Tag: 1990s

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Playlists

Playlist: O Canada – 45 indie and alternative Canadian anthems

Happy Canada Day everyone!

This is one of those holidays that I love and have always appreciated but have even more so in recent years. I am blessed to live in a beautiful country and one that is relatively safe and free. And though I haven’t gotten downtown to take in the festivities that our nation’s capital puts on for quite some time, I do try to observe the birthdate of my country in my own way, usually by spending time outside, hiking or biking, tending the bbq, enjoying a brew or two or three, and taking in a closer (to me) fireworks display. The weather forecast is looking a bit rough to start today so I’m not sure yet what we’ll get up to but I plan to enjoy the holiday nonetheless.

I often try to do a post on these pages to observe the return of Canada Day in some way, so I’m actually surprised I haven’t done a playlist yet, something I am remedying this year. And honestly, I slapped this one together pretty quickly and it was really easy to do so because there’s lots of great material to pull from. These 45 songs represent some of my favourite tunes by some of my favourite Canadian artists from the last four or five decades. I start the almost three hours of great tunes with the “alternate” Canadian anthem by North Vancouver’s Spirit of the West and end it with my favourite song by Kingston’s The Tragically Hip, the band that for nearly twenty years was indisputably Canada’s band and its frontman Gord Downey, our poet laureate. In between those two tunes, you’ll find alt rock classics from the 80s and 90s (Grapes of Wrath, 54.40, Sloan, Northern Pikes), as well as a slew of tunes from the Canadian indie rock renaissance from the mid-2000s (Stars, Metric, Dears, Arcade Fire) when the ears from around the world seemed to be turned in our direction, and of course, more recent stuff as well (Alvvays, Elliott Brood, Nap Eyes, Tallies). There are bands and artists here representing almost all of the ten provinces but unfortunately, none from the three territories.

So this is mostly for all of my fellow Canadians out there but like my home country, I would welcome anyone from around the world to come and enjoy our riches. I invite you all to put this playlist on, along with your red and white clothes and maple leaf temporary tattoos, and enjoy the music, whether you’re out barbecuing, enjoying a cold one, out for a swim in your pool, sitting on your porch, out for a hike, camping out, or looking for a parking spot close to a Canada Day celebration somewheres.

Cheers!

For those who don’t use Apple Music, here is the entire playlist, with links to YouTube videos:

  1. “Home for a rest” Spirit Of The West (North Vancouver, British Columbia)
  2. “Archie, marry me” Alvvays (Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island)
  3. “Stay out” Elliott Brood (Toronto, Ontario)
  4. “Ageless beauty” Stars (Montreal, Quebec)
  5. “Rosy and grey” The Lowest Of The Low (Toronto, Ontario)
  6. “When the night feels my song” Bedouin Soundclash (Kingston, Ontario)
  7. “Don’t haunt this place” The Rural Alberta Advantage (Toronto, Ontario)
  8. “Everything you’ve done wrong” Sloan (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
  9. “The safety dance” Men Without Hats (Montreal, Quebec)
  10. “Follow me down” Nap Eyes (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
  11. “I go blind” 54-40 (Tsawwassen, British Columbia)
  12. “Mari-Mac” Great Big Sea (St John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador)
  13. “Hare tarot lies” No Joy (Montreal, Quebec)
  14. “Red” Treble Charger (Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario)
  15. “Weighty ghost” Wintersleep (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
  16. “I’m an adult now” The Pursuit of Happiness (Toronto, Ontario)
  17. “I wanna be in the cavalry” Corb Lund (Taber, Alberta)
  18. “Teenland” The Northern Pikes (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan)
  19. “Sprawl II (Mountains beyond mountains)” Arcade Fire (Montreal, Quebec)
  20. “Claire” Rheostatics (Etobicoke, Ontario)
  21. “Still” Great Lake Swimmers (Wainfleet, Ontario)
  22. “Don’t walk away, Eileen” Sam Roberts (Westmount, Quebec)
  23. “Temptation” The Tea Party (Windsor, Ontario)
  24. “Tournament of hearts” The Weakerthans (Winnipeg, Manitoba)
  25. “Lost in the plot” The Dears (Montreal, Quebec)
  26. “All the things I wasn’t” The Grapes of Wrath (Kelowna, British Columbia)
  27. “Infamous” Basia Bulat (Toronto, Ontario)
  28. “Spiritual pollution” Pure (Vancouver, British Columbia)
  29. “Greater than consequence” Amos the Transparent (Ottawa, Ontario)
  30. “Ordinary people” The Box (Montreal, Quebec)
  31. “Memorize the city” The Organ (Vancouver, British Columbia)
  32. “Walking with a ghost” Tegan and Sara (Calgary, Alberta)
  33. “Breathing underwater” Metric (Toronto, Ontario)
  34. “Made for TV” King Apparatus (London, Ontario)
  35. “Use it” The New Pornographers (Vancouver, British Columbia)
  36. “Rossland Square” Cuff The Duke (Oshawa, Ontario)
  37. “Eat my brain” Odds (Vancouver, British Columbia)
  38. “Goodnight goodnight” Hot Hot Heat (Victoria, British Columbia)
  39. “The ghosts that haunt me” Crash Test Dummies (Winnipeg, Manitoba)
  40. “Paper girl” July Talk (Toronto, Ontario)
  41. “Don’t you know” Elephant Stone (Montreal, Quebec)
  42. “Brian Wilson” Barenaked Ladies (Scarborough, Ontario)
  43. “Mother” Tallies (Toronto, Ontario)
  44. “Swing your heartache” Young Galaxy (Montreal, Quebec)
  45. “Courage (for Hugh MacLennan)” The Tragically Hip (Kingston, Ontario)

