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Crash Kills Five
What Do You Do at Night? - 7" EP
(independent) - 1980
Michael Panontin
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Taking their name from a local newspaper headline, Toronto-based Crash Kills Five got their start in 1980 when transplanted Calgarian Reid Diamond hooked up with singer Don Pyle, leading to the release of this swell EP later that year. The band plied their sound around the Toronto punk circuit to moderate success, later opening for Ireland’s Protex at the Edge club in September of that year. The three songs here are all taut slices of late seventies pop/punk. The slower a-side seemed the obvious choice for radio play at the time – this back in the relatively new wave-friendly airwaves of Toronto in the late seventies and early eighties – but the punchier punk and spiky edge of ‘Special School’ on the flip is the clear winner here (To wit: “They say I’m not too smart / that’s why I go to special school”).
With the initial run of the EP close to sold out, Crash Kills Five entered the studio to record eight more tracks, but money issues and lack of label interest lead the band to pack it in. Crash Kills Five would have earned a place in the dustbin of punk history had it not been for the fact that Diamond, Pyle and guitarist Brian Connelly would go on to form the near-mythical instrumental combo Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet. Diamond, alas, is no longer with us, having lost his fight with cancer back in 2001. Pyle, meanwhile, has carved out a cosy niche as a music producer and soundtrack composer, while Connelly continues to fly the flag with his current band, the totally instrumental Atomic 7.
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