Peake: It's the ants.
Vincent Peake: That's it, the ants, like a parallel with the world.
Hugo Lachance: La Fontaine's fable, there too.
Vincent Peake: Right on it! So, it represented well what we wanted to be as individuals, meaning to be parallel to society and also not to look down on it all that much. We just recount that there is something else besides that. So "Ants have no chance," it became Groovy's anthem.
Hugo Lachance: Yes, that's it, it's Groovy's national anthem.
Vincent Peake: Dating from way back. That's the 80s, like '87-'88 even.
Hugo Lachance: Ah yes.
Danny Peake: At the start, it changed, it changed often.
Vincent Peake: It changed often. And that's it, it's the third recorded version. Yes, the first is on Kitsch'en Squatt.
Hugo Lachance: Yes, the second on the '88 demo.
Vincent Peake: This is therefore the third version, yes. There are elements of each that I like better than this version, but it's cleaner. There is acoustic guitar on it too. Still all of Marc-André's technique, the clean side. Damn that's good! I liked the text a lot too, it fitted completely with what we were, free electrons of society, what we were also at the time. Especially when you come back from a Rainbow, there you don't do much of anything anymore. But I was telling Danny earlier that for me, when I heard it on Kitch'en squatt, it was truly like... it really made me trip out, this track, because I liked the structure a lot, the time it takes for the track to place itself, and everything, everything, everything... the atmosphere rising, falling. Then the moment it takes off, and especially your bass groove, that made me trip out so much when I was young.
Danny Peake: Because we come out of an aggressive part super fast there, to a spaced out, hovering part. It looks like nothing else as you say.
Vincent Peake: Yes, and the bass all that, there I took that from Scooby-Doo.
Hugo Lachance: Oh yes!
Vincent Peake: When they get chased by ghosts.
Hugo Lachance: Yes!
Danny Peake: All the time the same tune.
Hugo Lachance: Yes, yes, yes. I hear it. Damn that's hot. I love doing this, the podcast. Learning things like that. Ants have no chance, anything else to add?
Danny Peake: It's good for me.
Hugo Lachance: OK, we go with "Ike."
Vincent Peake: Louis Bélanger. Guitar exchanges.
Hugo Lachance: So I take this opportunity to greet Ike Willis from the heavens above who passed away, the guitarist for Frank Zappa.
Vincent Peake: What a great one! One of our best friends, the Longueuil crew, Michel-André Dubois. OK, his nickname was Ike. Ah OK, there you go, it's a track dedicated to Ike. Whereas he didn't trip on prog all that much. But listen, I wanted to make an instrumental track with a title because Iiiiike! We called him Iiiike! So the onomatopoeia Ike made this song, another good prog track that was part of the big track in D that we did at the start. Then that, I arrived with it later, you know. The more it advanced, the more complex it was. The M39 was good! But it holds together, this track. Yes, it's trippy to do. But when we put out Eater's Digest on vinyl at Foufounes Électriques on November 24, 2019, so 25 years to the day, we started with a track there. Ah yes, because I had never done that.
Danny Peake: And I find it's such a good idea to start a show with this track.
Vincent Peake: Mingled right away.
Danny Peake: Yes, yes, exact.
Vincent Peake: After that, it can only be easier, but indeed. And it was always glued to "Grimaces." It's a bit like the intro to "Grimaces." These two tracks were made like together.
Hugo Lachance: What's the secret to your bass sound on that?
Vincent Peake: Well Marc-André Thibert, there is a little bit of effects on it, but I am not an effects guy for five cents there.
Hugo Lachance: But it cuts through, the bass, I find.
Vincent Peake: For me, it has something. But everyone plays on it. There is the panning, a little bit of a kind of flanger space. Which was the idea from Marc-André and Thierry Lacombe back in the day.
Hugo Lachance: Was it a Rickenbacker?
Vincent Peake: Yes, that's the whole album except for the fretless on "The Whole Gang."
