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
Thursday, April 29, 2004
The Toledo Zoo - A Brief History of Hoax (Part the Third)
Toledo, Ohio
After "Only" the band kind of disintegrated into its constituent parts. Everyone was away at university, except Pat who was still in the T.dot. Although icons, we got busy with other things, mostly non-iconic, and usually devoid of critical acclaim. I'm pretty sure Toppings forgot about the existence of the band (putting himself, ironically, on some solid existential footing). Lofranco started a real band with real instruments and signing and the works, which was all a bit of an affront to the hoax concept. Paul was in Waterloo making football history and getting hoax-drafted by the Saskatchewan Roughriders, and I was in Kingston, lamenting the bars of my cage. It was a precipitous turn of events for a fake band to survive, and the project sort of tumbled off the radar for a while.
But then in 1998, wouldn't you know it, The Tragically Hip intervened at another crucial juncture in the SW pastiche. We piled into a couple of cars this time, and headed west to Toledo, Ohio to The Zoo. Now, if someone's told you that it's all happening at the zoo, then you'd do well to believe it - do believe it's true. "Phantom Power" had just been released and Paul and I were loving every minute of it. The Hip's show at The Zoo was the kind of mind-blowing event that SW would like to believe every one of its non-shows could be. Somebody threw a shoe at Gord in the middle of Flamenco and it was like somebody threw a metaphorical shoe at Paul and me to kick start us into more SW hallucinations.
Shortly thereafter, or perhaps sometime thereafter, we released "Toledohio" (NB: no intermediate step of writing songs, working them out in the studio, producing, marketing - just releasing). The inspiration for the title of the album, in the tradition of serendipitously named "Only", was the fact that (a) we had been to Toledo, Ohio and (b) one word ended in "O" and the other began with "O". No random sighting of the side of a truck, but a recipe for success nevertheless.
This time it was just Paul and I toiling away in the mind-fields of hoax musicianshipness, restoring the dream, and getting the critics back on board for another dose of their notorious acclaim. We took the world of Spencervillains by surprise on this one (I think he might have missed the sticky-note we placed on his fridge). The track listing for "Toledohio" is anchored by Medicine Hat which was our first Top 40 success. It is impossible to listen to (read) that song without thinking of (a) Medicine Hat, Alberta and (b) a hat with medicinal values, which I suppose was Paul's point in writing it.
With a new album, one song, and memories of The Zoo, SW was back in full effect pushing the boundaries and testing the limits of art, imagination, and the audience's patience.
Next: Part the Fourth - SW Live!
Toledo, Ohio
After "Only" the band kind of disintegrated into its constituent parts. Everyone was away at university, except Pat who was still in the T.dot. Although icons, we got busy with other things, mostly non-iconic, and usually devoid of critical acclaim. I'm pretty sure Toppings forgot about the existence of the band (putting himself, ironically, on some solid existential footing). Lofranco started a real band with real instruments and signing and the works, which was all a bit of an affront to the hoax concept. Paul was in Waterloo making football history and getting hoax-drafted by the Saskatchewan Roughriders, and I was in Kingston, lamenting the bars of my cage. It was a precipitous turn of events for a fake band to survive, and the project sort of tumbled off the radar for a while.
But then in 1998, wouldn't you know it, The Tragically Hip intervened at another crucial juncture in the SW pastiche. We piled into a couple of cars this time, and headed west to Toledo, Ohio to The Zoo. Now, if someone's told you that it's all happening at the zoo, then you'd do well to believe it - do believe it's true. "Phantom Power" had just been released and Paul and I were loving every minute of it. The Hip's show at The Zoo was the kind of mind-blowing event that SW would like to believe every one of its non-shows could be. Somebody threw a shoe at Gord in the middle of Flamenco and it was like somebody threw a metaphorical shoe at Paul and me to kick start us into more SW hallucinations.
Shortly thereafter, or perhaps sometime thereafter, we released "Toledohio" (NB: no intermediate step of writing songs, working them out in the studio, producing, marketing - just releasing). The inspiration for the title of the album, in the tradition of serendipitously named "Only", was the fact that (a) we had been to Toledo, Ohio and (b) one word ended in "O" and the other began with "O". No random sighting of the side of a truck, but a recipe for success nevertheless.
This time it was just Paul and I toiling away in the mind-fields of hoax musicianshipness, restoring the dream, and getting the critics back on board for another dose of their notorious acclaim. We took the world of Spencervillains by surprise on this one (I think he might have missed the sticky-note we placed on his fridge). The track listing for "Toledohio" is anchored by Medicine Hat which was our first Top 40 success. It is impossible to listen to (read) that song without thinking of (a) Medicine Hat, Alberta and (b) a hat with medicinal values, which I suppose was Paul's point in writing it.
With a new album, one song, and memories of The Zoo, SW was back in full effect pushing the boundaries and testing the limits of art, imagination, and the audience's patience.
