Problem Children 1985-1989

Late 80s, melodic punk – this was always going to appeal to me.

The Problem Children were a three-piece band from a small backwater town in Canada actually called Dunnville.

Between 1985 and 1989 they released an EP – On The Air (1987) and two LPs – The Future Of The World Is Up To Us (1986) and Long Weekend (1989), which I’m putting up here, although I’ve added some extra tracks from the EP.

This record was a compilation of mainly previously released material that I believe was supposed to raise the profile of the group in Europe before they toured here and they always intended to release more stuff.

In the end it turned out to be a bit of an farewell album as they didn’t release anything else afterwards.

I believe they had some success among Canadian students but otherwise they just didn’t seem to be very well known at all, which is a shame as they did some pretty good stuff.

Problem Children 1

Problem Children 2

01. Fuk Yuz All
02. Thrashin’ With Yer Parents
03. Plastic Liver
04. Red Dyed Hair
05. What’s It All About
06. We Want You
07. Nobody Wins
08. The Future Is Now
09. We Are The Children
10. On The Air
11. Staying Young
12. Energy
13. 1-24
14.The Pit Between Two Signs
15. Canada’s Eulogy
16. Lover Or A Whore
17. Believe
18. Long Weekend

Doughboys 1987-1989

I feel a bit more on home ground with this post compared to some of my more recent ones as this group were just starting off when I was first getting into punk and I see them as having a lot in common with some of the other groups I was into at that time that were playing melodic pop/punk music – such as Snuff, Seneseless Things, Hard-Ons etc.

The Doughboys were a Canadian group and included John Kastner, the ex-lead singer from the Asexuals. In fact I would say The Doughboys were more of a natural continuation of the Asexuals as their type of catchy pop/punk – as well as the recognisable singing – had more in common with those early Asexuals releases than the later Asexuals alt/rock style stuff.

These are the first two albums: Whatever (1987) and Home Again (1989), which are probably the more ‘punk’ sounding as the next two albums Happy Accidents and Crush continued in the pop/punk-indie direction.

Whatever

01.Tradition 02.Stranger From Within 03.Can’t Find The Day 04.The Forecast 05.No Holiday (From Living) 06.You’re Related 07.I Remember 08.Senseless Murders 09.You Don’t Know Me 10.I Don’t Wanna Know

Home Again

01.Buying Time 02.No Way 03.I Won’t Write You A Letter 04.Waiting Away 05.White Sister 06.Numbered Days 07.In My Head 08.Today 09.Never Sleep 10.She Doesn’t Live There Anymore

Asexuals – 1984-1986

Here is another classic Canadian punk band, this time from Montreal, the Asexuals.

What I’m putting up here is the first single, Featuring… from 1984, and the first two albums, Be What You Want and Contemporary World, from 1984 and 1985 respectively.

These were recorded with the original line-up of John Kastner on vocals – who later left to form the Doughboys – TJ Collins, Sean Friesen and Paul Remington and they have a fast but melodic hardcore punk sound.

I have the later Asexuals album Dish, from 1988, which was recorded after John Kastner had left and had TJ Collins, the former bass player, on vocals and guitar.

It’s a good album but has moved away from the earlier punk stuff. It sounds a lot more like The Lemonheads of this time or even The Nils, another great Canadian punk group.

I haven’t heard later albums Exile From Floontown and Fitzjoy. As far as I’m aware they carried on in the same vein as Dish.

I heard somewhere that the Asexuals choose their name on account of the lack of sex they were getting. I sure know how that feels.

Asexuals Part 1

Asexuals Part 2

Featuring…
01.New World 02.B.F.D. 03.Where’s The Bus 04.Wake Up Stand Up

Be What You Want
05.Be What You Want 06.Contra Rebels 07.Trash Zone 08.Mind Contraction 09.3 Chord Speed 10.C.F.R. 11.We Seek No Glory 12.Too Slow 13.Asexual 14.Mr Useless 15.Ego Trip 16.Iraq, Iran 17.Mr Rat 18.Weekend Alky

Contemporary World
19.Where Were You 20.Take A Look Around You 21.Contemporary World 22.Circus 23.Up Close 24.Social Education 25.Stop The City 26.Death From Above 27.So Alone 28.The Times They Are A Changin’

Welcome to 2009 with Personality Crisis

Well, it’s being a while since my last post. I didn’t intend to take quite as long a break as I did over Christmas but I guess that’s what happens, sometimes it’s hard to get back into the routine.

So for my first post of the New Year, here’s something that was mentioned in a comment when I did the Canadian punk post with DOA, Subhumans, etc.

Personality Crisis was another classic Canadian punk group that was active from 1979-1984. They had a pretty distinctive sound with unique vocals and good musicianship.

They sometimes get linked with those other great Canadian punk bands SNFU and DOA but this is because drummer Jon Card went on to play in both those groups at one time or another.

As far as I know Personality Crisis only really released one album, Creatures For Awhile, in 1983 plus a few tracks on compilations.

