S-U |
| The Saffron Sect:
All Lead Back to You / A Pinch of Chalk - 7" - 2014
Well, it certainly is great to hear from the Saffron Sect after all these years. One of Canada's most underappreciated bands released what they call their "lost" second single in the fall of 2014 o... |
| The Saffron Sect:
Phosphorus Flash EP - 2006
The Saffron Sect seem to dwell in the same trippy, eccentric universe that the likes of Syd Barrett, Daevid Allen or Kevin Ayers once used to occupy. The band got their start in 2004, and since then,... |
| Saltland:
I Thought It Was Us But It Was All of Us - 2013
Rebecca Foon's latest project, Saltland, veers somewhat from the ethereal minimalism of her previous record for Constellation, Esmerine's frankly stunni... |
| Mary Saxton:
Sad Eyes / Take My Heart - 7" - 1968
She may have been as white as the snow that blanketed her hometown of Edmonton for much of the year, but Mary Saxton could belt out blistering northern soul with the best of them.
T... |
| Mary Saxton:
Is It Better to Live or to Die / Losing Control - 7" - 1966
Mary Saxton may not exactly be a household name up here in Canuckistan, but her singles fetch big bucks across the pond in U.K. northern soul circles.
Saxton was just a tweenie when h... |
| The Scene:
Scenes (from Another World) / You're In A Bad Way - 7" - 1967
'Scenes (from Another World)' is a criminally overlooked record, especially since it is one of the few Canadian productions of songwriter/producer/arranger Neil Sheppard.
Born... |
| Mahmood Schricker:
Null - 2012
For such a multicultural place, Canada has had scant few examples of truly ground-breaking world music. With the possible exception of Toronto's fiery Punjabi by Nature back in the nineties, and ar... |
| Hughie Scott and the Meteors:
I Will / Be Bop A Lula - 7" - 1964
For years Hughie Scott was the king of the Ottawa Valley country music scene. In fact Scott, who grew up in the nearby hamlet of Riceville, rarely ventured outside the capital region. He started pl... |
| Jack Scott:
There's Trouble Brewin' / Jingle Bell Slide - 7" - 1963
When Jack Scott died of congestive heart failure on Dec. 12, 2019, there was an almost immediate outpouring of tributes on the internet, including from singer Robert Gordon, who released his own ver... |
| Jack Scott:
The Way I Walk / Midgie - 7" - 1959
Dave Marsh called Jack Scott "undeniably the greatest Canadian rock and roll singer of all time".
Though considered by many to be Detroit's first white rock and roller, Scott actuall... |
| Scrubbaloe Caine:
Round One - 1973
One of the more entertaining groups that hailed from Canada during the early 1970s was an eclectic band of musicians who called themselves Scrubbaloe Caine. They arrived at a time when the Canadian ... |
| Sea Oleena:
Shallow - 2014
Charlotte Loseth is something of a prodigy in the music world. Recording under the name Sea Oleena, the Saskatchewan-bred, Montreal-based singer-composer dropped her first recordings while she was ... |
| Secret V's:
No Life Like It - 12" EP - 1981
"It was a revolution. Democracy! Let everybody in. Fuck the god damn rock stars!"
Ray Tremblay looked back on his days in the Vancouver punk scene with equal parts spunk and affection... |
| The Sedum Shadows:
Thinking Away / Anatomy of a Shadow - 7" - 1969
'Thinking Away' was the third release on Merv Buchanan's tiny Trend label, mostly known to the outside world for having issued Bent Wind's mega-ra... |
| Sandy Selsie:
The Poorest Girl in Town / A Date with Loneliness - 7" - 1962
No one talks about Sandy Selsie anymore. But at one point in the early sixties she was known as Canada's Brenda Lee.
Selsie got her start locally, in the (then) tiny burg of Richmond... |
| Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet:
Love Without Words EP - 7" - 1985
Saturday Night Live's Lorne Michaels once derisively referred to the music of Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet as "cheap strip music". And though they gave the world some of the finest surf i... |
| The Shags:
Smiling Fenceposts / Dr. Feel-Good - 7" - 1967
The Shags were part of the hopping mid-to-late-sixties rock and roll scene in southern Manitoba that included, in addition to the obvious Guess Who, groups like the Quid, the Deverons, the Jury, the... |
| Shalabi Effect:
Unfortunately - 2005
Montreal-based Shalabi Effect play a compelling and eclectic mixture of psychedelia and atonal soundscapes, and Unfortunately, their fourth disc, marks a return to the more intense industrial-s... |
| Shame Tree:
Junior Saw It Happen / My Little Buttercup - 7" - 1969
There is not a heck of a lot out there in cyberland on Edmonton's Shame Tree. It appears that the group was most probably a five-piece consisting of singer Ed Kilbride, guitarist Al Mix and keyboar... |
| Jackie Shane:
Any Other Way / Sticks and Stones - 7" - 1963
"Is he or isn't she?"
