Influenza with Victor Scott: Part One
Approach Influenza as a series which serves to help give insight as to where music is born; these are the thoughts, influences and the inspirations directly from the mind of the artist. In this, the first edition in the series, Vancouver-based solo artist Victor Scott describes his latest album Good Times and the correspondence between listening to soundtracks and the album’s lead track, “Hollow Leg.”
On Soundtracks:
My first record Happy Days was originally intended as a series of four song EPs, but I could never get more than two of my songs to sound alike. I couldn’t figure out what to do until I went through a phase of listening to soundtrack records; in particular, Kill Bill. I think I must’ve been on the bus listening to “Battle Without Honour or Humanity” when I realized that records didn’t have to sound the same. In fact I liked it when they didn’t.
The song “Celia’s Ghost” from my first record started out like “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” but luckily didn’t end up sounding much like it. “Celia’s Ghost” is in three time, like a lot of my songs. That’s probably because of all the jazz records I listen to. A good jazz waltz is like a secret weapon that has the potential to just kill anything else in the room. Pop songs in three are criminally under represented anyways.
The first song on my new record is in three, “Hollow Leg,” and there are at least a couple others, although I hardly notice anymore. With “Hollow Leg,” you can hear those soundtrack influences, I probably wrote the guitar part while I was watching Buffy and the slide guitar part after seeing the Creaking Planks in which a friend of mine plays the electric saw.
“seeing the Creaking Planks in which a friend of mine plays the electric saw” — is that Hather or Andrea? The former is pretty great, picking up whatever instrument is called for… while the latter is so truly stupendous with her specialised skills it’s a crying pity we only get to play with her a couple of times a year. Alas!