Staasi Quartet - Staasi Quartet

Last week, our pal Chris Zimmel (of Airship One and Massive Ferguson) mailed us a few tapes he had stashed away in his Edmontonian fortress. This is the first, and it's something we've been chasing after for a while. Staasi Quartet was note really a quartet - we have conflicting reports as to the membership, ranging from two people to more than forty. We know for sure that two of the folks were Ron Cho and Garrett McClure.

Of course, we're pretty transparent about things we like. You already know we like the Primrods (just a bit past the point of obsession), so pre-P7 Garrett McClure has been a strong point of interest for us. This tape hasn't disappointed us; it hasn't left the tape deck much over the past week.

We'd only previously managed to get hold of Staasi Quartet via the Hellride to a Bloodbath compilation, and this tape is quite different than the noisy guitar rock attack of Hellride's tracks. While much of this is richly steeped in early-90's indie rock (traces of Stereolab, Yo La Tengo and Sebadoh pervade), it's the first track that repeatedly blows our minds. "Available at Christmas in Hardcover Only" is basically a prototype of "Plans For Palmyra," from the Primrods' split 7" with Tristan Psionic and their tragically, criminally unreleased (*cough*) Geffen CD.

We still have no idea what the lyrics are, but we don't care.

Forbidden Dimension - Sin Gallery (1993)

We ended up talking tapes at Broken City last night (in between the flying fists - for future shows, we would like to request that idiots not attend rock shows when we are. With the CCPS present, there's enough idiocy for everyone, and less punching), and our friend Casey Lewis leans over and says (we're paraphrasing here, as we were a bit traumatized by the above mentioned flying fists and can't quire remember the what he said exactly), "I just told someone about your site, she's looking for a copy of Sin Gallery, I told her you'll have it."

"But, Good Sir!" We said, "We cannot post that! It was only released on compact disc, the medium of the devil!"

"No, it came out on tape," Casey insisted, "and it's out of print now."

Well, we've done a bit of research, and of course Casey is correct (as you've figured out by now, we are very rarely right about anything). It looks like Sin Gallery, which is technically considered FD's first full-length recording, was put out by the sadly departed Cargo records on both vinyl and cassette. We managed to confirm this visually via a facebook photo of someone's tape collection, which includes Sin Gallery (alongside both Roky Erickson AND Roxette).

At this point, Forbidden Dimension was Jackson Phibes, Lars Bonfire, and Larry Van Halen. Or, if you prefer, Tom Bagley, another guy, and a drum machine. It's good stuff, still one of our favourites from these guys.

However, all we have is the CD (which is lovingly stored in out collection alongside both Foreigner and Dan Fogelberg), so we're cheating a bit and using that as our source for today's post. To make up for that, we're going to point you to this FD Fanzine site for the lyrics and all of your sing-along pleasures (you'll find this especially useful for the horror-folk of "In the Pines").

Get it here.

THEexceptionsCDN - THEexceptionsCDN (1997)

We think we're getting towards the bottom of the pile of tapes we borrowed from CJSW. At least, we're getting towards the end of the list of ones that (a) have a j-card and/or (b) we know anything about. We suspect today's tape is somewhat related to this post, and out ears certainly think there's probably more than a slight chance to this.

But, as always, we're not certain.

New Internationalists - CJSW Demos 1992-97

We've pulled together three demo tapes from the New Internationalists into one collection here, partly to show how much a band can change over time (especially with changes in membership) and partly because we're quite lazy.

The first few songs on here fit the same style as the tape we featured yesterday; our Musical Analogue Expert wants to compare these guys to Hunters and Collectors without the horn section. We're still trying to figure out how we ended up with a position called a Musical Analogue Expert. We think he's referring to the anthemic, big music sound they put out. Anyhow, we found a bio of frontman Bruce Callow that indicates he split town and headed to Costa Rica, where he's been since. After the first tape, the style of this changes radically - ending in pretty uninteresting blues rock (to us - but then, we've never like the blues). We were overly-quick in returning the tapes we borrowed from CJSW back to Myke Atkinson; we neglected to make any notes of who the members were for the final two tapes.

The same bio of Bruce Callow indicates that the New Internationalists reunited sometime after 2003, and put out a CD.

But, again, we don't really care about CDs here.

New Internationalists - New Internationalists (1991)

We're struggling through some uncertainty here (as is often the case here at the CCPS). We know Bruce Callow of the 21 Hundredz went on to form the New Internationalists, but we have no idea who else was involved in this.

So we'll leave it at that.

The 21 Hundredz - Demo

We're heading back into some of our great finds from the CJSW archive with today's post (and, if we can stay focused, for the next short while). We've heard from the 21 Hundredz thanks to our pals over at Golden Rock and their posts of the Tones and Calgary Compelation LPs. Two of the tracks on this 3-song demo are from those records, leading us to guess the year on this is between 1986 and 1988.

