No. 30 - Losing my edge (fest 98) edition
Looking at the lasting cultural legacy of Tea Party, Our Lady Peace, Moist and more
Edge Fest 98, Vancouver, BC, July 11, 1998. Photo courtesy of Nesnad
as the sun was setting and the (literal) burning embers of Green Day’s set were extinguished the members of the Tea Party finally emerged on stage. This was the Windsor, ON trio’s peak: headlining the cross-Canada Edge Fest tour on a bill that featured both Foo Fighters and Green Day. The band — singer-guitarist Jeff Martin, bass player Stuart Chatwood and drummer Jeff Burrows — looked out over the soggy, teeming throngs that had filled the University of British Columbia’s Thunderbird Stadium. “We can’t afford to light our equipment on fire,” quipped Martin, referring to the fact that both American bands had before the group kicked off their set with industrial-rock banger “Temptation.”
In the summer of 1998, Edge Fest was on its second annual jaunt across the country: eight shows in eight cities, touching down in Vancouver on July 11 for the final date of its run. By this point, the traveling North American summer music festival was in full swing. Lolapalooza was dead (for now) but Lilith Fair, Ozzfest and Warped Tour continued to dominate their target demos.
Edge Fest wasn’t that. It was a traveling radio festival that very much played to a middle-of-the-road rock audience, albeit a Canadian one. Playing on that same bill were Matthew Good Band, Bif Naked, and the Watchmen, all of whom would go on to become household names to Canadian rock fans. Green Day and Foo Fighters were well on their way to becoming two of the decade’s most enduring acts. Our Lady Peace may have beat them in sales, and their biggest chart hit was yet to come, but it was the Tea Party who headlined the whole thing and a lot of people came out to witness it.
Those bands, along with Our Lady Peace, I Mother Earth and Moist, were the tip of a Canadian alt-rock spear in the second half of the 1990s. There were much cooler and musically adventurous Canadian acts working in the underground and at the periphery of the Canadian rock mainstream. That story is well documented in Michael Barclay, Ian A.D. Jack and Jason Schneider’s excellent book Have Not Been the Same: The CanRock Renaissance 1985-1995. But for oh, say a teenager living in North Vancouver with little exposure to those sounds and scenes, hearing bands from your own country, province or city blasting next to their by comparison more exotic (though often inferior) American peers was revelatory.
“It was unprecedented,” Alan Cross told me back in 2017 while I was working on a story about 90s Canadian rock music. He said that this was the point at which CanCon regulation “finally [came] home to roost and were finally showing why they were necessary.”
Up until the early 70s, there basically was no Canadian music industry. Canadian content regulations — which Cross described as an industrial policy as much as a cultural one — were only introduced in 1971. The first proper recording studio didn’t exist here until a year later. So artists like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and the Guess Who had to head south if they ever wanted to break out of a regional market. Yet, even then nobody took Canadian music seriously; radio programmers would often fulfill their government-mandated quotas with “beaver hours” in the middle of the night.
“It took about 20 years for the industry to grow up… [to reach a] certain level of maturity where Canadian artists could not only compete head-on with each other but the best in the world,” says Cross. Indeed, by the mid-90s you had CanCon quotas (set at 30 percent), a generous grant system, a now supportive radio sector, MuchMusic and a newfound — if often poorly articulated — sense of national identity all helped elevate Canadian artists, including many rock bands, to heretofore unheard-of heights.
In the second half of the decade Alanis, Shania, Sarah and Celine (also Bryan!) were all reaping the benefits of international superstardom. But a 1996 four-disc compilation celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Juno Awards that featured Moist, Cowboy Junkies, Crash Test Dummies and Blue Rodeo among many others went diamond in Canada, as would Our Lady Peace’s Clumsy and two Tragically Hip albums. This success was achieved on a massive scale at home with little to no interest south of the border, much to the consternation of certain armchair cynics critics.
