| |
L'Etranger
Innocent Hands - 12" EP
Ground Zero - 1982
Michael Panontin
|
Guitarist Andrew Cash and bassist Charlie Angus were mere 17-year-olds when they put L'Etranger together. But the pair actually go a lot farther back than that.
"Andrew and I met at 14 with the expressed purpose of learning to play guitar, forming a band, writing songs and then quitting school," Angus told CM in an email. "In the summer of 1980, L'Etranger - Cash, myself and drummer Pete Duffin - followed through on this plan."
It was sort of a trial by fire for the youthful idealists, whose politically earnest agit-rock would later draw parallels to bands like the Clash and the Jam. What the three lacked in experience, they more than made up for in determination. "We knew nothing about songwriting or music craftsmanship," Angus adds. "We practiced every day - Monday to Friday - six hours a day, going over the same parts over and over. We worked nights at restaurants and played gigs on the weekends."
By 1982, the hard work began to pay off. L'Etranger were virtual residents at the Cabana Room in Toronto's Spadina Hotel, and as a result had nurtured quite a following around town. But, well, punk in those days, even in a relatively open-minded place like Toronto, was hardly a lucrative career move.
"We desperately wanted to get a record out but couldn't afford the cost of a proper recording studio. We made an agreement to stop playing for a month and each of us worked full time to save up enough money." The guys eventually found a studio, Nova Sound in suburban Markham, that offered them discount rates. "We had to come in at 11 pm and leave by 7 AM. Plus we could only afford two reels of 15-minute two-inch analog tape that had already been used for another session."
The result, the six-song Innocent Hands, was much closer to an impassioned cry than the acrid screed coming from the hardcore punks at the time. The bulk of the EP deals with the powerlessness the little guy faces in a corrupted world, where the group rail against mendacious capitalists ('Goliath'), punk apathy ('Barricades'), and politicians' bullshit ('Today's Papers'). Musically, 'Barricades' shows the band to be good students of Paul Weller and his brand of punchy, soulful guitar chords, while 'Taken Away' reveals a softer side ("We had grown up on Neil Young, hence the acoustic guitar on that.").
But the record's finest track, and my own introduction to L'Etranger via a mix-tape back in the day, has to be the hook-filled 'Took What Didn't Belong', an "indictment of the class-defined life in suburban Scarborough at the time". The song's juxtaposition of crashing chords and vocal harmony make it especially powerful, an effect the group seem to have been aiming for. "We loved the idea of a 'big chorus', of vocals and harmony from the pop songs we had grown up with," Angus explained. "Pete had gone to St. Mike's choir school for grade school and so he was the de facto back up singer with me adding in lines here and there to counterpoint Andrew."
The boys also added their own bit of creative fun in the studio. "In the three nights of recording, we were really excited to experiment with sounds. We used piano on 'Not Seeing Us' and sound effects like bringing down a garage door as pennies were spilled across the top of the grand piano on 'Goliath'."
L'Etranger followed up with two more EPs, Running Out of Funtown and Sticks and Stones, but by 1986 the band had pretty well run out of steam. Cash soldiered on as the Andrew Cash Band, his career peaking at the end of the decade with a fortuitous signing to Island Records. Angus would enjoy further success with roots-rockers Grievous Angels before quitting Toronto - though not his ideals - to resurface in Northern Ontario as a Member of Parliament for the (leftist) NDP party. And, after years as a political gadfly for Now magazine, Cash swapped his pen for parliament and joined his erstwhile bandmate in the NDP caucus after winning the Toronto riding of Davenport in 2011.
|
|
Suggestions
Deja Voodoo
Monsters in My Garage + 3 EP - 7"
(independent)
Urban Scorch Compilation
(various artists)
Some
Land of Giants
Cannibal Dolls / Seven Men - 12"
AV
|