Danny Peake: The first one, yes.
Hugo Lachance: Yes, OK.
Vincent Peake: OK, with the Fender Precision (P-Bass), wait a bit. I found it was the most beautiful, a 1973. A couple of tracks maybe on that, but it's the Rickenbacker that predominates on this album. From there, that's it, that's gonna be the Eater's Digest sound. After that, I have my bass that I have presently for Vacuum and all the rest. OK, a fast track. Since I liked fast music a lot, but easy to play. It's like... It's just like open tunings, a bit easier than we think. We had never done that back then, but we thought of that for when we did the vinyl reissue. So, well, the beautiful riffs. Martin Pelletier once again, insane contribution on that. A track that is to this day tough to play when we decide to do it, it's a lot, a lot of practice. A track that just Danny can do. Then Peter Kosch never had time to learn it because we know that when Pierre Koch isn't there, it's Danny who replaces him. We are lucky that our original drummer from Groovy is capable of saving us and saving our butt. It's the kind of stuff we can do. And then, who has the intro to "Grimaces"?
Danny Peake: Yes, that's it, the two are inseparable. You can't play "Ike" without "Grimaces."
Hugo Lachance: Next, well, we listen to "Grimaces." Here we go.
[Sound excerpt: "Scared stiff in the bathroom / Locks the door, alone at last / Tried to follow her peers / Never could she let them see her now / Passing out in the bathroom / Swollen mind absorbs her fall"]
Hugo Lachance: So "Grimaces," it's its own track.
Danny Peake: Immensely proud of this track because of the progression of the drum beats at the start. In fact, personally I wanted to avoid making a track all the same the whole way through, because the riff is prone to that. So I wanted there to be a progression. I tried to find a creative way to give a bit of color to the track, and I find it served it well.
Vincent Peake: Indeed, Danny hears the riff, and he accentuates it in his way. That's what heavily creates Groovy's color. Like Alain does with GrimSkunk. The contribution of a drummer in a good band generally makes all the difference.
Hugo Lachance: Yes, the drums have to be musical.
Vincent Peake: Yes, it's possible in this kind of music when we make sophisticated or, in any case, thoughtful music. The drummer has everything to do with that.
Hugo Lachance: Absolutely.
Vincent Peake: I didn't need to tell Danny what to do, or maybe yes, I don't remember.
Danny Peake: But often,
Vincent Peake: I knew it was right. And "Grimaces," it speaks of that. I was starting to know people in the underground who did a lot of dope. Yeah, heroin. Especially when they went into overdose, we lost them. So it's the story of a girl who is in the washrooms, who did an overdose, and who sees herself in a train carrying her away.
Hugo Lachance: Yes, toward the end.
Vincent Peake: Toward the end. So "Grimaces" is that. And she grimaces because it's not too beautiful. And the cadence that Danny does is like a train.
Hugo Lachance: Ah yes, OK, OK.
Vincent Peake: It was perfect, Danny understood that. And that's well before I wrote, actually. I maybe wrote the text in relation to the drums because I was late.
Danny Peake: Well yes. It's that the drum beat was born before the text, actually. It was always like that.
Vincent Peake: Yes, yes, all the time. The text arrives at the end. Once the track is assembled, it gives an idea, a lead on the story to tell.
Danny Peake: The text and the vocal melody arrived at the end of the track. Yes, yes.
Vincent Peake: But I always had the melody, but it's the words that are tough. Finding words, at some point. "Grimaces," there was a version in French too that didn't last long. After that, I did it in English. It's well written, it goes fast, there's a lot of things happening. Yes, but we had put it for the end too because we knew it wasn't digestible.
Hugo Lachance: Digestible.
Vincent Peake: How is it for everyone then? But Ike and her together, it's a beautiful duo. We are never gonna separate them. There are tracks that are made like that, they are made to be one after the other. But a beautiful cadence, man. It always made me think of a train. So I built the text around the image of the girl.
