the Big Shiny late-90s/early-00s CanCon poll

Big Sugar, fuck. Bloozy Canadiana is pretty bleak.

I still love the first Big Wreck album, so I voted for them here. I really love the song Under the Lighthouse, its like a pre-emptive Interstate Love Song.

Also when winter turns to spring I invariably end up listening to Drinking in LA about 50,000 times in a row. It's a beautiful day.

Also - didn't Pluto include members who went on to form the New Pornographers? Or am I thinking of a different band?

simon you were talking about bif naked (who i had never heard of) when you were talking about this poll on facebook!

if Bran Van 3000 win this poll it means UK ilxors voted as that was a megahit here

bif naked did kinda suck it's true

Also - didn't Pluto include members who went on to form the New Pornographers? Or am I thinking of a different band?

associated acts to New Pornos, acc to Wikipedia:
Pretty Girls Make Graves, Destroyer, AC Newman, Limblifter, Superconductor, Age of Electric, Zumpano

(no idea what the PGMG connection is?)

I really enjoy Big Wreck whenever I hear them.

xp tbf that's not really an exhaustive list, for ex Neko Case was in Cub and Maow and neither of those are there

was kinda surprised Drinking in LA wasn't a hit in the US cos I associate it with a trip to the west coast in 1999 but tbf we started off in Vancouver BC so I assume it must've been there that it was playing in bars all the time

Are any of the Big Wreckers Americans or were they all just studying at Berklee when they formed?

Ha, wow, I don't remember this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtBYIghz6MU

oh god I remember these literal kids now.

also, someone get fgti in here

associated acts to New Pornos, acc to Wikipedia:
Pretty Girls Make Graves, Destroyer, AC Newman, Limblifter, Superconductor, Age of Electric, Zumpano

(no idea what the PGMG connection is?)

Ah I was thinking of Zumpano. No idea what the PGMG connection is either.

Are any of the Big Wreckers Americans or were they all just studying at Berklee when they formed?

Thornley and Doherty are Canadian's of course but Williams was American I think, not sure about the bassist.

not really poll-relevant but this is my fave pre-NPs AC Newman tune

https://youtu.be/TvTltNhTy-E

speaking of 90s Canadian culture and Jeremy Taggart, there's a quasi-Street Cents revival in the works

http://www.yourtwocentstv.com/

Matthew Good Band by a long shot, a band I not only like but actually LOVE. I go back to all those albums all the time, particularly UNDERDOGS which I really think is one of the best rock albums of the 90s, period. As mentioned above, OLP had their moments on Happiness... and Spiritual Machines, and also on the debut Naveed, but I agree the band was inherently flawed, and I don't find myself going back to them despite liking those albums a lot at the time. Tea Party and I Mother Earth were nice radio rawk bands. I have no impression of the rest.

Underdogs, though. Anybody else like that CD as much as I do? That's one for the pantheon, if you ask me.

underdogs kicks ass. i prefer beautiful midnight bc it feels a little more balanced to me but. "prime time deliverance"!!!

also the singles which are all incredible

in fact i even forgot how much i love "indestructible"

Word. Perfect album there, track for track, everything just HITS.

i have embedded too many videos in this thread but i wanted to shout out this song, as i was listening to it this morning i realized it's my favorite from any of the artists listed (still haven't heard a tea party record)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvFmXj_IvZI

Don’t know if they were still around in 1996 but I would hear the Gandharvas ‘first day of spring’ every day on 89x out of Windsor. This is What I hear when I think CanCon.

Gandharvas had another Canadian radio "hit" in 1997 with Downtime.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWTfECBP6ts

"prime time deliverance"!!!

yup, gorgeous tune. tbh Avalanche never grew on me that much for the most part. never liked the production or the string arrangements. I ought give Hospital Songs a shot. I seem to recall White Light Rock and Roll Revue having a few crackers despite being very much a Try-Hard Return To Rock record.

I'm a song guy, so Treblecharger for "Even Grable" and "Brand New Low."

Some of those bands, or at least the little I was unfortunate enough to hear--I Mother Earth, the Tea Party, Our Lady Peace--I remember as being considerably worse than Iron Butterfly.

tbh Avalanche never grew on me that much for the most part. never liked the production or the string arrangements

i refuse to accept this opinion! i was listening to the title track just now and thinking "simon should like this!!!!"

I have a soft spot for the first IME album with their second vocalist, Blue Green Orange - good prog gateway for me, though I'm sure it sounds naff now

Oh well, this is a depressing and happening thread.

I can't really type about this too much. I really like the first OLP album. I don't really remember a lot of these bands, but I liked Big Sugar (not listed) and Zuckerbaby (not listed). Treble Charger were cool when they were on Sonic Unyon, I think, then they got bad. One of my first ever shows I went to was Treble Charger/Hayden when I was like 15.

I don't remember anything about the sound of the band Pluto but I remember the album cover.

j. englishman was a big-dollar signing, he is Esthero's younger brother. The album flopped enormously but had one minor hit, a song called "More". j. was friends with friends and Kurt Swinghammer (a friend) worked on it so I remember listening to it and hearing garble. Like, the mix was so dense that it just sounded like garble. It was really interesting. It got really bad reviews iirc.

This is unrelated but I thought it was very funny, prior to Ron Sexsmith becoming a thing, he and Kurt Swinghammer had a two-piece band in like the very early 90s and they called it Sexhammer which is just great.

