Saturday 29 May 2010

Mark David Stewart - She Can't Cook or Sew and She Won't Scrub Your Floors (1994)





We almost didn't leave the house today, what with all the unseasonable snow and all, but we eventually did, lured by the promise of garage sales and the prospect of pints and tunes from Mark David Stewart down at the Ship and Anchor. MD Stewart released his CD from his new project, Prairie of Prax, but when we went to buy a copy, he slid us something else - a tape!

Back in 1994, after Rabbit Has Brain had called it a day, Mark David Stewart released a CD with the unwieldy title of "She Can't Cook or Sew and She Won't Scrub Your Floors." We'd lost our copy in a move (the usual story), but had no idea this thing had come out on tape as well until Mark passed one to us today.


We had also forgotten about the stellar cast that he pulled together for this - alumni of Big Bang Theory, the Quitters, Monster Zero (!), Gravity Thugs... and song fragments courtesy of one of Calgary's most pseudonym-ed drummers. Yes, it's quirky - but that's pretty much what you'd expect.

Get it here.

Friday 28 May 2010

Pete Link - The Pete Link Experience



One of the questions you may have is, if the Shinolas were stripped of their garage rock goodness, what would they sound like? You can wonder no more and download this, twelve tracks of head Shinola Pete Link and his acoustic guitar. Since he packed up and left Calgary, Link has been busy recording more demented meisterworks - there are at least two CDs (each a trilogy?) floating around the CCPS offices.

Get it here.

Wednesday 26 May 2010

Shinolas - Live at the Horsemans Club/Live at the Night Gallery

For us here at the CCPS, the Shinolas are one of the most criminally overlookeded of Calgary bands - their garage rock via Guided by Voices rubs us in all the right places. That's why we were quite delighted to find a couple of live shows in the big box of tapes from Conrad Montana. We're not sure what year these two recordings are from - but they're a might fine testament to the talent and snottiness of these guys.

Tuesday 25 May 2010

Mants - Live at the Republik

Well, we're hanging our heads in shame from getting yesterday's post so wrong. So we're going to make it up to you, and go back to what we know and love the best - garage rock.

Somewhere, circa 1996/97, David Wisdom and his amazing Brave New Waves broadcasted a night of music from the Republik. Greg Kushner taped the Mants' set, but lost to the winds of time (or at least not in out possession) are the sets from Curse of Horseflesh and Huevos Rancheros.

If you missed the Mants' reunion at the CJSW 25th anniversary party, you missed a really good thing. But we're pleased to see the Mants have somehow wrangled their way onto the Sled Island roster for this year.

Oddly, we're stuck for a good Mants pun tonight...

Monday 24 May 2010

CCPS Miscellany: The Animal Slaves - Live at 10 Foot Henry's

On the flipside of the Cryin' Helicopters tape that Greg sent us is a live set from another mid-80's band, the Animal Slaves. We don't know much about these folks, other than they were an (early?) Allen Baekeland outfit. We've got these folks pegged as a Calgary band, but our iTunes collection is also pointing to an Animal Slaves track off the Last Call Vancouver indie compilation.

Does that mean Animal Slaves moved to Calgary, or did they do time in Vancouver? If you know, can you let us know?

Update: we've just fired our fact-checker, who misread Animal Slaves for Animal Kingdom. Kingdom was the Baekeland band, Slaves were a different band from Vancouver. Thanks to the folks at the facebook page for steering us straight-ish.

Monday 17 May 2010

Cryin' Helicopters - Live at 10 Foot Henry's



One of our favourite things about the big boxes of tapes we recently scored from Greg Kushner and Conrad Montana is the number of unlabelled/j-card-less mystery tapes. Many of these are on regular blank tapes, like the ones you'd buy from London Drugs (we're not sure why London Drugs was the choice place to buy blanks - price? location? selection? lack of any real reason?), and many of them contain some real gems.

Like this - both we and our pals over at Golden Rock have been looking for any pre-Huevos Brent Cooper projects, the Cryin' Helicopters being one, and the Gravity Thugs being the other. Well, thanks to Greg Kushner, we have a live, straight off the mixing board tape of one of their 10 Foot Henry's sets. The volume level drops through the floorboards for the middle of the recording, but we're still able to provide 10 tracks of untitled, mid-80's garage rock for your listening pleasure.

