Included at the end is a link to the original interview file with images.
RG= Ranbir Gundu
DC= David Croft
GW= Graham Wilson
DGAW: I’ve had some trouble finding out proper dates. How and when exactly did the band form?
DC: The first incarnation of the band started in 1997 featuring Ranbir Gundu on Guitar, Jason Doell on Bass and
Andrew Hunter on Drums
RG: I had met Andy through a mutual friend, and he’d asked me to sing on a track of his, after which we spoke on the phone about starting a band...I said I had some tracks, and we’d need a bass player, he in turn said he knew someone (Jason), and we got together at J’s house to make noise...which then continued for years.
Who would you say were your biggest influences?
DC: Over the year the influences got broader and broader both between members and for the members themselves. I think it all started with The Cure and The Chameleons (UK) (“Script Of The Bridge” specifically), Eno, some U2, which then moved to The Pixies, Slint and Mogwai--then to the Sonics, Kinks and all that garage rock and 60’s Funk/Soul/Afro beat,
The Wedding Present and then it moved into almost every genre imagined. But those are the ones that are heard most in the albums.
RG; Davi’s spot on here, but I would also add The Fall, The Smiths, New World Records (downtown Brampton’s now
defunct-indie lp/cassette store which proved invaluable to me in acquiring and hearing hard-to-find and obscure music), old MuchMusic Spotlights on Nirvana, the look of The Residents, The VU CDS from BMG I stole, the 1st Stooges record...then Napster, and everything pretty much blew wide apart after that.
GW: I think that the post rock bands Godspeed, You Black Emperor!, Mogwai and Do Say Make Think were also important early on. They demonstrated a bunch of non-traditional ways that songs could be structured that we then applied to our early more ambient work, and continued to use as we went on. As we became more proficient and started adding more styles, we felt no need to structure songs as typical funk, garage rock or indie pop tunes. The New Designers, in particular, is full of tracks that are full of alt/indie pop sounds and hooks within post rock structures.
On a personal note, DJ Shadow’s Entroducing was an enormous influence on me when joining the VDS. As interesting and hypnotic as it is, it’s also musical, catchy and has some truly stirring / epic moments. I really wanted to be a part of a group that could produce similar feelings to the ones I had listing to that album.
You guys were known for your energetic and theatrical performances on stage.
How and why did you incorporate those elements?
DC: Who really wants to just watch a bunch of guys/girls standing there with their instruments looking at their shoes? What I wanna see when I see a band is them opening themselves up, letting down their guard and letting it all hang out. Giving everything they‘ve got and dancing like they’ve never danced before…but really, the thing that gave us our energy was going into the music and letting the music move us.
RG: I imagine, that as young men we didn’t have a lot of opportunity for public expression (most of our family rarely showed up to check us out aside from a handful of moments I recall), so it meant a lot to have an audience in front of us to let loose/act out in front of. Coming from a comic book, imagination fuelled, high-school drama infected narcissism, it was a treat to create fantasies in our minds, then do our best to project these live. Being Star Trek fans always gave us something to enjoy/laugh about and do before/after shows (on VHS, as we straddled the cassette to CD gap 1st hand). We were very nervous/self-conscious, or at least I know I was, And I was very uncomfortable stepping out in front of people to express my voice, so the masks were also as much a crutch as they were liberating freedom. In the end, we all intrinsically understood that in order to let it flow, we had to get the hell out of the way, which is why so many shows became manic. I sincerely think we were channeling a lot of spirit and consciously were willing to surrender over to that. Shows lasted (to me) a few seconds, and I hardly ever recalled what occurred.
The masks... please explain the masks?
DC: There was a quote we found on a bandana once that really summed up our feeling at the time. The shitty thing about the masks was that they were sweaty and we could barely see, but they gave us the balls to cross lines that we weren’t comfortable crossing as just ourselves. They were pivotal in letting our spirits have a little more freedom.
RG: I’ve touched on this already, but I believe that bandana was bought/stolen from the 410 & 7 Value Village when they were new, and I always imagined it came out of Quebec -- the product of a rebellious movement/heart
GW: Yeah, we could really let loose under those things. I liked the sinister edge that the masks brought to the visual of the band. I think they made the whole presentation a little more surreal for the audience, and definitely weirder for the band. On a good night the masks blurred the lights, audience and venue into a swirl of heat, sound and commotion that took us to near out-of-body experience. On a bad night they could blind us to the point of barely being able to play!