We're having a hard time tracking down details about this band, including membership. A bit of sleuthing tells us that Bruce Callow and a guy named V. Jed Deluca were part of this band, and we have reason to believe that Lori Kennedy played drums for these guys prior to being in Same Difference. A guy named David London may have been the front man. There's a lot we're guessing at, based on some heavy Googling/drinking tonight. The magic of a Google cache yields this:

This band released two singles and produced 4 videos one of which was in Much Music's rotation in 1984.They performed at the Montreal New Music Festival in 1987. The band also won Calgary radio station KIK FM's band contest in 1989 with the winning single being written and produced by Jed.

Wow. KIK FM. How many of you remember Humble Howard... and were at a taping of Switchback in the early-80s?

We were!

Drench - Drench (1993)

After we posted the tape from Von Hipple's Shak a bit ago, Ben Docktor got in touch with us and offered up this little demo (in an ongoing theme, which he kept track of the tape, he's managed to lose the j-card). Ben tells us that this was recorded at Airwaves, back in the day when bands actually used studios and not a basement and Garageband (see this week's f-word for the latest casualty of this trend).

After this great little noise-pop band, Karrie Galvin and Jeff Kirker would go on to play with a guy featured in yesterday's post, Bob Keelaghan, in Loudmouth.

Get it here.

Rabbit Has Brain - All Humans Are Stupid (1993)

We're not sure how this one has eluded the posting process for so long. It's a tape we love and cherish here at the CCPS, and we'd turned into an iPad-friendly format years ago. How'd we miss it? Probably has something to do with the drink.

Rabbit Has Brain, in retrospect, was a weird mix of folks. Led by the ever-quirky Mark David Stewart, featuring the shred-tastic guitar of Puritan/Agnostic Bob Keelaghan and backed by Tom Kennedy of Joe 90, the Ted Clark Five and Huevos Rancheros and Chris Wharton (who?), this probably shouldn't have worked as well as it did. Although the focus is on MD's songs, the two that Tom Kennedy contributes are also fantastic; they leave us wishing we could hear more from both of these guys.

We remember a few great Rabbit Has Brain shows at clubs that no longer exist, and whose location we can't quite remember (maybe they're just figments of our imagination?). We also remember Tom Atikinson of the Shinolas playing with these guys for at least two of those shows.

Get Stupid.

CCPS Miscellany: Various - Play: 28 Tunes That Say "Howdy" (1995)

We're trying to bring the Good Ship CCPS out of the Miscellany and back into our true mandate, so we're grabbing the one CD off our desk that seems to always be in reach. For us, this CD captures so much of the mid-90's Calgary scene, good (with the exception being the Primrods) and bad (the exception there being Brass).

This CD was put out by CJSW in partnership with the Brad Simm/Mike Bell joint venture that was Cry Baby Records. This CD would have come out at a time when most bands could barely afford to put out their own discs, so it was a good way of getting the tunes out in a reasonable format. This is perhaps one of the more diverse compilation CDs from the era - certainly moreso than the Bloodback comps or Oooh, I'm So Pretty.

There are some interesting bits of history on here. Much of this was recorded at Jeff Burns' basement studio, as his was probably the most accessible (ie cheapest) digital studio in town at the time. We just noticed, after coveting this thing for 15 years, that it was mastered by Tona Ohama. Lola, the Brad Simm, er, vehicle on here, features Leslie Feist on backing vocals. The Manhattan Jump Blues Revue morphed into the Dino Martinis. And the late, great James Muretich plays drums with the Walking Dead.

Here's the tracklisting, to give you a sense as to what to expect:

Disk 1
Elmo's Dream - Astro Girl
Wagbeard - Gooch
The Merkins - Fly
Placebo - Spike
25 Cent Peep Show - Freakweasel
Aysim - Flakey Boy
Bent On Barbi - Like This
Field Day - Enough For Two
Rabbit Has Brain - Debbie Like I Do
Forbidden Dimension - Lettle Red Schoolhouse
Pussy Monster - Modern Girls
The Parkades - Preactically Mine
Glider - Never Trust An Actor
Toledo Speedway - Impala's Dream

Disk 2
Fire Engine Red - Dime
The Plaid Tongued Devils - Scar
Drench - Vic Vega
Ramada Gods - A.A.S.S.
Red Autumn Fall - My Friend Deceiver
Poplydia - Come On
Six Digit Fix - I Fucked Up
Maud - 1-95
The Manhattan Jump Blues Revue - Kick You Out The Door
The Walking Dead - Match Made In Hell
G.A.S.P. - Waiting
Lola - Miles Ahead
The Fricks - Contagious
Rogue Pope - Castles In Spain

Over the past year and half or so, we've been pretty pleased to find tapes from most of our favourites covered on here. Still MIA are tapes from Rogue Pope, G.A.S.P. and Maud.