That is precisely how one writer summed up what must have been the question on everyone's mind. You see, in the staid old Toronto of the 1960s, Jackie Shane w... |
| The Shangs:
Sonny Bono Tear Down This Wall of Sound! - 2022
"Playing with him you felt like you were in the coolest band in the world...He was truly underground."
That was how Edgar Breau described the early-seventies David Byers ... |
| Jason Sharp:
Stand Above the Streams - 2018
"A sensory experience that extends beyond hearing alone."
That is how Jason Sharp describes his music. And those who listen to either of his (thus far) two Constellation releases will... |
| Sheep Look Up:
Sheep Look Up 12" EP - 1986
London (Ontario)'s reputation as a sort of stolid, whitebread wasteland was never really fair musically - hell, any city giving birth to and then actually managing to keep the likes of the Nihilist Sp... |
| Sheer Agony:
Pet Crow + 3 EP - 7" - 2012
Sheer Agony are anything but. The Montreal-based threesome ply a lithe, jangly power pop that recalls bands like New York`s dBs, Hoboken, NJ's Bongos or even the crafty eccentricities of the Homose... |
| Neil Sheppard:
In My Imagination / Beyond the Shadow of a Doubt - 7" - 1963
Neil Ship knew from an early age that he wanted to be in the music business. The Montreal lad attended his first audition at the early age of thirteen. But as he recounts on his LinkedIn page, livi... |
| Sandi Shore:
Like A Madness / Until You're Home Again - 7" - 1967
If not for a brief obituary in the weekly Vancouver Courier, Sandi Shore might have died a completely forgotten woman.
The Vancouver singer (who was actually born as Sandra Loranger... |
| Sandi Shore:
I'll Know Better (Next Time) / Roses and Heartaches - 7" - 1966
Brian Wilson once admired him and Phil Spector was allegedly scared of him, but these days no one really remembers Gary Paxton. The erstwhile svengali behind such early hits as 'Alley Oop' b... |
| Simple Simon and the Piemen:
People of Time / Anyhow - 7" - 1968
Simple Simon and the Piemen from Montreal's Notre-Dame-de-Grace neighbourhood are probably best remembered today - if at all, truthfully - for having been the launching pad for guitarist Robert Stan... |
| Simply Saucer:
She's A Dog / I Can Change My Mind - 7" - 1978
Punk rock turned out to be a saviour of sorts for Simply Saucer.
After three-odd years of equal parts practising and partying with the occasional gig thrown in for good measure, the... |
| Judy Singh:
A Time for Love - 1970
Judy Singh's A Time for Love is a deliciously rare recording that fetches upwards of $800 a pop in the high stakes world of record collecting. The little-known gem was recorded in Edmonton's... |
| Les Sinners:
Sinerisme - 1967
Les Sinners flitted between English and French-speaking Montreal, a place where the stone structures along Rue St.-Jacques, once the storehouse of stolid anglo wealth, sat just around the corner from ... |
| Siskiyou:
Siskiyou - 2010
A stint on an organic farm was all it took for ex-Great Lake Swimmer Colin Huebert to make that move from the Swimmers' Toronto base to the more organic climes of Vancouver. Once settled there, he t... |
| The Skaliwags:
365 Days a Year / Turn Him Down - 7" - 1966
This monster of a double-sider is reputed to be one of the rarest and most sought-after garage records in all of Canuckistan. The band behind it, a Gatineau quintet called the Skaliwags, had been ki... |
| Skylark:
Wildflower / The Writing's on the Wall - 7" - 1973
After all these years, the name Skylark is hardly what you would call a household name. But the BC group's top-ten single, 'Wildflower', with its tear-jerking opening line of "She's faced the... |
| The Slakadeliqs:
The Other Side of Tomorrow - 2012
The Slakadeliqs are actually the alter ego of one Slakah the Beatchild, whose unique hip hop visions meld jazzy downtempo with some rather nifty beats, and are thus a welcome diversion from the usua... |
| Slight Birching:
Cultural Envelope - 2014
Sean Travis Ramsay goes by the name of Slight Birching and this is his first long-playing record. The Vancouver-based singer-songwriter trades in the same sort of lo-fi folk that made Bill Callahan... |
| Sloche:
Stadacone - 1976
After the spacy prog-fusion of their superb debut J'un Oeil the previous year, Sloche eased up a notch on the controls on their follow-up. The Quebec City-... |
| Sloche:
J'un Oeil - 1975
The upper reaches of the St. Lawrence River may be about as far away geographically and culturally from the traditional anglo centres of rock as one can get. And yet in the seventies prog rock flowe... |
| Nick Smash:
Alone and Gone: The Story of Toronto's Post Punk Underground - 2015
Simon Reynolds, in his Rip It Up and Start Again, still the ultimate document of the late seventies/early eighties years, surmised that post-punk was punk's weirder sibling: well-read, art sc... |
| Grant Smith and the Power:
Thinkin' About You / You Got What I Want - 7" - 1968
Grant Smith and the Power are barely a footnote these days in the annals of Canuckistani scholarship, but in their time they were a popular group plying rock and soul at teen clubs around Toronto an... |
| Smyle:
Glory Glory / Will I Get Back Home Tomorrow - 7" - 1971
The Smile came together around 1967 in Burlington (ON), a bedroom community just to the east of Hamilton. Under the tutelage of Herb Lock, the four - singer/guitarist Ron Demmans, guitarist Ray Durr... |
| Hank Snow:
I've Been Everywhere / Ancient History - 7" - 1962
Given his wretched childhood, it's a wonder Hank Snow ever sang at all, let alone became Canada's most important country music performer ever.
