Chapter Thirty-Two: Grave--Diggin'

The It Came From Canada compilations contained multitudes. They were anything but seamless; in fact Og created a Frankenstein Monster out of the rotting copses of crude sounds of the past and its stitched togetherness was grotesquely obvious. When they were done the Og crew looked upon their work and declared it ‘cool’.

Last time around, we said that “Og pilloried the vacuousness of the nineteen-eighties by pushing bands who were a hundred different shades of anachronistic: Western-Swing, gospel-punk, garage rock, country blues, psychedelic, 77 punk, lounge-jazz, faux girl-group and cow-punk…” Perhaps we over-simplified.

Many years ago, in a crappy suburban record store (yes, Virginia…) I discovered a whole rack of the Og Catalogue. I chanced Volume One. Something was happening here, and I refused to be Mr. Jones. I still posses the first volume in the shrink-wrap (slit open) with the $6.99 written in white grease pencil. Soon I dug up the rest of the Og oeuvre.

Volume One’s multitudinous variety includes Jerry Jerry’s gospel-punk, Ray Condo’s rockabilly, Dusty Chaps western-ness, Chris Houston’s lounge-jazz and Deja Voodoo’s distorted 50’s pastiche, And that’s side one! Side two is both more cohesive and completely fucked. The Enigmas and UIC are both garage-punk in the mightiest sense of that compound. The Gruesomes’ ‘66 shtick worked live in grimy bars but on vinyl their exactness grated. Then, as compilations often did in the 70’s and 80’s, things get experi-mental. Terminal Sunglasses get hicuppy and trippy on their two tracks while Calamity Janes go all Bongos-and-free verse on you before My Dog Popper (who link this LP to the earlier It Came from the Pit) choose one of their more irritating work-outs to end this LP off on in a Ronald Reagan Acid Flashback kinda way. Enjoy the way it all comes together in a hideously wonderful way.

Download V. 1

IFC II almost equals its predecessor in a way sequels rarely do. (I refuse to name check the G-dfather series so let’s just compare it to Aliens.) The second LP is another musty distillation of ghost-town genres (garage-rock, hardcore, surf, country-gospel, blues, western swing, spoken-improv and, mais d’accord, a cappella beat-boxin’) with the zany creepiness of Vincent Price in the Hilarious House of Frightenstein. While it lacks a stone-classic like Jerry Jerry’s “Bad Idea”, it features one of the best Gruesomes’ songs (“What’s Your Problem?”) and the more comic side of the oft-furious Guilt Parade (see here for their shockingly-unheard album).

While not all songs (this time the one-song-per-band dictum is adhered to) reach lift-off, they all fit together. This synchronicity is one of the joys of a well-compiled piece – even the irritating bits help vary the flow and eventually find a place in the narrative.

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Third time’s the harm – here's where the ghoulish It Came From Canada series, after gorging on the corpses of genres-past, shambles towards its ghastly climax.

Familiar names abound; Deja Voodoo, Condition, Jerry Jerry, Guilt Parade, the Grusomes, Ray Condo, Chris Houston and the Ten Commandments all return from previous volumes. The Dik Van Dykes debut here, with the lead-off track, as they will do for the last two entries in the series. Perhaps the lower-string-less Diks along with the bludgeoning Colour Me Psycho and the nouveau-sludgeabilly House of Knives illustrate that the series, instead of uniting pre-existing primitivists, was now inspiring a new horde.


Download V. 3

Or try this one.

Jerry Jerry and the Sons of Rhythm Orchestra: Road Gore (1985)

"Jerry Jerry wasn't a serious band at the time it started, either. It was what we called a "fuck band". It took four or five years before I considered myself to be a performer."

Jerry Jerry

At the height of Canada’s eighties stomping garage-rock revival, spearheaded by Og Records (see here), along swaggered this hard-drinking, testifier, Jerry Jerry, (born Jerry Woods) and his seven piece band, the Sons of Rhythm Orchestra.




