| (00:03) |
Annie Murray |
So what do you wanna talk about? [Laughs] |
| (00:05) |
Katherine McLeod |
Well, first I’ll say: Welcome to ShortCuts. |
| (00:11) |
ShortCuts Theme Music |
[Soft piano music interspersed with electronic sound begins] |
| (00:12) |
Katherine McLeod |
Welcome to Shortcuts. This month, it’s another ShortCuts Live. In fact, it’s a final ShortCuts Live conversation that was recorded at the 2022 SpokenWeb Symposium and Institute. That’s because this year’s symposium and institute is coming up, starting May 1st. Check the full program by heading to the events link on the SpokenWeb website. And if you’re attending, do get in touch if you’d like to chat with us on ShortCuts Live in-person this year.
Back to this episode, it’s a conversation that I had with Annie Murray from the University of Calgary. It was recorded after a packed day of sessions at the 2022 SpokenWeb Sound Institute. The sounds will take us into 4th SPACE at Concordia University. I quite love the background noise because it reminds me of being there with the May sunshine outside the window next to where we were recording and the vibrant conversations that we were having all week.
So there I was sitting at a microphone with Annie Murray and I pulled out a cassette tape to start things off. Usually on ShortCuts, it’s an audio clip that starts the conversation. This time it was not an audio clip, but rather an audio object, and not just any audio object. It was my first cassette tape, and this cassette tape that I’m holding right now, well, it’s not only the start of me loving music that’s just so full of emotion, music that is moving, moves you and makes you want to move, but it was also the start of my conversation with Annie Murray about EMI Music Canada Archives. Which tape is it? Well, listen to find out. Here is ShortCuts Live…
[ShortCuts theme music fades and ends]
[Transitions into interview recording]
Thank you so much, Annie, for joining me on Shortcuts Live. |
| (02:04) |
Annie Murray |
Thank you. This is a great setup. |
| (02:07) |
Katherine McLeod |
And I’m about to take a tape out of my bag, and Annie’s gonna see this for the first time, but she’s heard that this is the object that will inspire our conversation. |
| (02:19) |
Annie Murray |
Whoa, shall I describe what we’re seeing? |
| (02:22) |
Katherine McLeod |
Yes. Take a look. What is this tape? |
| (02:25) |
Annie Murray |
Katherine has just handed me a tape called “Over 60 Minutes with Luba”. Luba is on the front. It was issued by Capital Records and EMI Canada in 1987. We had an earlier conversation where I learned this was a seminal tape for young Dr. Katherine McLeod. And the reason I’m interested in her relationship with this tape is because I’ve been working on a project that will bring some Luba content out in the world. |
| (03:03) |
Katherine McLeod |
Yes, I told Annie that this Luba tape was in fact the first cassette tape that I ever owned. I think I was about seven or eight years old living in Queensboro, which is a neighborhood in New Westminster, British Columbia. And I don’t even know how I had heard of Luba, I think, because I never really watched TV very often when I was young. So somehow much music must have been on. And I was really drawn to the song, “Every time I see your picture, I cry”. And this tape does have it on there. I think that says a lot about me as a seven year old, that I was really drawn to this very dramatic song, that continues. I feel like it just, I love very dramatic music and dance. So, you know, this was just an early sign of that.
I could still probably recite the entire song. And I recently found this tape at my parents’ house, and it made me think about the way that this recording, with it being issued by EMI, would be part of the EMI collection. And when Annie was speaking about the EMI collection in a SpokenWeb meeting, she mentioned, you know, it even has Luba. And I was like, oh, Luba! Yes, someone’s talking about Luba!
So I thought this would be a perfect audio object for us to chat about because it brings us into the EMI collection. It makes us think about audio objects and how just a tape that we’re not even playing right now can generate so much conversation. And it can also make us think about rights too. So maybe towards the end, I’ll ask you about, you know, can we even play this tape on the podcast? But, we’ll hold onto that question.
First of all, you know, I see Annie looking at the tape cover, she’s got it out of the, out of the case. And I’m wondering, you know, you’ve been immersed in the EMI collection at the University of Calgary. What do you, what are you noticing? How does this speak to you as an archival object? |
| (05:11) |
Annie Murray |
Well, what’s interesting about this tape is it’s not one of Luba’s studio albums. It’s a compilation album. So, Luba had already released some albums, and this is a compilation. The other thing I’m noticing is in what great physical condition it’s in. I know you loved it a lot, but you also took really good care of it. A lot of my old tapes from this era, the writing is rubbed off the cassette, but the tape looks in good shape and the liner notes don’t have the lyrics, which a lot of studio albums did. And I don’t know about you, but did you used to open them up and follow along? |
| (05:53) |
Katherine McLeod |
I sure did. [Laughs] Yeah. |
| (05:54) |
Annie Murray |
Yes. That, I mean, especially when you first got tapes of your own and you bought them with your own money, you were so proud of them, and you would open up the liner notes and follow the lyrics. So what I’m seeing here, there’s some interesting things about this album. First of all, Daniel Lenoi plays as a percussionist on this album. There’s some really interesting musicians brought in on some of these. And guess who’s the sax player? Kenny G! [Both laugh] And then there’s a list of tracks or songs, and there’s little symbols next to them that talk about the original recording, where it came from.
