Archives: live Pure videos

 For the past few weeks I've been posting old live videos of my 90's band Pure. It's been quite a lot of fun to re-experience those days from more than 30 years ago.

Here's a few of the full song clips I've cleaned up so far.

 

 Special thanks to Dan Maynard for not only videoing all these shows while doing lights for the band, but even finding a working camera for us to transfer the old tapes from. It's great looking back at these days!

Headlong Hearts - Creatures of Habit - out for Canada Day!

 

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Headlong Hearts "Creatures of Habit" out July 1st 2025 on all streaming sites. 

The second full length from Vancouver, Canada's Headlong Hearts is a big shift forward in their sound. Growing on the strengths of their debut, What We Call Forever, Creatures of Habit puts the band in a fuller, faster style. With songs like One Golden Day, Canadian Shield, and Canada all pushing the tempos more like a folk rock band, Headlong Hearts is demonstrating what they've learned from playing live for the past decade. More aggressive, more dramatic, but still retaining the sense of beauty from their beginnings, the band is having fun with their sound. 

Creatures of Habit is an eleven song, all original, album that features another wood cut cover art by the band's drummer Matt Brain. No only is Matt a great drummer, but he's also a wonderful artist as well.

Produced by Deborah Holland (with three songs co produced by Mark Henning)

Engineered by Emily Ryan and Mark Henning

Mixed by Mark Henning

Mastered by Graemme Brown

Original cover art by Matt Brain 

CD layout and graphic design by Robert Edmonds

Check it out where you listen to music, Linktree

Or better yet, click through to Headlong Hearts' homepage and order a cd!

Canada - Headlong Hearts (single)

 

"Canada" is the next song off Headlong Hearts'  second full length album "Creatures of Habit" (the physical cd copy will be available on March 21st - streaming to follow). 

Canada is written by Mark Henning with Chris Barrett, Matt Brain, Hugh Ellenwood, Brad Gillard and Matt Kennedy

The song is the eleventh track on the new record. Produced by Deborah Holland with Mark Henning

Recorded at Rain City Recorders and Boutique Empire Studio

Bedtracks engineered by Emily Ryan, additional engineering and mixing by Mark Henning.

Mastered by Graemme Brown at Zen Mastering

Original artwork taken from a Matt Brain original work  called "Morning Walk"

Cover layout and graphic design by Robert Edmonds at Evoke International. 

The video featured live performance of the Headlong Hearts from the Bez Arts Hub in Langley BC. The audio is the studio recording of Canada taken from the Creatures of Habit album.Video editing by Mark Henning at Boutique Empire.

Listen and download the song here

 

 

The Wivez - Boyz Toyz

Recorded this past winter, here is the double A-side release from the elusive indie rocker The Wivez featuring Boy Toy and Black Shellac.  

 

The Wivez are Jordy Birch, Rob Edmonds, Slam and Bean. I've know Jordy for 36 years when I was hired to be a touring member of the band After All in 1988. Later we went on to form the alternative rock band Pure in the early 90's. These many years later we are still working well together and this single is a strong indicator of what we can do in the studio. 

The Wivez - Boyz Toyz

Recorded at Boutique Empire Studio, Vancouver, Canada

Engineered and mixed by Mark Henning

Co-produced with The Wivez and Mark Henning

Mastered by Jordy Birch

Artwork and graphic design by Robert Edmonds

LISTEN HERE

Danser tout le temps Video - streaming now

 

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Boutique Empire presents Combine the Victorious "Danser tout le temps" Video.

Filmed at the Boutique Empire Recording Studio in Vancouver, BC Canada.

Camera Operator Jean Vercoe

Director and editor: Mark R Henning

 

Danser tout le temps will begin streaming on all sites on March 1st 2024. Currently available on YouTube.

 

Combine on Fiona Forbes' show Onstage (basement tapes live)

Combine the Victorious appeared on Fiona Forbes' show Onstage this week. They duo had a great conversation with Fiona from the Isabelle Dunlop Clothing store to talk about the shutdown, setting private appointments, and of course music. After the interview Combine performed five songs that were previously recorded in the basement of their house. Included here for the first time is their song "What's Going On In Your Head" as well as favorites "Smoke and Choke" and an acoustic piano version of "Embrace."

