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The Government


The Government - 33 1/3 RPM EP - 7

33 1/3 RPM EP - 7"
The Modern World - 1979


Michael Panontin
The Ramones played two nights at the New Yorker Theatre in September '76 and, as local legend has it, almost single-handedly launched the Toronto punk scene. But that was only half the story. The other revolved around the city's thriving arts community and a pair of shows the following January by another CBGBs band.

"I saw the Talking Heads at A Space in 1977 and at OCAD the following night." Andrew Paterson recalled for Mike Hoolboom. "They were only a three-piece then, and they intrigued me. They were the opposite of punks - they were so normal that they had to be perverse. This for me was much more interesting than so many of the punkers."

Paterson at the time was playing in the house band for VideoCabaret, an "inter-media theatre/video/live music aggregation". But when the playwright Michael Hollingsworth came looking for a new group of musicians for something he had written, Paterson made his move. "We were friends and he needed a band for this play he wrote called Punc Rok, so I put the Government together...It initially consisted of me, Robert Stewart on bass, vocals, and some writing, and a drummer named Patrice Desbiens."

Of course, VideoCabaret and the Crash 'n' Burn, the nearby basement club the punks had staked out as their own ground zero, were quite different beasts. But the two worlds - the artists and the punks, that is - were starting to grow closer. "Myself and Robert were sort of on the fringes of an art scene, around A Space in the mid-seventies," Paterson explained "[but] there was a fascination with punk within the Toronto art world."

The Government eventually started dividing their time between VideoCabaret and the city's club scene. But by 1979 the trio, with Edward Boyd having replaced Desbiens on the skins, broke away from VideoCabaret completely. It would prove to be a busy year, with the three issuing a 7" single (the self-released 'Hemingway Hated Disco Music'), an LP (the multi-media performance Electric Eye) and an EP that many consider to be their high-water mark.

The 33 ⅓ RPM EP was recorded in the summer of '79 at Doug McClement's Comfort Sound on Dufferin near Rogers Road. The four tracks vary in both quality and intensity, something that was not entirely accidental. "At first we thought it was a demo tape." Paterson explained to CM, "so we selected four quite different songs." 'Get You Sleeping' is probably the closest the band ever got to aggressive punk and was originally used in Hollingsworth's Punc Rok play ("That's why that song is rather homicidal.") 'Flat Tire', on the other hand, is by Paterson's own admission a send-up on old blues songs equating sex and automobiles and was even played on the then-hip CFNY-FM. Unfortunately, the satire was lost on the public and it became, in his words, "this stupid novelty song".

But the reason to search out this record is Stewart and Paterson's phenomenal 'Zippers of Fire', a four-minute-plus iteration of post-punk that is as riveting as anything the UK greats were putting out that year. Lyrically, it's a pointed commentary on those awkward sexual tensions that couples - gay, straight or whatever - are doomed to navigate. A duet, with deadpan vocals that are more uttered than sung, 'Zippers of Fire' cleverly flits back and forth from feminine to masculine voice (f: "Don't you touch me." m: "I'm not into it" f: "Oh, please don't touch me" m: "I can't afford it").

Musically, it takes the listener to a whole other level. Stewart's loping basslines and Paterson's angular guitar never melded together more perfectly than on 'Zippers of Fire'. But what really makes the track so interesting - and what sets it apart from the bulk of the Government's oeuvre - is the meandering and almost eerie synthesizer. "I played the synth part on 'Zippers...'", Paterson admits. "It was a rented Crumar that we brought into Comfort Sound with us. It's an extension of the melodic guitar part between the verses. I wanted something more than just another guitar and the synth was the obvious choice."

The Government followed up with two more discs, 1980's disappointing Guest List and the funkier How Many Fingers? with new drummer Billy Bryans the following year, neither of which sold well. And with a new guard of post-punk groups like Tulpa, Sturm Group and Rent Boys Inc lying in wait, the guys decided it was time to move on. "We were sort of in limbo. We wanted to make a good well-produced record that would redefine the band. And of course the money to do that didn't exist. There was no formal break-up. I think we all individually thought we were flogging a dead horse."

         
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