ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON OCT. 14, 1983
By Steve Newton
“I’ve always had a love affair with whores,” says Maurice Depas, lead singer for Vancouver’s Maurice & the Cliches. He’s responding to the suggestion that hookers and social outcasts were the main inspiration for several songs on his band’s most recent album, C’est La Vie.
“I drove a cab in this city for a number of years when things weren’t going good,” he explains, gazing out the back window of his West Broadway loft at the downtown skyline, “and I’ve seen a lot of that side of life. I fancy myself–and I flatter myself a bit–to think I’m a little more intellectual than your average whore or taxi driver, and I’ve been able to use those experiences in my writing.
“On the streets it’s real life. Things matter so much to those people one way or another, because it really is closer to the bone, closer to life and death. And one of the things that I try and explore in these characters is the beauty in, not their life, but in the people themselves–and the fact that within anybody a large degree of innocence is possible.
“No matter what you do for a living, it’s the person inside that really makes you who you are. If you’re dressed up like a Nazi, you don’t have to be a Nazi.”
That last statement of Depas’s has particular consequence when you look at the cover of C’est La Vie, for there–with a cigarette in one hand and an arm behind his back–stands a caricature of Maurice himself in ersatz SS regalia.
So does he dress up like that often?
“Only when he’s with his girlfriend,” jokes Cliches keyboardist/guitarist Paul Wilson-Brown, looking up from his ever-present drawing pad. Throughout the interview his pencil moves, but he follows the conversation with an acute ear.
“Actually,” replies Depas, “I was sort of poking fun at militarism–like the Clash and all those guys dressing up as jungle fighters. I get involved in causes”–he once tried to run for the mayor of Vancouver–“and I was really into this anti-militarism trend.
“And I felt that the best ways to show something anti-militaristically was to let people react to it, and have their reaction be anti-militaristic. But what happened was people responded that way and we were their antagonists. So I sort of fooled myself in that instance.”
“It was a case of monomania,” injects Brown.
“Yeah, that’s what it was,” agrees Maurice with a chuckle. “The power got to me!” he declares with Hitleric force.
But whether it’s by donning provocative costumes or journeying into the heart of the city via cab and mixing with creatures of the night, Depas is always able to glean important socio-political insights for his songs. And when his comments on pornography (“Soft Core”) and desolation (“Skyline) are churned into music by Brown, guitarist Gary Westlake, bassist Barry Muir, and drummer Jay Johnson–the Cliches–the effect is cinematic and encompassing. Real-life portraits are drawn with stunning clarity, and Depas’s arty articulations are the pen.
“It was 1978 when we first got together over coffee to plan the band,” recalls Maurice when asked of the Cliches’ beginnings. “We were sort of in the punk era then–there was a burgeoning local punk scene in Vancouver with groups like the Dishrags.
“At first we started out making music that was not where our talents and abilities would seem to lead us,” concedes Depas. “It took us an album and a half to figure out what this band was. We’ve dropped a lot of the flowery passages over the last four years, and now we have a much more direct and simple sound that’s strong on percussion.”
The Cliches’ first album, How Cliche Can You Get?, was released in April 1980 and drew heavily on ska rhythms and textures. But even then the band was way ahead of other local acts in terms of keeping up with the trendsetting British scene.
Says Maurice: “It turned out kinda funny because it just so happened that that record, with its ska influences, came out nine months before the Selecter and all those ska bands imported their records over here. And we’d been doing it for almost a year before Vancouver’s first ska band was formed.
“So we were really intrigued by that sense of Caribbean rhythm, but grew rather dissatisfied with it when we heard it just everywhere.”
February 1981 saw Maurice & the Cliches release the three-song disc Veronika and begin a working relationship with producer Jamie Bowers, who also lent his considerable talents to the making of C’est La Vie. Bowers has played with Vancouver bands Prism and Chilliwack, and also performs his own material with tape recorders in a live, Robert Fripp-type of presentation.
“He’ll take things out of our music and leave us with just enough meat on the bone,” says Depas.
Though the music on C’est La Vie is often stark and bare-bonesy, there is some mighty tasty meat within its grooves. Brown and Westlake’s swell guitar freakouts, Muir and Johnson’s sturdy yet inventive rhythms, and Depas’s pithy, intense comments on modern life give it an unusual and attractive aroma. And according to Brown, the band’s sound has reached the point where it is also more accessible.
“For me,” he says, “what’s changed in the band in the last year and a half is that we’ve started to see the music business as something that’s made up of two words: music and business. We’ve nurtured our abilities to work with people and because of that we’ve been able to make deals, move ahead, and get to more people.”
One of the deals that Maurice & the Cliches have been able to make is a nine-album one with RMS Records of Los Angeles. And the band is currently at work on their second for the independent label, tentatively titled Almost California, at Little Mountain Sound. The engineer for C’est La Vie, Lindsay Kidd, is again at the controls.
Also on the boards for the group are videos. Local filmmaker Michael Rosati–“he’s like the Cliche that isn’t in the band”–will start work with them in mid-November for a video on a song from the new album, and one on “Soft Core”, the U.S. single from C’est La Vie.
“Soft Core” was playlisted at KROQ, one of L.A’s top radio stations, and C’est La Vie has seen some action on UBC’s CiTR. Some of the bigger stations in town have ignored the band, but that hasn’t deterred their local following any.
“When we play the Railway Club,” says Brown, “we get lineups right down the stairs, and they have some of their best bar sales ever.”
Maurice & the Cliches will be appearing with the Visible Targets tonight (Oct. 14) at the Legion Hall, 6th and Commercial.
To read over 100 of my interviews with local Vancouver musicians since 1983, go here.