Pete Campbell with Coach StrobCam, or, uh, in this case, reading left to right, Strob CoachCam
So: Pete Campbell has been around. His involvement in the BC music scene dates back to the very roots of Victoria punk, with Pink Steel, whom we talk about more here. (You can hear the Pink Steel reissue on the Supreme Echo bandcamp). His other bands include the Wardells - who did a kind of timeless pop, a bit rootsier than Pink Steel; check out this fun little movie they made around "Get You to Want Me." Or for a taste of of what came next - with thanks to Doug Smith for digging this one up - check out this full set of his next band, the Sweaters, at Toronto's Horseshoe Tavern back in 1995.
While not all Sweaters songs are created equal, it was the Sweaters song "Hockey Sucks" - included in that Horseshoe set, and also on the first one of those Johnny Hanson Presents Puck Rock compilations - that convinced me of Pete's brilliance, but in a bass-ackwards way, because I'd seen Pete sing songs with David M (including an original, "Too Cool for Christmas," and a Christmas-themed Joy Division spoof called "Claus Will Tear Us Apart") at a few NO FUN Christmas shows at that point, having had no idea that he'd written my favourite song on that comp, beating SNFU, DOA, Tankhog, Ford Pier, and even the Hanson Brothers themselves. Maybe it's just that I don't care about hockey, so Pete was the only guy singing directly to me (and yes, I had hockey cards for awhile, myself, back in elementary shcool, though I never really cared and soon traded them up for Star Wars cards and Wacky Packages).
Anyhow, it was quite a revelation, putting that together, looking at the songwriting credits on the Johnny Hanson CD, then finally approaching Pete, whom I was totally taking for granted, at one of David's shows. Really, you're THAT Pete Campbell?
I wait with anticipation to see just how big Pete's balls are. I'm guessing that they're pretty big, at least a 15 on an endocrine rosary (apparently actually used for getting a feel - sorry - for how big someone's nuts are. These are also called a "Prader Orchidometer," but I was raised Catholic, and love the idea of connecting testicles to the dutiful saying of "Our Fathers". But I digress).
These days, Pete is in Coach StrobCam, of course - interviewed by me here - but he's also been weathering COVID by writing his own solo material, which we're going to talk about below (he's going to do a rare solo set before Coach StrobCam plays tomorrow!).
But first, apropos of recent news - here's Pete's Dayglo Abortions story, parts of which are a little bit different from the version in Chris Walter's band bio of the Dayglos, Argh Fuck Kill: The Story of the Dayglo Abortions.
The Dayglos — at this time The Sikphuxz (with lead singer Ann Archy) — invited Pink Steel to play the first ever hall gig in Victoria after seeing our show at Dancer's Teen Disco where we (I) got the crowd to chant "Disco sucks" and were later told by the owner that we (I) was not allowed to insult his customers.(The article about that first-ever hall show is on Jeff's website — found about halfway down the page. "Pink Steel Punk Not That Rotten" is the article's clever headline; referring to the fact that Johnny Rotten was rumoured to possibly be potentially in town and might attend the show to check out Victoria's "punk" "scene"). [Editorial note: Jeff Carter clarifies that this OAP gig with the Sikphuxz was distinct from the Fernwood Dayglos gig written about below, but no less resulted in "lingering animosity" between the bands].There was somewhat of a rivalry between the bands for a while — Jeff is better on the details of this stuff than me — they kept using our gear at a shared rehearsal space, even after we told them not to. Drum skins aren't cheap and they just beat the shit out of our drummer's kit over and over again.
At a soon-to-be-infamous gig at the Fernwood Community Centre [sometime in 1981 or 82, Jeff tells me], our guitarist Dean Shea was, I believe, shooting a water pistol at them and shouting "Dayglo's suck!" during their set, until Murray jumped off the stage and attacked him... bad move, as we were a seven-man band and kinda slapped him around a bit "for his trouble" as the article says.
Jeff Carter posts a small clip from a newspaper in the name of "setting the record straight," describing it as "an event which has been wrongly portrayed in another forum." Murray Acton is the singer in question. He's much more polite these days!
