VARIOUS - HERE COMES THE EAST COAST

Back in 2001, long time Halifax scene member Louie Roberts released a CD of local punk bands. This is his story. Download at the end.

Why did I do it? That’s a tough question. There were lots of reasons I suppose. The first proper answer would be to contribute to the local punk/hardcore scene. I wanted to showcase the bands that were active at the time. The idea and inspiration first came to me after a break-up with a girlfriend. I needed something to do to keep myself busy and my mind off girls at the time. There may have been more selfish reasons in there as well.  Ego? Maybe... Wanting to be someone who did stuff and make things happen.... But let’s stick with the official line, I did it for the scene.

I can’t remember exactly how, but Waye Mason running his No Distro at the time got wind of the comp, and got behind it. Things would have been much different if he didn’t come along. He had I think 500 copies manufactured. I got 100, and got rid of most of them at the CD release show at The Pavilion. I set it up so that you got a copy with the price of admission to the show. Waye wasn’t happy with that, as everyone who would actually want a copy got one that night, and that didn’t help local sales. Whoops.

The bands that ended up on it were pretty much the bands in the scene that were most active, that were able to provide a song or two that sounded somewhat decent. There were a couple additions that were favours.  Drunk Again by the Dynamics. Brendan, was always in a band, but never seemed to ever play shows. He helped a lot putting things together for me, digitizing most of the music, so I put them in. The Burdocks song The Chase was another favour. I don’t think anyone ever accused them of being punk or hardcore. I worked with Seth at Mikey’s at the time, and he was pushing to get the Burdocks on the CD. I told him if they wrote and recorded a punk song, I’d include them. I never expected them to actually do it, but they did. In hindsight that band always got shit done, so yeah it shouldn’t have been a surprise at all. They were the only band who wrote an original for the CD, and as far as I know never put that song on any other release either.  Seth ended up helping out with the final design and artwork on the CD as well. I didn’t have the means, talent or creativity to come up with anything. Brendan and I threw something together really quick and it was just awful. I think it had a map of the east coast and a pic of a guy playing bagpipes. So bad. I brought it to Waye who thankfully convinced me how terrible it was, and suggested Seth as someone who could help come up with something. The hardest part of the whole process was coming up with the final art and design, but it turned out really nice and very much in Seth’s art style. It worked. Seth was always awesome and still is.

I haven’t listened to the comp in quite a while. In probably 10 years or more. My favourite songs on the CD are Who by Nothing to Say, and Meet me at the Drive In by The Lewinskys.  Here comes The East Coast never sold a ton of copies, or got amazing reviews, but for me where it does succeed is that it captured the scene at the time, helped my ego, and got me over a breakup.


Track List:
1. By Any Means - All The Good It Holds (2:46)
2. Deep Woods - Gotta Get Out (2:21)
3. Hope - Fuck The Millenium (1:25)
4. Nothing To Say - Who (3:36)
5. Jokes Over - New School Loser (2:47)
6. Last Few Years - Out Of Breath (2:40)
7. Dry Leaf - Mind Your Own Business (3:25)
8. The Dynamics - Drunk Again (1:50)
9. Slump - In Retrospect (2:24)
10. Led By Regret - The Atmosphere Of Bombings On Airplanes (4:03)
11. The Lewinskys - Also Known As (3:24)
12. Falling Short - Highschool (3:10)
13. When All's Been Said - Troubled Youth (2:42)
14. Jokes Over - Jokes Over (2:34)
15. Hope - Victory Or Misery (2:13)
16. Led By Regret - Distraction (6:39)
17. By Any Means - Last Hug Good Bye (4:14)
18. Falling Short - Unite (1:51)
19. Last few Years - Your Need (2:44)
20. The Burdocks - The Chase (2:45)
21. The Lewinskys - Meet Me At The Drive In (2:41)
22. When All's Been Said - All Said And Done (1:51)
23. Dry Leaf - How About The Truth (2:20)
24. Deep Woods - Broken Bones (2:39)

DOWNLOAD IT HERE!!

Other links of varying use:
Discogs Entry
Exclaim Magazine review

LED BY REGRET

In the late 90's the Halifax scene took a bit of turn towards hardcore, venturing off from the long standing punk scene. One of the bands behind that was Led By Regret who started of in January of 1998. The released a demo tape and a CD EP on Sub-Profit Records. There was also a 4-song EP that was recorded but never released. I got in touch with their vocalist Tim Goodaire to get some details, peel back the layers, and finally get to know the real Led By Regret.

Update: Sad news to report...vocalist Tim Goodaire passed away in July 2018 after battling cancer. A tragic loss.

