Information/Write-up
“She has a way — this woman who calls herself the nation’s voice of liberal guilt — of jabbing and slicing at events and personalities with cutting sarcasm and delicious humour… An evening with her is good for everything — good for laughing, reflecting, remembering and just feeling great. They should play Nancy White after the evening news.”
-Sally Armstrong, Canadian Living
Nancy White: vocals, banjo, backing vocals
Doug Wilde: piano, synthesizers, auld fiddle, vocals, Prince Andrew, the hoser, the cowboy, Baron Von Rap ("Vienna Rap", "Gods of America", "Nouveau Calgary", and "Cute for a Tory" realized)
Bob Johnston: piano, bass, vocals, Ron R., Brian M., Fidel, Mr.Pike, Elvis impersonator
Rick Whitelaw: guitars, vocals, Mission Control
Mark Haines: fiddle, vocals
Glenn Anderson: drums, persussion, vocals, Elvis impersonator
Tam Kearney: Tam Kearney in "The Auld Alliance"
Anton Szabo: sound effects
Additional vocals by: Grazyna Krupa, Brooke Forbes, Suzannah Wilde, Ruth Szamosi
Produced by Grazyna Krupa and Bob Johnston
Arranged by Bob Johnston, Doug Wilde, Rick Whitelaw
Recorded and mixed by Todd Fraracci and Doug Doctor at Studio 4S (CBC Toronto)
Digital editing by Ray Folcik
Mastered by Peter Cook
Additional engineering by Mike Furness, Trish Thornton, and Ray Lund
PUMPING IRONY is a production of RADIO WORKS, CBC
General Manager: Diane Williamson
Cover and Sleeve Design by Vic Moreira
Photography by Patrick Nichols
Thanks to: Harris-Cole-Wilde, Wexford Collegiate, Brooke Forbes, Ann Merriam, Laurelle Favreau, Mark Daoust, Lois Catalano, Campbell Webster, My Sociologist Ron Gillis, Michael Finley, and the pig chasers of Red Deer. Bob and Nancy would like to pay tribute to Bob Robertson and Linda Cullen whose “voices” we slavishly imitate. And of course, Nancy is eternally grateful to “Sunday Morning” for having her on and making her write this stuff.
ABOUT THESE SONGS ..... Nancy White
CBC Radio’s flagship public affairs show “Sunday Morning” has been hiring me to write songs about the news off and on since the show began in 1976. Naturally, a lot of them have a short life. These ones, written between 1990 and 1993, are the ones we considered to be the most durable, the most musical, the least event-tied. It helps to be Canadian to enjoy this stuff, but because “Sunday Morning” is carried by many U.S. public broadcasting stations, a lot of American listeners hear it and write to us. I have a lot of affection for these folks and if I had the space I’d be footnoting like mad for them. I just hope these few lines will help a bit.
1. BAMBI THE REFUGEE (2'38". Aired in June of ’91)
Thousands of people have applied for refugee status in Canada, but Lawrencia Bembenek was unique in several ways. For one thing, the country she was fleeing from was the U.S.A. Ms.Bembenek had been convicted of murdering her husband and she escaped from a Milwaukee jail and got as far as Thunder Bay. Someone blew the whistle on her and she ended up back in the slammer, but not before a lot of publicity and a televised refugee hearing in Toronto. Ms.Bembenek is photogenic and articulate and many people believed she was not guilty, that she, a former police officer, was framed by the police department in Milwaukee. Bambi eventually got out of jail by entering a no contest plea.
2. SENATOR LAWSON AT THE MOTEL CUCARACHA. (3'43". Sept.92.)
I didn’t want to put much about Canada’s 1992 constitutional referendum on this tape. We’ve all had it up to here and anyway, Connie Kaldor has already recorded the definitive lullabye album. But the audacity of Senator Edward Lawson of B.C. surely deserves to be enshrined. Lawson was appointed by Trudeau to represent the working classes in the senate. (oxymoron alert!!!) A reporter figured out Sen. Lawson missed 1,111 of 1,379 senate sittings in his first sixteen years there. Indeed, when a senate reform group recommended that senators failing to attend at least a third of the sessions lose their seats, the legislation was nicknamed “The Lawson Ammendment”. Sen.Lawson has announced that if the senate is ever abolished and replaced by an elected body, he expects to be paid his full salary until he retires in 2005.