Archive: Blisterene - Broadcast Nationwide video

Blisterene had a busy year in 1997. We'd recorded our debut album, a ten song collection titled "So I Have Them" and already made one video. Broadcast Nationwide was a follow up to Gratitude and directed by Shawn Carnegie. We made this one on 16mm film and shot some of the footage in my brother's former business office on Marine Drive in Vancouver,

This was a fun video to shoot, thanks to Shawn and Tod Van Dyk who master minded the affair. This was a great underground video with many hours in an elevator and then even more running around the stairwells of the Pacific Centre mall. I have fond memories of this one, probably the easiest set I've ever been on. We all had fun, though worked a couple long days to create this!

The yellow walled rehearsal footage was shot at Les's place, (aka Malcolm Tente) where we actually recorded our album. Interesting times back then.


Band: Blisterene
Song: Broadcast Nationwide
Album: So I Have Them
Released: 1997

Archive: Blisterene - Gratitude video

Blisterene was a power pop band from Vancouver, Canada. I formed this band after I departed from Pure and thought to make an exciting three piece. We played every venue in Vancouver and then managed a full Canadian and a follow up Western Canadian tour before we put the band on ice.

This video was filmed and edited by none other than Blair Dobson, Blair had made two videos for Pure so it just seemed natural to approach him to make one for my new band. This video was played a couple times on Much Music and helped secure us a spot at CMW as well as our cross country tour.



Band: Blisterene
Song: Gratitude
Album: So I Have Them
released: 1997

Archive: Pure performs Anna on CMVA 1993

Back in 1993 Pure was invited to perform live on Much Music as part of the Canadian Music Video Awards (following picking up an award for best Alternative Video). This was in the autumn and following a summer writing session for the second album. In this clip the band is performing a brand new song Anna Is A Speed Freak, one of the first of the new batch of songs that would become Generation 6 Pack.

Archive: Pure wins Best Alternative Video - CMVA 1993

Way back in 1993 Pure won the best Alternative Video award at the Canadian Music Video Awards held at the famous Much Music studios on Queen St, Toronto. We attended a couple of these and both times I recall being a huge party and a great time. The old Much Music was so important to the Canadian music scene, establishing bands like ours right across the nation. It's fun to watch this again, with VJ Erica Ehm talking with us and the Bare Naked Ladies announcing our award.

Archive: Pure - Pure (video)

This was the last video we made from our debut album Pureafunalia. This song has a long and interesting history too. The song Pure was written when we were still calling ourselves The Grin Factory. Though that name was short lived this song wasn't.  We made a demo with John Webster (the producer of Jordy, Todd and Leigh's former band After All). John had been working on sessions with the likes of Motely Crew and Bon Jovi and had built up a respectable array of sampled drum sounds over that time. When we brought him this song he has a Tascam 488 (8 track cassette multitrack) that we striped one track with sync to drive his Mac running MOTU Perfomer. John loaded up his Akai S1000 sampler with some incredible drum sounds that he told us had been made either for a Motley Crew album or maybe it was Aerosmith, they had been made at Little Mountain Studio for a record that Bob Rock had produced (John was usually brought in to play keyboards and generally make things sound even huger than normal).

Leigh Grant, the drummer in Pure, played his parts on a keyboard, triggering these fantastic drum samples and then Jordy put down the bass part. (I don't remember if David Hadley was in the band at this point). Todd laid down one rhythm guitar part and I sequenced all the strings and the clarinet sample along with the little percussion sequence that I'd done in my Ensoniq ESP-16. I vividly remember the moment when John flipped the tape and told Todd to play a solo, but in reverse. The result was mesmerizing. Jordy's vocals went down pretty quickly and we had a killer demo.

Pure, the song, was then played at a Music West listening panel (in fact the festival was called Westex that year) wherein Ron Goudy from Restless Records stood up at the end of the playback and announced to the room that "this band will be signed in 24 hours." We weren't, but it did lead to us meeting a music lawyer and later signing to Reprise Records.