LBR @ TKO, Halifax

When and how did the band start?
Originally it was me, Nick Oxner, Spencer Cantley, and Keith Porter jamming at Nick's place some time in 1998. We were just messing around playing Bold and Youth of Today covers. This wasn't anything too serious and I don't think we even had a name. Then somehow Mackenzie Ogilvie joined - I don't remember if we asked him or he asked us or whatever. He took over bass from Keith, Keith moved to guitar, and Nick was out. This is the lineup that we had for our demo cassette that we recorded with Phil Clark.
The songs that we wrote after we'd released the demo were becoming more complex, which led to us bringing in Lance to play drums. This was the lineup that we had for the rest of our existence.

Tell me about shows you played out of town.
We played a few shows around the Maritimes but didn't venture out any further than that. We played in PEI, NB, and Cape Breton. On our way to our Fredericton, NB show, we had to stop for Keith to pee for the 10th time and found that Lance's car wouldn't start. We had to get the guys who were putting on the show to pick us up and drive us to the show. At the show, people were offering us money to cover Ramones and Misfits songs. Mac cut his finger on his bass and he was bleeding all over the place.
We had another really fun show at Mark Black's place. We played the show and then went swimming with all of our Cape Breton friends. Then Mark's Mom made us delicious pancakes for breakfast.

Led By Regret live @ The Box, Cole Harbour, NS

Why don't you tell the good folks about the recordings that you did?
The demo - Our first demo was recorded by Phil Clark in Keith's basement. I don't remember too much about it. We had enough songs to record a demo so we did it. Mac came up with the design for the cover. It was a picture that he found in an old book that he liked, so he messed around with it a bit and tada. We were more of a straight forward hardcore band back then, but you can still hear elements of our later sound.

S/T CD - It was Mac that spoke with Richard about recording a CD. I think Richard approached Mac and wanted to put out a CD, but I don't really know how that went down. We recorded with Jon Hutt. He was great to work with and it was a pretty stress free experience. I think we got the whole thing done in two sessions, but my memory is fading due to my advanced age. Oh. Jon had me record the vocals in his closet,
which was kind of strange. I was too tall to stand upright so I was kind of hunched over trying to scream into a mic in the dark. It was mixed by J. Lapointe. We got him to listen to the Anomie self-titled record to get an idea of the kind of sound that we wanted. We were all really happy with how it turned out.

Final Recording - The last recording that we did was with Mike Catano in his basement. I remember that we recorded on an analog 8 track. Two of these songs ended up on the "The Street Enters the House" compilation by "Fans of Bad Productions". We were really happy to be on that, along with bands like Countdown to Oblivion who we had played with and were just a great band and all-around cool guys. (Hi Bubby) You can download the whole thing here: http://abridgedpause.com/various-artists-compilations.

When we broke up, there was another recording in the works. We were supposed to be doing a split 7" with Useless Solution. Neither of us recorded though, which is kind of essential to doing a record...

Live @ The Pavilion

Why did it end?

Basically, I think we just kind of burned out on the band. Mac and Lance were playing with The Plan and a lot of their creative energy was going there. The song writing was taking longer and longer, which  was frustrating all of us. One day we all went to jam and we just weren't feeling it. Instead we had an impromptu band meeting and decided to take a break. After being on a break for a little while, Keith had decided that he didn't want to do the band anymore so we just stopped. I was pretty bummed out at the time. I felt that we had a lot more songs to write and a lot more shows to play. Looking back now though, I have nothing but fond memories. For a little while there, we were having tons of fun rocking out and playing with our friends. Every show was fun and we never had any kind of arguments or drama. It was just an awesome experience.

How about throwing out other random memories in point form.

- Playing a show for "Food Not Bombs Hat Girl"'s birthday. This was strange because we didn't really know her. I think she wanted a punk show for her birthday so her parents let her have one. 

- Playing Ian Hart's basement. This was pretty early on. I think this was the show where we covered "Positive Dental Outlook" by Crucial Youth. One of only two covers that we ever played.

- Keith handing out oranges with motivational quotes on them at one of our shows. He was always doing positive stuff like that.

- The show at the Khyber where an underage Nathan and Morgan snuck in and hid behind our amps so they could see the show. That show was awesome and tons of people were there. We played a second show there later and less than five people showed up. We treated it like a band practice and asked people what they wanted us to play. 

- Covering "Number of the Beast", even though we had it cut short. Bad Luck 13 were on next and we were out of time.

Bonus LBR interview from 1999 HERE! Courtesy of Timmy X

And for the first time...video of LBR's last show at The Pavilion:

And now here is the LBR complete discography in MP3 format for download featuring:

Demo tape 1998

Self Titled CD 2000

Un-released Recording 200?

LBR DOWNLOAD HERE!!!

Or listen here:

or check out the track Distraction off the s/t EP. (Fun fact: Winsdor, ON band Searching For Chin sometimes covered this song!)