By contrast, Walter's book - while not delving into the rivalry between the two bands - emphasizes that the audience had been abusing the Dayglos, and that Murray was reacting to being gobbed on and having his mike slammed into his teeth by someone in the front. That person is not named as Dean Shea, and there's no mention of a water pistol. Either way, the Cretin was provoked, and did leap into the audience and start mixing it up (with the help of Spud), but according to Walter, ""When the dust cleared, it turned out that the singer had jumped the wrong guy and was beating an innocent man. Cretin's victim, in fact, was none other than the keyboard player for Pink Steel, the headlining act." That keyboard player being Jeff Carter, who I guess was *not* attacked.
Carter, in a separate email, clarifies:
We arrived late in their set, so were not aware the band had otherwise been receiving abuse. Our guitarist Dean Shea had brought a water pistol to exact revenge for the gear misuse [mentioned by Pete above]. He sprayed Murray while calling out “Sikfucks rule!” two or three times. Murray dropped his guitar and leapt on Dean and a brief melee ensued. Murray may have mistakenly thought that Pink Steel members were also responsible for the previous spitting etc. Or maybe the water pistol was the red line. Or maybe the Sikfucks reference.
What's funniest to me here is that, whatever details Chris and/or Murray get wrong - and I challenge anyone out there to tell a story from 1980 without introducing an error or two - Pete's telling of the story actually makes Pink Steel look more culpable, since in Chris' telling, Pink Steel are entirely innocent of wrongdoing, victims of mistaken identity, while in Pete's version, Dean was in fact taunting the singer.
In any case, it's kinda fun that there are still some slightly hard feelings over a melee from 42 years ago. - though Pete remembers Murray at least somewhat fondly, especially from his pre-punk, prog period:
I went to Camosun College in 1979 and Murray was a student there as well. He was hard to miss as he had long, blonde hair and wore a black satin jacket with Brand X written all over it — apparently they were a prog or fusion band or something. Anyway due to some of those hard-to-dismiss roots, his punk-rock credentials were pretty easy to question in the early days of the scene. In actuality, The Dayglo's were likely the only real "punk" band in the city. They came from the "working-class" part of town: Esquimalt, the home of the Canadian Navy base and the attendant Legion-style dive bars, low-rent coffee shops and diners slinging cheap hash. The rest of us in the nascent "scene" were typically suburban and middle-class, or worse (!) kinda-rich kids from the chichi waterfront municipality called Oak Bay. Of course, viewed through a modern socio-economic lens, we were all just different levels of middle class. The Dayglo's also had the most noticeably badass pose to their whole presentation, consistently including in their sets a cover of The Rezillos' "Somebody's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight '' as well as an irony-denuded cover of NO FUN's "Mindless Aggression". Their own redneck-anthem "Now I Wanna Be An East Indian,'' was pretty much viewed as what it was: a poor attempt at some bad-taste humour, but the overt racism was impossible to overlook when assessing your own feelings about the band and their music. [Note: Murray's own explanation/ justification for the song is here].I bumped into Murray in front of the Rickshaw at the BUM show a couple years back and we greeted each other like old friends — which we kind of are: old soldiers from the punk-rock wars who have long since forgotten which side we fought on, or even what all the fighting was about.
Let's leap from there into the present with a discussion of Pete's new song, "Psychonaut," a catchy little bit of electropop (!) that reminds one more of the Flaming Lips than any of the bands that Pete has been in before.
I asked Pete via email to give the story of that song - was it about a real person? What drugs were they doing? You seem to be more amused by their foibles than disturbed, but you're not a participant, right? Are the Flaming Lips actually relevant to the sound?
Pete:
First of all, I just loved the word and thought it would make a great song title. My friend Rheostatics drummer Dave Clark told me that he feels the song has somewhat caught the zeitgeist. He is currently working with a physician who prescribes psychedelic substances as part of his therapy regime. Since the 1960s it has been illegal to do any research at all into the effects and potential benefits of the use of hallucinogens but now all that is changing — quite rapidly it would seem. These plant medicines are now being given the serious study they have long deserved.
