Fiori, Séguin revisit their landmark 1978 album
Quebec icons Fiori and Séguin reissue their landmark 1978 collaborative album Deux cents nuits à l’heure, recorded as the province’s top acts of the ’70s were disbanding
The reissue of Fiori-Séguin’s Deux cents nuits à l’heure is released on Friday. Forty years ago, the exciting, explosive Quebec music scene was at a turning point.
“In 1978, all the big groups — Beau Dommage, Harmonium, Les Séguin — broke up,” said Richard Séguin, the seasoned singersongwriter who was one-half of Les Séguin, along with his sister Marie-Claire. “It was really the end of something — the end of the major bands.”
“Everything crashed in ’80,” added Serge Fiori, the main man in Harmonium.
After the exuberance of the music scene ici in the ’70s, the province’s francophone rock milieu went into a funk the following decade, with many tying that downswing to the downbeat mood in nationalist circles following the Oui side’s defeat in the 1980 referendum.
Séguin and Fiori were giving interviews a couple of weeks back to talk up a remastered version of their classic 1978 album Deux cents nuits à l’heure, which will be released on Friday. Séguin and Fiori worked on the remastering with Ryan Morey, who also worked on the reissue of Harmonium’s L’Heptade, Arcade Fire’s Funeral, Half Moon Run’s Dark Eyes, Suuns’ Felt, and Lhasa de Sela’s Live in Reykjavik.
Fiori-Séguin’s Deux cents nuits à l’heure was a huge record at the time. It sold more than 200,000 copies, spawned a number of hit singles, and garnered three Félix awards at the inaugural ADISQ gala in 1979, for best album, record of the year and group of the year. Séguin and Fiori wrote two songs apiece separately and three songs together for the collection, which still sounds remarkably fresh and is very much in the same musical universe as L’Heptade. In other words, it’s folky singer-songwriter fare mixed with progressive-rock flourishes, all tied together by Fiori and Séguin’s unmistakable voices.
The project was supposed to be a Québécois supergroup with Beau Dommage lead singer Michel Rivard, but he dropped out when he fell hard for a woman in Belgium.
“The three of us — me, Michel and Richard — were spending a lot of time together,” said Fiori.
“We didn’t really make a decision to do the project together,” he said. “We were just playing together. We just went into it without knowing. When I had a break from touring with Harmonium, I’d go hang out with Richard.”
They wrote the songs at a friend’s house on Brown’s Hill, between Ayer’s Cliff and Fitch Bay in the Eastern Townships. The album was also recorded in the Townships.
Fiori was pleasantly surprised when he listened to the master tapes again for the first time in years.
“It really touched me,” he said. “The songs have really stood the test of time. For me, it’s like a beautiful gift. Plus, it really is like the memory of the end of an era. So it’s important to underline that. And it’s not about nostalgia — the songs still work.”
Added Séguin: “The only judge of songs is the passage of time, and for us, these songs have aged well.”
Fiori says it was great to collaborate with Séguin because it felt so different from his work with Harmonium. They laugh 40 years later, talking about a couple of articles from the time that suggested the collaboration was fraught with tension and fuelled by excessive drug and alcohol use. They say nothing could be further from the truth.
They say all the members of that era’s top Quebec bands were friends, and that there was a spirit of solidarity.
“I really never felt any real competition,” said Séguin. “If there was any competition, it was just to create the best songs.”
The biggest difference between the reissues of Deux cents nuits à l’heure and L’Heptade is that the Harmonium album was both remastered and remixed, with the remix significantly changing the sound. Fiori and Séguin say they believe Deux cents nuits à l’heure didn’t need a remix.
“Look, it’s representative of its era, with all of the advantages and all of the faults,” said Séguin.
“Listening to it again, I actually found it more contemporary-sounding than I would have thought,” added Fiori.
They talk of how the songs seem to have re-entered the popular consciousness, particularly Ça fait du bien, which often turns up at Fête nationale parties.
“These songs touch people,” said Séguin. “They have an emotional resonance.”
Fiori says that when he speaks to students at CEGEPs and universities, they’re still talking about classic Québécois albums from the ’70s. “These songs touch them just like they touched fans back then.”
“There’s a curiosity for that era,” added Séguin. “It’s just like how so many people go back and listen to those great Neil Young albums from the ’70s.”
The two singers were speaking in French, but Fiori broke into English to end the discussion.
“Look, at the end of the day, a good song is a very good song. In the decades since, people spent a lot of time on the production and the arrangements and a lot less time on the writing.”