Welcome, welcome! We’re on the fifth episode of this wildness— AKA “Episode Four”— and this time it’s all about some of our favourite artists from Atlantic Canada… clocking in at over ninety minutes… this special, monster-sized episode is maybe the first of more episodes on the Maritimes scene(s)…

This episode is in memory of Andrew “Drew” Crawford (1977-2016).

We certainly have a YouTube playlist! Come back for seconds if you’re not adequately stuffed… and comment on the post, the YT clip, or wherever you’re encountering us!

Dan’s Notes

An aside in praise of the 709-

First off, I feel like during the recording of the pod I neglected to provide a full description of what an average show in St John’s was like in the early 00’s. Imagine a 6 band bill where the same handful of people in different combinations plus a ringer or two here and there make up every band, but there are 200 people in the crowd and they are moshing so hard that the floor of the venue might give out, and then next thing you know someone is dragging a trampoline into the pit and the bouncers are trying to take a steel chair from the hands of a concert goer as said concert goer was trying to swing it at his fellow concert goers Rock-Vs-Mankind style, and then next thing you know the entire crowd is on the floor because the vocalist of the band had just cartwheeled into the pit causing everyone to tumble to the ground. A view from outside the venue would almost make you think the place was on fire between the red stage lights and steam generated from the moving bodies inside. The city of St John’s  has had a small but vibrant scene since the late 70’s when Da Slyme released their self-titled double-LP with their logo spray painted over the dust jackets of whatever old album covers they could find and reuse rather than spend the extra money to have their own professionally printed, through the crossover thrash of Schizoid and Tough Justice in the 80s to the birth of the “modern” hardcore scene there in the early 00’s. Unfortunately a lot of the bands from that era didn’t get the chance to record, and those who did do so in that early 00’s period mostly kept their releases to a handful of burnt CDRs distributed between friends and their music rarely made it to ears of anyone outside that province. With all of this in mind I wanted to highlight two St John’s bands from around the turn of the millenium, one (The Killing) made up of older more experienced scene members playing an angry and vicious take on the genre of straightedge hardcore who set the standard for that genre in the region and became the province’s most notorious live act (proudly banned from the ski town of Pasadena NL for their antics), and another (Geinus) made up of younger musicians at that time who went searching for the influences of their favourite grunge bands from the previous decade and had their minds blown by bands like Scratch Acid, The Melvins and Big Black and working those sounds into their own mix of melody, bombast and shredding guitars. Both had a massive influence on their town’s scene in the decades since their respective foundings around 2000 or so and are fairly unsung outside of their home province and I wanted to show them some love for it:

Geinus (St John’s)

Geinus are what happen when a gaggle of early 00’s oddballs from the suburbs of St John’s (shoutout to CBS)are fed a steady diet of 80’s and 90’s AmRep and weirder SST Records stuff and then holed up in someone’s parents basement until they had honed their off-kilter abrasive craft to devastating sharpness. From their very first show “in town” as a last minute replacement act on a benefit show for a local community group in 2001 and beyond they were the one band who managed to draw in the punks, the metal fans, the indie rockers, and even just your average joe out for the town with their mix of devastating riffs, intricate guitar melodies and sometimes off kilter rhythms. I saw them play countless times during that couple of years that I was living in St Johns and they always killed, no matter what genres of bands they were playing with. They recorded one full length in the mid-00s that can be found on YouTube these days that provides a well rounded cross section of their earlier material, and continued playing together on through the 2010s as well when they recorded their second full length Keeper in October 2018, which can be purchased through their bandcamp page. In preparing for this episode I think they were the band I found myself listening to the most out of any of my picks as I had not given them a listen in several years due to the fact that it had been so long since I had had the chance to listen to their earlier material but much thanks to the HeavyNfld YouTube channel for preserving these recordings, alongside those of so many other artists from the province. 

The Killing (St John’s)

The perfect storm of creative individual from another town shows up and recruits like minded locals to make fun music, douse people in vegan fake blood and usher in a new era of their scene. 

