Wednesday 23 April 2014

Thousandsticks - Six Songs (1999)


Clearly, there's only one way to go after the other day's Lee Shedden post - and that's further into the obscure Fire Engine Red-related CDs in the CCPS collection.

Thousandsticks (named for the FER drummer's hometown) was James Hayden stepping out from behind the drum kit to form a quite spectacular and horribly underrated band. There's something tremendously endearing about this band - Gene keeps muttering something about "blue collar rock", but he wouldn't know a blue collar if it bit him on the ass. This is a kind of grown-up rock and roll, with a bit of an alt.country twang.

This CD-R came out a few years ahead of their White Knuckled Midnight Drives CD, and lacks Lorrie Matheson's keyboard noodling, which helps Lyle Crilly's excellent guitar work stand out. Actually, Crilly is the odd one out here, as this is miles removed from the britpop bands that he played with in the mid-90's.

After Thousandsticks, Hayden played with thee mighty Von Zippers, before moving to Vancouver and playing with DOA for a short while (under the quite excellent pseudonym Floor Tom Jones). He's now part of the quite excellent Greenback High.

We highly recommend this quite excellent download.

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