Hugo Lachance: I hadn't seen it like that. It's true that it works completely.
Danny Peake: It’s in my top five of Groovy ever, "Grimaces."
Vincent Peake: I remember we had reached many Friday night jams, so we brought new stock. And there was Simon Dupuis, our graphic designer, people close to me who said: "Ah, you're surpassing yourselves, you're going elsewhere musically." It's less complicated than before, but it remains nonetheless loaded.
Hugo Lachance: It's cool. Melodic too.
Danny Peake: It was cool to have the comments of our friends who weren't necessarily musicians, but who had notions.
Hugo Lachance: Who knew music anyway.
Danny Peake: Yes, exact. And who brought us critiques, whether it was positive or negative, it was cool.
Hugo Lachance: It's sure that when you have a place to road-test your material, it's as if it were a show every Friday night.
Danny Peake: Right on it.
Vincent Peake: So, and people, in fact, we fed a lot on that. Yes, yes, and it was truly constructive.
Hugo Lachance: That's it. Exact.
Danny Peake: Because we always tried to arrive with something new on Fridays, so that it wouldn't be the same as last week. We were prolific in that era.
Hugo Lachance: We continue with "Daymare come true."
Vincent Peake: That was during the playoffs. Yes. The playoffs where the Canadiens won in 1993. We were in the space with beers, Labatt 50.
Danny Peake: That’s me coughing!
Vincent Peake: Still the fretless!
Hugo Lachance: Is that where it becomes super complex at the end? Completely mind-blowing.
Danny Peake: That part, when the two guitars are clean, it's M.A. who records them both.
Hugo Lachance: Yeah, that's it. I listened to it earlier, that's when I like woke up.
Vincent Peake: So, yeah. A riff by M.A. with his bit of a blues side. Jazz. A track that underwent a lot of changes through the jams. Yes, because there are plenty of other parts in this track that are no longer there. But a beautiful track that I arranged a lot. It's a track that worked super well after "Ike/Grimaces." It showed a bit of our hard rock bluesy side. Which we always love, obviously.
Danny Peake: Of which the slightly swing start is much more successful than in "Burning Rubber."
Hugo Lachance: Oh! [Laughs]
Vincent Peake: Yes, it's true, but it's true. But there, you know... there was harmony even more buzzed.
Danny Peake: But it's the two, one on top of the other.
Hugo Lachance: Is that it?
Vincent Peake: It's a track that Martin Dupuis, when he hung around the space before entering the band, it had completely blown him away. I was glad to have direct feedback. The crowd was there, like on what planet is this happening? It's cool. And then, the end was grand. It's a rock track. A guitar track. Free too. Marc-André Thibert, who did a beautiful job with an arrangement by everyone.
Hugo Lachance: We're thinking of "For Your Love," F.Y.L.
Danny Peake: Interesting fact, this track, we recorded it with a click because I had insisted on recording it with a click. Vince found that the part on which we finish, it is too slow. I told him: "In the track, this is the right speed." Then when it reached the end, you found it too slow. No, no, it has to be like that. And we had argued over it. We recorded it with a click.
Hugo Lachance: Why a cover of the Yardbirds?
Vincent Peake: Well personally, I love this track a lot. It played a lot on CHOM back in the day, and it was very different from the others, it was less bluesy. In fact, there is no guitar on it originally. It's the reason why Eric Clapton left the Yardbirds, because it was the organ leading. And personally, I had hooked onto that, I liked the harmonies.
Danny Peake: There is a tempo change... it's like a mismatch.
Vincent Peake: In the structure, exact. I remember that we started doing it live. The first time we did it was when Groovy opened for D.O.A. in June 1988. I had written the lyrics using the flyer to remind myself. Always out of concern for creating new music. At the Foufs that night there were 50 of our buddies and the fans of D.O.A. That’s the time I met Joey Shithead who was coming from Poland. He was really nice, cool to chat with, and inspiring.
