Two nice surprises from the summer festival scene have been the return of two classic Canadian indy rock bands: Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet and Change of Heart.
Shadowy Men are much better known outside of Canada due to their penning and performing "Having an Average Weekend", the opening theme for the legendary comedy show Kids in the Hall.
http://youtu.be/CqmFspZqr34
The band formed in the late 80s and released their first album, Savvy Show Stoppers, in 1990. The band mixed surf rock and touches of punk and indy rock, performing almost entirely as an instrumental band (very few of their songs had singing on them). They released only three full length albums during their short existence, but the band is well loved and well known by Canadian music fans. After the band's break up after 1995, Don Pyle and Reid Diamond formed another instrumental band with Dallas Good (later a member of the much loved Canadian alt-roots band, The Sadies) called Phono-Comb. Guitarist John Connelly formed another surf-rock instrumental band called Atomic 7, who released several albums on the Mint label, and played in Neko Case's band for a while. Diamond passed away in 2001. The band returned for some dates this summer, most notably at Calgary's Sled Island festival, with Dallas Good filling in on bass for Diamond.
What's even better is that the bands back catalogue is being re-released by the Lethbridge, AB based Mammoth Cave Records, which will be a nice treat for anyone who was a fan of the band, but had a hard time tracking down their albums.
Change of Heart was a heavily psychedelic influenced band from out of Toronto and part of the Canadian indy rock explosion of the late 80s/early 90s that included bands like Sloan, Thrush Hermit, Jale and Eric's Trip. Fronted by Ian Blurton, the band put out 6 albums, their last in 1997, Steelteeth, on the major label Virgin. After breaking up, Blurton worked as a producer for a lot of Canada's biggest names, such as the Weakerthans, Cursed and Attack in Black. He also formed the short-lived Bionic, and his latest band C'Mon, which just broke up in the last couple of years.
Blurton announced last month that Change of Heart were reforming for several reunion shows, as well as putting out a long awaited retrospective.
http://youtu.be/JsmKSN3rBPM
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