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
Tuesday, April 7, 2020
Monday, April 6, 2020
Art During COVID19: Zombie Roof - Automatic Lyric Video
This weekend I cut together a video for the band Zombie Roof. Earlier this year we made a full length album at the wonderful Hipposonic Studio here in Vancouver. Hipposonic is essentially the reincarnation of Little Mountain Sound Studios, in the former studio B. A fantastic spot with incredible rock and roll history (Bruce Fairburn and Bob Rock made several platinum selling albums in the studio) we recorded and mixed 10 songs in a week (yes I like to work quickly).
Just ahead a couple months and we are all in isolation and life has all but stopped for most of us. The band members have been proactive though and set about releasing video singles to share their music. Singer Trent sent me some footage that had a very cool "comic book" filter set on it, turning it to an almost rotoscoped looking black and white image. He also cut in some old archival footage in between his lip sync and I thought he had something cool. I requested everybody in the band do a similar thing and then transfer me their footage. I'd then cut together a lyric video from their stuff.
So on Saturday I received four different performances, all made in various spots around the province, all separately but of course all playing to the same song. I placed them on a timeline and within a couple minutes I knew instantly that it should look good. An evening of editing and tweaking and voila, a new video for Zombie Roof: Automatic.
Just ahead a couple months and we are all in isolation and life has all but stopped for most of us. The band members have been proactive though and set about releasing video singles to share their music. Singer Trent sent me some footage that had a very cool "comic book" filter set on it, turning it to an almost rotoscoped looking black and white image. He also cut in some old archival footage in between his lip sync and I thought he had something cool. I requested everybody in the band do a similar thing and then transfer me their footage. I'd then cut together a lyric video from their stuff.
So on Saturday I received four different performances, all made in various spots around the province, all separately but of course all playing to the same song. I placed them on a timeline and within a couple minutes I knew instantly that it should look good. An evening of editing and tweaking and voila, a new video for Zombie Roof: Automatic.
Friday, April 3, 2020
Records In My Life in the time of Covid 19: twst on RIML
So, along with most of the world, have been in a shutdown to slow the spread of the corona virus. Due to the shutdown, all tours have been cancelled and nobody is coming to Vancouver for shows so we have begun conducting interviews via video conferencing. This is our first interview with Welsh singer songwriter Chloe Davis known as twst. Chloe joined us from her parents house where she is in isolation to talk about her new EP, twst0001, and the music that shaped her along the way.
Wednesday, April 1, 2020
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.
Tuesday, March 31, 2020
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.
Sunday, March 29, 2020
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
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
Friday, March 27, 2020
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.
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.
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