We're doubly pleased to be able to present this VOX clipping, featuring a 12-year old Brent Cooper.

Saturday 15 May 2010

Unsightly - Crack '96 (1996)

Well, as you likely know by now, we here at the CCPS are nothing if not obsessive about completing stories. So the story of the Unsightly ends with this rare gem. In fact, so rare that Greg Kushner thinks only three people had heard this before it landed in out offices. Greg and Jeff re-recorded several of the tracks of their original Crack cassette (throwing in an ace cover of Pink Floyd's "Nile Song" to sauce things up), only passing a copy along to Wes Hegg.

However, we can't confirm is Wes ever took the time to listen to this - so Jeff and Greg may have been the only ones to have heard this before us - and, of course, you.


Friday 14 May 2010

Unsightly - The Unsightly Can't Play



It turns out our pal Greg Kusher misrepresented Sealed With a Kiss somewhat when he called it their "first official release." Rodney Brent tipped us to this when we ran into him a few weeks ago - Rodney was raving about this tape, so we're pretty happy that Greg sent us a copy.

This super-lo-fi tape was recorded to 4-track at CJSW - but it's the same scrappy pop that we've come to expect from the Brothers Kushner.

Thursday 13 May 2010

Big Blue Fish - Wirehead



We're talking stock of the "Big" bands we've already featured here. Big Bang Theory, Big Daddy Ritter, Big Dog, Big Gulp... well, here's one more. To be honest, we're really just listing other bands because don't know who these guys were.

Wednesday 12 May 2010

CCPS Miscellany: Local Band Seeks Fan



We posted this in a drunken stupor last night on the old F***book page. We forgot that F***book hates photos and likes to make them as tiny and useless as possible. So here it is in all it's moderate-resolution glory.

For those who are wondering from whence this came, it was the CJSW ad in the January 2007 Beatroute.

Tuesday 11 May 2010

Doris Day Film Festival - Die Elf Scharfrichter (The Eleven Executioners) (1985)



This is one from Greg Kushner's collection; we don't know who was responsible for this, so we'll turn the narrative over to Greg:

This is probably my fave Canadian cassette release ever, and the track “100 Drugs a Day” is one of my favorite songs EVER – the intro still gives me chills, the slightly out of tune guitar and bass when it all kicks in GRRRR!…a hot guitar solo and one of the best crash’n’burn endings EVER! I’ve heard this band was both Calgary and Edmonton based and that the drummer may have been Mark from Color Me Psycho. They were one of the many bands that opened for the Dead Kennedy’s when they played Mac Hall. The tape had at least 3 different covers, but this one was my favorite. BTW, the guy who recorded this (please note the amazing and powerful mix) was Shane C. who recorded “Crawling” and “Insignificant” on Jeff’s “Praise/Exorcism” tape which is why those tracks sound so good.

Having listened to this a few times now, we're joining Greg's general enthusiasm for this tape, but... fave Canadian cassette release ever? The CCPS office isn't even willing to touch that one tonight: we've had enough Quitters vs. Primrods throwdowns here over the past few years.

Monday 10 May 2010

Geek Beet - Daffodildo (1994)




Well, here's an odd/fun one. This is a collection of bedroom lo-fi genre-bending pop from former Fire Engine Red bassist Lee Shedden. Mr. Shedden is, apparently, a big fan of playing with tape speeds. Which is all okay by us - that's one of the luxuries that a real 4-track provides over, say, Garageband.

We saw Mr. Shedden fronting a fun 4-piece band a few years ago (mostly covers, if we remember - but well-chosen). We're not sure what he's up to these days.

Get it here.

Sunday 9 May 2010

Gaudhed - Oh My Gaud (1992)



"You remember these guys, right?" Conrad Montana slyly asked us last week while we were talking tapes. We actually don't - other than form the track of theirs that shows up on the NAMS compilation.