The song emerged from a Terence McKenna rabbit-hole I slipped into on YouTube one night — that ended up lasting a couple of weeks. He has always fascinated me: he is likely the world's most famous "psychonaut". His descriptions of so-called "breakthrough experiences" while using DMT blew my mind to be honest: he says that when you use the drug, you feel as though you are transported to a completely different reality. Not only that, but there are entities that inhabit this other realm ,"self-transforming machine elves" he calls them, that appear to have been waiting for you. They are very very excited to see you and immediately try to communicate that fact to you, When they speak — an unintelligible language — these jewel shaped objects emerge from their mouth. They encourage you to try to speak and show you that you too, can create these wondrous thingies just by speaking. The drug's effects only last about 10 minutes and your conscious recall of the "trip" starts to fade shortly after you return to the everyday world. McKenna has put a great deal of effort into retaining his memories and experiences in this other realm. He thinks that the discovery of DMT and its use is the most significant evolutionary development in human history.
Incidentally, DMT is the active agent in ayahuasca, the plant medicine used ceremonially by shamans in the Amazon, which has become a "destination experience" for aspiring psychonauts from all over the world.
McKenna also thinks that most people use psilocybin "magic mushrooms" incorrectly as well. Most people take a gram or so and then go to a concert. He says that you need to take 5 grams alone in a dark room — and then the mushroom will speak to you.
He advocates use of these "plant medicines" not to have fun, but to explore inner, psychic space. Astronauts explore outer space while psychonauts do the same thing in their own inner world. I have an old friend who was for many years a member of a quite strict fundamentalist Christian sect. At some point he became disillusioned with his path and chose another: he started using "shaman medicines" in the way advocated by Terence McKenna and his ilk. He doesn't take these drugs to "party", he uses them to commune with the universe and his deeper self.
If you take a reasonably close listen to the lyrics you discover that the song isn't really about the psychonaut and his adventures, but rather about the friendship between the singer and the psychonaut — who is described as "the best friend I've got". He also "knows what's hot". Everyone needs a friend like that.
The song opens with the psychonaut "getting caught" and explaining that he's not high, he's a psychonaut.
Later, the singer explains their friendship like this:"Some people never take you anywhere, even when you want to go.My friend says he'll take me everywhere,Anytime I say so"
The important element here is consent: the psychonaut will not coerce the singer to take the medicine, but rather will introduce him to these inner realms anytime he asks him to do so.
Musically, the song has no direct influence, though I think Erika's Flaming Lips comparison is a pretty damn good one. The song was originally one of about 20 songs that I wrote during a very productive month during the lockdown — the only productive period for me really. Like most people, I mostly binge-watched Netflix and ordered take out. I was experimenting with some new tunings —the song is written in Open D minor, which is seldom used — and I stumbled upon the riff which I thought was super- catchy. The song was written pretty quickly and I felt it was maybe the best pop song I'd ever written.
I recorded demos for 20 songs with Bill Buckingham who produced the Coach StrobCam CD, because I just wanted the songs out of my head. I quickly realized that some songs needed more than just guitar and lead vocals to communicate even the basic idea of the song. Without that swirl of psychedelic harmonies in the chorus, the song would make no sense. So I went in one day and laid down something like 22 background vocal tracks — something I have always wanted to do — to flesh out the "trip" which constitutes the chorus.
As a producer, Bill is very much a collaborator and will often radically alter the structure of a song to make the song the best it can be, to his ears. So he just added all this electronic dance-type instrumentation and sent it to me hoping I would like it..which I definitely did. I suggested a few changes but left it more or less intact. I sent it out to a few people whose opinions I trust and they seemed to like it too.
Coach StrobCam (or, L-to-R, Coach CamStrob) at the 2022 Bowie Ball, by me).
BTW, you Central City Taphouse goers, so far I've tried four entrees on the menu there: poutine, fish and chips, some sorta chicken wrap, and a bite of Erika's steak. There's lots else to choose from, and everything has been at least good, but the steak seems to be the real deal; the one Erika got was almost Keglike in proportion, and very tasty indeed, but about half the price of a Keg steak. Also, there's a sticky date pudding for dessert that seems to be the treat.
Pete Campbell Interview
The video for "Psychonaut" is really fun. Who did the animation/ how was it done? It reminds me a bit of Brother JT's "Sweatpants" in that it looks very simply done, but is still quite effective. Did you come up with a story for the video, as well as/ in addition to the song?