"Canadian city boy thinks he's a hillbilly preacher sings late '60s Texas acid rock." is how Jerry Jerry's debut album Road Gore: The Band That Drank Too Much (1985) was once described. And that just scratches the surface. The tempos are speedy, the lyrics sarcastic and the band chops up elements of blues, country, gospel, rockabilly surf and punk rock to make a thick n' chunky stew. The resulting sound is roots-rockin' cow-punk a little like their Edmonton, Alberta brethren Jr. Gone Wild (and even a little like really early k.d. lang). However, there's not much R.E.M. style jangle in these boys spurs and you can bet your ass that Jerry would make short work out of Micheal Stipe should they ever meet.





In that spirit, here's Jerry's brilliant anti-socialism screed, "Bad Idea". While still-gelling Road Gore may not be Jerry's strongest album, this song stands as his greatest achievement - no wonder it's track one, side one of the whole It Came From Canada compilation series. The lyrics are both humorous and deadly-serious. Jerry uses a stinging guitar line as his soapbox to condemn the evils of Big Government (Alberta is Canada's Texas) while the whole band offers full choral support. Eventually Jerry's righteous fury builds to an explosive triple-time ending. (Studio version here)





Tracklist
A1     Gospel Surfer    
A2     Rhythm Crazy    
A3     Color TV    
A4     Baby's On Fire    
A5     Livin' On Top    
A6     Hell And Back    
A7     Daddy Was A Peacock    
B1     Happy Nun    
B2     Bad Idea    
B3     Rancher King    
B4     Dumb Love    
B5     You Make Me Blue    
B6     Judgement Date    
This MRML-exclusive "edition" of the hopelessly out-of-print Road Gore has two bonus tracks, "Radical Look" and "Yap Yap", culled from the It Came From Canada series.




MRML readers weigh in with a comment: What do you make of Jerry Jerry's Gospel-punk?
 
JERRY'S STILL ALIVE

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Gospel-Punk Ex-plosion: Jerry Jerry's Road Gore

"Jerry Jerry wasn't a serious band at the time it started, either. It was what we called a "fuck band". It took four or five years before I considered myself to be a performer."

Jerry Jerry

So what's a discussion of this notion of gospel-punk (see here) without Jerry Jerry?

At the height of Canada’s eighties stomping garage-rock revival, spearheaded by Og Records (see here), along swaggered this hard-drinking, testifier, Jerry Jerry, (born Jerry Woods) and his seven piece band, the Sons of Rhythm Orchestra.


"Canadian city boy thinks he's a hillbilly preacher sings late '60s Texas acid rock." is how Jerry Jerry's debut album Road Gore: The Band That Drank Too Much (1985) was once described. And that just scratches the surface. The tempos are speedy, the lyrics sarcastic and the band chops up elements of blues, country, gospel, rockabilly surf and punk rock into a thick n' chunky stew.The resulting sound is roots-rockin' cow-punk like their Edmonton, Alberta brethren Jr. Gone Wild (and even, a tad less so perhaps, like real early k.d. lang). However, there's no R.E.M. style jangle in these boys spurs and you can bet your ass that the redneck-ish Jerry would kick the snot out of Micheal Stipe should they ever meet.

In that spirit, here's Jerry's brilliant anti-socialism screed, "Bad Idea". While Road Gore may not be Jerry's strongest album, this song stands as his greatest achievement, no wonder it's track one, side one of the whole It Came From Canada compilation series. The lyrics are both humorous and deadly-serious. Jerry uses a stinging guitar line as his soapbox to condemn the evils of Big Government (Alberta is Canada's Texas) while the whole band offers full choral support. Eventually Jerry's righteous fury builds to an explosive triple-time ending.


This "edition" of the hopelessly out-of-print Road Gore has two bonus tracks, "Radical Look" and "Yap Yap", from the It Came From Canada series.


