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we called ourselves kamikaze. we asked a japanese-canadian friend to show us how to write the kanji—神風—which we then inexpertly copied for our posters. we wrote and played stunned pop songs about making out with teenyboppers—“caught in candy”—and explosive sex (which only the synth player actually ever experienced)—“pearl harbour”. we had an ancient logan string synthesizer, a ratty micromoog, a roland compurhythm that played tango and rumba beats, and a characterless fretless gibson '76 thunderbird bassguitar. we practiced in the stockroom of a shoe store in freezing cold north york every weekend for almost two years. we made two useless and expensive demo tapes at a dicky studio in east york. and we played a grand total of five gigs. our trousers were too tight, we smoked way too much, and we thought we were too cool.
we were [expletive deleted] crap!
the atonal singer would show up to rehearsals and rave that “everybody thinks we're the best band in the city!”
wow! we got so pumped!
but who was “everybody” and how'd they know anything about us? about 20 copies of our demo tapes were reproduced and distributed. we entered a song in a contest at the heavy metal radio station; it maybe was heard once. we played those five gigs in local dives. our parents came (to some of them). a few of our friends came. a grand total of maybe fifty people. a hundred people? that's “everybody”?
the joys of self-delusion...
addendum
on the advice of management (we had a manager? why?), the beatbox had to go. therefore we recruited a drummer. brought in a lad from art college. he had tasty chops. bit arhythmic, though.
it was too little too late. we broke up, acrimoniously (and that's its own story).
north york shoe store stockroom band
last hurrah was our portastudio™ recording sessions. badly engineered by the bassplayer (who was clueless but owned the portastudio) then digitised decades later. now posted with undue care and attention in this ancient entry on an obscure blog that nobody will find or read (it's a secret):
1. secret place –and– (instrumental)
2. drive-in –and– (instrumental)
3. personality –and– (instrumental)
4. turnaround –and– (instrumental)
5. wrecked on love –and– (instrumental)
6. caught in candy –and– (instrumental)
7. cry for you –and– (instrumental)
8. all over again –and– (instrumental)
9. go-go girl –and– (instrumental)
10. sheila –and– (instrumental)
11. love letters –and– (instrumental)
12. foreign legion –and– (instrumental)
discomforting demos
first useless and expensive demo was recorded in 1979:
second demo was recorded in 1980:
footnote
a year or so after the break-up, the synth player and atonal singer somehow managed to convince a company in germany to let them hire professional musicians and rerecord kamikaze's “greatest hits”. part of the process involved getting the other ex-members to sign away their songwriting rights. duly occurred. as did recording. which then went nowhere.
at some point, results from a paranoid internet search revealed that the synth player had posted those recordings online. “for posterity”, apparently. subsequent searches no longer divulge that page. a cease&desist order from the company in germany? second thoughts? who knows?
thus songwriting on the above tracks is credited to kamikaze (except as noted). that was true then but unlikely to be true now. it's probably moot.
also dates may be off by a few years. it was a long time ago and careful notes were not taken.