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HAMILTON MUSIC NOTES
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by
Ric Taylor
April 3–9, 2003 |
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After 22 years with The Forgotten Rebels, drummer Dave McGhie has decided to leave the band. Fans are stunned by the news but the decision was not made lightly.
“I quit because sometimes it’s just easier to give up than fight,” he explains. “It’s been a very long time. If I just showed up, played and got paid it would have been okay, I guess, but all the extra work I put in and the stress that comes with it kept mounting, years of it, until finally I cracked.
“My view is a band has to continue to make records, videos, web sites, et cetera to stay a ‘real band,’” the drummer adds. “Half of the band seems to no longer think this is important. I did a hell of a lot of work recently on two new videos for the Rebels, and I had also created a new web site to tie in with the present one. The guys didn’t think any of this was worth doing. This, after all the recent work I put into getting this stuff all ready, was a slap in the face. It was the final straw.”
The legacy of The Forgotten Rebels as a first wave punk band that came out in the turbulent days of the movement alongside The Ramones, The Sex Pistols and Teenage Head is important, but fond memories only count for so much in the real world.
“My greatest memories of the band would be the nights you get on a stage and the crowd would cheer so loudly when we were getting into position I’d actually have to cover my ears it hurt so much,” McGhie remembers. “Nights like that were rare and just pure magic. It was the fans and those kinds of rushes that I played for. I’m proud of our music. We made a lot of great songs over the years that will continue to stand the test of time.”
On top of adding heft behind the kit, McGhie designed the band’s merchandise as well as four album covers. In later years, he developed a lucrative career in the film business, creating special effects on TV shows, commercials and movies.
“These friendships are much more important than the band is. It has definitely not always been fun, in the endbut the good times far out–weigh the bad. Some friendships will survive, others may not — only time will tell. I’ll miss playing with my friends and I’ll miss the fans that enjoyed our music. I will miss it all greatly. It didn’t end the way it should have. I’m glad to be out, though; it was time to leave.”
While still upset about his desire to leave, McGhie still cherishes his friendship with lead singer Mickey DeSadist.
“As a musician,” the drummer says, “the guy is a true genius. I have never met anyone as talented as he is at song writing. He is a true rock star in the classic sense of the word, and no one even comes close to having his stage presence. As a punk, he was one of the first — just listen to the first EP… ’nuff said. As my friend, Mickey affected me a lot in my early years. He has such an unusual outlook on everything, and is definitely one in a million. His personality is what makes him the star he is. And no one anywhere has his brilliant, sick sense of humour.”
“It’s sad news,” DeSadist says of McGhie’s departure. “We were friends for a long time, but things came to an end. He was a dedicated guy and he did a lot of good. He contributed a lot of songwriting and production work. With our last album, he made the best possible mix of the album.”
With a resurgence in Rebels popularity, DeSadist, along with guitarist Jeff Campbell and bassist Sean Maher, will continue on with an as–yet–unnamed drummer who should make his debut with the Rebels in May.
“Dave and I will always be friends, but the Rebels will continue, one way or another,” the singer vows. “We have a new drummer but you’ll have to come to the show to find out who. You’ll be very surprised because everyone is going to know him. He’s a friend of mine from the last three or four years.
“You’ve got to understand — the four core members are whoever is there at the moment, whoever’s doing it,” DeSadist insists. “Everyone else is still, in theory, part of it. Everyone influences everyone in the band along the way and part of everything I learned from them will still be with me. The Rebels are going to continue as we always did. As David Berkowitz said, ‘The cats will still come out at night to mate and the birds will still sing in the morning.’”
The Forgotten Rebels family on a whole might be happier with the respite. The band will continue and McGhie is currently enjoying life as an ex-Rebel.
“I rather like not having to worry about band stuff right now,” he smiles. “This is the first time I haven’t thought about the band since I was 16, basically. It is a little weird still. It’s a new feeling. But to all the fans, I thank you. It has been a lifetime’s worth of fun at least.”
Ambient music has bloomed considerably since the ’90s, deepening and broadening its presence in both mainstream and esoteric fields, regenerating and mutating with each passing day. Locally, the music of dreams and nightmares grows with the latest offering from two Hamiltonians steeped in an exploratory tradition.
Calvin Hagar and Daniel Wintermans first met in the early ’90s when they performed in goth/pop band Vampire Sex Chain. With that band’s demise, the duo took the experimentation to headier extremes in Make Joy Cry, but after four years parted ways.
In 1999, they regrouped with a mutual interest in ambient music and formed headphone overtone. The core duo has enlisted a few guests including drummer, Stu Griffett and vocalists Natalia Tovar and Bryna Flowers.
“The girls add an ethereal aesthetic to the music, because they don’t really sing lyrics,” offers Wintermans. “They use their voices more as punctuation and colour, emphasizing the drama in the music, sometimes directing the dynamics. The experience can become quite surreal during a 40-minute set.”
“There really are no influences in terms of other musicians or bands,” he adds. “Of course, we like other music and listen to other bands, but that has no bearing on the music we perform. The music generally all develops from a single starting point: Calvin or I, or Bryna if she’s onstage that night, will begin with a few notes until it eventually takes on a shape. The piece will develop texturally, ebb and flow… sometimes the music becomes a thunderstorm, other times, it’s a dark forest filled with little creatures. I guess you could say the influences come from nature, from moods and atmosphere.”
“I thought that what we’ve been doing is completely original but over time we’ve met many outstanding musicians who’ve been following a similar mindset and it has been both humbling and enlightening,” continues Hagar. “As we’ve toured, we’ve been introduced to several people and groups who share the same aesthetic. However, a lot of them don’t seem to share the joy that I think we do. We try to leave people with a sense of ‘upliftedness’ and purpose. Great art should allow the mind to wander and potentially inspire great art. Our sound recordings are documented ‘moments in time’ of both our live shows and brilliant rehearsals.”
The recorded product has been limited so far including a few EPs and one full–length entitled Summer of Love released in June of 2000. With a new album scheduled for a May release, headphoneovertone seem poised to take their musical explorations to another level.
“We make music because we need to, because it’s an integral aspect of our being,” Wintermans explains. “We don’t do it for attention, or to get on TV or to make money. We’re not concerned with formulas, rules or expectations.”
“There are many musicians like myself or Calvin in this city, who believe in chaos and deconstruction and randomness,” Wintermans concludes, “but they have to work below the radar because it’s not ‘normal’ to play such music in bars — at least, not yet.”
headphoneovertone play Mermaid’s Lounge this Sunday, April 6 with Montreal–based deep space trio Below the Sea and local bit twister Matt Boughner. Cover is TBA.
E-mail Ric at musicnotes@viewmag.com by 5 p.m. the Thursday before publication
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