{MRML readers weigh in with a comment: What do you make of Jerry Jerry's take on Gospel-punk?}

Road Gore LP Re-Upped HERE

(MRML recommends WinrRAR for unpacking your downloads)

Chapter Fourteen: Og n' Me

I’ve been in a band. So has everyone, right? Well, no. Lots of people have no musical talent. I don’t mean the way failed musicians deride the playing of Ramones or Meg White - I mean people who by universal standards have no place on the performance stage. Such untalented music lovers work in record stores, write music criticism or manage bands. I did those sorts of things later. My band (Jane Fonda and the Hondas) was a two-piece (a sorta cross between They Might Be Giants and The Shaggs) who my, vastly more talented partner (later a member of the socialist-punk band The Strike), described as, “Sludgeabilly with extra sludge”.

“Sludgeabilly” was Gerald Van Herk’s self-description of his band, Deja Voodoo, a Canadian two-piece psychobilly-swamp-punk band that sounded like the Cramps with a denser, leaner, cruder taste for pre-rock blues. Fifteen years later that sound could get you on the front of Rolling Stone but in the cultural vacuum that was the late 1980’s almost no could hear Deja Voodoo scream. They toured the country by Greyhound and started one of the most diverse yet cohesive indie labels of all-time: Og Records. Og pilloried the vacuousness of the nineteen-eighties by pushing bands bands who were a hundred different shades of anachronistic: Western-Swing, gospel-punk, garage rock, country blues, psychedelic, 77 punk, lounge-jazz, faux girl-group and cow-punk and I’ve just begun. It was the vinyl era and the five-volume 'It Came From Canada' series (the icfucks as Gerald called them) sent me on a nationalistic music bender, which I never regretted.

They also inspired me to form a band and perform one earth-shattering show for fourteen close personal friends, thirteen of whom were still close personal friends after we finished. We performed two songs; a butchered cover of Billy Bragg's ‘Strange Things Happen’ and an original called ‘Socialized Hairdressing’ and then we served pizza. Don’t count it against Gerald it’s not really his fault.

The Dik Van Dykes worshipped one of the all-time great neglected bands (The Rezillos) and hence they were the Og band I loved the most. Musical comedy is a Canadian Weakness but The Diks pulled it off with scads of aplomb. The songs are hummable, if mangled, and the lyrics will return a thousand joys - even if you never understand them all.

Download

Deja Voodoo was an acquired taste which seeing their flailing live concerts finally imparted me with. (Their live introductions were spot-on, “This is a song about my girlfriend. It’s called My Girlfriend. “This is a song about Saskatchewan – it’s called Big Pile of Mud.) This is their most distinctive album – enjoy.

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My Dog Popper was not an Og-affiiliated band that I listened to a lot but two considerable music guys (Mike Koop of a million Winnipeg bands including Kicker and Winston of Nuclear Armed Hogs blog) requested it – so here it be. Sorry for the lack of cover art (it is is one album well-served by its cover) and the dodgy sound quality.

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The Enigmas: Strangely Wild (1985)

 

The Enigmas were a post-punk garage-rock band that puzzled Vancouver throughout much of the eighties.





Led by a saxophone-wielding Iggy-worshiper named Paul McKenzie (Future leader of Fat Wreck-Chords folk-punk band, The Real McKenzies), The Enigmas pushed an idiosyncratic retro-punk sound that would carry throughout Canada and help, in its own way, expand the Og Records empire.

The band unleashed their Seeds-Iggy-Bowie-Damned Frankensound Monster on the world via two 12" EP"S and a slew of compilation appearances including It Came From the Pit and the aforementioned Og Records', It Came From Canada Volume One.

Owing possibly to it being my introduction to the band, I'd argue that Strangely Wild is the band's best work. With ripping tracks like the Nuggets-y "A Bit Too Far", the snarlin' but folk-rockin'  "The Flying Dutchmen" and the Cramps-ish "Monster's in the Basement", the band's failure to find a wild cult following remains a riddle, wrapped in a mystery...

A1		Flying Dutchman
A2		Windshield Wiper
A3		Monsters In The Basement
B1		A Bit Too Far
B2		Strangely Wild
B3		Rush Hour In Russia

 

So give us you take on the Enigmas in the COMMENTS section (which is where you'll find  the Strangely Wild link).

Real McKenzies Homepage

The Dik Van Dykes: Nobody Likes...