Born in tiny Brooklyn, Nova Scotia into... |
| Soma:
Train / Welcome Love - 7" - 1971
Soma were formed in 1969 by former Stitch in Tyme keyboardist Bob Murphy after his return from Toronto to the East Coast. There, Murphy switched to rhythm guitar and took on a host of musicians incl... |
| Someone:
Le Magicien / Selon le Bible - 7" - 1970
Someone issued two impossibly rare singles around the turn of the decade, 1969's 'Chante et danse avec moi' on Visa and this one the following year on the Canama imprint, which aside from bei... |
| The Soul Motivators:
Free to Believe - 2015
If on first listen you pegged the Soul Motivators as a collection of vinyl purists obsessing over vintage deep-soul singles and modern day Daptone offerings, you probably wouldn't be too far off the... |
| The Soul Motivators:
Dirt on the Floor EP - 2015
One thing is certain. The Soul Motivators can definitely count themselves lucky to have the hugely blessed chanteuse, Lydia Persaud, fronting things for them. Persaud is swiftly proving herself to... |
| The Souljazz Orchestra:
David Pecaut Square - Toronto, Ontario 2014-06-12
As a proper urban space, David Pecaut Square in Toronto is more makeshift than planned. But surrounded by converted century-old warehouses and encroaching skyscrapers, it is as fine a backdrop as a... |
| The Souljazz Orchestra:
Inner Fire - 2014
The Souljazz Orchestra have been at it for a dozen years or so and on their latest full-length they appear to be once again in fine form. The Ottawa-based afro-jazz sextet have definitely come a lo... |
| The Souljazz Orchestra:
Rising Sun - 2010
Since the Daktaris blasted us with their Soul Explosion LP back in 1998, the embers of afrobeat have kindled across North America with the likes of Antibalas and the Budos Band south of the b... |
| The Souls of Inspyration:
The Souls of Inspyration - 1971
The Souls of Inspyration were formed in Red Lake, Ontario, a small town in the north of the province near the Manitoba border. Red Lake may have been isolated - it's a three-hour drive just to get t... |
| The Sound Box:
Warm Your Mind and Soul / I'm Learning - 7" - 1968
The Sound Box issued a couple of decent psych singles on the Regency label at the tail end of the sixties. The Montreal quintet was formed in 1968 by drummer Brian Redmond, along with guitarist M... |
| Spacecraft 7:
Lonesome Torpedo Redux - 2024
Spacecraft 7's Lonesome Torpedo Redux may seem to have dropped from out of nowhere, but the Toronto-based quartet's two guitarists actually go back decades. "Billy J. Coombs and I formed Spa... |
| The Sparrow:
Tomorrow's Ship / Isn't It Strange - 7" - 1966
In Canada, if you couldn't get tickets to see the Beatles, there was always Jack London and the Sparrows.
