SNOT PARTY

This mid to late 90's Halifax band was more known for their live show then recordings. They mixed sloppy hardcore and powerviolence with goofy lyrics about pie and wrestling. They released 2 demos and played a few shows around the Maritimes. The band comprised of Morgan Carpenter on vocals, Gerry Hubley on bass, Lance Purcell on drums & Steve Manette on guitar. Morgan and Gerry filled us on the inner workings of this often duplicated, but never imitated band (minus the often duplicated part which no one ever bothered to do.)

When? Who?

Morgan - The band started in mid to late '96 if I remember correctly. Steve and I were coming out of playing in Ritlan, which was more of a pop punk thing.  Steve wanted to move to playing guitar, I wanted to just sing, and we wanted to do something more straight forward and goofy. Lance was a friend of ours from school and we had met Gerry from shows. We maintained the same lineup from start to finish. 

Why? Where?

Morgan - When we started the band we knew we wanted it to just be completely juvenile and funny. We started doing costumes for shows right from the get-go and it eventually became part of (read: all of) the allure. Snot Party was really sloppy and kind of hard to listen to, so the shows were our only redeeming quality. I think the majority of our following were just there to witness what might happen each time. We'd dress up and plan pranks, get antagonistic and playfully violent with the crowd, and generally things would usually pleasantly fall apart at the end. We never got to play outside of Maritime Canada, but had a lot of memorable shows. Ones that top it for me was playing the final Cafe Ole show and the last Chitz show. There were plenty of great ones at Cafe Ole, the Arts Guild in PEI and random ones in Bridgewater. There were plenty of stinkers too, like when we were chased out of Fredericton by rednecks after Gerry got naked on stage and worked on his GG steez, or when we played a wedding in the rural eastern shore. That was awkward. The costume to top all costumes was at our last show when Gerry wore Rollins style shorts and covered his whole body in Vaseline. That was going out on a high note. 

Snot Party @ Cafe Ole

Talk about demos. Begin.

Morgan - We did two official demos, "Please Hammer Don't Hurt Us" and "627 Days". The first was recorded by Brendan Stabenow in several houses and apartments. In lieu of a lyric sheet we put in an obnoxiously long thanks lists. That one was the "cleaner" sounding of the two. The second was recorded by Ian Dares kind of quick and dirty at the Cornwallis Street practice spaces. It sounds like shit, but at the same time, sounds raw and accurate. I still love the bass sound on that one. Ian had apparently taken a bunch to Toronto once and left them at Who's Emma - the fact that the cover just had the 80's SPEED METAL logo on it I guess made it sell well. I assume those people were met with disappointment though. 

We did a couple live recordings in addition to the demos. One of which was our set in Woodlawn at a birthday party show with The Bombscares, and another at a show in Charlottetown PEI. The Charlottetown show was recorded with a small interview style tape recorder that Gerry was toting around at the time doing interviews and such for Incoherent Crap Zine. The Woodlawn show I don't remember if it was recorded the same way or with Derrick Hiltz' 4-track (it was around this time that he was recording a lot of bands for the Incoherent Comp). A few of the Woodlawn tracks became our two contributions to the Incoherent Comp. The PEI one became nothing, but I actually still have the tape, but am afraid to listen to it. Snot Party fucking sucked.

I want to know what 21 pies is about. Tell me. Also, why is the 2nd demo called 627 Days?

Morgan - The 21 Pies thing, I don't know. Gerry wrote that one. I think it would be funniest if it was completely fictional. 627 Days was the exact amount of time we were together from start to finish. We already had our last show planned before we released the second demo. 

Gerry - 21 Pies is about a fat kid from my high school. This guy "Matty" used to always pick on him because he was fat and would say "That boy. Look at that boy. That boy eat 21 pies." So I wrote a song about it. That fat kid was bullied and that is serious.

live in PEI...i think

Why not?

Morgan - We broke up in mid '98 I think. I'd like to say it was because our maturity grew out of that of 8 year olds, but to be honest I think it was because Steve and I didn't get along anymore. Gerry and I were wanting to start something heavier, and started doing Useless Solution shortly before SP was officially done. After that, Steve went on to play bass for By Any Means for a short while and I'm not sure if he did anything musically after that. Lance did Falling Out - the worlds worst straight edge band - with Steve and I also, but I believe that ended before SP did. He joined Led By Regret and saw that to the end, and of course started The Plan the following year and achieved more success with that than the rest of us combined. Gerry did Useless Solution with me, as well as CEO'd Incoherent Crap Zine, and eventually went on to extensively roadie for The Plan, North Of America, etc. I immediately did Useless Solution and started Envision with Ian, Shrine Of American Martyr, joined Existench and others.

reunion show @ TKO. Gerry had this to say about this show "We shouldn't have done that. It was a dumb idea that Ian Dares pressured us into by leveraging it as a benefit for animals or something, which Morgan cared about. By then it was a whole different scene, and only about a quarter of the crowd was in on the joke. The other 75% didn't get it, or care, and rightfully so. It was self-indulgent and dumb."

Final thoughts? I promise to never mention Snot Party again after this.

Morgan - Thinking back, the thought of a bunch of teenagers dressing up in shittty costumes and rolling around is one thing, but doing it in our 20's probably looked ridiculous and lame. The thought of another reunion now with us well into our 30's is just flat out cringe worthy. Snot Party had a time and place, and that was pretty much at Cafe Ole. The Neptune Theatre killed Snot Party.

Gerry - The only thing I think I need to say about snot party is that it is the only time I really, really had fun in a band. I know for my part I had no idea what the fuck I was doing so the concept of having a three hour practice where we wrote 11 songs wasn't foreign to me. It was just stupid and fun and pretty much every band I've started or tried to start in the last ten years was a failing attempt to recapture that. But it shouldn't matter to anyone but us. I think if snot party were together for 1 more year we would have put out something amazing. Unfortunately, we didn't, and everything we put out was 80% shit.

And now here are some videos:





Check out a couple songs (1980/Theme from the 627 Days demo) first here:

If you don't hate that, download MP3's of both demos here:
SNOT PARTY DISCOGRAPHY