Oh and yes, I never liked IME even for a minute until they got Brian Byrne in the band, at which point I liked them for six minutes or however long "Summertime In The Void" is, it's a good song!

Gandharvas or Spooky Ruben would get my vote.

I didn't actually live thru any of this not being from here and am unfamiliar with a lot of these names

The Gandharvas' "Watching the Girl" also got radio play. I liked thise albums reasonably well and would have voted for them if they were here, like I lobbied for.

those

But if a Windsor station was playing "First Day of Spring" daily, it probably had more to do with the band being from London, ON, than anything else.

I weirdly have no recollection of those guys at all

In 2008, Edwin announced that he, Mike Turner (Our Lady Peace) and Jeff Burrows (The Tea Party) planned to record an album together.[5] The band, named Crash Karma, is rounded out by former Zygote bassist and lead singer Amir Epstein. Crash Karma released its debut album, produced by Turner, in March 2010 and released it on E1 Music Canada.

i'm not ever going to listen to that, but it's sure a fact

omg @ serial joe

Fun fact: The kid from Serial Joe was also the kid in the music video for Our Lady Peace's Superman's Dead.
Also Fun Fact: Said video for Superman's Dead doesn't seem to be on YouTube, despite the fact that it's used as the thumbnail for the other version of the video.

Growing up in the 90s in my American town on the border, I remember an distressing number of these acts. OLP were just massive in my high school, one of the handful of bands that I didn't realize werent megastars in the states until I got to college, lol. Had completely forgotten it, but after clicking play on the j. Englishman's "More" I definitely remember hearing it on the radio.

I don't remember seeing any of these Big Shiny Tunes comps growing up though - were they not distributed in the states?

I think they were just sold in Canada. This page only lists Canadian chart performance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Shiny_Tunes#Charts_and_certifications

Did you get MuchMusic (Canada's MTV equivalent)? I'm pretty sure that's how we were brainwashed into buying so many copies.

We didn't have MuchMusic but we got the Edge from Toronto, which is I think what drove much of the popularity of those acts in my town. Plus the bigger ones got played on our local US stations, I guess because it was pre-Clear Channel merger and there could still be things like regional radio hits.

There was a kind of subtle thing happening with these Big Shiny Tunes comps, sliding in a Wide Mouth Mason track between Chem Bros and Radiohead, artificially inflating the perceived worth of the Canadian product

Wide Mouth Mason played at my high school in grade 9, I think as a reward for some fundraising thing. What I mainly remember is that the announcements every morning were trying to hype us up to get out and raise money because WIDE MOUTH MASON ARE COMING!!

I remember literally nothing about them, save for them nicking the moniker from the famous jar of the same name

In the last two days I noticed two different people on the subway listening to Heaven Coming Down. I should put on some Tea Party when I get home from work today.

I vaguely recall Wide Mouth Mason but had never heard of Gandharvas prior to this poll.

I just remember mistaking both "Harder to Breathe" by Maroon 5 and "The Remedy" by Jason Mraz as Wide Mouth Mason songs when I first heard them on the radio.

never heard of Gandharvas prior to this poll.

Sort of a quirky art-rock band who got a few singles on alt radio/Much but I don't think ever crossed over to top 40 or became as big as some of these bands. (But apparently "First Day of Spring" got so much play on the Windsor station because of listener requests.) Their last album was 97 so probably early for this poll. "Coffee shop Jane's Addiction" is probably the best description I can give but even that doesn't do justice to the number of bases they tried to cover on A Soap Bubble and Inertia. Idk if it's worth it if you didn't hear them at the time, and I wouldn't make extravagant claims for it, but it could be a contender for the least acclaimed album I love.

i feel like the philosopher kings' "i am the man" could slot in here, maybe the later jet set satellite "best way to die" but good list to choose from. i'd never listen to any of this music except to evoke the feeling of sitting in the basement after school watching muchmusic. oh also maybe "groovy dead" by rusty? basically just want to list minor canadian rock hits. maybe "shine" was a bit too early. just listing songs now.

i think a lot of these the clip on youtube is clearly vhs'd off muchmusic sometime in the mid- to late-1990s, like this age of electric video.

also i want everyone to enjoy this video of i mother earth from snowjob 97

honestly i have no idea what i'd vote for? "future is x-rated"?????

"indestructible"??? "carmelina"??? "load me up"????

I even love "Rico" which, iirc, he completely hates.

everybody's gotta be something
me i'm garbage!

also love "Anti Pop" which instantly joins the pantheon of "singles tossed off spitefully when the band was told their album did not have a single" which is one of my favorite genres of song and I am thinking of polling

*sends my manager an e-mail* "Do I have to pretend to like Matthew Good? I do? OK thanks"

I guess he does a pretty reasonable Foo Fighters impression

lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s64LD9K-Fy0

rusty on rita and friends in late 95? 96?, doing "misogyny"

We heard the Tea Party's "The River" on the radio the other day. Weirdly, although I still hear the obvious Zep influence, I didn't hear Jim Morrison at all, although that's what it seemed like at the time and it's who Martin was always slammed for imitating. The vocals just sounded like post-Vedder alt-rock. Single holds up well enough.

J englishman + Late 90's + Canadian = Not Jenny Englishman alias Esthero, surely?

Quick discogs search revealed that it's Esthero's brother.

OLP's Is Anybody Home? has become one of my pandemic anthem. Happiness is one of the very first albums I bought.

thinking about "carmelina" again