The Oshawa (ON) band was formed in 1964 with London, who was actually born in ... |
| The Spasstiks:
Love's Got a Hold on Me / If That's What She Wants - 7" - 1967
The Spasstiks' big moment came at precisely ten in the morning on September 24, 1966, when they opened the Toronto Sound revue at Maple Leaf Gardens. That massive show ("14 Hours - 14 Big Groups in... |
| Charles Spearin:
The Happiness Project - 2009
The first two quasi-solo releases by Broken Social Scenesters, Kevin Drew's Spirit If... and Brendan Canning's Something for All of Us..., came out under the auspices of "Broken Social... |
| Eddie Spencer:
You're So Good to Me Baby / If This Is Love (I'd Rather Be Lonely) - 7" - 1968
It may not be the first song that comes to mind when you think of northern soul. But once you get past the more obvious Wigan classics - from stone-cold floorshakers like Dobie Gray... |
| Eddie Spencer:
Dream Lover / Whiter Shade of Pale - 7" - 1968
Of the dozen or so top-twenty hits that Bobby Darin enjoyed in his career, perhaps none is more durable than his silky smooth 'Dream Lover'. Indeed, the song has been covered countless times... |
| Spoons:
Nova Heart / Symmetry - 7" - 1982
The late 1970s and early 1980s were fertile grounds for the growth of new wave music in Southern Ontario. The young musicians at the time were of the right age to have heard of the sixties rock and ... |
| The Spy's:
Underground / Machine Shop - 7" - 1980
The whole of the American Midwest, including Detroit, was a bit slow to latch onto punk. By 1979, though, a handful of bars there, like Lili's 21 in Hamtramck, the New Miami in the seedy Cass Corri... |
| The Squires:
The Sultan / Aurora - 7" - 1963
Boasting a 17-year-old tyke by the name of Neil Young on guitar, this seven-inch of plucky guitar instrumentals by Winnipeg's Squires is perhaps the rarest and most sought-after of all Canadian record... |
| The Staccatos:
Half Past Midnight / Weatherman - 7" - 1967
Following on the success of early rock 'n' rollers the Esquires, Ottawa's most successful sixties group got their start in 1963 as the backing band for local DJ and singer Dean Hagopian, releasing a... |
| Stars:
Ageless Beauty +2 EP - 2005
A charming EP, this is, clocking in at just over eleven minutes of blissful, airy pop. 'Ageless Beauty', taken from Stars' massively successful long-player Set Yourself on Fire, anchors the di... |
| Stars:
Your Ex-Lover is Dead / Fairytale of New York - 7" - 2005
The second single from Stars' massive Set Fire to Flames LP is a plaintive break-up duet that pits some rather melancholic strings and horns with a majestic guitar build-up. Amy Millan's lush v... |
| Stars:
Heart - 2003
Heart, the second full-lengther from Montreal quintet Stars, is an album dripping with sublime beauty and unabashed romanticism (of the incurable type no doubt), despite the cornball intros pri... |
| Starving Ghosts:
Starving Ghosts - 2017
With "a heart the size of ten Greyhound buses", New Brunswick's plucky Bored Coast Records is definitely anything but boring. The Fredericton-based label is run by JE Sheehy and is in fact the prim... |
| Katie Stelmanis:
Join Us - 2008
Billing herself as a "children's choir survivor', the classically schooled chanteuse Katie Stelmanis jumped ship at the last minute, abandoning her studies in the opera programme at McGill University ... |
| Still Life Still:
Girls Come Too - 2009
Still Life Still grew up together in Toronto's Danforth and Main area on the city's east side, forming as early as 1999 while the boys were still just, well, boys in junior high school. After plugg... |
| The Stone Circus:
Stone Circus - 1969
The Stone Circus LP has long been one of the holy grails to collectors of the legendary Mainstream label, but so little is known about it that the misconceptions have grown along with its monetary v... |
| The Stonemen:
In the Evening / Faded Colors - 7" - 1967
The Stonemen's lone single is criminally obscure, with only a handful of copies known to have survived the sixties. For years there was such a paucity of information out in cyberland that even the ... |
| Nick Storring:
Mirante - 2025
Mirante, Toronto-based multi-instrumentalist and composer Nick Storring's ninth studio LP, continues his knack for layering unprocessed electric and acoustic instruments into fascinating - an... |
| Strange Movies:
(I Can) Feel It Coming / What a Drag - 7" - 1969
The origins of Strange Movies can actually be traced back to the mid-sixties and the sunny British Columbia interior. It was there that a couple of long-forgotten bands, Jimmy and the Rebounds and... |
| Sturm Group:
Century Ho! - 1985
Toronto's punk scene exploded sooner and bigger than anywhere else in Canada. Its post-punk scene seemed on the verge of the same success. Today, however, it is littered with forgotten bands whose s... |
| The Subhumans:
The Subhumans EP - 12" - 1979
No place in North America took punk more seriously than Vancouver. Anyone who has spent time in that west coast city knows full well the political anger that seethes beneath the picture-postcard vi... |
| Sugar and Spice:
Cruel War / Not to Return - 7" - 1969
Sugar and Spice's 'Cruel War' was a cash cow of sorts for Frank Weiner and his tiny Franklin label. The Winnipeg band's hokey version of Peter Yarrow and Neil Stookey's love-in-a-time-of-war... |
| Les Sultans:
La poupee qui fait non / Il n'y a rien au monde que... - 7" - 1966
