Over the summer, MuchMusic contacted Soul Plane and informed us that they would be invading our lives for a good couple months to film our band's debauchery and give us some national television exposure and to put us through rockstar training to see if we have what it takes to make it somewhere in the music industry. If you haven't seen the episode or heard the verdict yet, catch it online now at http://www.muchmusic.com/tv/disband/soulplane.asp (full-screen the window for the optimal in-yo'-face experience). These are my memoirs from our time on set with Much...
The Voiceover Sessions
Location: MuchMusic Headquarters
Saying formal goodbyes to MuchMusic after our final performance like everyone else in Soul Plane did was, for me, an absolutely inappropriate thing to do. In fact, the weeks that followed the success that was our show at Much saw me getting busier than I ever was during the actual filming process.
You may have noticed that throughout our “Disband” episode that there’s a dude that keeps talking off-camera and why won’t he just shut the hell up and let me watch this damn show. That’s because MuchMusic decided that reality-TV fans cannot get enough of a first-person narrative of what’s going on – merely seeing us get chewed up, swallowed, and projectile-thrown-up in a back alley by music industry bigwigs for 17-or-so minutes (until the judges miraculously got high or something and somehow and decided that we had what it takes, despite all contrary appearances, to make it in the music biz) wasn’t enough, they had to hear it from the horse’s mouth. Except on the show I looked more like an ass than a horse.
When Hector called me to tell me that I’d be doing the voiceover sessions for our episodes, I was less than excited. I knew immediately that they would have a script prepared for me, and I knew that the script was going to be cornier than a bag of nachos. Obviously this is no reflection on the writers of the show; this is more a reflection on their target audience’s shitty sense of humour. I don’t care how much you want to blame the writing, because the numbers don’t lie: somebody out there is tuning in and sending these ratings through the roof, which gives the head honchos at Much Headquarters the impression (and rightly so) that the mainstream masses are eating it up (because you are), which leads to a pat on the back and a letter of encouragement for the writers, which now backfires in my face hard because I have to read this in a way that convinces everyone that this is really how I would talk. I was going to have to either stand up for myself once the script fell into my hands, or sit down to pee on national television.
From the sounds of it, I definitely chose the latter.
But even how gay I sounded narrating our two months of camera-time with Much couldn’t take away from the experience of actually recording the voiceovers for a reality show. Each session I was called down for (and there were several because I suck and I’m no good at making other people’s shit my personality), Hector was in Super-Host God Mode. He gave me a tour of the entire building, I got to meet a lot of the Much TV personalities – they’re all just as cool as they seem on TV. Hannah Simone and I got to kick it and that’s where I found out she wasn’t even that offended that I dropped “faggot” in my freestyle against Bishop, she just had to play it up for the purposes of the episode. Nevertheless, she took the opportunity to warn me that part of her job description when interviewing bands/celebrities is to find out where they “fucked up and expose them accordingly,” so if I wanted to avoid that kind of grilling from other media personalities, I needed first and foremost to watch my mouth and my actions. I in turn reassured her that I wasn’t looking to put gays on blast… just Bishop. And that didn't work out so well either.
During our down time, interspersed with smoke breaks and meeting and kicking it with TV personalities at Much, we went over how these voiceovers were supposed to go down: I was supposed to sound like I truly meant everything I was reading off that script. I got a lot of heat from my friends at how corny some of those voiceover lines were – I’d like to take this time to clear the air: I did not write my own shit, nor did I see any of the footage that my voiceovers were supposed to be segmented into. If I had, it would NOT have come out sounding cornier than a bag of Tostitos chips. Not that it sounded shitty or anything, but if they just let me talk as I was watching the final cut of the episode, they would have gotten a fully authentic commentary on everything that was happening on the screen. It would have been much more entertaining: for example, during the scene where Soul Plane goes into group-hug mode after Sarah Taylor announced the verdict, I woulda been like: Yeah, here’s where I hump Gideon’s leg. See? Much better already – no pun intended.
And then there were just some things I flat-out refused to say. One of the writers tried to get me saying something like, “…and when Greig said that we shouldn’t play ‘Life is Beautiful’ for the judges, it kinda put a pickle in our steeze.” Are you serious? What the fuck is a pickle? I put pickles in my sandwich. Who says “pickle” for ANY OTHER REASON? What kind of assclown was this writer trying to make me look like? When I got to the line I calmly looked at Kelly, the studio engineer at the time, through the glass pane and then the writer who was, at the time, supervising the voiceover session, and the following conversation ensued:
Yui: I’m not saying “pickle.”
Writer: What?
Yui: This line here… “…a bit of a pickle of a situation?” What the fuck does that even mean?
Writer: It means that Greig telling you not to play that song was pitching a curveball at your plans.
Yui: Couldn’t you have just written THAT?
Writer: …
Yui: Seriously, I’m not saying this.
Writer: Well, just give it a shot, man. It might come out good.
Yui: Impossible.
Kelly: Yeah, I think it sounds stupid too.
Writer: Oh.
Another thing I refused to say was the word “finangle.” I don’t know what that means either, and I certainly didn’t care about context. It just sounds dumb no matter where, when or how you say it.
Most of you have seen our episode. What did you think of the voiceovers? Email your thoughts to fanmail@soulplanemusic.com. I’ll pretend to care as soon as I remember the password to get into that email account.