Your obsession with Canadian history and Canadiana
DC: It’s who we are, where we come from. Back then we believed that after all the superficialities that everyone is getting sick of nowadays; people would turn to nationalism/memories of a country/time wherein we hadn’t lost the plot. We were making music for this future eventuality, delving into Canadian roots, digging up the real gems that your everyday Canadian might not know about…the famous Trudeau “Just Watch Me” quote, the greatest world Expo (67) that ever happened in Montreal, and the architecture of Canada itself. This was to show us/others that we were a greatly creative people, have always been so, and could remain so tomorrow.
RG: I’d been to the UK a few times and was stunned at how much The Smiths/Kinks/etc. lyrics, settings, names and themes from music had formed my relation to the country, and wanted to do the same on our end - this for ourselves, and anyone else picking up our music. My parents were very emphatic about their profound respect/awe towards people like Terry Fox and Pierre Trudeau, and i recall hearing their tales with wonder & imagination
GW: We had a real gang mentality within the band and were always looking for things to strengthen our bond and to set us apart from everybody else. Similar to embracing geek culture long before its current popularity with our nods to sci-fi and comics, digging into cool things from Canada’s past and embracing our Canadianess was a way to do that. Also, we were coming into form creatively right after 911 and the beginning of the Bush area. I don’t remember ever really discussing it, but I feel like we wanted to stand apart from the perceived conservatism, paranoia and warmongering that was prevalent in The US and Britain. We were a marauding bunch of weirdos looking to blow people’s minds, and we wanted the world to know we were doing it from Canada.
¡Die Dief Die!
So many things to talk about for this track. The lyrics, which are a big fuck you to the gullet of former Prime Minister Diefenbaker for killing the Avro Aero,
The 70s Italian soundtrack that inspired the synth tones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHr1PR8ti4&index=1&list=PLCXRCQ2EhUneitAfXZMLHi1eID6UMm6Uw
and the feeling in the studio when Ranbir played that track for us. Not to mention the amazing feeling when we all played that track - the tightness, the groove the oneness as the synth lead builds in that song…and of course, the idea for the video. Which, from what I remember, was done in the style of Monty Python’s paper cut outs. I can’t remember the whole thing but it ended we me dragging Dief up a volcano by his saggy gullet, propping him up on the edge and on that last ‘DIE DIEF DIE!!!‘ scream, I give him a boot kick over the edge…watching him fall, and as his body/clothes start to spark you hear those firecrackers start going off.
RG: :) Yeah, just as Davi says! I would also add, that I enjoyed being able to get Zardoz samples onto the instrumental break in that track, which is something we did more often earlier on. Great time/track/recording/etc.
GW: Probably my favourite VDS song. This would be a great example of us taking a punk/garage track that would typically be a short verse/chorus/verse rocker that we extend and structure as a three movement post rock / prog piece. I remember it being pretty easy to put together initially, and really fun to goof around with in the studio. I love its heaviness, trippyness and goofiness. “Get me an Iroquois Engine!” is so funny when you know Gundu’s sense of humour. The cavernous reverb, which might be a little much on some of the other tracks, is perfect on Dief. The wacky Zardoz sample that leads into the synth solo is such a silly non-sequitur that somehow fits perfectly. It’s an angry, violent, hard driving track that’s also atmospheric and fun. Side note: the backward guitar at the beginning is the riff from “Daft Punk is Playing at My House” reversed.
The Brampton and Mississauga music scene in the early days (90s to early 00s)
DC: Best scene of its time, So many amazing bands, so many amazing friends. It’s a shame it had to end over someone trashing bathrooms. We do have to thank all the promoters that made this scene possible
Adam Nimmo
Shawna Ashenhurst
Ryan Tobin
Farrell Rafferty
Tim Ford
and
Ramiro Chamorro
for doing sound at so many of these shows, and so many more promoters too many to name.
RG: The daycare school I always wanted. Very open, very accepting & supportive. The strength being in the uniqueness of all involved. Everyone brought their creativity, and it was not just in the music, but the shirts, the art, the dress, the books, the locations, the promotion, the headspaces and hearts, etc. Frankly, only as time moves on do I realize how blessed and spoilt we were. We did all of southern Ontario a number of times, and nothing touched these 2 cities’ scenes, or came even close. We had a large number of loving people that were ready to indulge and share w. one another and we never took it for granted, and nearly always gave our everything in exchange.
GW: It was the perfect place for us. Along with the similar scenes in Kitchener and Brantford (The Ford Plant), the audiences were young and excited about what we were doing. We had some good nights with older bar crowds, but the all ages nights with the people in Mississauga and Brampton were consistently great and the people we met were amazing.
Brampton. The city in general, What do you like about your hometown?