Like most francophone pop bands in Quebec during the 1960s, Les Sultans were busy churning out French-language versions of all those popular anglo hits, starting with 'Toujours devant moi' (a cover ... |
| Sunday Morning:
Junky Don't Care / Explain the World (download single) - 2022
Sunday Morning's latest single is a reworking of Art Bergmann's 'The Junkie Don't Care', originally issued by the BC punk icon on his 1988 Crawl with Me set. And as one would expect, these yo... |
| The Sunparlour Players:
Hymns for the Happy - 2007
Farm-raised in a Mennonite family amidst the tomato fields around Leamington, Ontario, Andrew Penner was exposed as a child to country and bluegrass bands like the Stanley Brothers. But after initial... |
| Patty Surbey:
(I Want) a Beatle for Christmas / Christmas All Year 'Round - 7" - 1964
Patty Surbey was sort of a perky amalgam of Connie Francis and Brenda Lee, with maybe a bit of Annette Funicello or Cathy Carroll thrown in for good measure. The Burnaby (BC) singer only released a... |
| Sam Sutherland:
Perfect Youth - the Birth of Canadian Punk - 2012
All rock and roll obsessives have their own mythical period, a far-off time or place long before they had ever bent down to flip through that first crate of discs, where the music was pure and the p... |
| Suzanne:
Suzanne - 1969
Like many a teenaged Toronto musician in the mid-sixties, Greg Hambleton could be found in Yorkville making the scene in the clubs and cafes of that city's buzzing enclave. The would-be singer-songw... |
| Sweet Somethings:
He's My Soul Baby / Pot of Gold - 7" - 1968
It may not be widely known, but one of the first all-female rock and roll acts - anywhere in the world - was a group of five Montrealers called Les Beatlettes. That band formed in February 1964, iss... |
| SWO8 Blues/Jazz:
Monkey of Sousse - 2014
SWO8 Blues/Jazz are a family affair and Monkey of Sousse is their second EP. The Mississauga-based collective is the muse of Leslie Martel, one-time flautist for the Queen's Own Rifles March... |
| Syrinx:
Long Lost Relatives - 1971
After the spacy textures of their groundbreaking debut, Syrinx (the trio of John Mills-Cockell, Doug Pringle and Alan Wells) set about exploring the possibilities o... |
| Syrinx:
Tillicum / Melina's Torch - 7" - 1971
Like many a teenager back in the fifties and sixties, John Mills-Cockell was hit with that proverbial epiphany, the one where you realize that music is all you want to do in life.
Ex... |
| Syrinx:
Syrinx - 1970
The birth pangs of electronic pop music were often tentative affairs. Bands like the Fifty Foot Hose and the Silver Apples had to absorb such obtuse luminaries as Karlheinz Stockhausen or Morton Sub... |
| T.H.P. Orchestra:
Two Hot for Love - 1977
Montreal may have been the hands-down disco capital of Canada - "the second most important disco market on the continent, outside New York," according to Billboard at the time - but Toronto also had... |
| T.H.P. Orchestra:
Theme from S.W.A.T. (Part 1) / Theme from S.W.A.T. (Part 2) - 7" - 1976
In 1979 Billboard magazine dubbed Montreal "the second most important disco market on the continent, outside New York." And while disco-obsessives will hardly dispute that fact these days, the more... |
| Lisa Taan:
Simon Simon / No One 'Cep' Me - 7" - 1967
Both sides of this obscure seven-inch come from the pen of Martin Hillman, a.k.a. Martin Martin, the Montreal producer whose sixties resume boasted such gems as Rings and Things' groo... |
| Les Talmud:
Avoir raison / Un autre ami - 7" - 1967
In the summer of 1967, while Expo '67 was drawing in hordes of visitors over on Montreal's Ile Ste-Helene and anglophone bands like the Rabble and the Haunted pushed envelopes over on the west islan... |
| Tapeheads:
Bricolage I & II - 2014
Thierry Larose goes by the name of Tapeheads and Bricolage I & II is his first true album of music. The limited-edition cassette of mostly instrumental bedroom recordings is what the young M... |
| The Taste:
Sea Legs EP - 2014
Have you ever wondered what the world would be like today if punk had not happened? I mean if the anger of 1977 had been replaced with romanticism and we had obsessed over bands like the Beatles an... |
| Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers:
Does Your Mama Know About Me / Fading Away - 7" - 1968
In his autobiography, Tommy Chong described the Calgary of his childhood as "more like Mississippi than California in the way that black people were treated." It was precisely in such an environmen... |
| R. Dean Taylor:
There's a Ghost in My House / Don't Fool Around - 7" - 1967
R. Dean Taylor started singing at various open-air country and western shows when he was just 12 years old, and by 21 the Toronto native had already issued his first record, the pop/rockabilly floor... |
| Susan Taylor:
Don't Make Promises / Twelfth of Never - 7" - 1967
'Don't Make Promises' was the first song on side one of Tim Hardin 1. And while it is now overshadowed by the heart-rending 'Reason to Believe' (which kicked off the other side of that LP), i... |
| Teach Yourself Piano:
Sweet Waltz, Bitter Waltz - 2006
Windsor siblings Kevin and Sarah Atkinson are Teach Yourself Piano (he the tunesmith, she the wordsmith) and this self-released CD Sweet Waltz, Bitter Waltz follows a decade or so of cafe/books... |
| Teenage Head:
University of Windsor - SAC's Pub 1985-01-22
*This is a slightly abridged version of a review that originally appeared in the University of Windsor newspaper The Lance in 1985.