Danny Peake: They had interesting last names too…
Hugo Lachance: Yes, yes.
Vincent Peake: So it was truly out of love for this track. It closed the show well. So it was trippy to have a local Love Fest in Longueuil. A radiance on Chambly Road. So that closed the show well. Then we said: we're gonna put it on the album.
Hugo Lachance: It's a good idea.
Vincent Peake: It's a bit the same reason why we did "Le petit bonheur" at the end of Vacuum.
Danny Peake: And we made a music video for "For Your Love" in which Claude Paré appears; he plays the role of the girl's boyfriend.
Vincent Peake: It's our second video. After the video for "Y’a tu kelkun ?" which had worked well, we had a grant to make a video much more polished visually. During the shoot, the Spike Film crew had the idea to fix a camera on top and make it turn with a rope. Personally I was underneath and I turn but they had forgotten to put a bolt.
Hugo Lachance: Yes.
Vincent Peake: So I took the camera right in the face! I was an inch and a half from losing an eye. Those were the big MusiquePlus cameras at the time.
Danny Peake: It’s heavy, those big cameras!
Hugo Lachance: Yes, yes, they aren't iPhones.
Vincent Peake: It was the day of the Tour de l'Île bike event.
Danny Peake: How come you remember that?
Vincent Peake: I went straight to the hospital, and there were tons of people who had crashed on bicycles. It took an eternity before I could pass. They gave me stitches. I still have the scar, then I went back to finish the video.
Hugo Lachance: Ah yes, OK. Wow.
Vincent Peake: I spent 5 hours at the hospital to finally finish the video. It was super late, you see it in the video that we are tired. It was hot, we had taken a three-and-a-half apartment in Hochelaga and we had painted all the walls ourselves in bright colors.
Danny Peake: I had borrowed the toms from Louis Bélanger's kit so that they would be different colors too.
Vincent Peake: We wanted a video with a colorful and fun look. Then it almost cost me an eye.
Hugo Lachance: Lucky break! Guys, we went through the album. Yes! We have one segment left: "Salut à toi." That's where I do a shoutout to an independent podcast. Today, I want to greet the crew from La paire d'écouteurs. It's a monthly music review podcast hosted by Jertrude Battue and Alexandra Houle. They also have the Radio-Show, a spin-off. Go check that out, it's really interesting, funny, and they are the ones who won a Lucien award at the last podcast awards. We greet them!
Hugo Lachance: There remains a small segment: Silly answer, silly question. I give you choices. You must choose Beloeil or Montreal?
Danny Peake: Montreal.
Vincent Peake: Montreal.
Hugo Lachance: The Vodka Peake or the Viscérale beer from B.A.R.F. brewed by our sponsor Hopera?
Vincent Peake: I haven't tasted B.A.R.F.'s, so I'm gonna go with what I know.
Danny Peake: Personally I agree with everything he says.
Hugo Lachance: Regarding mascots: the Skunk or the Aardvark?
Vincent Peake: Good question. The Skunk is more threatening, but the Aardvark is more friendly, he represents us. The two, it's like a dichotomy of modern society.
Danny Peake: The Skunk and the Aardvark, those are two great distinct buddies, always together.
Hugo Lachance: "Le petit bonheur" or "Boisson d'avril"?
Vincent Peake: "Boisson d'avril" because it's a composition by Martin Dupuis. "Le petit bonheur" is cool because it's Marc Vaillancourt singing it and it's a tribute to Félix Leclerc, but "Boisson d'avril" is one of his best ideas, to have invited Yves Lambert and Michel Bordeleau to sing with us.
Hugo Lachance: Marc Vaillancourt or Yves Lambert?
Vincent Peake: On a desert island? I'm gonna go with Marc because he's gonna be able to set up a boat for us so we can get out of there. But Yves and I, we would sing much better.
Hugo Lachance: Fender Precision or Rickenbacker?
