SONG OF THE DAY

“And If Venice Is Sinking” by Spirit Of The West (Faithlift, Warner Music Canada, 1993). Written by John Mann & Geoffrey Kelly.

INTERESTING FACTS (a la wikipedia)

– The song is about Mann’s honeymoon in Venice with his wife, Jill Daum. Infatuated with the city, Mann expresses his desire never to leave by alluding to the sinking of the city and asserting that he’ll go down with it: “And if Venice is sinking/Then I’m going under”. The song also references Marino Marini’s sculpture “Angelo della Città“.

– Several of the band’s friends and family members, as well as producer Michael Phillip Wojewoda, also appear on the track as backing vocalists on the song’s final chorus, and are credited in the album’s liner notes as “Venetian Choir”. Daum herself can be heard laughing in the background after the word “erection”. However, some radio stations played an edited version with the words “with an erection” blanked out.

– It proved to be Spirit of the West’s most successful single on the Canadian pop charts, reaching #30 on the RPM Top 100 singles chart the week of November 20, 1993, and #12 on the adult contemporary charts the week of January 31, 1994.

– Spirit Of The West are a Canadian folk rock band, who were popular on the Canadian folk music scene in the 1980s before evolving a blend of hard rock, Britpop, and Celtic folk influences which made them one of Canada’s most successful alternative rock acts in the 1990s.

– The band began in 1983 as a Vancouver-based folk trio called Evesdropper, consisting of John Mann, Geoffrey Kelly and J. Knutson. They soon changed their name to Spirit of the West, and independently released a self-titled album in 1984 before signing to Stony Plain Records, a roots music label based in Edmonton, Alberta. Stony Plain released Tripping Up the Stairs in 1986. Following that album, Knutson left the band and was replaced by Hugh McMillan.

– They decided to bring in a drummer and experiment with a more rock-oriented sound at the turn into the 1990s. Drummer Vince Ditrich was brought in, and the band’s 1991 album, Go Figure, was the result. Although the album retained many of the band’s folk influences, it was more hard rock than any of the band’s previous efforts, and this proved controversial among the band’s fans. The album included a rock rendition of “Political”, and at one show in London, Ontario, the audience presented the band with a petition demanding that they play the original version of that song. Despite the controversies, however, it became the band’s mainstream commercial breakthrough, and won them many new fans in the alternative rock scene.

In 1996, the band performed two shows with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. The band included some of their hits in these shows, but also included an album’s worth of songs written specifically for the occasion, and the new songs were released as Open Heart Symphony that year.

– The remaining members recorded 1997’s Weights and Measures as a four-piece, working with members of The Wonder Stuff, Capercaillie, Fairport Convention and Jethro Tull to round out the studio effort, and added Tobin Frank for their concert tour. However, with the music industry’s emphasis having shifted by this time toward more mainstream pop-oriented performers, Warner Bros. put little effort into promoting the album, and dropped the band from their roster after the tour.

VIDEO OF THE DAY