3. CANADA'S SWEETHEART JOE CLARK (3'14". Nov.91)
Joe Clark, briefly and ingloriously a Canadian prime minister himself, served as external affairs minister in Brian Mulroney’s cabinet and was later appointed minister of constitutional affairs with the gruesome job of organizing the referendum debate in Canada. Suddenly he was Miss Congeniality. He who had once been the laughing stock became the most popular and trusted politician in the country. Everyone was surprised; probably he was too.
4. WHAT AN EMBARRASSING MAYDAY (2'12". April 90)
Here is a song all a-quiver with historical resonance. The fall of communism in two minutes. Of course I knew there were enormous political consequences as well, but I kept thinking of the poor folks in the Soviet p.r. department. What a nightmare for them! A technical note. Bob Johnston’s Fidel has a vaguely eastern European accent because Mr.Castro is such an internationalista. Please do not write to us. Gracias.
5. NOUVEAU CALGARY (3'30". Jan.90)
When TransCanada Pipeline moved its head office from Toronto to Calgary, it tried to persuade its Toronto employees to move with it. Figuring folks were scared off by Calgary’s cowboy image, it brought in a big delegation headed by Lanny MacDonald, who then played with the Calgary Flames, to convince the people from hogtown that Calgary had culture up the wazoo. Mayor Al Duer joined actors and musicians and artists in this daunting task. I never did find out if they were successful, but, really, they could have just mentioned the blue sky and the price of houses and all of us eastern bastards would have mosey’d right over.
6. ROYAL COUCH POTATO (1'59". March 92)
Is it just me, or is the aristocracy less aristocratic than it used to be? When Princess Fergie and Prince Andrew broke up, didn’t you want it to be for a royal reason? HE kept leaving his crown on the floor for HER to pick up, HE hated the way SHE left her tiaras drying on the shower rail? No such luck. According to what I read, Fergie was annoyed because P.A. played golf and watched TV all the time. Just like the rest of us. I do hope he didn’t pick up those tedious habits at Lakefield College! God, wouldn’t that be embarrassing!
7. VIENNA RAP (2.28". Sept.90)
It was a challenge to write tasteful rap music about Kurt Waldheim and his friendship with Saddam Hussein, but I like to think Doug Wilde and I almost did it. Shortly before the Gulf War began in earnest, Mr.Waldheim announced that in the event of a war, no American military planes would be allowed to land in Vienna. The day after that statement all the Austrians in Iraq were allowed to leave. I suppose it could have been a coincidence.
8. BARNACLE BETTY AND PSYCHO PIKE (3'31". Sept.92)
Barnacle Betty, a 13-pound lobster, disappeared from a fish store in Windsor, Nova Scotia. Psycho Pike, a mechanical fishhead, disappeared from the set of a video being shot in Sky Lake, Ontario. Don Getty, premier of Alberta, resigned just weeks before the referendum debate. I suppose it could have been a coincidence. (Did I just say that?)
9. GODS OF AMERICA (3'32". Feb.91)
This song was originally entitled “Doug Wilde’s 15th Dream”, because Mr. Wilde did indeed have a dream about the Americans sending their icons to scare the Iraquis. I wrote a lot of songs about the Gulf War, including “Prime Time War”, “Line in the Sand”, “La Cicciolina Does Baghdad”, “High River Rambo”, “War Over Waltz” and, most recently, “Let’s Bomb Iraq” (Jan.1993), but “Gods of America” is the most, um, lighthearted.
10. SAVING FRANCIS' BACON (6'33". Nov.90)
This is Grazyna Krupa’s baby. The people at CBC Red Deer sent “Sunday Morning” a wonderful documentary about Francis, the escaped pig. Grazyna envisioned it with an epic song running through it and they graciously agreed to have their work used in this way. Our part of it was done almost live in a two-track studio where, if you made a mistake, you had to go back to the beginning. Grazyna played the clips and cued us and we’d play and/or sing. It was a little terrifying for me because frailing on the banjo is one of those things that are okay as long as you don’t stop to think about what you’re doing. So it’s a little crude, musically, but we think the people in Red Deer are so endearing and the true story of Francis, the fattest pig in the west, so compelling that we included it, as is. I hate to tell what eventually happened to Francis cause it’s kind of sad. Come see me backstage at a concert some time and I’ll break it to you face to face. I think that would be more humane.