Friday 7 May 2010

CCPS Miscellany: The Lucy Show




Tucked into the box of great tapes we got this week from Conrad Montana, we were pretty excited to find the two tapes from the Lucy Show, a band featuring two ex-Calgarians, Mark Bandola (brother of Steve Bandola from Citrus Park) and Rob Vandeven. We've always been big fans of this stuff, so we've got an excuse to post this now. Plus, Greg Kushner's second salvo included an old VOX with an interview with the band. We're taking that as more than ample reason for tonight's post.



We're not going to retread the history - we're going to let you read the article above and the Wikipedia entry. There's been a bit of debate in the CCPS office tonight about the comparisons to the Cure that seem to be prevalent in both of these sources. The majority of us think they comparisons are neither well-founded nor well-informed. So we've been wandering the interwebs, and discovered this extensive band history at the website of the label that's recently reissued both of these tapes. It hasn't helped the debate, but it did distract us for a bit. But we're very easily distracted, so that's really not such a big deal.

We're not sure how available these re-releases are in our parts of the world, so we're crossing our fingers that we don't get sued again.

Thursday 6 May 2010

BMF - Cheese




When Chad passed us the SPI tape we featured yesterday, he also gave us this curious little tape. BMF was Chad's basement band - we here at the CCPS are unfortunately familiar with this sort of thing. A few friends get together, drink some beer, come up with some perhaps-not-so-highbrow song concepts, drink some more beer and then record said songs. Chad tells us BMF has the distinction of having taken this further:

There was a "Battle Of The Bands" at MRC in a couple weeks that we wanted to enter (another drunken decision). We recorded every night and just made the deadline. Due to the fact that every band in Calgary played thrash in 1993-4, we placed fairly high in the standings. We were supposedly 1 spot from playing live at the finals. Thank God we missed out on that because the embarrassment of our equipment alone would have shamed us for life.

Shame is a big part of what keeps us at the CCPS going. That is, shaming others.

We're not sure what BMF stood for, or what any of the other members of the band went on to. We suspect they may still like beer.

Wednesday 5 May 2010

Simon's Pet Iguana - Real



So, while one of our previous donors shared SPI's first, appropriately-titled tape, Free, Chad Auramenko apparently paid good money for this one. We're thrilled that he's passed it along to us, but - judging from the liner notes - not as thrilled as the boys from SPI were to be recording in a "real studio."

Sunday 2 May 2010

Forbidden Dimension - Corpus Earthling (1992)



Since we at the CCPS have no issues with taking our obsessions to nearly-illegal lengths (as yet, no one has issued restraining order on our any of our, er, members), we're very excited to have tracked down a Forbidden Dimension tape we'd nearly forgotten about. Nestled deep within this excellent discography (with links to lyrics!) is a quick reference to this 1992 tape from Jackson Phibes/Tom Bagley, which Christopher Zuk has passed our way.

While the track listing of this tape is quite similar to Our Martian Heritage, our untrained ears tell us these are different recordings. There are a few tracks on here that we haven't heard before or seen anywhere else, including an unlisted cover of the Moving Sidewalks' "99th Floor."

We've ignored the directions for usage, and slid this up our nose anyways.

Saturday 1 May 2010

Color Me Psycho/Forbidden Dimension/Jackson Phibes (1987-1999)



We happened to catch Tom Bagley on CBC radio this week, talking about his favourite rock song of all time. For those who missed it (maybe you're like us, and you've now abandoned the CBC for their firing of Barbara Budd?), Tom's pick was a choice one - Blue Oyster Cult's "This Ain't the Summer of Love."



We want you to listen to that at least three times before you listen to this great tape that Christopher Zuk gave us at the Legion last night. There's so much to that Blue Oyster Cult track that's echoed back throughout this personally-crafter compilation (except, mayhaps, the beards, leather and bad hair). This tape is an amazing 12-year slice of Tom's career, it's like a two-week package tour of Europe that hits all the right places ("Give You the Gears" is our Eiffel Tower). A little bit of Color Me Psycho, some early drum machine Forbidden Dimension, smatterings of FD as a full band, and - our favourite part of this - a Jackson Phibes CBC session featuring Brent Cooper on bass.

This ain't the summer of love, but it also ain't the springtime of suck, either.