Howdy! (And Heidi!)

CCPS Miscellany: Pal Joey - Repent Sinners (1993), Demo (1996)

Last night's festivities had us listening to Wagbeard's back catalogue this morning (if you missed the show last night, word is they're playing at Bamboo ce soir), and chance led us (via the Primrods, 'natch) to Pal Joey. We already posted a demo of this great Edmonton band's last spring, although we completely goofed up most of the facts around that tape (in our defence, it did give us reason to post one of the best rock photos ever to come out of this city).

So we're going to try to make things right with a collection of another two tapes from Edmonton's great purveyors of Replacements gone roots power pop. The first is their 1993 tape, Repent Sinners, which predates Lorrie Mattheson's involvement. A comment in last year's post indicates that this their second tape, and it's pretty damn good. To our ear, it has a lot in common with Fire Engine Red's fantastic 1530 (we had to drop a Fire Engine Red reference in here somewhere - they're one of the bands we'd really like to see play again. Please take note, Mr. Jett Thunders, for the next CJSW anniversary bash).

The second tape is a demo from 1996, featuring one more song by Trent Buhler and Lorrie Mattheson's "Sadie Hawkins" (we think this is the same version that shows up on Local Band Seeks Fans). To also bring things back to Wabeard, we were pretty excited to see Lorrie joining the Beardos onstage for TNT last night. But mostly because at first we thought they playing a Primrods cover.

Also in the comments of our previous PJ post, Pal Joey Alumni Janice Frisch pointed us to some additional tunes; you can repent or get the demo here.

CCPS Miscellany: Bartok Guitarsplat

We neglected to mention the intent of these Miscellany posts when we started them up. While our focus is primarily on cassettes recorded by Calgary bands, there are occasionally items that we come across that are either (a) cassettes that are somewhat linked to the Calgary scene or (b) important recordings by Calgary bands that were released on other media.

With this in mind, we're pleased to present a trio of cassettes by Bartok Guitarsplat, also known as Rodney Brent. These recordings of experimental-improvisational electro-acoustic music were done by the former Sacred Heart of Elvis guitarist while in Vancouver during the late 80's and early 90's. It's worth noting that while in Toronto, Bartok Guitarsplat made a name for himself in the local scene, and contributed to recordings by yesterday's Miscellany focus, Lost and Profound.

Brent/Guitarsplat has been back in Calgary for a while now (we like this f-word article, which helps explain the Guitarsplat/Brent thing as well as why the Toronto time was so important to him). We saw him onstage pretty much five years ago to the day, playing with a re-united Sacred Heart of Elvis for CJSW's 20th anniversary.

Another thing we like about these cassettes: they're home taping approved!

CCPS Miscellany: Lost and Profound - National Hotel (1989)

We're getting pretty darned excited about tomorrow night's festivities, so we're going to take a bit of a detour to Toronto for tonight. There's an interesting trend of Calgarians moving to Toronto, sometimes returning, sometimes not. We're puzzled as to why anyone would go there in the first place, but then we rarely leave the city limits.

Lost and Profound was Allen Baekeland, Terry Tompkins and Lisa Boudreau. They met in Calgary and then relocated to Toronto and, in the early 90's, released a couple of records on a major-ish Canadian label. We're interested in this tape for a few reasons. First, Baekeland is a significant player in the history of our favourite radio station. Second, he and Tompkins also played in the Now Feeling (with another of our favourites, Joe McCaffery) - and this tape includes a Now Feeling tune. Finally, this tape - though recorded in Toronto - features a Calgary landmark (which narrowly avoided being turned into crappy condos). Oh, and fourth, now that he's back in Calgary, Baekeland plays in the always entertaining Rembetika Hipsters, who will be on the bill tomorrow night.

We'll see you there.

Katana - Short Demo Recorded Live at Sparky's Diner (1988)

Back in 1988, folks didn't know what an at sign was, and accordingly used proper English grammar and punctuation. Hence the title of this cassette, we suppose.

Anyways, we've ignored the dire warning on this tape, and hope you enjoy this little slice of coffeeshop folk.

We're hoping the title of the first track is Hard Ride, and not Hand Ride, as one of our archivists insists.

G. Fournier - Random Structures (1990)

Just to prove we're not all just form and order over here at the CCPS, tonight we're bringing you a tape with a very different bent. We're not sure who Mr./Ms. Fournier is, but we found his/her tape of ambient soundscapes in the CJSW archives.

Random, to be sure.

Calspur - Food Chain (1995)

This is the second Calspur tape from the CJSW archives. It's another in a long line of recordings featuring a cartoon of the band members.We like to categorize such drawings into two groups: Tom Bagley and not Tom Bagley.

It's a crude, yet effective system, and it hasn't let us down yet.