Banned From Atlantis: People Write to Geena Davis in Japanese (1994)

Dr. Lisa Smirl, a Lecturer in International Security at the University of Sussex, has died of cancer at the age of 37. While I'm not really qualified to disuses her research, I am plausibly qualified to discuss her brief career in rock n' roll.

Lisa played bass, and did occasional lead vocals in a Winnipeg inde-punk band named, Banned From Atlantis in the early nineties. BFA released two cassettes, Self-Titled and Outie, a split seven-inch with noise-punk band Elliot and a full length, People Write to Geena Davis in Japanese. The band split, let's leave it at acrimoniously, and then guitarist Doug McLean formed The Bonaduces while Lisa went on to earn a Rhodes Scholarship.

But for a glorious year or so Banned From Atlantis were everywhere at once. While often chaotic in their playing, the intensity of their performance was fucking arresting. By the time this album came out, shortly before the band's demise, it seemed anticlimactic. Their label, Sister Records, had brought in Steve Albini's co-conspirator Bob Weston to produce three local bands (the others being The Breath Grenades and Bulletproof Nothing) but the results were no one's big break.

For a lot of their local fans the album was a bit of a let down being that so much of the material had appeared on earlier releases but looked on now when that overlap is no longer an issue (and we can forgive the murky production and after-thought-ish artwork so common on nineties CD's) it isn't really a problem. If you wanna check out a couple of the hookier tracks, ones reminiscent of Superchunk and Archers of Loaf, give a listen to "I Do" and "Subtle Suggestions".

Recorded at God of Thunder Studios by Bob Weston and Paul James. Mastered at John Golden Mastering.

1.     Tantrums
2.     Philadelphia/Cincinnati
3.     Sebadohboy
4.     Ido
5.     Rickets + Riddles
6.     Subtle Suggestions
7.     Steaming Seed
8.     Sovereign Thug
9.     Tricks
10.     Pretty Geek Poetry
11.     Sociopathetic

Hey readers, I got lots more BFA rarities but I'll hold off the ripping, labeling and scanning till I see if we get some COMMENTS going here.

MySpace

The Bonaduces Mega Post!

Y'know musicians sometimes whinge when songs that they are particularly proud of go uncelebrated. Well to join in on that for a bit, I'll briefly lament how some of my favourite posts (i.e. wordy personals narrative of bands I know too well) sometimes sink without a trace. Now, to drown out the sound of that small violin, I'll re-up some neglected favourites and give you a chance to reconsider your silence.

The Bonaduces are one of the great lost groups of recent times. I could qualify that by sub-categorizing them as "Canadian", "pop-punk" or even "bands with guys I know in them", but its an unconscionable distortion of the truth. Due to the many requests (readers become surprisingly chatty when links are down), here is pretty much their whole discography (minus their final album, which you can still BUY!)

Click on the link to go the re-upped page!








Matching Socks Missing Feet is here















Bonaduces/Bucko Split is here

Everything's Rachel is here

'K' is for Catherine is here















Pretty in Pop is here















Super Secret Songs is here














Self-Deconstruction is here














An account of the band's near-incendiary
reunion show can he found right here

HEY, WILL PEOPLE LEAVE SOME DAMN COMMENTS - IT'S JUST A THOUGHTFUL THING TO TO DO. (Plus maybe you'll help kick-start that NEW Bonaduces album we've been promised!)

Self de-construction: A Benefit for Food Not Bombs

The Bonaduces (see here) were never an expressly political band (the vegan-friendly "Soy to the World" aside) but that was the milieu they were a part of. Winnipeg's mid-nineties punk scene was so politicized that even the Christian punk bands wrote songs decrying Christopher Columbus and "the American Jesus"*.

*No slight is meant against the Undecided who released two fine albums with unfortunate cover art on Tooth and Nail back in the late nineties and early aughts. Their final show will be at the Royal Albert on July 24th 2009 alongside the never-say-die Bonaduces.


A sign of the unity of this time was the Rock Against Racism show at Le Rendez-Vous in 1997. The line up included the anarcho- hardcore band Propagandhi, the traditional ska of JFK and the Conspirators, metal band Malefaction, indie-pop-punkers the Bonaduces and Kirby not to mention a visit from local hip-hop legends Mood Ruff. It says a lot about the scene of the time that, other than Koop losing his over-all's mid-Bonaduces set, the jam-packed show went off without a hitch.



