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Drastic Measures
Drastic Measures
Columbia - 1980
Michael Panontin
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As a founding member of the Dishes, Toronto's mid-seventies art-pop icons, Tony Malone can certainly say he got into the punk/new wave scene on the ground floor. The band were regulars at the Beverley Tavern back when the punk mecca was, as Malone describes it, "a silent carcass, a shell...NOT a happening place".
Malone left the Dishes in March 1977, just prior to the release of their Fashion Plates EP, but stayed on the scene with a pair of gigs at the infamous Crash 'n' Burn club in June that year (in a short-lived band called the Streets). Two weeks later, he had formed a new group, one that would eventually veer off down quirkier - and decidedly un-punk - avenues.
"Drastic Measures came into being during a Dishes performance at Crash 'n' Burn," Malone recalled for CM. Malone, who was no longer in the Dishes and was there just to take in the show, ran into guitarist How'rd Pope and the two got to talking. "How'rd wondered why I quit the band, and why I was there cheering for them. We talked all evening and agreed to start a band together the next day. We can date the birth of Drastic Measures to that Dishes show June 24, 1977."
In the next couple of years, Drastic Measures honed their music on the local scene, keeping a quasi-revolving door policy that saw band members coming and going and coming back again. In April '78, the band scored their first of several high-profile gigs, backing up the Stranglers at the Horseshoe Tavern. They also managed to secure a slot on the scene-defining Last Pogo show in December that year, with two songs, 'Flowers' and 'Mr. America', making their way onto the LP And Now Live From Toronto - The Last Pogo.
In the late summer/early fall '79 - twenty-one days over a couple of months, actually - the guys went into Phase One Studios to record their debut LP. The unconventional sounds on Drastic Measures bore little resemblance to anything coming out of the Canadian scene at the time. The bulk of the album is given over to Malone's strident, outsider cool. At a time when even a short guitar solo was meticulously scrutinized by hipsters lest it be labelled too prog, the iconoclastic mix of solo piano, bouncy new wave and unlikely covers (kids oldie 'The Teddy Bear's Song' and Shirley Matthews' 'Big Town Boy') probably had the punks flummoxed. It's hard to imagine what they would have made of Drastic Measures' melding of sax, guitar, synths, ukulele and, hell, even a bit of harpsichord.
But the group that entered the studio to record Drastic Measures was quite a different beast from the quartet that appears on the cover. Malone had actually been wanting to make the leap from indie band to something much more professional, but not everyone was on board for that. "While the LP was being recorded, I was using the unfinished tapes to attract trained musicians to the band," Malone explained. "How'rd and Ken [Farr] had steadfastly refused for years to take guitar or bass lessons, and I really needed to take that next step. During the sessions, I found Monte Horton (guitar) and Steve Webster (bass). They joined just as the LP was being finished, so we put them on a couple of tracks, and they're on the main cover photo."
A wise decision, as it turned out. "That new unit of the four of us - Peter Novak was the drummer at that time - was just killer. Monte and Steve were technical wizards and could make a vast amount of music with their fingers, and so our first two shows at The Edge with that lineup were a revelation."
Unfortunately, despite a little push by local radio station CFNY-FM, Drastic Measures fell short of almost everyone's expectations, save possibly CBS records, whose support for the band was dismal. "Our first LP was printed in a limited edition of 5000 on used vinyl, because CBS weren't sure they could sell it," Malone laments. "It wasn't promoted much, but it crept into the hands of several DJs, whose listeners liked us." Drastic Measures ultimately shifted 7000 copies, and through the help of long-time supporter Nash the Slash, they managed a follow-up single ('It Won't Be Long' b/w 'Modern Heart') on his own Cut Throat label.
Alas, a batch of songs for a second LP was recorded and ready to run, but the Measures' eccentricities must have puzzled those simple-minded music execs. "I finally gave up knocking on their doors. I just couldn't bear to hear 'I wouldn't know what to do with that' or 'that's not what we're looking for', or some useless piece of negative advice, one more time." Tired and dejected, Malone closed up shop for good in 1985.
These days, pop eccentricity comes pretty well standard issue, and Malone takes pride in his role in that. But it is not without the occasional tinge of regret. "I told a young friend once that I wished I'd been born twenty years later, and he said, 'Everyone is writing weird pop songs now - you'd be huge!'. We were hacking out a path that others could follow. But it was lonely and everyone's dreams got dashed."
(Malone assures us that both Drastic Measures and its aborted follow-up have been remastered and are due to be reissued in the very near future.)
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