I was out last night at a bar and a few people complimented me on the Eric’s Trip t-shirt that I was wearing. It’s always nice to meet people who like Eric’s Trip. They’re my favourite band to come out of the early 90’s East-Coast Canada music scene, but it definitely took me a while to get into them. When I was young, my oldest brother had a few Sloan albums that we would listen to on family roadtrips. When I started getting more into music in high school, I remembered liking Sloan so I bought a few of their albums on CD. I saw them live in 2004, and I can easily say they were one of my favourite bands back then. I still enjoy their 90’s output, plus few tracks from their more recent albums.
In 2006, I saw Julie Doiron play at the Velvet Elvis in Oshawa (previously discussed in this post). At that point I really didn’t listen to her, but I immediately became a fan after that show. I learned more about her story, and discovered she was in Eric’s Trip. I think I remember seeing the music video for ‘Stove’ when I was a kid, but I really hadn’t bothered to listen to them until that point. I ended up buying a used copy of Forever Again at Deja-Vu Discs on King Street in Oshawa one day after class sort of on a whim. I guess I should mention that I’d already gotten into a few other East-Coast bands throughout High School like The Super Friendz and Thrush Hermit. Anyway, ever since I started listening to Eric’s Trip, I’ve been slowly collecting other music from that era. As you can see from the above photo, my collection is still pretty small, but I think I’ve got a few gems in there. A lot of it is on CD since I really didn’t buy records until recently. It’s pretty rare to see much stuff from that period in stores around here, but I think I’ve been lucky. Most of my collection was found by scouring used stores in Oshawa and Toronto, but I’ve had to get harder to find records off the internet. Amazingly, I don’t have any overlap in my collection, though I really want to get all the Eric’s Trip albums on vinyl. I saw a copy of Love Tara about a month ago on eBay but I didn’t have much cash that week so I let it pass, and now I really regret not getting it. It was a sealed copy from a record store in Kingston and it only went for $60, which isn’t too bad. I’ve never seen it anywhere else before. I’ve seen Forever Again once or twice, so I’m hoping I can get a copy soon. None of the Sloan CDs are hard to find. I have two Moon Socket CDs, I’m not sure how rare those are. Same goes for the Jale and Hardship Post CDs.
I’m pretty happy with what I have right now, but there is so much out there I still need to get. Eric’s Trip alone have about ten more EPs I need to get. Fun fact: Out of the 28 releases I have, 11 came out on Sup Pop and 9 came out on Murderecords.
I headed to the Drake last night to interview the Great Bloomers for an upcoming episode of Soundcheck, and stuck around to see them play later on. I last saw the Bloomers play two summers ago at Track and Field, and since I liked them back then and bought their EP, I was interested in seeing how far they’ve come. They have a new album called Speak of Trouble coming out on April 21st so they mostly played songs from that, but also this song ‘Black Rising Fire’ from the aforementioned 2007 EP. Watch for their episode of Soundcheck in April.
As for the show, they were really good! Their new songs have a lot of cool time changes and lots of awesome piano.
Here is a video I shot yesterday of Gentleman Reg playing at Soundscapes. I started listening to Gentleman Reg way back when because he was signed to the same label as Cuff the Duke and the Cons. That was a long time ago now, about 5 years, but he’s finally putting out a new album, which is cool. Anyway, I wasn’t sure if I was going to go to this in-store or not. I wanted to, but I was having a crummy day so I thought of staying in. However, the best cure for the blues is to go out and have fun, amirite folks? So I went to Soundscapes with my new camera in tow and had a great time. I saw plenty of friends, and got to try out my new camera in a familiar setting. I think the footage is a lot better than what I was getting with my old camera, wouldn’t you say? It’s even in HD (so it might take longer to load). Hope you enjoy it, feel free to post it on your own blog or e-mail it to a friend.
Here is a music video I made with Kenny for a song off the new Timber Timbre album. Yesterday I was at Sonic Boom and I saw a cute girl buying the album, probably because she saw this video.
So, for this Soundcheck, Brad arranged for the Bruce Peninsula to play in an art gallery in the Distillery District, which is on the other side of town. It took me the better part of an hour to get down there. It was a really cold day I remember, and I listened to the new BP album A Mountain Is A Mouth on the streetcar. I’d listened to it quite a bit already, but it had been a while since I listened to it from start to finish. It’s a fantastic album, but on this particular day, listening to it on the streetcar as it snowed outside, I thought it was the best thing I’d ever heard. On the way home I listened to Nebraska and fell asleep.
Here’s the latest video in the Soundcheck series I do for the National Post. I shot this one back in November, but I had to hold off posting it for a while. I’ll admit I haven’t heard too much Hey Rosetta! but I was still pretty excited to have them playing in my apartment. It was funny, when their van pulled up outside, I believe it was Adam, their guitar player, who commented on how big Toronto is. He said, “We’ve been driving forever and we’re still downtown!” I guess when you’re from St. John’s, any part of Toronto seems like downtown, but I certainly don’t consider my neighbourhood to be downtown.
I think the plan is to post a new Soundcheck every two weeks, so keep your eyes to nationalpost.com/theampersand, because that’s where they’ll be posted first. Also, leave comments on the videos on YouTube!