Another of the unifying forces of the scene at the time was the action group Food Not Bombs, who were always ready to feed rice and beans at a strike, a demonstration or a riot. Alex from the record store/label Underworld (terribly helpful when I booked the 1996 Bonaduces tour) put together his own benefit compilation for Food Not Bombs. While a typical mid-nineties punk/oi/HxCx/Ska/Pop-punk melange, Alex did manage to bring together a solid cast from all over North America including; Subb, Youth Brigade, Anti-Flag, Rhythm Collision, the Planet Smashers, the Ripcordz and, following our theme, the Bonaduces. Like 90% of all comps you need to sift your personal wheat from your personal chaff to get the most out of it. So, go to it.



Download Self De-construction CD

Pretty in Pop: Songs From the Films of John Hughes

Back in the late nineties the Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature build an exhibit called "Get Back" as history of rock n' roll. In a series of concerts, the museum chose the Bonaduces to represent the eighties, despite the band's nineties origins. Perhaps someone in the museum's hierarchy detected the band leader's love of the post-Brill Building song-writing assembly line work of Stock, Aitken and Waterman and such. For the concert, the Bonaduces covered Prince ("Purple Rain"), Alan Parsons Project ("Eye in the Sky") and Flesh for Lulu ("I Go Crazy") and a whole lot more.



That show helped to inspire this 1998 compilation from endearing records which pitted bands from all over the map against the musical curating skills of John Hughes. The indie-pop bands herein all add a twist or two to these eighties synth-pop standards from Flesh For Lulu, Echo and The Bunnymen, The Psychedelic Furs, The Thompson Twins and Simple Minds. Winnipeg, reflecting the local biases of the compiler, start and end with the two best contributions. Be'hl strip the Bowie affectations from "Don't You Forget About Me" and turn int into a campfire-ish pop song. The Bonaduces rough up "I Go Crazy" by amping up the guitars and losing the synth but without disrespecting the song itself.

Endearing Records honcho Blair Purda adds:

"The idea for this comp actually came from Simon of the Vancouver band Speedbuggy. He was planning a heart shaped pink 12" I believe and asked if a few Endearing bands could contribute to what was mostly going to be a Vancouver based compilation. The Bonaduces and B'ehl recorded songs and we waited, waited and waited for the other bands to finish their songs and the record to be released.

When none of the Vancouver band's got songs in, we finally just said, WTF, let's put it out ourselves and we asked a few other Endearing artists (California's Ciao Bella and Australia's Ninety Nine) if they could bang off covers. They did, we had enough songs to put out an EP and Pretty in Pop was launched at the West End Cultural centre with performances by some of the artists, screenings of the films and pop corn."



Download Pretty in Pop CD

The Bonaduces: The Roof is (Not) on Fire

The Bonaduces damn near set the Lo Pub on fire. The sheer humidity of over one hundred people trying to keep up with the energy on stage tripped the fire alarm. When the men with the swirling red sirens arrived in their flame-retardant suits with their axes and sledgehammers, we all evacuated. When the fire department finally let us back in, the band picked up in the exact same spot in the song they'd left off on.


As always, the band occasionally teetered on the edge of chaos (no one brought a tuner?) before suddenly pulling everything together for some ass-kickin' performances, including a raging "Really Powerful Telescope" and a full-blooded sing-along take on "Understudy to Abby Grey". Then the fire alarm went off. Again.



With another false alarm discredited, we all filed back in (trying to remember where we'd left our drinks) and the band kicked off again (quite literally in Koop's case who spent much of the show defying gravity).



It was a great triumph but as a hopeless partisan I could have written that before the show even happened. The alarm did go off again before the money got split up but all the bands, including the Cop-Out's (their set, their first ever, was strong and almost alt-country-ish) and Halifax's Dog Day (who showed an unusually tough take on indie-rock, as exemplified by their blazing cover of the Nils' "Fountains") got paid. Then we shut things down before the fire trucks were forced to return and fight another illusory blaze.

All photos by Jameel Adams



Thanks to the ever-dedicated Brody469 for the footage.

(And yes, the lighting at the show was pretty miserable.)

The Bonaduces: Chapter Five

The Bonaduces' (see here) 1998 album The Democracy of Sleep remains their only work still in print. It is also their crowning achievement. Calling it a concept album, a meditation on living with death, may sound pretentious but it's all true plus it still rocks like crazy.

The Bonaduces - Bomb Threat at Montgomery High

The Bonaduces rock Canada Day 2006 (photo courtesy of merr.)

The album can be downloaded from Zunior or purchased the old-fashioned way from the original label, endearing records. Support the damn band!




