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

I kind of remember OLP and MGB as tonal polar opposites almost duking out in some way, though never explicitly I don't think, with Raine as the careening rafter-climbing pretty boy and Good as the sneering, self-hating loser who was above doing rock moves.

my fave MGB singles were the ones off of The Audio of Being, which is half-great but you can practically hear how miserable it was to make

I remember finding the MGB overly lacking in the angst department. But then again, Bush was my favourite band for a few months.

my fave MGB singles were the ones off of The Audio of Being, which is half-great but you can practically hear how miserable it was to make

― Simon H., Wednesday, April 3, 2019 5:37 AM (forty-two seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agreed on both counts. "carmelita" is prob their best song!

yeah, absolute snarler. nasty tones.

"carmelina"* lol

great video too, good was always uh good at maximizing the ideas he could get out of his videofact budget

not so successful that they actually made it big in the US.

I don't remember any of Our Lady Peace's songs, but Clumsy shifted quite a few units.

olp are an odd case, the title track of clumsy was kind of an alt rock hit in the u.s., and then they had a legit hit many years later with "somewhere out there," yet they're forgotten enough to qualify i think

I think I would die of embarrassment if I heard any of the Gravity singles today

i loooooved "innocent" at the time

re: music videos and working on a budget, Big Wreck did their best with some lighting and a long staircase

https://youtu.be/0JtB0Y9oM0I

my favorite fact about our lady peace that makes no sense: happiness is not a fish that you can catch ends with a drum duet between jeremy taggart and elvin jones

lmao just watching that "Automatic Flowers" video again and just...yeah, no, Maida is just too much. I can't with him at all. Idk why cause I like other bands with objectively worse frontpeople.

i don't blame anyone for not being able to deal with raine maida, you can hear his smug smile in every line he sings

skip to the perfect drumfill at 1:35 imo

I've owned the first Our Lady Peace and Moist CDs. I'm pretty sure I just got these from either columbia house or BMG, probably as my last picks in the X CDs for a penny thing. As I mentioned on the other thread, I spent a lot of time listening to Edges of Twilight, but relistening to it now, it doesn't really hold up.

Bran Van 3000's albums were really good, they really deserved to be more than just a one hit wonder.

I imagine I would recognize songs by most of these other bands (I kind of vaguely remember liking a I Mother Earth song that was getting radio airplay), but I can't say I ever got into any of them.

I always found it kind of odd that for as big as Our Lady Peace was in Canada, it took until Big Shiny Tunes 6 (From 2001) for them to show up on one of those comps.

I noticed that too! Must have been a label issue or something.

It's wild that BV3000 had a single with Curtis fucking Mayfield.

I mostly know Pluto for this song, which I was a fan of as a kid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeDs-jZBh5s

Also I noticed you left Bif Naked off this list.

lmao fuck I specifically meant to include them! (tbf though I never found them any...good, really)

I remember listening a lot to this 1998 Edge compilation, which looks like it was angling to tag along on the success of BST1/2. They put OLP right up front.

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/4PcAAOSwoFVabinq/s-l640.jpg

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.

re the convo upthread, as a rural boy in 90s ontario i can tell you with absolute confidence that leloup, colocs, etc had zero penetration in my tiny circle, and in fact i did not really hear any of these artists/bands until the past couple of years bc of dating francophone person. like, even living in mtl and largely hanging out w/ anglos i still didn't get any exposure. but all of these BST bands i was at least very intimately familiar with their heavy rotation muchmusic/bst offerings.

still really split on who to vote for, OLP or Moist prob the most honest to me at the time (in that order chronologically, i think?), kinda wanna vote bran van for the most interesting career to me retrospectively, and kinda wanna vote holly mcnarland because numb just fuckin bangs

BV3000 had that one wild song where the video was just people making out for like 4 minutes. i think i liked the song but i was far too repressed to not feel deeply uncomfortable watching the video. maybe that was the point!

UHH matthew good covered cloudbusting in 2015, feat. holly mcnarland????????????????? ok im voting for her

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Next to no discussion about the Odds and they sneak in for second place. Good band, occasionally great, and there's nothing embarrassing in their catalogue (even "Wendy Under The Stars" holds up) like any of the other acts that I was familiar with in this poll , so that's why they got my vote.

The only song I remember by them is "Heterosexual Man" tbh, which I do think of as a bit embarrassing.

It did have Kids in the Hall in the video tbf.

I guess it's a bit embarrassing, but I never took it as anything more than Gen X irony, and the video reflected that.

It was definitely ironic. I just don't think the by-the-numbers rock track or the joke have held up that great. Tbf, though, I doubt they were going for timelessness. It did give me a smile at 14.

told you who would win any why, Simon.

xp It's a safe bet that the by-the-numbers rock sound was imposed upon them by record company higher-ups (We'll let you self-produce but there had better be a radio-friendly hit)...they still managed to get Robert Quine and Warren Zevon to guest on the album.

Hm, maybe I should listen to more of the album.

A Tea Party song came on when I was out in the car today ("Temptation"). I reflexively reached to turn it off as always, thought of this poll and left it on. As they say in Newfoundland, lord thunderin' Jesus.

Oor was right, it's true

anyway 6 people voted for MGB in an ILM poll so my work was worthwhile

https://exclaim.ca/music/article/r_i_p_big_wreck_guitarist_brian_doherty

Big Wreck guitarist Brian Doherty has passed at only 51. Crank "That Song" this weekend in his honour.

:(

sadly it took the prompt for me to listen to their well-thought-of album from 2017 and it's quite a bit proggier, more psychedelic and colorful than the stuff they got famous with

if I thought anyone but brad and I would vote in it I would do a Matt Good singles poll. it's like a semi-secret history of alt-rock.

In the wilderness the only place to find freedom is in the dictionary
Under "F"

1. Odds won this poll righ?
2. Ton of cdn indie music at this time but not in this particular marketing strategy worthy of a thread?

Almost certainly!

In fact a fair number of bands that would presumably qualify were cited itt

if I thought anyone but brad and I would vote in it I would do a Matt Good singles poll. it's like a semi-secret history of alt-rock.

― Simon H., Wednesday, September 25, 2019 11:11 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i found me a reason
so check me tomorrow

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