Vincent Peake: The Fender Precision was for me the answer to the music I wanted to offer on bass. I prefer the look of the Rickenbacker, but the Precision has been singing in my fingers for almost 40 years.
Hugo Lachance: Rush or Yardbirds?
Danny Peake: Rush.
Vincent Peake: Rush, for sure, being Canadian and a fan of prog.
Hugo Lachance: Zappa or Yes?
Danny Peake: Zappa.
Vincent Peake: Zappa.
Hugo Lachance: Zappa. In relation to the last episode, Jim or Bertrand?
Danny Peake: One doesn't go without the other. But I prefer Bertrand Gosselin.
Vincent Peake: Bertrand! He plays mandolin, he is extremely skillful. But yes, Bertrand.
Hugo Lachance: Piano or drums, Danny?
Danny Peake: I'd like to have the time to dedicate as much time to the piano as to the drums. But lack of time. It’s a mind-blowing instrument. My youngest, Zachary, helps me with it right now; he's gonna be the best musician in the family. He teaches me several things on piano. The game in a circle, you know.
Vincent Peake: By John Coltrane.
Hugo Lachance: Giant Steps.
Vincent Peake: Yes! His boy listens to Mahavishnu Orchestra these days.
Hugo Lachance: Vincent, in relation to your brother: piano or drums?
Vincent Peake: Piano, but I play with drumsticks!
Hugo Lachance: Disques MPV or Slam Disques?
Vincent Peake: Slam, hands down, a hundred miles an hour. Finally a record company doing it right.
Hugo Lachance: GrimSkunk or Groovy Aardvark?
Danny Peake: Both.
Vincent Peake: Well personally, I am recognized as the singer for Groovy Aardvark and I am always gonna be. I'm proud to represent GrimSkunk because it became my favorite band and they are my best friends, but Groovy is my first band and it will always be at the deepest part of my heart.
Danny Peake: We're doing a show together soon, with two drums on the stage!
Hugo Lachance: Vacuum or Eater's Digest?
Danny Peake: Eater's Digest.
Vincent Peake: I prefer the sound of Vacuum. I prefer the concentration of ideas on Eater’s. I find it represented better what the group was live.
Hugo Lachance: Danny Peake or Pierre Koch?
Vincent Peake: What kind of question is that, come on!
Danny Peake: Good question.
Hugo Lachance: That’s the goal! I have to make you guys a bit uncomfortable, right!
Vincent Peake: Danny Kosch!
Danny Peake: Martin Dupuis said it's like comparing Clive Burr and Nicko McBrain. Those are two different things.
Vincent Peake: Yes!
Hugo Lachance: "Hallowed Be Thy Name" and "Wasted Years" that we were talking about earlier.
Hugo Lachance: Francofolies or Polliwog?
Vincent Peake: Polliwog! When it worked.
Hugo Lachance: According to Mama Groovy, Vincent or Danny?
Danny Peake: Like any good parent, you can't have a preference. Both have to be considered.
Vincent Peake: That is really tough, this question, you're pushing my buttons on purpose, you bastard!
Hugo Lachance: Well of course, come on!
Vincent Peake: Ha-ha, Normande is gonna say something like… The rest of us are like "Ike" and "Grimaces": together!
Hugo Lachance: An anteater or an aardvark?
Vincent Peake: I like the aardvark a lot, it’s the word I learned searching for the title of the album.
Hugo Lachance: Last one: sleeping with your brother or sleeping with the Polliwog crew?
Danny Peake: The last time we slept next to each other was at Mont-Tremblant, at Pat Gauthier's cottage. I was snoring, then he got up, grabbed his pillow and gave me a massive pillow beating!
Vincent Peake: Whereas with the Polliwog crew, I have to face five of them, you know!
Hugo Lachance: That's it, guys, that's all! Thank you for your participation, it was truly super cool. Thanks to the listeners, thanks to Hopera and thanks to Véro for the Salle des Tortues. We'll meet again for another episode! Ciao!