Both audio and text extracts from this CD book are available. You can also read the book's introduction below:

from Ian Ferrier's intro "Wired on performance in Montreal."

"Three years ago I approached musician/composer Sam Shalabi with the idea of forming a poetry band. This CD book documents what happened to that idea, how it grew up, who joined it, and where it is now.

"It is an expression of the thought that verse and music can live in the same composition without subordinating either.

"Some of the poems – Where Will I Ever Find You, Exploding Head Man and Gasoline – were composed with the music collaboration in mind. Others were written miles from any stage, on the Pacific Coast and on a motorcycle trip my wife and I took through the American Southwest. Half a dozen were written during the heights and depths of winter storms in Montreal.

"I grew up listening to the stories my father told me, to the recordings of Dylan Thomas and Wallace Stevens, to readings by William Burroughs, Ed Dorn and Michael Ondaatje, to the sound of the language as written by Samuel Beckett, Allen Ginsburg and William Carlos Williams.

"I also grew up in an age where song lyrics were (and are) more central to the culture than poems. And for all the subtlety and power of the music I listened to, the lyrics were for the most part awful.

"This CD is an attempt to undo some of that regret. Unlike most song lyrics, I do believe you could sit down and read the verse in this book more than twice. I still perform many of the pieces in it without a trace of music, although because of the work of the musicians you hear, I don’t always imagine them that way. Often I can no longer disentangle the music from the voice.

"For this I have to thank André Asselin, Will Eizlini, Jay Scodnick and especially Sam Shalabi, who brought their musical skills to bear on a project that had about as much chance of paying their electricity bills as any other 13,000,000 to 1 ticket. Their generosity, patience and talent are what make these pieces live.

I would also like to acknowledge and thank some of the people who set the standard so high for spoken word performance in Montreal. By these I mean Fortner Anderson, Regie Cabico, Clifford Duffy, Corey Frost, David Gossage, Geneviève Letarte, Catherine Kidd, Hélène Monette & Bob Olivier, Norman Nawrocki, Alexis O’Hara, Todd Swift & Tom Walsh and the late Ian Stephens, a pioneer of this form in Canada.

Montreal has also benefited from the talents of a series of poet/producers who have created the events and venues where this work can flourish. This list started with Fortner Anderson and Lee Gotham, and has since been carried (sometimes singlehandedly) by Jake Brown, Alex Boutros & Kaarla Sundstrom, Mitsiko Miller, Alexis O’Hara, Victoria Stanton and Vince Tinguely, Todd Swift and Debby Young. Because of their work the performance scene now extends from jazz poetry to lectures, to sermons, stories, theatre and hip hop.

Lately it feels as if the city is in a renaissance, with new labels and presses to match the new words and music that have arisen. And this new series from Planète rebelle is, in my opinion, the clearest expression of how our literature now lives in two worlds—both in the pages of a book and in solo and collaborative performances whose voices and sounds are echoed on radio, television and CD.

With new music from Alien8 Records, ongoing support from CKUT FM and CBC Montreal, help from DNA Productions, and new words from Conundrum Press, DC Books, The Other Theatre, Véhicule Press, and Wired on Words, the stage is set for this work to continue long into the future.

This CD lives in a scene made by all these people. It is dedicated to the ones who have inspired me the most: to my parents, Ilay and Elizabeth Jean Ferrier, to my wife Lucy Riddell, and to our children, Michael and Sarah Tadhg.

Ian Ferrier,
Montreal, 1999