The video was done by my friend, Joe Sousa — a great songwriter in his own right — who was the guitarist in a shamefully-overlooked Victoria pop-punk band Treecrusher (along with the Sweaters and Coach StrobCam bassist Turk). Joe is the epitome of an indie artist, in that he finds something he likes and just figures out how to do it. He has a pretty active TikTok channel where he is doing mostly political videos featuring his simple, yet charming illustrations. I asked him if he would be willing to do a video for the song and he agreed. Joe has never done any hallucinogenic drugs so I had to direct him to some of the stuff I had been watching on YouTube, just to give him an idea of the type of imagery I was looking for. I just had a sense he would do a great job and he really did. He not only captured the psychedelic aspect of the song, but the central theme of friendship as well.
You can find his other stuff here:
https://www.tiktok.com/@your_friend_mr.slappy?lang=en
Do you have any memories or impressions of that Sweaters live at the Horseshoe video clip that Doug found? Details from that night? (How often did you play Toronto?)
That video is the only full Sweaters' show to be found on YouTube, so it was pretty cool to see. Apparently Punk Rick recorded tons of bands at The Horseshoe in the 90s and The Sweaters were one of them.
We toured pretty consistently during that decade, many times back and forth across Canada. While I don't remember that show specifically, it seems to be fairly representative: not many people in the audience and I talk way too much between songs. Kuba (our bassist who later went on to play with DOA) looks about 12 years old, and James Richards, our drummer, is amazing and pretty much the star of the band.
After watching the video, I had a couple of thoughts:
First, that we were a pretty damn good band live, which makes me happy to be able to say. I can't usually listen to or watch my own stuff because I'm too critical — I only hear and see what I could have done better. But Turk kept saying how great it was and that it made him a Sweaters' fan again, so I decided to give it a chance.
I can also tell that by this point in our evolution, I had been exposed to the frontman-superstar vibes of KJ Jansen of Chixdiggit — still one of my closest friends — and had upped my own frontman game. We played with Chixdiggit during our first show in Calgary, the first night of our first tour, and KJ was — and still is — the best natural frontman I have ever seen. He made me a better performer just by existing.
My favourite part of the show was when I tell Dave Clark, the aforementioned Rheostatics drummer — and another of my closest friends — that I love him, which is pretty sweet and a great memory to have on tape.
We always did really well in Toronto — and a few other cities in Canada like Edmonton and Calgary. We were treated with respect and as a pretty great band, which surprised us at first, as it was not always the case in Vancouver. Vancouver has always been a punk-rock town and pop-punk was never really much appreciated. There weren't many bands of our ilk around — which worked out great for us in some ways: we got to open for Green Day three times because there was really no other band that was a good fit. At Lollapalooza, they even gave a shout out to the Nappy Dugout, the all ages place where we played a great gig with them— though they never mentioned our band. [Note: video exists, but not of the Sweaters set!]
A humorous side note that tells much about my deep knowledge of the music industry: I remember standing outside the Nappy Dugout while Green Day were playing, thinking what a great band they were, but that it was too bad they would never make any money.
The Sweaters: Pete looked taller then
So CoachStrobCam, also on the bill, is now back to a trio, right? Is that a happy thing for everyone? Will you be continuing to perform thus? (I haven't noticed that many gigs since things started loosening - the Bowie Ball and this; did I miss one?).
After our cd was released and we explored the band thing for a while, there were some issues around the direction we were going. It became obvious that as a trio we still maintained the great chemistry that was our original foundation, and it just seemed a natural step to revert back to that formulation. Our rehearsals are really just the three of us sitting around, drinking a few beers and playing some songs. There is almost never any discussion of arrangements: we just all play what we feel like and it usually seems to sound great. This easygoing dynamic makes the whole affair a completely pleasurable experience and so that is the way things are at the moment. Who knows what the future holds, though? We may bring a DJ and a couple of synthesizers into the mix if "Psychonaut" takes off...
We were really thrilled to be asked to play The Bowie Ball and I thought the trio format would set us apart from all the other rock bands, which I think it did. We were able to play some deep cuts which would have been impossible if we chose to do the show as a full band. Plus, Rachel got to finally play her vintage Fender bass and we got to wear sparkly outfits, both of which were firsts for the band.