The Killing ran from about 2000 to 2004 in St. John’s, after Dave Munro moved from Toronto to start a tattoo studio and some of the locals learned of his ties to the hardcore scene and eventually convinced him to do vocals for a Misfits cover set on Halloween. It was a chaotic blast and next thing you know they were working on originals, and ended up started a whole new era of the hardcore scene in the city. Their intense and very physical live shows became notorious, to the point that when former locals turned major label nu-metal adjacent rockers Bucket Truck would come back through town they would ask the Killing to share the bill because of the crowd they would bring out, and let the straightedge thrashers play last because there was usually no following their set. When new local HC bands were looking to learn a cover song to get the crowd moving, more than one added their takes on The Killing’s usual set-closer “The Death Of Optimism” which would drive the audience into a frenzy. Despite having very little recorded output, their live shows were legendary, especially their annual Halloween performances usually held at a venue they were not planning on using again due to their antics in the spirit of the holiday. These sets usually involved the band in some sort of costumes, with life-sized coffins holding “backup dancers” who would spring out and spray the crowd down with the band’s special vegan-friendly fake blood mix, then cover the sticky crowd with trick or treat buckets full of flour (which would then stick to the fake blood and make a nasty sort of dough) or maybe just start pelting the mosh pit with rotten jack o lanterns depending on what was on hand, all while the band was playing drop-tuned Misfits covers at double the speed and occasionally stopping to light off gas station fireworks onstage or occasionally attack the crowd with their instruments. They released a hard to find self titled CDR at the start of their existence, and then towards the end of their run in 2004 recorded “You Can Make Music….We’re Gonna Make War” as the sole decent-sounding testament to their existence, though as previously mentioned, the band’s live experience was truly the best way to experience their rage.

Phone Jerks (Moncton)

In the mid 2010s it felt like Moncton’s punk scene went through a bit of a renaissance. Claude’s House, a venue/practice space/crash pad owned by the proprietor of a local veggie restaurant  and left in the care of “the kids” provided an incubator for a ton of great younger bands as well as convincing quite a few older locals to get back in the game. Of all of those bands, The Phone Jerks were always my favorites to see (and share stages with, during the years I was travelling to their city to perform standup comedy sets at punk shows fairly often). With an “ex-members of” resume that includes veterans of such acts as Cape Breton’s Teenage Hurricanes, late 90’s Seattle rockers The Valentine Killers and local dirtbag acts such as Impulse Items, The Beaten Hearts and Nerve Button, the Moncton four piece serve up a spicy catchy take on garage punk with lyrics that mix working class laments, odes to their favourite drag queens and meditations on parenting with more standard rock and roll topics. From around 2015 to when they called it quits in early 2022, Phone Jerks were the flagship band of this new Moncton scene and one of my favorites to see live when I had the chance either sharing the stage with them or just enjoying the show.

Booji Boys (Halifax)

I have no idea how Cody Googoo does it. The guy has been a fixture of the Halifax scene since the mid-late 00’s to date and always at the center of like 3-4 bands at a time….according to  to discogs he’s been in something like 20 bands over the past two decades of involvement in the local scene (and I can think of another half dozen at least that aren’t listed on there).  All of these projectstotally killer in their own ways, though for long time mostly on the faster and uglier sides of things. Around 2017 he and Alienation-bandmate Steve Earl (not that one) joined up with members of local indie band Bloodhouse to create the Devo-referencing  juggernaut of melodic punk mixed with new wave doused in swirly vocal effects and ear-grabbing guitar hooks. Between their pair of LPs that bookended 2017 (s/f released in Feb 2017 and “Weekend Rocker” on Xmas Day that year) and their final full length “Tube Reducer” in 2019 (along with a handful of EPs and compilation tracks) the band was a constant around stages all over Halifax and possibly the most accessible music project Googoo or Earle had been a part of up to that point (as in not crust punk or full of blast beats and screaming), though some of the more psych-rock elements of the band’s music were given the chance to flourish in one of Cody’s other newer bands Heavenly Blue with Booji’s rhythm section that lean more into the Syd Barrett than the Greg Ginn of it all if you catch my drift. Like so many other bands that burned fast and hot and then moved along to explore other creative lanes, their intensity during the time they were around made up for how short that actual period of time was, but at least they left us with a pretty killer trio of full length records out the whole deal anyway. Definitely one of Halifax’s best bands of the past decade or so. 

