The Flies

Here's a blast from the past (for me, at least). Back in 1988, I recorded my friends The Flies (Gerry Petrash, Stephen Maher, Jim Davis, Rodger McKinley) running through some originals and cover tunes in a makeshift recording studio (i.e. bedroom with blankets and egg crates on the walls) on Oxford St., Halifax. The sessions were recorded on my Tascam Porta-One four-track cassette recorder - one of the few times I took on the role of recording engineer for someone else's music. I don't know how useful I was as an engineer but we had fun and the recordings turned out okay (for bedroom demos recorded to cassette). Flash forward almost four decades and Gerry Petrash has embarked on an archival project digitizing and publishing recordings by some of his old bands, including The Flies and his 1990s Sapporo, Japan-based group Cactus Blanket (https://www.cactusblanket.ca/home). Yesterday, Gerry posted a video featuring one of the songs from that 1988 Halifax recording session, a cover of Paul Revere and the Raiders' "Louise". The video also features photos of the recording session taken by Thomas Lorimer. And could that be my hand and the back of my head in one shot?

Check out this slice of vintage Halifax garage punk here:

 https://youtu.be/gWbwkHgi80g?si=m9kwQnMBkeodrjRu

- W.A.Davison

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

R.I.P. Paul Dutton

Image
Deeply saddened to hear that Paul Dutton has died. He was a dear friend and one of my most valued on-stage collaborators. It is a tremendous loss to the arts in Canada and internationally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dutton h ttps://actuellecd.com/en/artiste/dutton_pa https://grainmagazine.ca/news/interview-with-paul-dutton https://youtu.be/bnIWW1tY6v4?si=xcakGDvaJ_q1Aa2Q https://youtu.be/d7YS9IKhZGo?si=daLNzzrZIe_mXeVM https://youtu.be/RedWQBU_Is8?si=xItLRLfLTlTYq2z2 https://youtu.be/th-pbiwcipI?si=EzOodAjhytdOPvGu - W.A.Davison
Read more

W. David Oliphant

Image
The most recent video from W. David Oliphant ( Maybe Mental , Life Garden , Bastard Kings Of Samedhi , etc.) includes some samples from my "500" album/sample collection! Have a look below: I first heard David's Maybe Mental project sometime in the early 90s (a decade after it had been released) and became an instant fan. However, I knew almost nothing about him and did not follow any of his other projects (although, I was aware of Life Garden). Not surprisingly, Mr. Oliphant has produced a large body of interesting work over the last four decades and a bit. I just didn't know about it. Fortunately, that error has been corrected! David and I have been getting to know each other via email recently and, thanks to his website and Bandcamp, I've been able to explore many of his art and music activities past and present! Great work! I highly recommend visiting https://wdavidoliphant.wixsite.com/movescreamsing/store and digging in deep! - W.A.Davison
Read more

irr. app. (ext.) + The Recordists

Image
The current irr. app. (ext.) monthly digital single series sees our friend Matt Waldron resurrecting material from the long-defunct Nine Day Antler Society . I wrote about it back in March of this year and you can read that post here . The October edition of the series features a collaboration between irr. app. (ext.) and The Recordists . This is an odd one as The Recordists ( W.A.Davison and S.Higgins ) did not contribute any actual sounds to the recordings. Instead, Matt used some collaboratively written surrealist texts, authored by The Recordists, as the basis for four very funny sound pieces (funny odd AND funny ha ha). https://irrappext.bandcamp.com/album/2023-monthly-digital-single-ndas-revisited-october Needless to say, the other material in the October edition, and the entire series, is great and well-worth checking out! - W.A.Davison
Read more