And here is the promised link to the Apple Music playlist.

If you’re interested in checking out any of the other playlists I’ve created and shared on these pages, you can peruse them here.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 1994: #28 Meat Puppets “Backwater”

<< #29   |   #27 >>

I first came across Meat Puppets care of the old MuchMusic late Friday night alternative music video show “City Limits”. I used to sit poised, close to the TV and VCR, and ready to hit the play and record buttons whenever KCC (and later Simon Evans) would announce an interesting or familiar upcoming video.

One night, and I’m not sure why I did, perhaps it was the interesting band name, but I recorded the video for “Sam”, a single off of Meat Puppets’ seventh and first major label album, “Forbidden places”. Of course, in an age before the Internet was in wide use and almost a decade before the establishment of Wikipedia, I had no idea that the trio led by Curt and Cris Kirkwood had formed in 1980 as a punk band and had released so many independent albums already, amassing a small but mighty cult following.

Upon repeat viewings of the aforementioned video, I formed an attachment to the song and the frenetic way frontman Curt Kirkwood delivered the verses, contrasted with his static facial expression in the video. I ended up purchasing the CD* used at ‘Hooked on Video’, my hometown’s only music store, which was located at the eponymously named Bowmanville Mall.

So I felt a little smug when the group attained a certain level of fame and notoriety a couple of years later when Kurt Cobain invited the Kirkwood brothers onstage to join Nirvana for the taping of their now legendary MTV unplugged performance and they recorded a handful of Meat Puppets covers together. “Backwater” was the first single to be released off the album “Too high to die”, the first bit of new material to see the light after that appearance, so of course it did well, charting higher and selling better than anything the band recorded, prior or ever since. Sure I was a bit of a jerk about all the bandwagoners but I didn’t seriously blame any of them because it was a pretty great tune.

Whenever I hear “Backwater”, I am instantly transported back to the summer of 1995, a whole year after its release. It had had lots of time to steep on commercial radio and was recognizable to many. I was working at the recycling division of the steel plant my father worked at**, a summer job he had arranged for me and that I had quit my favoured 7-Eleven post because it paid more. I spent the better part of the first month in that job picking up scrap metal from the ground around the division’s offices, a make-work project to keep me and the other student hire (we’ll call him Todd because I don’t remember his real name) busy until we had real work to cover off. I spent much of this menial time singing songs to myself and “Backwater” came up often and when ever it did, Todd would join in, doing his best mimicry of the Kirkwood vocals but sounding more like Bert and Ernie.

“Some things will never change
They just stand there looking backwards
Half-unconscious from the pain”

Sure, the song definitely had a more mainstream feel than the sound I had gotten used to on “Forbidden places” but it got its lure hooks into me quickly and never let go. It’s got raunchy guitars, a popping time keep, and a driving riff that would not be denied. It plays like a joyride down small town back roads in pickup trucks with lit cigarettes burning in the ashtrays and open cans of watery domestic lager sloshing in the cupholders. Definitely not my memories of glory days but it still spells warmth somewhere.

*I would, however, sell that same CD a few years later at York University’s music store for a few bucks when I needed some beer money.

**A job I’ve mentioned before.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1994 list, click here.

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: New Model Army “The love of hopeless causes”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: New Model Army
Album Title: The Love of hopeless causes
Year released: 1993
Year reissued: 2025
Details: Music on Vinyl reissue, 180 gram, flaming orange and red vinyl, numbered 1686/2000

The skinny: I received this record in the post a couple of weeks ago, being my most recently procured disc, and I’ve given it quite a few spins already on the ole turntable. It’s an album I never thought would grace my collection so when I saw Music on Vinyl was doing a special edition pressing there was no hesitation. It was an instant purchase. New Model Army was the first band I ever saw in concert and it just so happened that they were touring for this, their sixth studio album. It was my friend Tim that got me into their folk infused post punk and when he mentioned to me that they had been scheduled to play Lee’s Palace in Toronto in the summer of 1993, I was all in. Spinning this beautiful 180 gram pressing on red and orange flaming vinyl brings back all those memories of listening to these songs, prepping for the show, and the day of the concert itself, driving to and then taking the subway in from Scarborough town centre and then rushing to catch the last subway out after the show. Yup, I still know all the words.

Standout track: “Bad old world”