Neighbourhood Watch (Fredericton)

Full disclosure : some members of this band band basically helped raise me at an awkward time, even if they weren’t really an active band at that point. Nik, who played drums for their initial incarnation in the 80’s hosted the Sunday night punk show on the local campus radio station and shaped my teenage years with his musical selections, and NW vocalist Grant aka Rusty was a constant sarcastic fixture of various downtown coffee spots I haunted during my younger years, and helped introduce me to tons of music, film and other pop culture stuff. The fact that these folks had also had a band together in the 1980s made it all seem that much cooler to me as a youth and was excited to see the rare reunion shows they would play, albeit featuring a few ringers here and there due to some other members not being in town anymore. While living in BC in my early 20’s I scored a copy of their Death At The Hands Of Time EP from a local record collector selling off some of their doubles at a show and it was one of my prized possessions for years and felt like a piece of hometown history while I was living far away. Years later living in Halifax I was overjoyed to see they were back together for a reunion tour with the lineup from that 7”, including their original guitarist who had just moved back to NB and it was great to see these folks who had looked up to so much as a youth back at it again. While not everyone from that lineup decided to keep at it, a new lineup of the band has been formed by Grant, Ciaran (the guitarist who had moved back) and some newer musicians and they have even recorded a full length you can get through their bandcamp.

Bonus Note

I knew that Matt was going to pick Eric’s Trip so I did not give them a full writeup on my side, but they were *THE* band to me as a teen. Their first full length Love Tara is one of my all time favorites of any genre. I will talk at length to anyone who will listen about this, and really had to struggle at not making this new episode even longer by doing so. I am sure we will talk about them even more in the future as well.

Addenda…

…and related things that got mentioned in the chat:

And also…

Please visit this Vice article on Mark Gaudet of Eric’s Trip, Robins, Purple Knight etc:

https://www.vice.com/da/article/6azq5a/did-punk-rock-start-in-moncton-new-brunswick

*Love the title for that last article! Matt

Matt’s Notes

Hey everyone! Or anyone…

Thanks for joining us today! Or now! Or whatever!

This topic is, obviously, close to our… individual and/or collective… heart(s)!

Uuuuhhh….

Anyway! From such random and yet serendipitous connections of people and moments and things… MOSTLY IN THE NINETEEN NINETIES… we’ve kind of hit the muck where indie & punk music seemed popular for awhile… right when we needed indie & punk music to be popular… and then for the decades after… there are so many rich potential trajectories you could follow with this kind of music… and all the spinoffs… and immediate and tangential effects…

Thanks to Dan for choosing to jump into this feet first! I was surprised, and I’m delighted to follow his lead…

Joel Plaskett… and Sloan!! (Halifax, NS)

I think I’ll probably save the commentary… as far as Joel… for whatever I said during the recordings!

He’s limitlessly talented, independent, prolific, and real…

The dude is only 3 or 4 years older than me… but his imprint in Canadian music… and in Halifax… is unsurpassed.

