Sunday, May 02, 2004
SW Live! - A Brief History of Hoax (Part the Fourth)
Clarkston, Michigan
There is a certain energy and intensity to a live show that you don't even try to capture in the recording studio. There's a front and centre insistence to a crowd-fuelled set that all the time in the world in the sound booths and editing suites isn't going to reinvent. This axiom is especially axiomatic for a hoax band entering a new phase of their non-existence. This was Spencerville Wayne in 1999. Our album "Toledohio" was still sky-high in the charts when we got the bright idea to put out a live record. Our record execs initially balked, saying it was too gimmicky, too opportunistic, and predicting that it woud alienate the fan base and lower the level and volume of acclaim coming from the critics. Paul and I were nonplussed.
Our idea was this: we were about to head out on an entirely fictional tour that was going to take us through our bread and butter venues in Southern Ontario and the northern U.S. We had talked some of our favourite performers into coming along with us - Ken Tizzard from the Watchmen, Chris Brown, and Phil Comparelli from 54-40, to name a few. As a duo, Paul and I had been perfecting our act and really working on our stage presence. The chance to add a couple of pieces - Phil's trumpet or Ken's bass (since I didn't do anything with mine, except plug it in and bang at it spasmodically) - intrigued us as a way to get back to our early days as a five-piece studio imaginary band. Plus, now we had this plethora of amazing tunes that we wanted to pretend to get down on tape in live format.
The result was "Hoist" - a five- (six-) song live EP recorded in Clarkston, Michigan at the Pine Knob Theater and in Toronto at the Horseshoe in late spring 1999. The two nights that we committed to tape were standouts in a series of mind-altering performances that had critics in the independent press falling all over themselves in breaking out the superlatives. Critics in the dependent press were no less lavish with the superlatives, but due to larger budgets and expense accounts they were not so much with the falling all over themselves bit.
Listen to the album and decide for yourself, but "Hoist" has always seemed to me to be a key to the whole SW puzzle. Here we were, this little lockbox of a demented fantasy side-project from real life - Paul and I in the salt mines cranking out hit after fake hit with our studio material - and suddenly we exploded into (ir)reality with this moment in time sketch of raw hoax musical power. There's a moment on the Medicine Hat/Pirates medley when Paul pauses, breathless but about to launch into the next verse of the song, and you hear the bright wash of crowd noise as thousands of Spencervillains beat him by a fraction of a second to the next lyric. An unbelievable feeling. And had it really happened, it would have been intense.
Next: Part the Fifth - High Society
Clarkston, Michigan
There is a certain energy and intensity to a live show that you don't even try to capture in the recording studio. There's a front and centre insistence to a crowd-fuelled set that all the time in the world in the sound booths and editing suites isn't going to reinvent. This axiom is especially axiomatic for a hoax band entering a new phase of their non-existence. This was Spencerville Wayne in 1999. Our album "Toledohio" was still sky-high in the charts when we got the bright idea to put out a live record. Our record execs initially balked, saying it was too gimmicky, too opportunistic, and predicting that it woud alienate the fan base and lower the level and volume of acclaim coming from the critics. Paul and I were nonplussed.
Our idea was this: we were about to head out on an entirely fictional tour that was going to take us through our bread and butter venues in Southern Ontario and the northern U.S. We had talked some of our favourite performers into coming along with us - Ken Tizzard from the Watchmen, Chris Brown, and Phil Comparelli from 54-40, to name a few. As a duo, Paul and I had been perfecting our act and really working on our stage presence. The chance to add a couple of pieces - Phil's trumpet or Ken's bass (since I didn't do anything with mine, except plug it in and bang at it spasmodically) - intrigued us as a way to get back to our early days as a five-piece studio imaginary band. Plus, now we had this plethora of amazing tunes that we wanted to pretend to get down on tape in live format.
The result was "Hoist" - a five- (six-) song live EP recorded in Clarkston, Michigan at the Pine Knob Theater and in Toronto at the Horseshoe in late spring 1999. The two nights that we committed to tape were standouts in a series of mind-altering performances that had critics in the independent press falling all over themselves in breaking out the superlatives. Critics in the dependent press were no less lavish with the superlatives, but due to larger budgets and expense accounts they were not so much with the falling all over themselves bit.
Listen to the album and decide for yourself, but "Hoist" has always seemed to me to be a key to the whole SW puzzle. Here we were, this little lockbox of a demented fantasy side-project from real life - Paul and I in the salt mines cranking out hit after fake hit with our studio material - and suddenly we exploded into (ir)reality with this moment in time sketch of raw hoax musical power. There's a moment on the Medicine Hat/Pirates medley when Paul pauses, breathless but about to launch into the next verse of the song, and you hear the bright wash of crowd noise as thousands of Spencervillains beat him by a fraction of a second to the next lyric. An unbelievable feeling. And had it really happened, it would have been intense.
Next: Part the Fifth - High Society
