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Jane Siberry: keyboards, Fairlight arr. in "Vladimir Vladimir" and "Mein Bitte" and bass-synth in "Empty City"
John Switzer: bass, tambourine
Ken Myhr: guitar, guitar synth
Al Cross : drums, kaleida-drum
Anne Bourne: keyboards, speaking in Vladimir
Rob Yale: keyboards
other spoken: Trace Sitter, Christiane Fischer, Shirley & George Stewart
Teddy Borowiecki: accordion
George Stewart: singing at end of Vladimir
on Vladimir "you always hurt the one you love"
dada-ists: Anne Bourne, Christiane Fischer, George Stewart, Shirley
Stewart, Trace Sitter
Sarah McElcheran: trumpet in "Map II"
produced by Jane Siberry and John Switzer
co-produced and engineered by John Naslen
recorded at Manta Sound, Toronto, spring 1985
assistant engineers: Mark Baldi, Rick Starks, Scott Campbell, Mike Duncan
mastered by: Bob Ludwig at Masterdisk, N.Y.
"One More Colour" - writing in the little basement where I lived, I was so happy singing this song. I don't think it sounds a joyous as when I wrote in on my dinky synthesizer but still uplifting. Apples, legs, sweaters, bare dark, autumn fields. The chorus was inspired by the unadulterated joy of a friend of the family, who is a bit slow, who described something that had thrilled him one day. I can see his waving arms so clearly still, we were all caught up in his vision. He never really said what it was exactly. Just how it was. I also used his voice for boy #2 in "The Bird In The Gravel".
"Seven Steps To The Wall" crystallised from an image I kept seeing which was a figure bent over a table in the centre of a bare room. The dust in the air made the streams of sunlight very clear. Then I read "Darkness At Noon" by Arthur Koestler and it all jumped together. Pacing his cell, counting the number of steps and when he was taken down the hall to be executed, the advice from the man in the next cell was "don't turn around".
"The Very Large Hat" was written after a trip to the Yukon to perform. We played at Diamond Lil's and during our show the fire alarms kept going off. Eventually all the tall men at the show (most with long hair and beards) climbed up on chairs and stuck their fingers between bell and clapper. And that's how we finished the show. With these tall men poised around the room like statues. If I had had a movie camera it would have been great to drape them and make a movie out of it. We were all quite high by 5 am and it was still light out, and my manager was arrested for drinking outside and taken to jail for a few hours. Apparently, next time he steps across the Yukon border he could be arrested immediately. This thought still intrigues him.