I was looking at a blog post about the new Super Friendz new CD when I wonderwed who was in the band, cause I used to live in Half-a-slacks in the 80's, went to the Grafton Street Cafe, was 1/2 of Bob the Dog on CKDU and I found this picture on the band's old site and I think - that guy looks like the John Wesley Chisholm guy from Blackpool once drummed by my soccer pal Roger as well as the Chipster (nice togs). So I goog a bit and find this chart created sometime before 1995 by Chris Murphy of Sloan (also ex-Blackpool) which sets out the entire family tree from, what, the mid-80's to mid-90's, which references Basic English who I knew as a NSCAD band of Monctonians when I was at Kings who used to live above Sams (later the Silver Bullet and the Double Diamond) where my brother Iain would see Sarah McLaughlin sing at parties. I had no idea there was a link between the semi-proto Slone band Kearney Lake Road (who I saw play outside at TUNS before or after Sook-Yin Lee and her band Bob's Your Uncle in the summer of '88) and 100 Flowers, one of which band my roomie dated in around '89. Best name: Al Tuck and No Action.
Later: I did not mention the early 80's start of the Hopping Penguins - still going - which I think was key in letting then-high-school kids know that local music could be vital and fun live. I have also dug out my tape of the pre-Geffen Sloan on Cod Can't Hear from '92 and the 1993 CD Out of the Fog, Too - brother Iain got me both. It is interestnig to see on the tape liner notes that Sarah M is thanked right before Zippy Print. Ah, before they were stars...
Comments
Brother Iain - July 18, 2003 9:31 pm
Sorry to spoil an anecdote, but I never saw Sarah McLachlan (spelling, laddies) sing at the apartment above Sam's (now, sadly, a particularly grotesque parkade). For one thing, that was in 1982-83, when she would have been, er, about 14.
I do remember being in the same room as Sarah McLachlan at another Basic English party house on Dresden Row round mid-86. But she wasn't singing. In fact, she was looking rather disdainfully at a roomful of would-be guitarists "jamming" -- including me! (Thus for years I would be able to brag that I'd never seen Sarah McLachlan perform live, but she had seen me.)
Then-roommate Dave Johnson reported around that time that he saw Sarah M. pick up an acoustic guitar and perform the entire first side of the first Kate Bush album, in order. (I had lunch with Dave last month and , among other distinctions, he now claims to be the great-uncle of several Hutterites.)
... You see how these stories get improved over time? ...
Steve Maher, the sometime Halifax Herald restaurant critic, once claimed that his band played at the old Pub Flamingo in Halifax one night when Sarah McLachlan was the coat-check girl. This led me to suggest that it was probably the high point of his musical career and the low point of hers. ... Or maybe I just thought that.
The (artistically) surviving members of Basic English are now in a band called Trainwreck whose main musical goal now seems to be to perform in the smallest possible venue in T.O.
Alan - July 19, 2003 8:07 am
See. Never let a half-fact go unstated.