The WP has been hard at work this year, getting a new batch of songs in the can. They will be released in some form in 2018, and I’m very happy with them. But this summer, I’ve been busy with another project: the 30th anniversary tour of the Permanent Stains!
The Stains was my high school band, and though we’ve done things here and there since that era, we’ve been inactive for the last decade. I’m very excited about this tour, and the anniversary re-edition of our autobiography, Let’s Get Greasy, with a bunch of new material.
There’s a lot I could say about the Stains, but you can read all about it in the book, or get a hint from this video with some of the messiest moments from our Ottawa early-90s punk scene heyday:
It was weird for me to watch the old footage that I compiled to make this video. A friend was asking me “What were you guys thinking?” and I have to say, it’s hard for me to remember or connect with my vision at the time. We just wanted to perform, freak people out, and have fun. And make good music – we may have fallen short of that particular goal a lot of the time, but we were just teenagers, and we’ve done all right for ourselves since; all of us still play music, many in a full-time pro capacity.
On that note, another thing I noticed going through the old materials was that from very early on, I defined the band as being bad. Was this a pre-emptive strike against criticism, a lazy way to excuse sloppiness, or just the pervasive influence of Mad magazine with its “usual gang of idiots” self-definition? At any rate, I now want to come clean and say that I think, and have always thought, that we actually rule.
Our antics may or may not be as crazy as a bunch of genteel middle-aged artists – we’ll see. All I know is that to play music with my brother and a bunch of my closest friends is something that brings me a lot of happiness, and I look forward to sharing it with you.
Come check us out at these dates:
Wednesday August 9 – Ottawa – Pressed
with Coastal Pigs and Worn Robot
8pm * $8
FB event
Thursday August 10 – Montreal – La Vitrola
With Ugly Cry, Eliza Kavtion, Gamma Scum
9pm * $10/PWYC
FB event
Friday August 11 – North Bay – White Water Gallery
With Lightmares and Like A Girl
8:30 pm
FB event
Saturday August 12 – Toronto – Burdock
With Broken Puppy and Just Like the Movies
8:30 * $8/10
FB event
Sunday August 13 – Peterborough – The Spill
Garbageday 2017 with garbageface, The Lonely Parade, Heartless Romantics and Jesse “The Magic Man” Rose!
9pm * $8