Atomic Werewolf is doing a bang-up job of releasing NO FUN items, just now releasing Triumph of the Oinksdedoinks for the first time ever "thus" (though the recordings on it were included - mostly? entirely? - in that NO FUN box set that existed long enough for me to write a Straight article about it, but which you probably don't have, anyhow, since NO FUN's David M. - a devotee of the Residents' Theory of Obscurity- declared a moratorium on its production after selling maybe ten copies of it, within weeks of that article appearing, so it's kinda moot).
There is also an I-think-previously-unreleased bonus cut from 1975 on this release (NO FUN has been around a long time).
It seems clear to me that the relative obscurity of NO FUN has a lot to do with their past output being initially released primarily on cassette, which few people collect and fewer still listen to. In fact, if you look on file-sharing sites - and I have - you can find rips of NO FUN's early, obscure 7" singles, which shows that people do care about the band, but no rips of even their most famous cassette releases (which I hold to be Snivel and 1894, both of which are also available through the Atomic Werewolf bandcamp. Vinyl is planned, as well! I have looked for them many times, not because I need them - I have the box set - but because I want to know: "Is anyone trading Snivel yet?" For 20 years, the answer has been NO). It says something that you have been previously able to (illegally) download "It Came from Heaven" but not "I'm Not Taking Suzie to the Be-In," for example. And it seems no accident that the best-remembered NO FUN songs, "Mindless Aggression" and "Be Like Us," are the two songs that have actually seen release on CD (the former on the Vancouver Complication anthology, also available on vinyl, and the second on the Zulu Records Last Call anthology). The band's format of choice - tape - was just exactly wrong to guarantee NO FUN a proper seat at the table with other Vancouver punk pioneers. (It probably doesn't help that they're also not actually a punk band - though they did PARTAKE of punk; CF the Triumph recording of "Snog," for example, and in fact, Pointed Sticks and other peers were not punk bands, either, really) or that they have been fronted by someone with an unusual approach to self-promotion, who, for instance, makes high quality colour posters for shows that he gives away AFTER the show, for instance, to people who have already been there, having put (as far as I know) none up BEFOREHAND, which is normally how it is done. But still, but still... NO FUN deserves a seat at the table! The Pointed Sticks get this. Richard Chapman of Northern Electric (who helped put up some other NO FUN releases) gets this. Atomic Werewolf gets this. *I* get this. BUT DO YOU?
In fact NO FUN's catalogue is much richer, deeper, and larger than even the aforesaid releases, and David M.'s contribution to Vancouver music history is even more significant than his own band's, since it was his 4-track recorder that was used to document the infamous Body Shop battle of the bands in which NO FUN, Doug and the Slugs, and DOA all competed AND LOST to a band who no one remembers or cares about now (I cannot be arsed to look up their name again. Sapphire? Something shitty and forgettable like that, in any case). In fact, you can find David M.'s name in the credits for Triumph of the Ignoroids, somewhere on the back cover, since that release only exists due to his loan of equipment (he also helped the Subhumans out with the same 4-track, when they were recording their first 7", though those tapes, except I think a little of Dimwit's drumming, are lost to time, long reused). I presume you all are familiar with the front cover of said DOA EP, which Triumph of the Oinksdedoinks is riffing on. I am not actually sure where on the back cover David's name appears, but if you want to find it, go for it, it's there, I promise:
Of course, another element in the obscurity that dogs NO FUN is that people just flat-out take the band for granted, even though they have been active in some form or another for close to fifty years, without significant pause, if you count those David M. shows (essentially NO FUN shows) where David did not use his band's name. I too am guilty of this "taking for grantedness." I did not, for example, do any actual work in researching this blogpost, did not try to interview M., even though I was just visiting him yesterday. I also couldn't tell you which of the discs in the NO FUN box set the Triumph of the Oinksdedoinks material appears on, though I have it just over there on the shelf (says David). I could go look, but you - unless you're one of the lucky ten or so people - don't have the set anyhow, and David's not making it anymore, so why bother?
Atomic Werewolf, however, clearly has a plan to rescue NO FUN from obscurity, and I approve heartily. 1894 and Snivel, to be sure, are local classics; you cannot fully appreciate the Vancouver music scene in the 1980's without giving them their due, and there are some truly stellar songs on both (though also some throwaways and smartasseries and songs I just don't get, but I'll not dwell on that). For the very best of them, try, for example, "Ambivalence" off Snivel (my current fave cut off the set), or, say, "To Hell With the Past" off 1894. This is great songwriting! Witty and insightful and catchy and TOO MEMORABLE TO BE FORGOTTEN, and as good or better than most of the recorded output of...
...a lot of much more famous local bands that I don't want to name, but you see what I mean. Thank you, Atomic Werewolf, for your work in bringing these gems back to the public ear (stay tuned for announcements sometime in the next two months of the next NO FUN Christmas show...).
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