I always considered us a punk band with a hit single. On its face a collaboration between Men Without Hats and Voivod doesn’t seem like a fit but if I look back at your music Rhythm Of Youth had protest songs wrapped in pop music. I’m not sure if it was Blacky’s last record with the band for a while. What did you think of the Angel Rat material? That’s almost like your Sideways record in that people don’t know what to do with it. I’m actually doing the same thing with him now he is working on an online comic book on UFOs and I proofread it. Michel and I are both into comics and drawings and into flying saucers. I just read his lyrics to make sure there were no mistakes. As far as the lyrics go all I did was proofread. Michel was recording Angel Rat at the time of Sideways so I played keyboards and programmed a few songs. Michel and I have been in touch ever since. We knew the fans and the record company wouldn’t understand it.
I remember every record I’ve made and my state of mind and that was just fun with no pressure. Nirvana hadn’t happened yet so they (the label) were like, o.k., we’ll do it for half the budget. I never really thought it would be a Men Without Hats record but I had enough songs. So he inspired me and I started writing all of these songs. We just started jamming and Michel – he’s the most musical drummer I’ve ever worked with. I had one record left on my contract and had an obligation. A guitar record from Men Without Hats? It was only released in Canada and has become a curious record for our fan club. The album, well, people just didn’t know what to think of it. We recorded Sideways in upstate New York and Michel was there with me. I basically put the Sideways album together jamming with Michel and Kastner and another guitar player.
I was writing the last Men Without Hats record of the 20th century Sideways. we’d go to the Voivod jam space for a few hours. After the bars would close in Montreal at 3 or 4 a.m. John Kastner (from a Canadian punk band called Doughboys) introduced us. We tracked down Doroschuk and talked about the shared ties between a legendary metal band and a global hitmaker. The partnership goes both ways Langevin appeared on the little heard Hats album Sideways and joined the band on tour and Doroschuk contributed to the wildly inventive Voivod albums Angel Rat and Phobos.
One of the most intriguing partnerships to emerge in the early 90s was the musical bond between Voivod founder/drummer Michel “Away” Langevin and Men Without Hats founder and songwriter Ivan Doroschuk. Men Without Hats are from Montreal, home to a very close-knit musical community. The Saturday night featured program on the SiriusXM new wave channel is called? You got it: The Safety Dance. People never stopped doing “The Safety Dance.” Remixes show up every week, including a metal version (more about that below). And “The Safety Dance” was one of the biggest songs of the decade, and continues to resonate. Men Without Hats were one of the biggest pop bands of the early to mid-80s.
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