Months later we found ourselves living on houseboats in Sausalito, California and recording our album Pureafunalia with former Talking Head's guitarist/keyboardist Jerry Harrison producing. We tracked an entirely different version of the song with live drums and Dave on bass but something didn't feel right. Turned out we'd recorded it a bit faster than the demo and we had lost some of its groove. That lead to us getting John Webster to transfer the music to a 2" 24 track up in Vancouver and sending it down to us in California. The real irony came later when we built the song up to so many tracks we had to transfer everything over to a Sony PCM 3348 digital multitrack. We managed to go from the day's cheapest recording medium to the most expensive in the course of recording one song!

Pureafunalia came out, we made a handful of videos, toured several times and then figured we could get one more single off the album and made a video for the song Pure. It was filmed in a rehearsal room that was decorated with the items you see in the video. Co-directed by Rob Chong and Jordy Birch, with camera and editing done by Rob. It's a great song and typically Pure looking clip (all our videos seemed to look alike) that I'm happy to share with the world 28 years later.

Thanks for reading. Stay healthy. Cheers!
Mark

Archive: Pure- Spiritual Pollution debut on Much Music

Spiritual Pollution was the third single from Pure's debut album Pureafunalia. This video was co-directed by Blair Dobson and Jordy Birch, with Dobson handling the camera and editing as well. Made in a loft in Vancouver with not much more than a concept, a couple horns and a smoke machine Spiritual Pollution was one of the more successful videos from the band.

This clip included a short interview with Much Music VJ Steve Anthony talking with Jordy Birch and Mark Henning before debuting the  clip.  I believe this was sometime in late 1992.

Pure - Blast (Cdn Version) 1992

Here is the first version of the video for Blast, the first single from Pure's debut album Puerafunalia. Shot and directed by Dermot Shane in a warehouse in Burnaby, B,C., Canada back in early 1992. Blast came out in near the end of the summer in 1992. This video was later replaced by a second, higher production level version directed by Troy Smith (which won Best Alternative Video at the CMVA's in 1993).

Once again, this clip was transferred from vhs tape that had been taped from Much Music television. I've replaced the broadcast audio with CD audio to increase the sound quality for YouTube.

Archive: Blue Water (Silent North demo)

This clip came to me courtesy of a friend, Sean McFarland. Way back in the Autumn of 1985, my second year of University, The Silent North had written a handful of songs that we were considering releasing for an EP. This song wasn't included on the EP but was finished just about that same time. Sean suggested we try filming something and came by our rehearsal space with his 8mm camera. We shot this footage and it was lost to us for decades. After a move recovered the canister Sean gave me the film canister again about 10 years ago. A few years went by until by chance Stefan Sigerson mentioned he had a projector at his place and could digitize the film for us. I had this footage for several years and it wasn't until this Covid-19 breakout that I had time or inclination to try setting it to music.

With no sound on 8mm film there was only the image to go from. I attempted lip reading to determine which song might be being performed but I couldn't really tell.  A conversation with Daniel Clement suggested that we were playing our song Blue Water. The tempos are about the same but the singing parts didn't completely line up (though I suspect we were just playing it live and not attempting to lip sync - we honestly didn't know any better). Therefore I took a bit of liberty and cut the footage to follow the song a bit better.

Musically this was another cassette 4 track demo. We did a lot of writing and recording those days, all of it on Dan's Tascam 244. To my ear it sounds as though we were using a Roland TR-707 drum machine on this song. The mixdown went to another cassette tape and we made copies from that. The music on this video is a digital transfer I made back in the early 90's from cassette to a Panasonic SV-3700 DAT machine. I guess I was always concerned about backing things up and I recorded a lot of that old material to DAT tape. Yesterday I did a bit of processing on the music and lined it up in Davinci Resolve to the video. And now, after 35 years we finally have a little music video for our song Blue Water!


