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Urban Scorch Compilation
Urban Scorch Compilation (cassette only)
Some - 1981
Michael Panontin
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An obscure but invaluable document of Toronto's nascent post-punk scene circa 1981, this cassette-only compilation features four bands, each contributing some 15 minutes of music - it's a C-60 if you do the math - from the nether reaches of the Toronto music scene. By that year post-punk was at its apex across the pond, with the Gang of Four, Cabaret Voltaire and PiL each commanding sizeable followings. By contrast, the Toronto scene was modest, especially given the enthusiasm with which bands like the Diodes, Teenage Head and the Viletones were greeted several years prior.
An extremely knowledgeable friend once opined that post-punk was just too weird to ever be resurrected by today's young punters. And though he has since been proved wrong, the music on Urban Scorch is at least once removed from the likes of the Government or Kinetic Ideals, two of the more successful, though equally forgotten, bands of the era. Interestingly, Urban Scorch reveals how the Toronto scene had already morphed into divergent camps: alternating gritty and trippy post-punk (Fifth Column), industrial-strength cacophony and electronics (March of Values and the Party's Over, respectively) and no wave (the Diner's Club).
The novice Diner's Club, recorded live somewhere, is grating and challenging, though these tracks were probably best left on a personal home-recorded tape. The 10-member March of Values are equally messy, dishing out a warm cacophony of sound, tossing synths, guitars, violin and sax into the mix. The Scott Kerr-led Party's Over were clearly working within the Cabs orbit, especially circa their enthralling Voice of America period, and the results are equally riveting electronics.
Fifth Column are the only band here that actually achieved a modicum of fame, recording their feminist punk right into the nineties. Clearly the most polished act on the tape, Fifth Column intrigue not only for their music (a very early version of 'Boy/Girl' is almost eerie psychedelia) but also for the mysterious inclusion of a quote in the liner notes ("Fifth columnists inside the Hilton blinked their lights in a show of solidarity when our delegates spoke from across Michigan Avenue..."). Is this perhaps a reference to the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, or possibly even to Detroit deejay 'Electifyin' Mojo', who back then used to ask his listeners to flash their headlights in a show of solidarity to funk and who later coined the term 'techno'? Could it be...?
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