How has Sing Along with Pete [Pete's self-invented "dayjob," performing for seniors in care homes] been affected by COVID?
Well, basically I was out of work for 2 years. I was playing over 50 shows a month before the lockdown and they all stopped completely. It was really a drag. Sing Along With Pete is more than a job to me: it is my vocation. To have that pulled from my life, especially so quickly, was devastating. For the first week of the lockdown I was receiving multiple emails and phone calls every day — all of them of course, with the same bad news. Multiple daggers to the heart, day after day.
Well, basically I was out of work for 2 years. I was playing over 50 shows a month before the lockdown and they all stopped completely. It was really a drag. Sing Along With Pete is more than a job to me: it is my vocation. To have that pulled from my life, especially so quickly, was devastating. For the first week of the lockdown I was receiving multiple emails and phone calls every day — all of them of course, with the same bad news. Multiple daggers to the heart, day after day.
My mental health was severely affected, my finances decimated.
Eventually I got to the point where I decided to really focus on songwriting which kind of saved me. Writing songs has been a constant in my life since I was a teenager, so it was a logical place to seek refuge. It really helped me right my ship and bring some much needed stability and focus to what was a pretty sad state of affairs.
Now that things have opened up again, I am back playing gigs almost every day with the resulting benefits to both my state of mind and my finances. It's not like I ever took it for granted before, but now I bask in the glow of every show and my relationships with the amazing seniors I play for— many of whom I have come to know as friends.
I once again have the best job in the world and I am over-the-top thankful about it.
Tell us about some of the other new "lockdown songs" you (or Coach StrobCam) will be playing?
"With The Care Of Those In Your Command" was written after I woke up one morning with that phrase in my head...I had to first figure out what the hell the phrase meant ...then figure out what the hell kind of sentence fragment precedes that line to make it a full sentence...then figure out what the hell a song with that title was about...then back-fill the entire thing so that it was an actual song. It was like "song sudoku"...challenging, but fun..
I will also be playing "Cal And Beckie's" about my sister and her husband's hobby farm/ home in The Shuswap Hills. I played mandolin on that one, but Coach StrobCam now regularly include it in our sets; our harmonies are perfect fit for the song's tone and feeling.
My sister Beckie has been one of the only people to hear much of my solo material over the years. I usually spend a week at her place every September, play guitar every day and write some songs...then I will give Beckie a one-on-one concert, under the condition that she actually sit and give me her full attention. She has been vital to my process over the years, because by playing them for her, I can get a sense of whether a song "lands" or not. I have found that my solo material only works if the listener gives me their full attention, which is why I stopped playing solo shows around 2010.
"Cal And Beckie's" is a song that always makes Beckie cry, as does another song called "Empty Restaurant" that features the lyric "When it comes to love, I'm an empty restaurant" —referencing the old saying "No one wants to eat in an empty restaurant". My sister Beckie's tears are the highest endorsement for my "mope-core" material... my solo stuff in general is very sedate, thoughtful and frankly pretty damn sad... though I will be playing more upbeat stuff on Saturday night.
I used to do solo shows at The Main every couple months after The Sweaters passed on. It was at one of those shows that my collaboration with David began. I believe I bumped into him on the street and asked him to play my 50th birthday party show...he asked me to get up and play a couple songs with him at the show, and once he started playing solo shows again, he asked me to join him playing electric guitar.
I wrote 20 songs in a month or so during the pandemic, a bunch of them using a Dmin open tuning, the first time ever using a different tuning for me...many players use open D maj, but few open D min..
After I went through the big songwriting purge, I decided to go record demos of all songs with Bill Buckingham who produced the Coach StrobCam CD. I just wanted the songs out of my head!
Get Pete Campbell's songs into YOUR head at Central City Taphouse in Surrey, a short walk from Surrey Central Station. Come hungry! No cover, no age restriction - but give Pete your full attention, please! Facebook event page here.
1 comment:
I had the steak this time, and it was good, but not as great as I made it out to be, and certainly not Keg-level. I still recommend it but lemme turn my enthusiasm down a notch...
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