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Happy Canada Day!

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Music obsessives with no musical talent often work in record stores, write reviews, promote shows, run labels, book tours or manage bands. I did those sorts of things later but first I had to prove my lack of ability with my band, Jane Fonda and the Hondas. We were a two-piece speed-folk band, who my vastly more talented partner (later a guitarist in the socialist-punk firebrands, The Strike), described as, “Sludgeabilly with extra sludge”.

(We had merch!)

“Sludgeabilly” was Gerald Van Herk’s self-description of his band, Deja Voodoo, a Montreal two-piece (four-stringed guitar, no cymbals on the drum kit) rockabilly-blues-punk band. Fifteen years later such an approach could land you on the front of Rolling Stone but in the cultural vacuum that was the late 1980’s almost no one could hear Deja Voodoo scream. The band also ran the awe-inducing Og Records. Og pilloried the vacuousness of the times by pushing bands who were a hundred different shades of anachronistic: Western-Swing, gospel-punk, garage rock, country blues, psychedelic, 77 punk, lounge-jazz, faux girl-group and cow-punk on their five-volume It Came From Canada series. Based on the series, icfucks as Gerald called them, I dug up records by The Gruesomes, The Cowboy Junkies (yup), Colour Me Psycho, Jerry Jerry and the Sons of Rhythm Orchestra, Sons of the Desert, Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, U.I.C., Guilt Parade and of course Hamilton, Ontario's The Dik Van Dykes.

All those Og records helped inspire Jane Fonda and the Honda, who performed just one earth-shattering show. For that so-called show we played a butchery of Billy Bragg's "Strange Things Happen' and an original called, "Socialized Hairdressing" before serving some cheap n' doughy pizza. Our audience consisted of fourteen close personal friends, thirteen of whom were still as such at show's end.

So JFH (our initialism!), never did get to fulfill our dream of opening for The Dik Van Dykes. The Diks were a band that cleaved to the Og doctrine of primitivism (see Steve Hoy's three-string guitar and Stu Smith's kick pedal-less kit) but who added a chirpy but choppy pop sensibility to it all. Some said they sounded like the Ramones battling The B-52's. Perhaps more precisely, The Diks high-speed junk-pop, with back-up singers the Pop-Tarts bringing the la-la's, bore a strong resemblance to late seventies Scottish fashion-plates, The Rezillos (whose album title the Diks paid homage to). Easy comparisons aside, this album still stands on its own, like some demented inukshuk. The songs are hummable and funny - these lyrics will return a thousand joys even if, and perhaps because, you'll never understand them all.

Nobody Likes link is in the comments.

Speaking of comments, please leave us one about the Dik's music or that time you were involved with a not-so-good band.

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A big thanks goes out to Nicola who not only bought me this L.P. for my birthday on almost exactly this date twenty-fuckin-two years ago but also had every Jane Fonda and the Hondas "demo" tape.

Let ICFC Die

It Came From Canada Five killed the series. It wasn’t the quality of the entry: each of which rocks (my personal preference for numero four aside). Instead, like almost every one of their bands, the label found they had emptied the cultural morgue. Even Deja Voodoo showed contempt for nostalgia in its final track, “Let Elvis Die.” The many highlights of this final volume include RipcordZ (described by Gerald as “‘77 punk with ‘66 chord progressions”) who are one of the few ICFC bands to have never quit (Paul Gott cannot be killed), the hyped up-country of Hard Rock Miners (whose Michael Turner wrote the brilliant poem-novel Hardcore Logo). As well, Gordon Lightfoot finally shows up in the form of the Supreme Bagg Team’s rocked-out cover of “If You Could Read My Mind”, 64 Funycars ape The Dik Van Dykes (we here at MRML can appreciate an homage to an homage) and pop-punk rears its bespectacled head in the form of the Stand GT (more later). Taken as a whole, it’s a suitable epitaph.

In 1989 Og died, shot in the head by the indifference of their era. If only they could have seen the indie-grave-robbing orgy that was coming - in which case they might’ve pulled the trigger themselves!


Download V. 5