Happy Canada Day: Classic Canadian Alternative compendium

I've been enjoying going back in time and reminding myself of the great Canadian bands that changed the course of independent and alternative music back from the late 80s to early 90s. Why not enjoy some Classic Canadian Alternative while celebrating Canada's birthday on Canada Day?

Click through to music from the following great bands:

Grapes of Wrath

Universal Honey

National Velvet

Wild Strawberries

Pure

Doughboys

The Killjoys

Rusty

Sandbox

Rhymes with Orange

Rough Trade

Lava Hay

hHead

Collider

Classic Canadian Alternative: National Velvet

About a year and a half ago, I mentioned National Velvet in a post on cool Canadian alternative bands. This post features them in some more detail.

National Velvet formed in the mid-80s through a chance meeting between singer Maria Del Mar and bassist Mark Storm. Their 1988 début album was a fantastic mix of alternative rock with goth influence and aesthetic. There were many amazing tunes on that album including their biggest hit, "Flesh Under Skin", "A Wake", "Change My Mind", "Bam Bam", "68 Hours" and "Pacifist at Risk".

Their second album, 1990's Courage marked the addition of a second guitarist who unfortunately brought with him some of the hair metal stylings that were popular at the time. In spite of this, there were many cool tunes on Courage including "Shine On", "Sex Gorilla", "Chalice", "Rattlesnake", and "Weebles".

I was lucky enough to see National Velvet live a couple of times back in the day. A memorable gig was at Rock and Roll Heaven, a now-dead venue that was in the basement of the shopping mall at Yonge and Bloor. At this show, Maria was the subject of sexual heckles from an audience member who kept shouting things like "Let's see your tits!". Classy. Well Maria is not one to be the victim. She responded with something like, "Sure. First, let's see your dick." When she was greeted by silence, she waved her little finger in the air and said, "That's what I thought.". Nice.

Years later I was at The Ultrasound Showbar, a now-dead venue on Queen West where I was lucky enough to dance with Maria to whatever band was playing that night. A very cool human.

Their final album Wildseed came out in 1995 and sadly I never really got into it.

Bassist Mark Storm passed away in 2002 and the band still plays some gigs. I would love to see them on stage again.

Check out some tunes, first from their eponymous début:

"Flesh Under Skin"

"Bam Bam"

"68 Hours"

"Change My Mind"

All of their début is here, if you please:

And some tunes from Courage:

"Shine On"

"Sex Gorilla"

And here's all of Courage.

Pic from Last.fm.

Five-by-Five: Classic Canadian Tunes

Today, the radio proclaimed it was playing Supertramp. Well, in fact it was the Spoons. A fine, fine Canadian band. So I have been inspired to write a Five-by-Five post on awesome Canadiana. Here we go:

"Flesh Under Skin" by National Velvet

"Underwhelmed" by Sloan

"Answer" by hHead

"Nova Heart" by Spoons, and

"Shine" by Doughboys