So this is like an anthology. And then some were mixed by Daniel Lenoi, then it shows how many songs Luba wrote and how many she didn’t. So this is, this is fascinating. |
| (06:56) |
Katherine McLeod |
I love thinking about it as an anthology of Luba. Luba is a Canadian singer who was very popular in the eighties. And we really haven’t heard much from since. So, actually, it’s interesting how things, you know, like YouTube. I think like, partly just to go back to your point about how the tape is in such good condition, I think it’s because then when CDs came out, I didn’t listen to my tapes as much, and Luba sort of had faded into the background.
So, I’d almost forgotten about this amazing song. And then, recently, you know, searching it on YouTube and thinking, yeah, like, I can listen to this in a digital version without having to, you know, dig out my tape from so long ago. And just listening to it again, I thought, wow, this almost like, power ballad song, really resonates with today’s moment too.
So I thought, yes, Lupa to come back, but then thinking, you know, this is like this anthology and this collection, a collection within a collection thinking of this tape itself is almost like a collection. And how it also speaks to, you know, this moment in Canadian music. And, you know, as you’re noticing all these artists that were part of this tape, that in many ways many people probably would know those names and not necessarily know Luba’s name too. So that’s really interesting thinking of what we can learn from the tape itself. I know you told me that you asked some of your colleagues in the archives about what you have in terms of Luba’s work in the collection. |
| (08:26) |
Annie Murray |
That’s right. So, maybe just as I recorded my live reactions to the liner notes, I’ll read you some information that my colleagues David Jones and Rob Gilbert provided. I explained what I was going to be up to and that you were a Luba fan from childhood and that we’d be looking at the tape and they immediately knew, oh, well that’s a compilation, you know, and I, cuz I didn’t know.
And then David said, that’s awesome. So is Luba. And then Rob came along and said a few things that I’ll just read. So Luba was a direct signing. So the capital releases, the EP and the three big albums in the eighties are all extensively documented. So in the EMI Music Canada archive that’s at the University of Calgary, if that artist was signed to Capital or EMI, the archive will contain all of the original studio recordings and will have all the documentation about how that album was produced, how it was recorded, produced, disseminated, marketed and received.
So it’s like the whole story, but if the EMI artist was someone like Kate Bush or The Beatles or Pink Floyd, and they weren’t actually recorded in the, for Canadian, like on the Canadian label there would be less recordings and material associated with it. All of those originals would’ve been in England or in the United States. But for Luba, Rob says, I think Luba is one of the more significant artists in the collection. All of the audio is migrated or out with a vendor and/or Nathan. So Nathan Chandler is our audio audiovisual conservator who, in Calgary, we built these studios. So sometimes some types of formats, we’ve migrated them right there in Calgary. Other ones have been sent out in different places in North America, depending on like, would it be too expensive to buy the equipment or too difficult or maybe there aren’t enough recordings in that format because the EMI archive has 94 different media formats.
So some of them wouldn’t make sense. But guess how many individual Luba recordings will be available eventually? There will be 400 audio recordings [Katherine laughs] available to users eventually in an online system. So the system we’re using is called Cortex. It’s a digital asset management system. Rob goes on to say all of the quarter inch tapes are done. The half inch tapes were sent out to a vendor last summer and should be done soon. And many of the two inch tapes are on a cart with Nathan waiting to get to them. So even in the time Luba was recording, she first recorded on quarter inch, then half inch, and then on two inch multi-tracks. So even in her eighties, early nineties career, she recorded on these different formats. So. |
| (11:58) |
Katherine McLeod |
That’s incredible! [Laughs] |
| (11:59) |
Annie Murray |
Then all told there are 400 of them because like, say a two inch recording, it’s massive. You might have one to three songs on one reel. And so if you think of how many times you would record something to make an album, that’s why there are so many. So then, let’s see, also, any videos associated with Luba will also become available. So it’s audio, but it’s also video. And then, this won’t be put online or you won’t be able to access this, but there was also all the original artwork that they used to make all the album covers. So that has also been preserved for the Canadian artists such as Luba.
So, let’s see. There are whole sets of studio sessions, 24 track tapes and mixes on half inch tapes. The 60 Minutes with compilation is like a “best of” album with a couple extras on it. It was a branded series from Capital, maybe tapping into CD technology, having the ability to play over 60 minutes without switching sides of a tape or a record [laughs].
