Description 15 - The Pursuit of Happiness

A long time coming and a long time listening (almost an hour!), I explain what the deal is with me and Canada's greatest power-pop band, including some exclusive live recordings - not to mention tales of slinging drunk girls over roadies' shoulders, post-show dog-licking and pants that match someone's couch.

Here's where you go if you wanna ride the big wave and subscribe.
Here's where you go if you wanna open up the bomb bay and download directly.
(Don't know those references? Check here.)

Associated links:
Incompletely Conspicuous: The Pursuit of Happiness and the Press (yes, my site)
TPOH @ Maplemusic (buy CDs or downloads of the last two albums and Moe's solo album and book)
Buy Love Junk and When We Ruled from EMI
TPOH with The Management Trust (Jake Gold's agency)
Canadian Indies Hall of Fame
TPOH Loveslaves Yahoo Group
Actually, the first podcast about TPOH was on Zaldor's World.
jazz.fm91 (Brad's beautiful jazz station - go listen when you're done with the podcast!)
The Populars, the great opening band whose beers Kevin stole.
Off the Record on TSN

Seriously, I'm NEVER doing a show that long ever again. But I had to cram about 20 years worth of stuff in one show to get it all over with. Then when I mention one person or another later on, you can check back here and remember what I'm on about.

Renee mentions Tim Mech saving her from a night of debauchery long ago. Tim was the guitar tech for TPOH for most of the time I was going to shows, and he continues working on some of the best crews in this country when he's not working on his own very cool nasty music with Tim Mech's Peep Show - with Ron Koop, who you'll recall from Description 05 at the Monteforte show. Oh, and singing lead with Brad in Monteforte is Tam Amabile, who you hear in this episode singing on the original "I'm An Adult Now". See the tangled web?

Other great people I've met because of the Pursuits include the ones I've met on the mailing list, as we used to call it back in tha day. After a show in '95, Kris suggested I check it out (likely in the hopes I'd find a new outlet other than writing them letters). I didn't have a computer back then, but a couple months later I lived in downtown Belleville a couple doors down from the Quinte Arts Council, who had an ad hoc internet cafe of one computer, so I went over there and took my first steps into the glorious cyberspace. Once I figured out the whole listerv thing, I was part of the Loveslaves mailing list (or listslaves), a global bunch of usually nice and perpetually frustrated people (considering Moe's typical subject matter, that was appropriate) - frustrated because information or promotion of or about the band was always hard to come by. Jaap who ran The Downward Node site and Tina who led the list at the time did their best, but the band was never great at marketing themselves (the initial video aside) and no one else around them was very good at marketing them either (although that was their damn job!). That's one reason why I started my site 4 years later, after Jaap had to quit because life took over and when the band had sort of unofficially finished. I had these articles and reviews that when put together, told an interesting and sometimes maddening story of some nice folks who made amazing music but got screwed around by circumstance, bullshit and the typically Canadian lack of ability to sell one's way out of a paper bag. That series of articles forms the backbone of the site. It's a cautionary tale for young bands (especially Canadian) coming up, although today, there are many more ways to work around the path that used to be the default.

Okay, that's talking about the site out of the way as well.