Next: Part the Fourth - SW Live!
Monday, April 26, 2004
Did Somebody Say "Francine"? - A Brief History of Hoax (Part the Second)
Toronto, Ontario
With the runaway success of the idea to start a fake band and the giddy enthusiasm that surrounded the whole notion of not having to do anything and yet becoming internationally famous icons, we decided to put out an album almost immediately. By the time we had returned home to Toronto, "Only" was three-quarters done, with nothing but the mixing, the promotion, and the packaging (or "emballage" as the French would say) to finish. The fact that there were no songs on the album disturbed us not in the least. The fact that, at the end of the day, there was no physical disc or vinyl or tape or anything but a couple of Subway wrappers and Tim Horton's cups to show for our creative efforts was, rather than disconcerting, oddly comforting and even empowering.
Eventually, well after we'd "released" the album - to heaps of critical acclaim - we sat down to write some lyrics to some songs we'd imagined. I remember distinctly that Copyright Zealots was produced later that summer with Paul showing me his lyrical musings while we were at Edgefest waiting for 13 Engines to play Saviour so we could go home. Paul also wrote Sans Titre, Turtle on My Back, and Catch 22 that summer. I worked on Presswood and Veneer and Only. In terms of hoax product, it was a fecund time to be alive. At this point, as in a few other instances over the years, the band toed the line between being a superstar hoax sensation and being a bunch of guys who wished they could write better lyrics to songs for which the music eluded them. Happily for western civilization, the band built on these juvenile efforts to become even more deluded, self-important, and solipsistic.
With a back catalogue rapidly developing, we have to fast forward to the Year 2000 for the ultimate completion of "Only". Four years after its release to critical acclaim, Paul and I finally got around to writing down a list of 12 song titles for the album. Some of the song lyrics, as we've seen, had actually been written (though a few had been lost in the intervening period), but the album was not completed until the addition of Taylor's Mistake, (This is What Passes for Lies) These Days, Door Wide Open, Landmarks, Pirates of the Caribbean, and of course Francine - SW's glamour-girl extraordinaire.
If you haven't heard Francine, you're not alone. If you've never read the lyrics to Francine, then you're missing out on one of the defining moments of musical history in the late-1990s (albeit, written posthumously in the 2000s). The core of the Francine movement was inspired by two sources: horribly insipid songwriting and The Tragically Hip's 1987 disaster-piece, Evelyn.
It was perhaps a fitting milestone in SW's career that it's first album, which actually contained some very valiant efforts at lyric writing and some critically acclaimed insights into the human condition, became synonymous with a song which plumbed the depth of human emotion, devotion, revulsion, compulsion, depradation, degradation, delusion, confusion, mystery, myth, and legend. This would not be the last time that Spencerville Wayne tapped this rich vein of hoax sublimnity.
Next: The Lyrics to Francine and Part the Third - The Toledo Zoo
Toronto, Ontario
With the runaway success of the idea to start a fake band and the giddy enthusiasm that surrounded the whole notion of not having to do anything and yet becoming internationally famous icons, we decided to put out an album almost immediately. By the time we had returned home to Toronto, "Only" was three-quarters done, with nothing but the mixing, the promotion, and the packaging (or "emballage" as the French would say) to finish. The fact that there were no songs on the album disturbed us not in the least. The fact that, at the end of the day, there was no physical disc or vinyl or tape or anything but a couple of Subway wrappers and Tim Horton's cups to show for our creative efforts was, rather than disconcerting, oddly comforting and even empowering.
Eventually, well after we'd "released" the album - to heaps of critical acclaim - we sat down to write some lyrics to some songs we'd imagined. I remember distinctly that Copyright Zealots was produced later that summer with Paul showing me his lyrical musings while we were at Edgefest waiting for 13 Engines to play Saviour so we could go home. Paul also wrote Sans Titre, Turtle on My Back, and Catch 22 that summer. I worked on Presswood and Veneer and Only. In terms of hoax product, it was a fecund time to be alive. At this point, as in a few other instances over the years, the band toed the line between being a superstar hoax sensation and being a bunch of guys who wished they could write better lyrics to songs for which the music eluded them. Happily for western civilization, the band built on these juvenile efforts to become even more deluded, self-important, and solipsistic.
With a back catalogue rapidly developing, we have to fast forward to the Year 2000 for the ultimate completion of "Only". Four years after its release to critical acclaim, Paul and I finally got around to writing down a list of 12 song titles for the album. Some of the song lyrics, as we've seen, had actually been written (though a few had been lost in the intervening period), but the album was not completed until the addition of Taylor's Mistake, (This is What Passes for Lies) These Days, Door Wide Open, Landmarks, Pirates of the Caribbean, and of course Francine - SW's glamour-girl extraordinaire.