I’ve only seen Joel play twice, somehow, over these decades… but both times… literally decades apart… were superb. Like I said during the recording… there aren’t many artists who can pull off a fucking tight four LP box of original music… but he did! I hope I can align whatever I’m up to this summer with Joel’s touring, cause of course he will be…

I’ll be honest… his virtual series during COVID actually helped keep me feeling a little bit better than normal for those times… MAJOR… and the re-recording of Down at the Khyber twenty years later… with the original Emergency lineup… fucking genius in intention and delivery…

Limitless respect, actually…

And fuck… as far as Sloan… the stuff of theirs I liked… I’ll say I distinctly remember seeing the video for 500 Up around age 14… and being blown away… as much by the video as by the song… like… these are four dudes just standing around… and yet it’s awesome…

I “came back” to them about four years ago (I’m 44…) and now I’m getting all of their stuff that I can. Smart, passionate pop music that ages better than you might remember…

And to those who always knew they were independent pop geniuses in waiting… congrats… I wasn’t one of you… but now I am…

SIDENOTE: I always wondered why it didn’t work out with Geffen? They were on the same label as Nirvana at the same time that Nirvana was popular… I mean, I’m sure I could google it… I feel like… MUCH LIKE THE REPLACEMENTS… Sloan have perhaps made choices that worked for them artistically… but maybe weren’t always the best from a business standpoint… anyway… this post is so fucking far into the weeds at this point… so…

Rocking Argentos + EI (Fredericton, NB)

Listen, my intention here is… NOT TO THROW ANYONE UNDER THE BUS…

So as such, I’ve included a couple of tracks here THAT REMIND ME OF THESE BANDS. In the best possible way…

I get it! I’ve been involved in all kinds of wild art over the decades… I was seventeen and publishing poetry with Joe Blades (RIP)… and whatever else…

Jeremy from Argentos is super-fucking-cool. We met in Skyline / Southwood in like grade six or seven. Cool as fuck. Nice and creative and everything. Years go by. You fall out of touch. But… I’ll admit to this… I met Moonyea Park, the mom of my kids… at a Rocking Argentos show one night after getting off from likely a double-shift at the Avis / Cendant call centre… and needing desperately both to get drunk as fuck… and preferably to the loudest music available…

I’m not trying to add any undue significance to this one particular night… except there is exactly 0% chance I would have met my kids’ mom had I not gone to that show…

Seriously man, I’m gonna cry if I keep this up…

And… EI… just the coolest fucking guys in the world… who happen to have had the coolest fucking band in the scene at the time… for those of us who were still going to shows…

Eric’s Trip (Moncton, NB)

Thanks to Dan for letting me keep this for my list!

Not that he had to…

I think we could easily have an entire show… an entire Eric’s Trip Podcast if you will… with album-by-album breakdowns, track-by-track analysis, and sharing specialized tidbits about any and all things to do with Julie Doiron, and/or Rick White… including Elevator, Elevator to Hell, and all of his myriad solo recordings over the decades…

As mentioned on the show, SubPop has done a lovely job of keeping most of the records in print… on gorgeous multi-coloured vinyl, no less… if anybody has a line on a nice copy of Love Tara on vinyl, please hit me up…

Finally, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND visiting the Rick White Archive on Bandcamp… just all kinds of stuff from pre-Eric’s Trip to 2022… and you can also find links to the latest edit of the Eric’s Trip movie… fucking heaven, man…

ERIC’S TRIP 1990-1996 (new2021edit) from RickWhiteArchive on Vimeo.

Old (90’s) Fredericton punk… (Fredericton, NB)

Here we are: Ground Zero of my teens and early twenties… and I’m struggling to remember a bunch of these bands’ names…

I could give you four or five or maybe ten without having to go too deep into Google…

So this is where nostalgia begins to fail… because at the time it felt like there were TOO MANY BANDS TO COUNT.

So… folks… in my experience there were too many kids and teens and early adults making this wild, innovative and utterly independent music… and, at risk of being even more of an asshole… I will leave it at that for now… or also, some of you could do a better job of curating whatever kind of legacy you think you might want to have via Bandcamp and whatever…

Every fucking show I went to for a certain period between ages like fifteen and twenty-five… was formative in some way… even the dull ones!

We are deeply grateful that you’d choose to spend some time with us, you hosers! Until next we meet in a Maritimey bog…

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Filed under: Uncategorized - @ February 10, 2023 8:39 pm