quoperative

Courtesy of i (heart) music — one of the best but fugliest music blogs around — comes news of an Inbreds reunion show at this year’s Halifax Pop Explosion.  If this Haligonian wasn’t 6280 km away he’d definitely make a serious effort to be there.

For the ignoramuses in the crowd, The Inbreds were a killer rock duo way before bands with only 2 people in them became the flavour of the month.  And they didn’t even play the blues.  They made straight-up indie pop using a bass guitar played like a guitar through a guitar amp — power chords, feedback, riffage and all. It ended up sounding more like a guitar than a bass, but not really like a guitar at all. After a few albums they called it quits in ‘98 when they were just starting to get some traction.  Just before the break-up they were booked on one of those traveling summer festivals (maybe Edgefest) when Foo Fighter Dave Grohl (who was also on the tour) famously called the Inbreds his new favourite band… or something to that effect.  I’m sure that picked them up a few new fans but they packed it in soon after.

Since then, Mike O’Neill has released a couple of solo albums and played in Sarah Harmer’s band for a few years.  Dave Ullrich opened up Zunior, blogs at Thick Specs (”classic indie rock”) and plays in a band called Egger.  So they haven’t been what you would call “slouches” or anything.

Speaking of Halifax Pop Explosion… it’s been 10 years since Mish and I flew from Ottawa to take in the festival (back when it was called Halifax On Music).  I thought I had died and gone to indie rock heaven. Behold this magical and wonderful 1998 lineup…

Admiral, By Divine Right, Cheticamp, Cool Blue Halo, Deadly Snakes, Holler, Julie Doiron, Lady Bug Transistor, Moon Socket, Mooney Suzuki, Neko Case, Number One Cup, Pansy Division, Papas Fritas, Plumtree, Rebecca West, Richard Davies, Rome Plows, Ron Sexsmith, Shallow North Dakota, Shyne Factory, Soaking Up Jagged, Starbeam, State Champs, Straight, Syrup USA, Teen Wolf, The Euphonic, The Grifters, The Inbreds, the Ten Cent Wings, The Vees, Thrush Hermit, Tricky Woo, Yo La Tengo

Highlights from that trip included:

• Seeing Thrush Hermit play in a venue not unlike my high school cafeteria a few months before Clayton Park came out so I got to hear all those songs before the album was released.
• Buying my first Tricky Woo album — The Enemy Is Real — which remains probably one of my top 20 albums of all time to this day.  Talk about having your ears ripped off your head and nailed to the wall.  Also… minimum 2 guitar solos per song.
• Discovering the Brian Jonestown Massacre.  Bit of a back story… BJM were supposed to be headlining the aforementioned cafeteria show (the festival finale) so they were on the front cover of the Halifax weekly arts paper but they got busted for drugs at the border and never made it to the show.  Regardless, I picked up Strung Out In Heaven (their “major label” debut on TVT) mostly because of the totally electric buzz surrounding the band and the fucking awesome album art.  I bought it from Sam the Record Man on Barrington Street where Inbred Mike O’Neill was working and a totally unknown punk band of pre-pubescent misfits called “Sum 41″ was playing an in-store performance to like 6 people.

Christ… that was a real Canadian indie rock fanboy trip down memory lane.  Back to regular programming.

Before I sign off, a seminal Inbreds track for your listening pleasure — “Any Sense of Time” off the most excellent 1994 album Kombinator:

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Mish and I went to see King Khan & The Shrines last night at the Red Room on Richard’s.  King Khan is formerly of the Spaceshits from Montreal.  Yes, the same Spaceshits that Mark Sultan (aka BBQ) used to play in before Les Sexareenos.

As you might expect, King Khan’s apple doesn’t fall from the Spaceshits/Sexareenos tree.  His schtick is a bit of a sloppy James Brown-meets-garage-rawk-party type thing.  Fronting the Shrines, a 7-piece band and go-go dancer, King Khan is the master of ceremonies who occasionally sports a guitar but mostly just sings and mingles with the crowd.

Not a bad show but the whole thing kind of fell flat.  The place was packed and by the time King Khan hit the stage everybody was fully juiced up to get their collective rocks off but it didn’t seem like ol’ Blacksnake was giving the expected 110%.  Definitely worth the price of admission but not quite as good as I expected.

Here’s a track from the Shrines’ latest platter “What is?!” called “Took My Lady Out to Dinner”

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Saw one of my desert island bands tonight — Moncton, New Brunswick’s own Eric’s Trip.  Formed in 1990, broke up in 1996, reunion tour in 2001 and have done the occasional mini-tour here and there since 2006.  Despite not releasing any new material since 1996 and only a couple of post-humous releases shortly after they disbanded they can still pack a room… and crank out a setlist’s worth of some of the best lo-fi indie rock to come out of this country. Period.

As I stood in the club (stupidly without earplugs) enjoying this killer performance my mind wandered.  I thought to myself — I’m going to blog about how awesome this is when I get home.  And so here I am.  My mind continued to wander.  It wouldn’t be a very interesting blog post if I were to just gush about how awesome Eric’s Trip is.  I agreed with myself.  It wouldn’t be.  My mind also agreed.  And it wandered some more.

Then I had a small epiphany. Eric’s Trip means so much to me because they’re my Ramones. They’re the band I heard around the same time I got my first guitar and made me think “Holy shit, this is so good. I need to learn these songs and then write some of my own just like them”.  And so I did… kind of.  The songs I wrote weren’t really that much like Eric’s Trip but I can safely say that band totally inspired me in a way that Joey, Johnny, DeeDee, and Marky (and briefly Tommy… but not CJ) did for so many fledgling musicians for the previous 20 years.  And when you look at it, Eric’s Trip isn’t that unlike the Ramones — syrupy sweet melodies over really loud guitars.  And no solos or wanking of any kind… ever.

There we go — a reasonably significant blog post that came out of a totally killer rock show.

Here’s a couple tracks for your listening enjoyment. “One Floor Below” from 1996’s Purple Blue (the only album they ever did in a proper studio)

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And “You’re Always Right”, a live recording from their August 2001 show in Regina.

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ps… I saw some people camped outside a few Rogers locations tonight. Presumably to pre-order Love Guru on DVD.  There’s no way they’re actually lined up for the iPhone… that would be ridiculous.  It’s not Radiohead tickets, people.  Get a life.