What I’m putting up here is actually a 1990 UK reissue of that album which actually has alternate tracks from the original. Why they did this I don’t know. So while you gain some tracks you no longer have People In Glass, Scavengers, Wild Game and Name Dropper.

I also had a single released at the same time, which had the album track ‘Twilight’s Last Gleaming’ and a live B-side called ‘The Jam’ which as I recall sounded pretty much as the name implies. Unfortunately this single seems to have disappeared from my collection.

I have however added the two compilation tracks from Rat Music For Rat People Vol.2 and Something To Believe In.

So once again a ‘not quite’ discography of another classic band.

Personality Crisis

01.Vampire’s Dream 02.Mrs Palmer 03.Twilight’s Last Gleaming 04.The Advocate 05.Double Take 06.Losing Time 07.Creatures For Awhile 08.Wonder What They’re Thinking 09.The Look 10.Empty Sky 11.Waiting 12.Tyrants 13.Piss On You 14.Case History

Oh Canaduh

I just happened to notice the other day on my Art of Modern Rock calendar – which incidentally has a really cool Siouxsie & The Banshees flyer this month – that it was Canadian Thanksgiving on Monday.

So in celebration of that, here is some classic Canadian punk for which we can all be thankful.

The Subhumans 12″ EP has recently been reissued but it has a slightly different track listing to the one here, which I think is a UK release combining the four tracks from the 12″ EP plus the two tracks from the Firing Squad single and the two tracks from the Vancouver Independence Compilation.

Subhumans

01.Death Was Too Kind 02.Fuck You 03.Inquisition Day 04.Slave To My Dick 05.Firing Squad 06.No Productivity 07.Behind The Smile 08.Out Of Line

I was well aware of the UK Subhumans for a long time before I heard of the Canadian group and it was only thanks to DOA who seemed to make a point at their shows of doing a Subhumans cover or two – well they did have an ex-member – and spreading the word about the group.

The DOA EP here is The John Peel Session. John Peel was the greatest DJ ever on British radio who covered all kinds of alternative music and was certainly the only I can think of who ever paid any attention to hardcore punk. As far as I know this is the only time a classic North American hardcore group ever recorded a Peel session.

DOA

01.General Strike 02.Race Riot 03.A Season In Hell 04.Burn It Down

Finally, back in the early nineties I picked up this book from a local record shop, Smash the State by Frank Manley, which is an excellent discography of Canadian punk from 1977-92.

It came with a 7″ EP that had four rare tracks of early Canadian punk – real KBD stuff. There were also three albums of the same name compiling more of this stuff but unfortunately I never got them.

Smash The State 7″

01.Arson – Coho? Coho! 02.The Fits – Bored Of Education 03.Rock And Roll Bitches – Wild West 04.Hot Nasties – Invasion Of The Tribbles

True (North) Strong & Free

 

Okay, so DOA are one of the legends of punk – they only went and coined the term hardcore – and have been going on and off for thirty years with some classic releases to their name from the early years and some occasionally good stuff from more recent times.

Yet this album from 1987, released between Lets Wreck The Party and Murder – so therefore right on the borderline between the classic early stuff and the not quite as good later stuff – seems to have spent most of the time out of print and certainly in my experience proved to be very elusive to track down in the UK. I don’t know whether that’s the case in Canada or the USA, but I have only ever seen it once in a record shop in England.

In that case it was this great second hand record shop in Leeds when I was a student there in the 90s. I was a pretty regular customer at this shop and found some great records there and they were always willing to put stuff behind the counter if I didn’t have enough money on me – as was the case this time.

Feeling pretty chuffed with finally tracking down this album I then spent the next two weeks procrastinating, spending my money going out drinking and generally not getting around to going back to pick it up until, when I finally did, I found to my horror they had only gone and sold it to someone else.

This taught me a valuable lesson in life – never trust people who deal in second hand records. If I want to be tardy and drag my feet I will and I don’t need anyone putting me on a clock or to some timetable. I said I’d come back for it, I didn’t say when.

It wasn’t to be until years later that I finally managed to get a copy of this album off ebay.

Anyway, I love DOA, even a lot of their later stuff and I’ve been lucky enough to see them live several times. They have great fast, powerful songs with plenty of shout along chorus bits without ever getting too noisy or losing that melodic edge.

They have very political songs covering many typical anarcho-punk subjects but without ever coming across as too preachy, like many Crass style bands, plus they have plenty of less serious songs about drinking beer, etc.

They also have a great down to earth look, dressed as they were/are in just jeans, denim jackets and check shirts – like me and many of my friends dressed – rather than studded leather jackets and bondage pants.

Still going after 30 years – I shall be looking out for their Northern Avenger album when it comes out this year.

True (North) Strong & Free

01. Hell An’ Back 02. Takin’ Care of Business 03. Bullet Catcher 04. Endless Sky 05. Ready To Explode 06. Lumberjack City 07. Nazi Training Camp 08. None But The Brave 09. Power Play 10. 51st State

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