Sleeping Dogs from Outa-Space

July 8, 2007... I wrote this piece in April, then learned from Model Citizen ... Zero Discipline that the band doesn't appreciate bloggers posting their songs, so I ditched the fucker. Here it is anyway, featuring songs by other bands I am reminded of when listening to this band. Enjoy!

*****

Hamilton, Ontario. Steel mills, slag heaps. A place where you can walk from donut shop to donut shop in a downpour and not get wet. Resolutely blue collar, and not the sort of place you'd expect to nurture an against-the-grain, avant garage band during the polyester era.

Simply Saucer formed in Hamilton in the early 1970s, a noisy, repetitive, Velvet Underground-influenced jam band, whose songs were leavened with wah-wah freak-outs, space-age sound effects, and comic book lyrics about Eva Braun, masochism and the terrifying future.

The Velvet Underground - I'm Waiting for the Man

Iggy and the Stooges - Raw Power

The band gigged around town and made some lo-fi recordings, but were generally ignored. Eventually, they shook their sci-fi and jamming fixations and wrote a bunch of more concise, poppier songs, two of which, "She's A Dog" b/w "I Can Change My Mind," were released as a single in 1978.

Then they disappeared.

A decade later, a compilation of Simply Saucer's earliest, spaciest recordings was released under the title Cyborgs Revisited. Obscurantists around the world took note. Another decade passed and Sonic Unyon re-released the album with nine extra tracks from the band's later, more varied, but sixties garage influenced period.

The Monkees - (I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone

Syd Barrett - If It's in You

The Replacements - I Will Dare

Cyborgs Revisited is a record of bravery in the face of hostility, or at least of persistence in the face of indifference. It is a record of a time and place that history had forgotten. I'm glad it's in my collection. If you like the songs I've posted here, there might be a place for it in your collection, too.

The Who - Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere

P.S. I saw Simply Saucer perform in April. It was the third-and-a-half gig they'd done since reuniting in September. They weren't horrible, exactly, but they were sloppy, and they played with a lot less energy than I was hoping for. I guess it's harder to sing with conviction about being "cyanide over" Eva Braun at age fifty than it is at age eighteen...

For more about Simply Saucer, check out this and that.

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