Various - Suburbanators Original Soundtrack (1995)

We're trying to shake the taste left in our mouth from our last pair of posts with the best mouthwash we know: the minty-fresh Primrods. We're never ones to back off from the edge of a major obsession/compulsion, so what's wrong with one more Primrods-related post?

Okay, that'll be the last reference of our favourite band this post. On to this CD, the soundtrack to Calgary filmmaker Gary Burns' first feature film, The Suburbanators. We only ever saw this film once (in its initial run), and have been half-assedly looking for a copy ever since. We say half-assedly, because if we'd really focused and tried, we probably would have found it at Bird Dog. But we didn't bother, and now we've accidentally killed Bird Dog. Sorry.

Thankfully, the internets have the original trailer:

We only half-remember the film (those beauty shots of a pre-renovation Westbrook Mall are etched in our memory), this trailer helps us fill in a few blanks, as do plot summaries like this one.

From that half-recollection, we believe that each of the bands who had songs on this soundtrack (many of which were grabbed from the Play compilation) had one song featured in the actual film, and then selected an additional track for inclusion on the disc. This disc is packed with our faves: the band we said we wouldn't mention again in this post, Forbidden Dimension and Wagbeard (okay, what's up with the version of Alpha that's on here? We always think our tape player is eating the tape... even though we know this is a CD). Plus, Field Day, Huevos-Rancheros-in-an-alternate-reality Maud, Kerry Clarke's GASP and a quartet of hillbillies who we've got to be careful when we mention lest we break CCPS Policy HR-LR-004 (note: for ease/out of laziness, the CCPS has adopted all of the policies of the City of Calgary - if they're good enough for Nenshi, they're good enough for us!).

We're pretty big fans of Gary Burns' work - thanks to waydowntown, we kept a bottle full of marbles on our desk for years. And as inner-city snobs, we totally dug Radiant City. We haven't seen his most recent film, but now that we've watched the trailer, we're feeling REALLY guilty about killing Bird Dog.

But Blockbuster? Not so much.