11. GEEZERS IN LOVE (3'14". April 93)
Just after April Fool’s day, Brian Mulroney, nearing the end of his nine (neuf!) years as our prime minister, went off to visit Ronald Reagan, possibly for some kind of a pep talk. They each issued a statement about the other’s greatness. Reagan said “as you near the end of your term as prime minister, Canada is stronger, more confident and more secure than when you began your stewardship”. This was news to us! I had this vision of these two old shillelaghs sitting on their porch somewhere in the Ozarks. One can’t remember much, the other doesn’t want to, and they’re talking about fishing, or boar hunting, or some dang thing.
12. THE AULD ALLIANCE (4'02". Aug.92)
I think it’s wonderful that the Scots and the French tolerate each other because they both hate the English so much. And I think it’s wonderful that an international Scottish festival was held in Montreal in celebration of this official feeling of loathing (“The Auld Alliance”) during the referendum debate. And I think it’s wonderful that Tam Kearney of The Friends of Fiddlers Green sang this wee song with me. It was a great thrill. I’d hoped that Tam could coach me in the accent but he said he thought a bad Scottish accent would be more entertaining for people. So we kept it.
13. CUTE FOR A TORY (3'25". May 93)
This little tribute to Prime Minister Kim Campbell was actually written during her campaign for the leadership of the Tory Party. A couple of notes for non-Canadians. “Charest” is Jean Charest, even cuter for a Tory, who was running against her. The new erogenous zone mentioned is the shoulders, which she bared in a famous photograph of her with the ol’ robe-on-a-hanger. One thing I like about Kim Campbell (a former Socred) is that she talks even faster than I do. I’ll bet it drives her mother crazy too.
14. VIVA PAPA PIERRE (1'48". Sept.91)
It seems that our ex prime minister Pierre Trudeau is such a fervent Canadian nationalist that he has fathered children with women from both coasts of our great nation. Wouldn’t you know that that insouciant man could become a papa again at the age of 71? (Notes: I paraphrase Marie-Lynn Hammond’s line “encore une fille, b’en oui” from “La Jeune Marie”. And there’s a nod to Margaret Trudeau’s famous remark that her husband, then in his 50’s, had “the body of a 25-year-old”.)
15. BABY ON THE POTTY ALL DAY (2'17". April 91).
Earth Day, 1991, was approaching and I was discussing the cloth-versus-plastic diaper debate with Brooke Forbes, who sometimes produces me for “Sunday Morning”. “The disposable diaper companies would have us believe cloth diapers are more environmentally suspect because of all the hot water used to wash them. It’s hard to decide,” I whined. Brooke, whose kids are grown, tried to suppress a yawn. “Why don’t you just keep the baby on the potty all day?” she said. So I did.
16. HURRAY FOR BOBBI BONDAR (3'24. Jan.92).
This song is a pretty straight ahead tribute to an extraordinary person, Canada’s first neurologist in space, Dr. Roberta Bondar.
17. HALL OF HOSERS. (3'16". Sept.91)
Grazyna and I were discussing a noisy episode in the House of Commons. Tory backbencher William Kempling had called Liberal Sheila Copps a slut, then denied it. “Well, there he goes,” said Grazyna, “into the Hall of Hosers.” I later rewrote the song to accomodate other politicians but gave up. I mean, the Iliad was already written.
A note on “hoser”. Bob and Doug McKenzie, the creatures of Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas on “S.C.T.V.” brought the word “hoser” into common use in North America. It was never defined, but everyone could tell that a “hoser” was not a good thing to be. My friend Chris Boyd, who’s from Alberta where the early “S.C.T.V.” shows were filmed, thinks that “hoser” comes from the oil business. That hosers were guys from the east who worked in the oil fields. They lived in isolation far from their families and on weekends took their money into small towns where they created a little havoc. Or a lot. Chris thinks she may have dreamed this. So does every other Albertan I asked. But I believe it. Hey, let’s start a myth.
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