Title: Blue Water
Artist: The Silent North
Lyrics: Callan Wilson
Music: The Silent North (Clement, Henning Wilson)
Vocals: Callan Wilson
Bass, guitar: Daniel Clement
Keyboards, drum machine: Mark Henning

Camera Operator: Sean McFarland
Editor, post audio: Mark Henning
Film to digital transfer: Stefan Sigerson

All the Way Back to the Beginning: The Silent North

White Rock, BC, 1987.
This video is a simple home video from my high school/university era band The Silent North (also known as Idle Minx). While we never really got the band off the ground we did manage to write several songs over our short lived history. The song here, "Even You" was one of the last tracks we wrote and recorded. As I remember it we were using guitarist Dan Clement's Tascam 244 cassette 4 track along with a Roland MC500 midi sequencer synced to tape. I'm pretty sure this was mostly me doing the programming and keyboard playing as it's so busy with parts! Our singer Callan Wilson sadly died in a car crash only a few weeks after we made this clip so it became our final output together.

We set up in our rehearsal space built in Dan's garage and messed around with a fairly basic VHS tape camera and a couple house lamps. The grainy moments seemed to come from us trying to layer new elements over top of the first bits in the camera. If memory serves the camera was operated by our friend James Ginther (who may have owned it as well).




Music: Mark Henning    Lyrics: Callan Wilson
Vocals: Callan Wilson
Bass, trumpet: Dan Clement
Keyboards, sequencing, drum machine: Mark Henning

Equipment used:
Tascam 244
Roland MC-500 with PPS sync
Korg Poly 6
Korg Poly 800
Yamaha DX-7
Yamaha RX-7
video camera: unknown

Blast From the Past: Pure on Ear To The Ground

I found this interview on a seldom used old hard drive, one that contained a bunch of old footage, transferred from VHS. This is a CBC production called "Ear To The Ground" featuring my former band PURE. The interview portion was recorded in Vancouver at a now defunct poolhall (called The Automotive if memory serves) while the live footage was filmed in Toronto during a show at Lee's Palace. Following the release of Pure's debut album "Pureafunalia" this Ear to The Ground was one of several nation television moments for the band. Please enjoy this blast from the early 90's, when Much Music was still important and people loved to see bands perform live!

Records In My Life: Health

This week's episode features Jacob and John from the Los Angeles band Health.  We filmed them in the hidden ballroom of the former Biltmore Hotel amid the mirrors and chandeliers.  Jake and John were filled with stories and humour and offered up a collection of esoteric albums from their past.  They spoke about the Stooges, Steve Reich, Crass and Ex Models as well as Andrew WK and Xui Xui.  Truly one of the funnier episodes we've filmed.  Check it out!

Producer and host: Charles Brownstein for Northerntransmissions.com
Directer and editer: Mark Henning
Videography: Benn McQuire and Mark Henning
Animations and RIML logo: Susana Ramirez

This episodes features the song "New Coke" from the Health album Death Magic
Intro theme is Best Tonight by Combine the Victorious from their album Autonomous

Records in My Life: Joanna Gruesome

 Northern Transmissions and Boutique Empire presents this week's episode of Records in My Life featuring Owen Guesome from the Welsh band Joanna Gruesome.   Owen joined us in the lobby of the illustrious Cobalt Motor Hotel to discuss a few of the albums that had made impressions on him, the band's music and in the case of Nina Simone, he just loves!   A couple surprising picks in this list for sure, check it out.

Host and producer: Charles Brownstein
Videography direction editing: Mark Henning
Animations and logos: Susana Ramirez

Filmed at the Cobalt Motor Hotel, right beside the Cobalt Nightclub,

Intro Theme Music: Best Tonight by Combine the Victorious

Episode features the song Last Year by Joanna Gruesome

New Music: Combine the Victorious - Encryption

Boutique Empire presents Encryption, another new instrumental from the upcoming Autonomous album by Combine the Victorious. 

This is a continuation of the cubist videos we've been creating as promotional videos for Youtube.

Music by Combine the Victorious
Produced and mixed by Henning
Recorded and mixed at Boutique Empire Studio

Video produced by Boutique Empire.  

And now for something completely different - Whoop!

Jordy Birch and Mark Henning have begun a production team once again, and in addition to working with other artists, they have created a few new Guilty About Girls songs. The following is one of their new ideas: Whoop!  The video contains footage featuring the Hullabaloo dancers, taken from a 1960's television show.