So there’s gonna be a lot of Luba content that researchers can access. So you could explore the documentation around wow was that album produced there in your hand? How were the other studio albums? Her EP? I don’t know if they would’ve had a demo, but we would be able to find out if there was a demo. So it kind of goes to show the extensive documentation, both audio, video, and then there’s all the textual archives that would’ve been, so perhaps you’ll come to Calgary to do a deep Luba research trip? |
| (13:50) |
Katherine McLeod |
Yes. Yes. A deep listening in the Luba archives. I also love how it feels like Luba, you know, I was speaking to like maybe she could have a resurgence and maybe she could have a resurgence through the archives. |
| (14:03) |
Annie Murray |
That would be great. Like, it will be interesting to see how people respond to an archive of this type being made available. Like, first of all, the fact that it’s being preserved, that it is in a public institution, and that we have created some secure and elaborate, but easily available ways to use audiovisual archives, which really isn’t always the case.
The traditional model is if there’s a recording in an archive, you travel to the archive and you listen to it in there. We knew that with the way systems have developed and the way digital asset management systems have developed, that you can still have users authenticate and use a recording and access it remotely. And in the time that we’ve been finishing up this project during Covid, there is actually more expectation of remote access now of archives and libraries. So these sort of systems coming online is just perfect timing for these kinds of researcher expectations. |
| (15:17) |
Katherine McLeod |
Maybe one last question then, leading along those lines around access. On a podcast like this, if I were to play a clip of one of Luba’s songs, am I allowed to do that? |
| (15:34) |
Annie Murray |
I think so. I think it’s a kind of quotation. We could ask a copyright person about how much is appropriate. But say for example, like broadcasters and news organizations, they generally work with clips of a certain length for reporting, and then scholars can use certain lengths of clips for their academic reporting, so to speak. I don’t know where a podcast is on the spectrum. Is it broadcasting? Is it news? Is it scholarship? Seems to be a blend of those things? |
| (16:10) |
Katherine McLeod |
And often defined by the producer or the maker of the podcast, rather than the podcast itself being a medium that is defined in those ways. I feel like because we did, you know, we’ve been commenting on the tape and especially offering a bit of commentary around one particular song, that that song perhaps could, you know, appear at some point, audibly in this or- |
| (16:37) |
Annie Murray |
A clip. |
| (16:37) |
Katherine McLeod |
A clip. Exactly. It would just a, just a- |
| (16:39) |
Annie Murray |
Maybe the most dramatic part. |
| (16:40) |
Katherine McLeod |
Exactly. [A clip from “Every time I see your picture, I cry” by Luba plays and ends]
So I think that’s, you know, a perfect note to end on. And I want to thank Annie Murray for joining me here on ShortCuts Live in 4th SPACE at Concordia University. Thank you so much, Annie. |
| (17:12) |
Annie Murray |
[ShortCuts theme music begins to play]
Thank you. And I just wanna extend an invitation. As a Luba fan, you could create, when you have an account in the University of Calgary’s digital collections, you could create something called a light box where you could keep track of your favorite Luba recordings, and then you could say, Hey, these are my favorite Luba tracks curated by Dr. Katherine McLeod.
So, then even if you return later and you’re like, oh, I’m going to think about Luba again. You could keep track of what you’re interested in. You could send it to another user, then they could sign it and say, oh, these are the three songs that most shaped your 1987 life. |
| (17:57) |
Katherine McLeod |
Yes! A curated listening and yeah. To be able to share that. Oh, yeah. That’s fantastic. |
| (18:01) |
Annie Murray |
So, when it’s available, I’ll contact you and you can be our guest digital curator of the Luba Collection. [laughs] |
| (18:11) |
Katherine McLeod |
Thank you so much, Annie. I look forward to that. Thank you. Thank you.
[ShortCuts theme music ends]
[A clip from “Every time I see your picture, I cry” by Luba plays]
You’ve been listening to ShortCuts. A special thanks to Annie Murray for joining me for this ShortCuts Live recorded on May 19th, 2022.
[The Luba clip ends and ShortCuts theme music begins again]
And for the invitation to head to Calgary for a curated listening in the archives. Do check the show notes for links to more about that archive, and for a few fun photos to accompany this episode. Yes, you’ll see Annie holding the tape itself, and what you won’t see is me listening to Luba on repeat in the weeks surrounding this conversation. But indeed that happened too.
My thanks to the SpokenWeb podcast team. Our supervising producer is Kate Moffatt. Our sound designer is Miranda Eastwood. And our transcription is done by Zoe Mix. ShortCuts is written and produced by me, Katherine McLeod. Stay tuned next month for a full episode of The SpokenWeb Podcast. And as always, thanks for listening.
[ShortCuts theme music ends] |