Teenage Head's latest effort, Live in an E... |
| Teenage Head:
Picture My Face / Tearin' Me Apart - 7" - 1978
In the spring of 1977, when Frankie Venom (ne Kerr), Gordie Lewis, Steve Mahon and Nick Stipanitz, all long-haired rockers from nearby gritty Hamilton, managed to talk their way into a gig at Toront... |
| Jay Telfer:
Life, Love and the Pursuit of Happiness / Watch the Birdie - 7" - 1968
Though he was once a household name in Canrock circles, Jay Telfer seems to have fallen a little deeper than most down the well of pop history. As the singer and principle songwriter for A Passing F... |
| The Ten Commandments:
Weird Out - 1987
Toronto-based garage rockers the Ten Commandments got swept up in the mid-eighties Nuggets/Pebbles/Boulders craze, co-hosting their own Pagan Strudel-Fest Pit nights at various clubs about town. Wi... |
| Texture and Light:
The Hard Problem of Consciousness - 2013
Texture and Light are the brainchild of recovering west coast DJ Trevor Refix. The British Columbia native spent much of the early noughts spinning at raves out in the wilds of the BC interior - Ke... |
| Thee Deuces:
You Gotta Try / Hung Up on You - 7" - 1966
Originally from the small town of Almonte (about 40 km southwest of Ottawa), Thee Deuces started out as an instrumental combo in 1964. A forty-seven-week residence at the Inter-Provincial Hotel acro... |
| Ian Thomas:
Painted Ladies / Will You Still Love Me - 7" - 1973
"Ooh-ooh, feelin' fine mama / Painted ladies and a bottle of wine mama / Ooh-ooh, feelin' good mama / They took my money like I knew they would."
Ian Thomas' 'Painted Ladies' ... |
| Those Who Walk Away:
The Infected Mass - 2017
Matthew Patton describes The Infected Mass as "something very genuine and at the same time very wrong."
As the curiously named Those Who Walk Away, the Winnipeg-based compo... |
| Threads of Fybre:
Mama / Believe Me - 7" - 1967
From the tiny village of St. Clement's near Kitchener, Ontario, Threads of Fybre were a rather fleeting concern, allegedly performing not more than ten times in their entire career. Nonetheless, in t... |
| Three to One:
See Emily Play / Give Me Love - 7" - 1967
The Pink Floyd's 'See Emily Play' is one of the greatest pop songs ever written, psychedelic or otherwise. Syd Barrett's dreamy nugget, ostensibly about a free-spirited fifteen-year-old but with fa... |
| The Tiaras:
Foolish Girl / Surprise - 7" - 1968
The Tiaras' two singles are virtually unknown outside of a handful of northern soul anoraks on the other side of the ocean in Britain. But here in Canuckistan, the Toronto group is important for be... |
| The Tiaras:
Where Does All the Time Go / All I Ever Need Is You - 7" - 1968
Brenda Russell was just 12 years old when her musical parents (her father Gus Gordon was once a member of the Ink Spots) left Brooklyn for the relatively colour-blind city of Hamilton, Ontario. And ... |
| Timber Timbre:
Timber Timbre - 2009
Timber Timbre is the first release for Torontonian Taylor Kirk on the ever-growing Arts and Crafts label, after being previously issued on the smaller Out of This Spark imprint (along with a ... |
| Tinkertoy:
Wroxeter - Toronto, On 2006-02-04
Andrew Wedman and Paul Shrimpton have been working the controls of Tinkertoy for about six years now, melding languid, throbbing baselines and various bleeps and glitches into something vibrant, somet... |
| Tomorrow's Keepsake:
High And Mighty (Here We Stand) / Elevator Operator - 7" - 1967
The White Knights were one of the most popular bands in Regina in the mid-sixties, so much so that RPM featured them on the front cover of their March 11, 1967 issue. The four-piece of singer/guitar... |
| TOPS:
Tender Opposites - 2012
TOPS released their first full-length record in February 2012 to kudos on both sides of the Atlantic. The Montreal foursome of singer/keyboardist Jane Penny, guitarist David Carriere, bassist Tho... |
| Jerry Toth:
A Place to Stand b/w A Place to Stand - 7" - 1967
Had it not been for Ontario's one-time unofficial provincial anthem, the talented musician, composer and arranger Jerry Toth would be even more forgotten than he already is.
