Tag: Crash Test Dummies

Categories
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
Live music galleries

Live music galleries: Crash Test Dummies [2022]

(I got the idea for this series while sifting through the ‘piles’ of digital photos on my laptop. It occurred to me to share some of these great pics from some of my favourite concert sets from time to time. Until I get around to the next one, I invite you to peruse my ever-growing list of concerts page.)

Crash Test Dummies live at Bluesfest 2022

Artist: Crash Test Dummies
When: July 14th, 2022
Where: SiriusXM stage, Ottawa Bluesfest, Lebreton Flats Park
Context: So I jumped back into live music with both feet over the last few weeks. It was my long-awaited return to Canada’s largest outdoor music festival, aka Ottawa Bluesfest. I had bought a full festival pass back in March 2020, just before everything went to hell, and when that year’s edition was cancelled, I just transferred my pass to the next. And then, the next – this year. I ended up attending five of the ten nights and saw plenty of great sets by acts as diverse as The New Pornographers, Lucy Dacus, Garbage, Run the Jewels, and Rage Against the Machine. But my favourite of all? A side stage headline set by Crash Test Dummies. It was partly nostalgia, I admit, but they really did put on an entertaining show. I had their debut album, “The ghosts that haunt me”, on cassette tape back in high school and I near wore it through with the amount of times I played it on my Walkman. And though it was good, I wasn’t as big a fan of their sophomore release, mostly because they were floating away from the folk-rock sound that I loved from the debut. So I never did see the group perform live. A wrong I definitely righted a week ago tonight. The set was heavy on that sophomore release, it was their biggest success, of course, but I was extremely happy to hear them pull out four tracks from that debut, including the cover song below and their big Canadian hit, “Superman’s song”. For many moments on that night, I was seventeen again and screaming along to lyrics I had never forgotten.
Point of reference song: “Androgynous” (Replacements cover)

Three of the original dummies – Brad, Dan, Ellen
Mitch Dorge on the drums
Marc Arnould, touring keyboards
Ellen Reid and Dan Roberts
Stuart Cameron, touring guitarist
Ellen rocking the accordion
Brad Roberts at the microphone
Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: Crash Test Dummies “The ghosts that haunt me”

(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: Crash Test Dummies
Album Title: The ghosts that haunt me
Year released: 1991
Year reissued: 2019
Details: Black vinyl, reissue

The skinny: A couple of songs from this very album have already seen the light on these pages: the Winnipeg folk-rock band’s cover of The Replacements’ “Androgynous” and their first huge and at the time ubiquitous hit, “Superman’s song”. It was in that latter post that I went on about how I bought the cassette tape on the back of that song, how it spent a lot of time in my Walkman, and how I likely would’ve worn it out had it not been stolen first. I also mentioned how I would love to have it on vinyl and since that time, noticed that the Crash Test Dummies’ sophomore album, “God shuffled his feet”, was getting the reissue treatment. And yeah, it probably did better commercially but I was still partial to the debut so I held out. One day last month, I was scrolling through the Amazon Vinyl pre-orders list, as I sometimes do, and I found this sitting there for the taking. There was no hesitation. I received it a few days ago and it’s already hit my platter a few a go-rounds. Just like the old days.

Standout track: “The ghosts that haunt me”