A New Treble Charger Video Discovery & Much More News & Notes From The Last While!!

Let's get a new news post on the site on this Sunday morning, including some assorted shorter items, local musician appearances on two indie artist spotlight YouTube series, and leading off, a flashback 15 years back of a big local band in a somewhat unexepected setting. Here's what you should know!

Here's a neat find, a VHS recording of inactive local/Toronto indie/punk band Treble Charger playing a live acoustic concert in a record store back on June 14th, 1997! Recorded at the time by Brennan Manoakeesick and uploaded to YouTube user LaFarm's channel last week, this (as best as I can tell) was recorded at the old Musiplex store in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and presumably comes from Treble Charger's tour cycle in support of their then-new third album "Maybe It's Me". Bill noted that they were playing before a set by "The Amazing Transistor", which I believe referenced the Winnipeg indie rock band Transistor Sound & Lighting Co., who were labelmates of theirs. The 26 minute video features Treble Charger (minus Rosie) playing "10th Grade Love", "Friend of Mine", "Ever She Flows", "Fade", and "Morale", and it's definitely interesting hearing Treble Charger unplugged at this stage of their career!

Despite persistent "snow" on the video proper and some noisy static at times, the video and audio quality of this is really solid, and you do get some nice views of Musiplex, which looks like it was a huge record store with a great selection of albums! Fans were receptive to this short set, especially the kid taking pictures, and it's neat seeing a band as big as Treble Charger telling the sound guy what to fix with the levels, almost like they were back on the local circuit. If you love Treble Charger's Bill-led indie rock material, don't bypass this classic unplugged set below!

Next up, here's some more episodes of the YouTube series You Rock! with Thomas Christ, which is slowly getting more and more of a local flavour as Saultite musicians discover the series! In episode #18 from January 5th, Thomas heard and reviewed at least three songs by local artists live during the three & a half hours long episode, including Inner City Surfers bassist Brad Example's solo song "Someday" (46:28), marking his return to the series after appearing in earlier installments. While not a hard rock song (more of a bluesy folk number), Thomas praises his passion and songwriting! The ever-prolific Mike Haggith continues his regular run of You Rock! appearances later with "2145" (1:07:36) from his 2020 album "If Ever Comes The Day", and Thomas also gave it a strong recommendation for its beautiful vocals and melody, and how it would translate well to just a piano.

The local contingent of that episode ends with defunct local grunge/psychedelic rock trio SBD (both Brad & Dann have submitted material for You Rock! before, so it's only natural) via a demo of their original song "Ess" (1:39:00), preceded by info about how SBD formed. Thomas complimented how fun the song sounded like it must have been to record and called it "very fun". Nice to see more local talent getting widespread exposure like this from a dedicated community of independent musicians, so give episode #17 of You Rock! a watch below!

As for the other YouTube series where a host checks out independently recorded original songs live with a dedicated community including Saultites (Your Music Live by Studio Live Today's Pete Johns), there's definitely been less of a local element in their last five episodes, though a Brad Example song does end episode #83. The aforementioned Mike Haggith did finally return to the series in episode #86  from Friday, with Pete checking out the title track from "If Ever Comes The Day" at the 44 minute mark. Pete praised the song's arrangement and melody, calling both it and Mike himself "very cool", so give all of that and loads more indie musician reviews a watch below!

Finally for today, here's three assorted shorter news items from the last while, and usual, these are in alphabetical order by artist name:

 

• In a mild & locally unique variant of a name change, local indie/punk quintet Northwest have tacked "The" to the start of their name on their Facebook and Bandcamp pages, complete with a new band logo calling them The Northwest. A reason for the alteration wasn't publically announced, but it could be related to the commonality of Northwest as a band name (three other bands on Bandcamp are named that) or just signifying a fresh start after largely being dormant during the pandemic. We'll let you guys know when The Northwest announce their next plans!
• Relaunched local/Barrie punk/metal band Spades GT (née Jack Spades) will play in their new hometown on April 14th when they're among the openers for both The Dayglo Abortions and Random Killing at The Queens Nightclub! 2019 Oh!No festival performers The Speed Humps are also on the bill, FYI. This could be the first chance Greater Toronto has to see the new look Spades in action, so keep it in mind if you're in the area, and click here for more details!
• Sault Michigan hard rock quartet Tarnished will play their first publically advertised show of 2022 when they hit the road for frontman Alex Traynor's old Mount Pleasant home base on February 26th! The show will see them open for Mount Pleasant rock bands Venom of Virtue and Bang Up Tape Job at Rubble's Bar, and hopefully this Lower Peninsula gig goes well to help kick off a hopefully busy year! Visit the Facebook event page for more info!
  

 

That's all for today, but stay tuned for more news and notes on the site this week! Thanks everyone!