Michael Barclay’s latest book, Hearts on Fire: Six Years that Changes Canadian Music 2000-2005, chronicles the rise of Canadian indie rock in the first half-decade of the new century. In it, Torquil Campbell, singer for Toronto indie-rockers Stars, talks about the switch that was flipped in people’s minds when they realized that artists no longer needed to leave the country to live in an internationally recognized arts hub. “That changes a culture,” he says. “When people feel like they can be at the centre of the conversation within their own country. That’s when you build a real generational scene.”
Campbell is specifically referring to artists from the early 2000s. But, in my opinion, it applies to Canadian music fans as well who had their come-to-maple-syrup moment in the five years prior to that. No matter how much their music might have followed established American trends (I’d argue they complemented them, but that’s just me) watching homegrown talent eclipse the foreign competition forever put to bed the idea that anyone was “just a Canadian band.”
It wouldn’t last. As alt-rock gave way to teen pop and nu-metal, bands ran into label issues, broke up, went on hiatus, got new singers or simply faded away. But their short run was a remarkable achievement that primed Canadian audiences to wholeheartedly accept the next generation of artists like Arcade Fire, New Pornographers and Broken Social Scene. To paraphrase Andre3000, they showed that “the true north got something to say.”
Want to know more or just reminisce? Here is a nine-hour playlist of 90s Canadian alt-rock
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I generally try not to repeat many of the artists that I highlight in this section. But it turns out that I’ve been doing this lil newsletter long enough that musicians I’ve already profiled are now moving onto new album cycles.
Case in point: I interviewed Rich Aucoin back in KKMC No. 14 while he was still promoting his record United States from his home in Halifax. Aucoin is back on the road This week Aucoin dropped his first new music in two years. “We’re in It Together.” The joyous and poignant track features members of Oakland, CA party funk band Planet Booty, and 99 of his friends and fans in the choir, a (very effective) trick he pulled a decade back with We’re All Dying to Live to which hundreds of Canadian musicians made vocal and musical contributions. No word on whether the track is part of the “very long synth record that has a lot more Vangelis and Morricone” that Aucoin teased last year.
beabadoobee is another Friend-of-the-Newsletter whose “Last Day on Earth” I wrote about in KKMC No. 14 as well as “Worth It” way back in KKMC No. 1. So I guess I’m a fan. Anyway, the London artist is set to release her second album, Beatopia, on July 15 on Dirty Hit. “Talk” doubles down on the 90s big beats and crunchy guitars that she showcased on her debut. Though “Talk” lacks a bit of “Last Day on Earth’s” self-aware charm, its promises good things for the rest of the record.
Sophia Allison, aka Soccer Mommy, who made my fav songs of 2020 list back in KKMC No. 5, is finally getting to tour her excellent 2020 album Color Theory (I’m seeing her tonight!). But she’s already moved on to LP3. Sometimes, Forever arrives in June, produced by Oneohtrix Point Never’s Daniel Lopatin (aka the guy who did the soundtracks for Good Time and Uncut Gems). I gotta say that “Shotgun” doesn’t necessarily sound like what I had in my head for such an odd pairing, but I like the groove that carries the whole thing and I’m very much looking forward to hearing the rest of what they cooked up.
Finally, Toronto jangle duo Ducks Ltd., who I wrote about in KKMC No. 15, teamed up with Illuminati Hotties (see: KKMC No. 17) for a cover of the Jesus and Mary Chain classic “Head On.” If I’m being honest, I wish there was a bit more of Sarah Tudzin in the mix, but I like the way they were able to bend the song to their own sound, no small feat given JAMC’s distinctive sound and semi-ubiquitous influence. It’s the first track from Ducks Ltd.’s new The Sincerest Form of Flattery cover series where they team up with a different artist for each installment.
Ian Gormely is a freelance music journalist based in Toronto.
Hit up koolkidsmusicclub@gmail.com for questions, criticisms and submissions.