The Winds... |
| Tough Age:
Which Way Am I? - 2020
"A band that stands still might as well not exist."
Jarrett Samson's thoughts are words to live by. And on their fourth long-player, Which Way Am I?, Tough Age most certainly b... |
| Tough Age:
Unclean EP - 7" - 2017
Tough Age may be the quintessential archeologists of lesser-loved guitar rock these days. In fact, the erstwhile Vancouverites have built up a pretty solid discog mining all those classic riffs of ... |
| Tough Age:
Plays Cub's Hot Dog Day - 7" EP - 2015
Cub was always something of a curiosity. The Vancouver trio were cute, catchy and cuddly, but mostly bereft of any sort of musical talent. So what happens when you strip away all that cuteness an... |
| The Tower of Dudes:
Make Your Own Culture - 2014
The Tower of Dudes are anything but suburban poseurs. The Victoria-based gypsy punks actually got their start as a more international collective on the streets of Prague way back in 2007. "Origina... |
| Tranquillity Base:
If You're Lookin' / Fun - 7" - 1970
Everyone of a certain vintage has memories of Ian Thomas' 1973 hit 'Painted Ladies', a song that spent a few weeks up in the single digits on the powerhouse... |
| Trespassing Bean Rays:
Trespassing Bean Rays EP - 7" - 1982
As far as the early-eighties dustbin goes, things don't get much more obscure than Ottawa's Trespassing Bean Rays. This hopelessly unknown three-piece seems to have toiled about the national capita... |
| The Trials of Jayson Hoover:
King Size / Baby I Love You - 7" - 1969
Unlike R&B-obsessed Toronto, Vancouver in the 1960s was more heavily affected by the electric sounds emanating out of northern California, with the Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Co... |
| Le Triangle:
Deux miroirs / Les montagnes russes - 7" - 1969
Pierre Senecal, Rayburn Blake and Jerry Mercer had been kicking around the Montreal music scene since 1960, playing under various names like the Phantoms, Ray Blake's Combo and the Dominoes. By 1965... |
| A Tribe Called Red:
Nation II Nation - 2013
A Tribe Called Red couldn't have dropped this album at a better time. Though the Ottawa collective of Bear Witness, DeeJay Shub and DeeJay NDN make music that is ostensibly for dancefloors, they ha... |
| A Tribe Called Red:
A Tribe Called Red - 2012
The Ottawa collective known as A Tribe Called Red started off inauspiciously enough back in 2008 when local deejays Ian Campeau, aka DJ NDN, and Bear Witness threw a party with hopes of gathering up... |
| The Trifids:
Brainbroom / Invincible - 7" - 1983
The Trifids were essentially the same unknown Czech woman behind the equally demented and hopelessly obscure One of You, who issued a couple of singles a few years prior to this featuring a terminal... |
| Troyka:
Troyka - 1970
Troyka's discography is rather slim - just one LP and a single - but the group actually trace their origins back to the mid sixties and a band called the Royal Family. The quartet issued a couple of s... |
| Tulpa:
University of Windsor - Subway Pub 1986-03-15
*This is a slightly abridged version of a review that originally appeared in the University of Windsor paper The Lance in 1986.
