Thursday 31 May 2012

CCPS Miscellany: Cadillac of Worms - Let's Eat (1988)


Continuing on our ramble through Edmonton tapes, we have this delightful little cassette. We're somewhat fond of this as, sound-wise, there's a lot in common with Color Me Psycho and the Choads. These guys use the same garage rock formula that worked for our Calgarians, and in doing so have won us over.

Someone on the Youtubes posted a bunch of songs from this tape, complete with scrolling lyrics:



Let's eat!

Tuesday 29 May 2012

CCPS Miscellany: Psyche - Psyche


The problem with having a random selection of Edmonton tapes in the CCPS collection is that, well, they truly are a random selection. We had post punk yesterday, and dark wave today.

This collection of early tracks from Psyche came to us via Greg Kushner - there's no year on the tape, but we think this is from around 1983 or so. Turns out Psyche is still active, although based in Germany. As a bonus, the Youtubes have provided a video of a song off this tape:


Get the tape here.

Sunday 27 May 2012

CCPS Miscellany: Ghost Shirt Society - Live Demo


So, we're going to dig into some tapes from the City of Champions. Every time we want to put an Edmonton band in context, we visit the masterful Chronology of Edmonton Bands, a pet project of Vertical Struts/Famines guitarist Raymond Biesinger.

The site tells us that Ghost Shirt Society was around from 1983-85, and was made up of Scott Parker, Dave Bacon and Andy Hill. We have no idea who any of those guys are, but together they make some pretty fine, Killing Joke-esque post punk, as evidenced by this tape from the cavernous basement of Mark Igglesden.

Get it here.

Saturday 26 May 2012

Various - From the Ladle to the Gravy (1995)


We're going to ease ourselves into our next few posts with this, a great release from Brent Oliver's Edmonton-based Green Pepper Records. We picked this up mostly because our obsessive behaviours the couple of Calgary bands on here (Field Day and Fire Engine Red - literally, a couple of Calgary bands).

The concept is pretty straight-forward: get a bunch of Alberta-based bands to, well record a random selection of cover songs. Field Day's haphazard dash through the Beatles' "Help" kicks things off, and Fire Engine Red show their roots with with Steve Earle's "Billy Austin." So, even judging just by our local folks, you can tell there isn't a lot of focus here.

But the highlight is from one of our favourites from Dirt City - Pal Joey's take on Channel 3's "I Didn't Know" is right on the money. And Lyle Bell helps Molly's Reach's take on "867-5309/Jenny."

Okay, so maybe good things can come from Edmonton.

Monday 21 May 2012

New 1-2 - ICOE Pre-Production (1999)


Our Wagbeard/Primrods long weekend continues! A while back, Craig Evans passed us a box full of tapes and things (including a plethora of Night Gallery gig posters, which are up on our Facebook page). One of the tapes was this one, a series of early mixes of the New 1-2's second CD.

As Craig pointed out to us, the New 1-2 was a different band by this time. They had lost their original bass player and drummer, and shifted their sound from the angular math-rock to a more visceral garage rock. There are a lot of hints of future direction Coutts took with the very excellent Twin Fangs on here.

As a bonus, we also found this in the box from Craig:


It still doesn't answer some key questions (most significantly: what the hell?), but it certainly is a cool thing to have in the CCPS archive.

As is this tape, of course.

Sunday 20 May 2012

Earthquake Pills - Earthquake Pills (1997)


Well, since we're enjoying the Primrods/Wagbeard split 10" so much right now, how about this tape? This came to us via Joe McCaffery, and our pal Steve Elaschuk tells us that this was basically a promo done of a few tracks from the Earthquake Pills' first CD, the oddly-titled Audiodidactaphone. 

This gives a good reason to link to this ancient F-Word article, which includes (a) a "joke" comparing Chris Temple to Bronski Beat's lead singer, (b) a mention of a record rep (remember those strange beasts? The one in this article was clearly off his meds) and (c) Mark Igglesden's pseudonym du jour. 

This one's an easy pill to swallow.

Saturday 19 May 2012

Primrods - Encourage Citizen Advocacy plus three more/Wagbeard - Three Songs (1993)


Well, this is a bit embarrassing. Why haven't we posted this yet? We're not sure. We mean, we kind of have, but... it's complicated. But we're going to make it all better now.


This 10" is, quite simply, one of our favourite things to ever come out of this city. We've raved about the Primrods on here ad nauseum, and we've been pretty thorough in our praise of Wagbeard, as well. This is such a great record. We really, really like it.

So we'll shut the hell up and just let you grab the download.

Monday 14 May 2012

Kids - He's No. 1/Victim of Hypocracy (1983)



We've had this sitting in the CCPS digital archive for a while, so since we found the Kids' full-length, we may as well share this with you. 

We have conflicting information about the number of singles these guys put out. MOCM says one, but JAM! says two (and RYM even has a picture of the label of the other single). So we're guessing that two is correct.

We kind of wish the cover of their records were as high-gloss at the record labels. But, as we're well aware, you should never judge a record by its cover.

Sunday 13 May 2012

Kids - The Kids (1983)



So, we managed to get out to the the Calgary Records Collector's Show last weekend - and, more importantly, we managed to leave without having to re-mortgage our house. We managed to grab a few things for the CCPS archives which we didn't have physical copies of and... this.

We'd like to thank the individual who pointed this out to us. He had been told three things about the record: first, it's not the Belgian band of the same name. Second, it's rare. Third, it's not very good. Which explains why an allegedly rare record was going for such a reasonable price. So reasonable, that we couldn't pass up a chance to grab this.


In many ways, we weren't disappointed by our purchase. This isn't a great record - in fact, it was sounding really good until we realized our turntable was set at 45 instead of 33. But, look at the band picture on the inside! 


Wow, totally worth the price.

Anyways, the Museum of Canadian Music tells us that keyboardist Derek Bullen is still active. But that's all we know.

But don't let that stop you from grabbing the download.

Tuesday 1 May 2012

Straight - 4-Track Demos (1998)


Here's something we're pretty thrilled to hear again. Years ago, we were lucky enough to hear some early demo versions of songs Joe McCaffery was kicking around for his then-new band, Straight. So when Joe surprised us by finding the very tape that we heard some 17 years ago, we were kind of over the moon.

This is a set of songs that, apart from "Devil Doll" and "Brains," Joe never gave over to Straight, finding them perhaps too dark. The songs were recorded over about three years, from late 1995 to 1998.

Thanks again to Joe for unearthing this gem.