If you haven't heard Francine, you're not alone. If you've never read the lyrics to Francine, then you're missing out on one of the defining moments of musical history in the late-1990s (albeit, written posthumously in the 2000s). The core of the Francine movement was inspired by two sources: horribly insipid songwriting and The Tragically Hip's 1987 disaster-piece, Evelyn.
It was perhaps a fitting milestone in SW's career that it's first album, which actually contained some very valiant efforts at lyric writing and some critically acclaimed insights into the human condition, became synonymous with a song which plumbed the depth of human emotion, devotion, revulsion, compulsion, depradation, degradation, delusion, confusion, mystery, myth, and legend. This would not be the last time that Spencerville Wayne tapped this rich vein of hoax sublimnity.
Next: The Lyrics to Francine and Part the Third - The Toledo Zoo
Bandwidth - A Brief History of Hoax (Part the First)
Syracuse, New York
In 1996, we did a record called "Only" which, frankly, reinvented modern rock and roll in quite startling ways. In other ways, fortunately, the industry wasn't ready for us and the only people to really get it were a handful of critics and a number of diehards, who quickly began calling themselves Spencervillains. I say fortunately, because we were like the Big Bang, a supernova (or perhaps a number of smaller supernovae) of innovation, and, in my opinion, the Big Bang isn't something you hold in your hand and pet it and, you know, grab the entire thing like so many lesser bangs. You're lucky enough if you can hold the concept in your head, and think about it from time to time and try to process the enormity. That's what we were like in 1996. So, I think if everyone had "got it" from hearing Francine or Pirates way back then, it would have meant that we "got it" wrong.
The '96 lineup was an ecclectic blend of guys. We had Pat Tanzola and John Lofranco and Marc Toppings, and of course me and Chiarcossi. It was a fantastic crew for getting the ball rolling - a shocking blend of imagination and inventiveness. It was really a question of being in the right place at the right time. If you listen to our song Landmarks on "Only" you can hear (well, read) the first stirrings of the band deep in the guts of that song. The idea for the band came together on a trip to Syracuse in May of 1996; we were headed out to see The Tragically Hip play a show and the five of us packed into Mrs. Tanzola's red Pontiac Grand Prix and took off for New York State. The Hip had just released "Trouble at the Henhouse" and we were grooving along to songs like Ahead by a Century, Gift Shop, and Don't Wake Daddy. Well, somebody must have awakened genius, because somewhere along the way we saw a truck (which is featured prominently as a motif in the cover art for "Only") which had the magical words, "Spencerville, Wayne: Only" stencilled on the side. I don't know who first suggested it - it may have been Paul, it may have been Pat - but someone said that that would be a great name for a band. And a band was born. No instruments, no music, no talent - nothing but a will to live, a dare to dream, a fleeting moment of chance, a brush with fate, and a truck on the interstate.
Next: Part the Second - Did Somebody Say "Francine"?
Syracuse, New York
In 1996, we did a record called "Only" which, frankly, reinvented modern rock and roll in quite startling ways. In other ways, fortunately, the industry wasn't ready for us and the only people to really get it were a handful of critics and a number of diehards, who quickly began calling themselves Spencervillains. I say fortunately, because we were like the Big Bang, a supernova (or perhaps a number of smaller supernovae) of innovation, and, in my opinion, the Big Bang isn't something you hold in your hand and pet it and, you know, grab the entire thing like so many lesser bangs. You're lucky enough if you can hold the concept in your head, and think about it from time to time and try to process the enormity. That's what we were like in 1996. So, I think if everyone had "got it" from hearing Francine or Pirates way back then, it would have meant that we "got it" wrong.
The '96 lineup was an ecclectic blend of guys. We had Pat Tanzola and John Lofranco and Marc Toppings, and of course me and Chiarcossi. It was a fantastic crew for getting the ball rolling - a shocking blend of imagination and inventiveness. It was really a question of being in the right place at the right time. If you listen to our song Landmarks on "Only" you can hear (well, read) the first stirrings of the band deep in the guts of that song. The idea for the band came together on a trip to Syracuse in May of 1996; we were headed out to see The Tragically Hip play a show and the five of us packed into Mrs. Tanzola's red Pontiac Grand Prix and took off for New York State. The Hip had just released "Trouble at the Henhouse" and we were grooving along to songs like Ahead by a Century, Gift Shop, and Don't Wake Daddy. Well, somebody must have awakened genius, because somewhere along the way we saw a truck (which is featured prominently as a motif in the cover art for "Only") which had the magical words, "Spencerville, Wayne: Only" stencilled on the side. I don't know who first suggested it - it may have been Paul, it may have been Pat - but someone said that that would be a great name for a band. And a band was born. No instruments, no music, no talent - nothing but a will to live, a dare to dream, a fleeting moment of chance, a brush with fate, and a truck on the interstate.
Next: Part the Second - Did Somebody Say "Francine"?
