Details
Small town idyll and angst-y emotional unrest…
My high school was nestled at the top of a hill backing a forest. The open, expansive grounds were surrounded by a number of farms, an equestrian ground, and a giant grey corrugated metal box that passed as a “recreation centre”… that and a lot of portable classrooms and hidden tennis courts where kids did bad things on lunch break.
My time out of this school was spent with late nights drinking over-brewed drip coffee in 24 hour family restaurants (I was straight edge for a while), putting on shows in weird halls, going to shows in weird halls, hitch-hiking a three hour drive south to Victoria to see shows in weird halls, making loud rackets in bands, and writing zines on a typewriter that needed the right side propped up on a book to make the carriage move properly with the aid of gravity.
It was in this town that was the genesis that formed who I am now and how I think about the world and art. I grew up around a lot of pop music but didn’t grow up on pop music. I was raw, and totally was emersed in the hardcore and punk/post-punk coming out at the time. The catharsis of loud and abrasive music.
There was a great thing that happened with the arrival of punk and hardcore in the late 70s and early 80s but I honestly felt the wave that happened in the late 80s and early 90s had as equally great of an impact in those there to see it in their youth back in the day. There was a lot of time spent on this playlist listening through hordes of bands and long lost records to condense the selection to the one seen below. I’ve tried to mix up a few more melodic tracks in the mix that come from the same sort of general “scene” that was happening across North America at the time. This overall selection is from my own perspective at the time and I distilled the choices down to tracks that I still listen to get excited about from time to time even in this present day.
Starting off with the cavernous, murky, and dour sounds of Indian Summer, this collection of tracks represents what I was listening to at the time but also what a hell lot of other kids were listening to at the time.
DISCLAIMER: Many of these tracks were recorded on 4 or 8 tracks, mixed badly, rife with and vinyl crackles and tape hiss, and vocals are lost in the mix, and generally a lot of angst and screaming. If you are “faint at heart” for this sort of thing it might be best to take this particular mix in measured segments, sort of like a syndicated TV show…
1. INDIAN SUMMER | Orchard 1994
2. UNWOUND Envelope 1993
3. SHOTMAKER Failure 1996
4. SWING KIDS Line 1 1994
5. UNIVERSAL ORDER OF ARMAGEDDON Visible Distance 1994
6. MOSS ICON Kicks The Can 1989
7. RITES OF SPRING In Silence/Words Away 1985
8. LINCOLN Sugarloaf 1993
9. THREE MILE PILOT Chenjesu 1995
10. NATION OF ULYSSES Maniac Dragstrip 1992
11. ANTIOCH ARROW Suspicious Uzi 1993
12. BREAKWATER Seven 1995
13. EMBRACE Building 1985
14. JAWBOX Dreamless 1992
15. PORTRAITS OF PAST The Outlook Is Bleak 1994
16. CLIKATAT IKATOWI Too Simple 1994
17. SPITBOY Wizened 1994
18. HOOVER TNT 1994/1997
19. GIANT’S CHAIR New Orleans 1994
20. SPARKMARKER The Way She Moves 1993
21. JULIA Peripherals 1995
22. CIRCUS LUPUS 7x4x1 1993
23. ANGELHAIR Space Ape 1994
24. THE REPUBLIC OF FREEDOM FIGHTERS Stomach Council 1995