The Bonaduces splintered sometime after this album's release and each band that rose up from the fall-out has its own virtues. Singer-guitarist Doug McLean continued the evolution of his song-writing in the Paperbacks, guitarist Mike Koop brought the Rock with his band Kicker, bassist Bob Sommers carried on the proud legacy of Can-Con (that's domestic pop that Canadian radio must play by law, for all you non-Northerners) with the now-defunct Red-Eye Morning and drummer Chris Hiebert anchored the lush pop extravaganza known as Paper Moon.




Since I can't have a post without a proper download, here's Super Secret Songs a mammoth CD benefit compilation (these things were endemic to the nineties) that includes an unreleased ballad ("Salt Lake City") by the Bonaduces, plus the rockin' "Allison the Queen" by Koop's Other Band Cheerleader and lotsa forgotten nineties indie-pop hardly-rans.


"I was behind the Super Secret Songs comp, many years ago. For what it's worth, you have my complete and utter blessing to distribute it free, for the rest of time. I'll admit there's some crap on there, but looking back on it there's some nice music that exemplifies that particular slice of Canadian music history. Long forgotten maybe, but not entirely without merit. If anyone's looking for an actual copy let me know, I may have a few in the basement."

Patrick from Kitchener



Download Super Secret Songs CD

(Say Goodnight, Doug...)

The Bonaduces: Chapter Four

The Bonaduces' (see here) first album was a long time coming. Finally though, in 1997 the tiny Toronto indie label Squirtgun unleashed the band's first full-length, 'K' is for Catherine, in then-hip format known as the compact disc (quaint as a buggy-whip now isn't it?). As per the last three releases, this one recycles a bit of the demo (the brilliant "Really Powerful Telescope" and the high-speed power-pop of "I'm the only Proof You Need") , while surrounding it with increasingly sophisticated new material. While the band still blasts out loud, propulsive pop-punk, indie-pop ballads like "We Never Close" and "All the Way from Stockholm" prove they were capable of hitting even greater heights then they had been letting on.

The Bonaduces - Really Powerful Telescope

(The band rocks out at The Royal Albert Arms some time in the late nineties.)

While singer/guitarist/songwriter Doug McLean and his ever-growing lyrical and melodic prowess looms large over these proceeding, the Bonaduces were undeniably a group. The newly-solidified rhythm section really kicks in on this album, with Bob and Chris adding ska (in the best sense of that much-maligned word) to "Beat on the Betamax" and keeping the warp-speed "Android at the Superhero Party" from raging out of control. While Bob keeps a bouncing rhythm and Koop's deft guitar figures colour every song, they also crafted memorable, intertwining backing vocals - check out "Friends with the Narc" as proof of how Koop and Bob formed the best tag-team since "Jumping" Jim Brunzell and Greg Gagne (them's the High Flyers, for those of you who missed out on the golden age of wrestling.)



The album, which always suffered with mastering issues, has been "re-mastered" by MRML (we used GoldWave to double the volume) just to save you from cranking it up so high up that later, when you play something normal, you shred your speakers.



Thanks to meltingvisa for uploading the vids!




Download 'K' is for Catherine CD (lyrics included)

(MRML recommends WinrRAR for unpacking your downloads)

Here's the Facebook page for the Bonaduces reunion show this Saturday at the Lo Pub.

The Bonaduces: Chapter Three

I never managed the Bonaduces. (See here.) Though when, à la the Ramones, each band member got a nom de Bonaduce (Jon Bon Bonaduce, Koopie Bonaduce, Rusty Bonaduce and BoBo Bonaduce) those surrounding the band got their names too. While one friend of the band was dubbed Meredith-Baxter Bonaduce, I got to be Kincaid Bonaduce, though I claimed John Sinclair Bonaduce could work too. I was as successful at feigning managerial skills as I was as attempting to be as a singer/guitarist/bassist/drummer/pianist/ukuleleist. So I ended up a music blogger, the literary equivalent of playing tambourine.

(Chris brings the Rock)

Speaking of me and instrumental talent, I did, to take credit where minuscule amounts of credit may or many not be due, assist the Bonaduces in their the next leap of proficiency. I hooked them up with percussionist extraordinaire Chris (what was his Bonaduce name again?) when their first drummer, Rusty, went AWOL. When I said that the Bonaduces needed a drummer, he leapt at the opportunity. When asked if he could play drums (he was playing guitar in an industrial metal band at the time) he said, "To be a Bonaduce, I'll be a drummer." With Chris, who duct taped his hands so he could play with the drive of early Stewart Copeland, the entire band changed, intensifying on just about every level.