Saturday night at the Subway, Tulpa's acutely ele... |
| Tulpa:
Mosaic Fish - 1985
By the mid-eighties the tight-knit punk scene along Toronto's Queen Street had begun to fray into various musical threads. A more escapist alt-country scene was developing around the irrepressible ... |
| Roxanne Turcotte:
Amore - 1994
Montreal pianist/composer Roxanne Turcotte studied electro-acoustic music at l'Universite de Montreal, and her first recording, on Quebec's fine Empreintes DIGITALes label, bears all the hallmarks o... |
| Tyme and a Half:
It's Been a Long Time / Magic Island - 7" - 1968
There must have been a bit of a Netherlands connection up in Trenton, Ontario. It was in that tiny military town some two hours to the east of Toronto that Dutch-born Barry 'Buzz' Vandersel hooked ... |
| Uaxyacac:
Double Seeker EP - 2013
Uaxyacac (pronounced Wa-ha-ca) is the electronic project of University of Moncton music grad Nick Smith and the five-song Double Seeker is his first release. The Montreal-based Smith describ... |
| The Ugly Ducklings:
Somewhere Outside - 1967
Nineteen sixty-six was the year pop's voice cracked, when its squeaky clean Beatles complexion broke out in the pimply scruff of garage rock all over North America. From the Chocolate Watchband out in... |
| The Ugly Ducklings:
Postman's Fancy / Not for Long - 7" - 1967
The Ugly Ducklings' fourth single saw them dabbling in psychedelia to limited success. The b-side, 'Not for Long', is the better of the two tracks here, a summery slice of pop existentialism, languor... |
| The Ugly Ducklings:
Just in Case You Wonder b/w That's Just a Thought That I Had in My Mind - 7" - 1966
By late 1966, the Ugly Ducklings were ascending the throne of Toronto's Yorkville scene, with their debut single 'Nothin'' having shot to #18 on the CHUM radi... |
| The Ugly Ducklings:
Nothin' / I Can Tell - 7" - 1966
Toronto's Ugly Ducklings were hatched in the proverbial backwaters of suburban Scarborough, but it wasn't long before they would become the most popular band in the hip Yorkville neighbourhood downt... |
| The Ugly:
Stranded in the Laneway (of Love) / To Have Some Fun - 7" - 1978
Though barely a footnote in the Toronto punk scene, the tragedy of leader/singer Mike Nightmare and his band the Ugly is hands down one of the most fascinating stories in the entire annals of popula... |
| UJ3RK5:
UJ3RK5 - 12" EP - 1980
UJ3RK5 may well have been the quintessential nerdy art school band of the punk era. Where most acts back then were filled with the usual poseurs, undergrads and hangers-on, UJ3RK5's roster w... |
| The Underworld:
Bound b/w Go Away - 7" - 1968
Toronto's Underworld were a garage band managed by Jed MacKay (of It's All Meat) along with fellow Meatster Rick McKim. McKim's father was rather conveniently positio... |
| The Unforscene:
These Are the Words / You and Me - 7" - 1967
"In 1966, two members of a band from Canada called the Unforscene brought some demo records to me," producer Don Perry recalled in his 2016 memo... |
| Union Duke:
Bandits and Bridges - 2013
Like their contemporaries south of the border, Trampled by Turtles and Old Crow Medicine Show to name a couple, Union Duke can trace their musical heritage all the way back to Dillard and Clark's ep... |
| United Empire Loyalists:
No, No, No / Afraid of the Dark - 7" - 1968
By the time the United Empire Loyalists got around to releasing this deliciously rare seven-inch - the only piece of wax they would ever make - they were already fixtures on the west coast undergrou... |
| Unknown Mobile:
Chime, Flower & Fountain Cures - 2015
Levi Bruce divides his time between two Canadian extremes, the bucolic shores of the Kootenay River in BC and the urban zoo that is modern-day Montreal. "I was raised in a rural area on a farm in ... |
| Uproar:
Different Drummer / Look Who We Are - 7" - 1971
Uproar formed in Vancouver in 1970 and included a couple of local alumni, Jeff Ridley (United Empire Loyalists) and Glen Hendrickson (Mock Duck, United Empire Loyalists). 'Different Drum' is ... |
| Gordie Uranus and the Universe:
Fear of the Night / It's Only Urgent - 7" - 1979
As further evidence that the dustbin of rock is indeed a bottomless pit, there is this potent little double-sider from Gordie Uranus and the Universe. The band was from Ottawa, a relatively punk-fr... |
| Urban Scorch Compilation:
(various artists) - 1982
Urban Scorch is an obscure but invaluable document of early-eighties post-punk in Toronto. The cassette-only compilation features four bands, each contributing some 15 minutes of music - it's ... |
| Urban Surf Kings:
...Play El Toro and Other Favourites EP - 7" - 1999
Halifax scenesters Urban Surf Kings have been plying their trademark surf instrumentals out on the east coast since the mid-nineties. The lads became a bit of an east coast phenomenon with a spate of... |
| The Utopiate:
You've Been Warned / Actions or Misguidance - 7" - 1987
I am going to bet that these days in their hometown of Richmond Hill (a suburb to the north of Toronto) there aren't many people who remember the Utopiate. In fact, even Google's all-powerful algori... |
| UWUW:
UWUW - 2022
UWUW (pronounced 'you-you') is a new trio consisting of guitarist/keyboardist Ian Blurton, bassist/keyboardist Jason Haberman and drummer Jay Anderson. Their self-titled four-track disc dropped in t... |
| UZEB:
Fast Emotion - 1982
The genre of music in the 1970s known as fusion is usually defined as an amalgam of jazz and rock. That definition is perhaps an oversimplification and probably has more to do with our insistence on... |