So to document the Bonaduces' ascent, especially the terse, berserk,"Everything's Rachel", I decided to put out a single myself. My entire oeuvre as a record mogul at No Glory Records is laid out before you in this post. But what a one-off! All four songs (10:01 in total) are flat-out rockers with rousing choruses. Lyrically, the songs are exemplary Doug first-person narratives, whether in teen-girl mode ("Introducing the New Rachel Jones") or benevolent stalker mode ("Judy Blume Weekend). Plus you get the pop-pop-punk "Hunt and Peck", which has an infectious 2-3-4- backing vocal hook and the band even name-checks itself!

(Producer John Sutton and Doug record them some Bonaduce goodness.)

Re-up on Rapidshare

Download Everything's Rachel 7" (lyrics included)

(MRML recommends WinrRAR for unpacking your downloads)

(Click to enlarge)

The Bonaduces: Chapter Two

The first incarnation of the Bonaduces (see here) broke the vinyl barrier in 1995 with this split (produced by Weakerthans bassist, John Sutton) with fellow Winnipeg pop-punks, Bucko. "The Early Ayn Rand" re-appears here, even faster than the first time. In addition we have another first-person teenage girl narrative in the ultra-catchy rocker, "Planet Claire". Enjoy!





Download the split seven inch (Bonaduces side only - I'll fix that when I rip the Bucko demo some day.)

The Bonaduces: Chapter One

The Bonaduces began as a bad band. Early hopes were modest for these veterans of an odd assortment of Winnipeg bands, including the Superchunk-erific Banned From Atlantis (Doug McLean (vocals, guitar), the girl-pop Buick Six (Mike Koop, guitar), the deeply quirky Garage People (Doug again plus Bob Sommers, bass). However, this two acoustic guitars plus an off-key bassist and an off-time drummer line-up failed to set the early nineties alight.

(Doug McLean, Mike Koop and Morph the cat in their unnatural habitat, circa 1995.)

Then, quite unexpectedly, the Bonaduces clicked, morphing into a stellar, if unusual, pop-punk band. Individual member's may have leaned towards indie-rock or classic rock but when crammed into a dark, moldy practice space, things picked up speed and aggression. Complicating matters of influence was the fact that chief song-writer Doug McLean's idea of pop was borne out of pure devotion for the shifting aesthetic of Top Forty radio, whether it be the Beatles or Tiffany, or Ace of Bass or as Doug once "confided" to me, “You know, since I bought the new Chynna Phillips album, Naked and Sacred, I no longer feel the need to eat.”


The newly-electrified band chidingly referred to the drastic change in sound as their, “New, More Jeff-Oriented Direction” (for this author’s notoriously narrow taste in high-speed pop). However, the band had actually just stepped up to the challenge of accompanying the increasingly sophisticated compositions Doug was firing off at a terrifying rate. While they still bounded about the stage, Koop and Bob added their own shadings to the songs, the most significant addition being their backing vocals which drove the band to new heights of choir boy brilliance. “Soy to the World” which also features Propagandhi’s (see here) Chris Hannah on background bellows was an early, striking example of this group approach.


This stronger, tighter, louder band risked obscuring Doug's lyrical voice, an unusual one in any genre. Doug had a literary bent but not so much of the poetic variety endemic to ambitious rockers but rather the bent of a short story writer. Each song is a tautly constructed narrative, with carefully delineated characters, often written from the point-of-view of a teenage girl (which back in the P.C.-minded mid-nineties was called "voice appropriation".).
Their 1995 tape, Matching Socks, Missing Feet, is more cohesive and better recorded than most demos. That said, time has done its decaying work to the magnetic tape though even with the hiss, these are clearly the songs of a band that had begun badly but was fast-approaching greatness.



Download Matching Socks, Matching Feet tape (lyrics included)

(MRML recommends WinrRAR for unpacking your downloads)


As a follow up, the boys released a split cassingle with la-la girl-pop band Be'hl and, as was the style at the time, they each covered one of the other's songs. The Bonaduces, with clashing guitar lines and and vocal parts, shine as a group on their cover, "Breathe You" and Doug's teen-girl conflict ("Monica and Veronica") some how feels more personal, with the characters being more like proxies. Or perhaps we're over-analyzing a sing-along pop song.



Download the cassingle (Bonaduces side only - I'll fix that one day I promise.)

For any Manitoba readers (hello?)
the Bonaduces
will play a reunion show at the
Lo Pub on June 20th.
Don't miss it!