DC: The Brampton I knew when I was a kid and during the Vulcan era was great, safe and full of brilliant music.
RG: I don’t recognize it now, but it was a great place to grow up, something right out of all those 80s coming-of-age films around us at the time. Used to be able to bike across the whole city once upon a time, delivering papers, hitting up comic and music stores, gathering w. mates in empty fields or by ravine’s and digging the neighbourhoods to be explored - it really did have an idyllic charm believe it or not.
GW: People like to exaggerate the incidences of crime and decay in Brampton now because it’s become such a large ethic enclave and it doesn’t look like it used to when it was a much whiter place. I can tell you from my experience in my current job, that the people living in Brampton are doing well, the houses are well maintained and that property values have never been higher.
How do you feel about your cult status in the music scene across the GTA?
RG: We’d be honoured if this was/is the case, but it’s news to me.
GW: It’s hard to tell. I don’t really move in musical circles these days and from what I can tell, there doesn’t seem to be an organized group of people still discussing our band online. I’m sure there are people with fond memories of our shows and folks who may still listen to our music. It’s fun to imagine people out there trading old CDs or memorabilia, but I have no idea if they’re out there. There is the odd article written or posted on our social media, so it’s nice to know that people still think of us. And, I did see a melodic post rock band in Brampton called The New Design, so maybeeeeee……… Anyway, I’m really proud our music and I really appreciate anyone who still enjoys it or who has come to find it after the fact.
French as well as English lyrics?
DC: English, French, Punjabi, Japanese; Canada is Multicultural, why should we be any different with our music?
RG: “Breakin’ these borders will build new orders’ - Tjinder Singh
As the late 90s rolled on and I was well into music clubs and house parties, it always stunned me when a track would come on and the lyrics were in Punjabi/Hindi. I’d get excited as I knew I was one of only a few people that was ‘getting’ it at that moment, and would look around wildly to see if anyone else did as well. I wanted to share that experience with any of our listeners as well. Also, there are some things that don’t always express as well in English, which isn’t always the most melodic of languages. The multi-language facet also played a part in my own waking to a sense of equality in cultural identity/values and self-worth.
Hospitals vs Dan Burke?
DC: A Misdocumented event. What actually happened… we were doing the last Tuesday night of our month long residency at the Silver Dollar, and I believe we went on at 11pm and had an hour. We played our set and ripped into our last song of the night (I Wanna Be Your Dog - The Stooges), and about a minute into the song we hear all this noise and we look over and The Hospitals have set up on the floor and started their set. According to one of the Hospitals’ members, they thought we had finished and the DJ was just playing some cover of “Dog”, when Dan Burke ran over ‘n took The Hospitals‘ mic saying something to the effect of ‘They’re not finished yet! Just wait and you can have the stage’. The Drummer thought he was fucking with their set and it turned into a Fight. The guitar player was standing on his amp still playing some chaotic noise. Then I think what happened was that Dan got shoved and he knocked the guitar player’s headstock who in turn took his guitar and smashed it on Dan’s head, and then the Fist Fight continued. Graham swooped in like Batman and pulled Dan out of there to break it all up.
GW: I pulled the Hospitals guy off of Dan and I think Jason helped Dan to the back. I went to check on them in the bathroom and it was a bit of a crazy scene! What a nightmarish end to a rough month of shows! I really appreciated what Dan was trying to do for us, but it was tough going into the city four Tuesdays in a row. We didn’t take longer than our allotted time, but we took most of it, and the set list we chose wasn’t going to win over the tired cranky hipsters who weren’t interested long instrumentals like ‘panicked & frenzied; primal’. We were bombing, so it was probably really exciting and “punk” to the people there to see the Hospitals when we got cut off (unintentionally or otherwise). It was a good lesson for us though. Our sets really tightened up after that and were significantly shorter and better suited to each situation. “Leave ‘em wanting more” as they say.
If the members of the band were animals, what animals would they be?
DC: Spirit animals? Kung Fu animals? well Ranbir and myself started a band called Snake & Crane so that may give you sense of what the two of us are.
Ranbir’s vocal style and charismatic stage presence?
RG: I was never much of a singer, and although we could get away with ‘masking’ our musical chops in many ways, this was one that was harder to veil. I have a very high/light voice, so it was a matter of learning to use that as well as I could, though I knew little. What I did excel at, was rockin’ a mic, and feeling very comfortable holding audience/court. I could not help but bring the MC/iconoclast/stand-up/spoken word vibe to the shows, which was always a gamble. Believe me, it went either way most nights, but when we were in our groove, we could get the collective consciousness of the room to plug-in w. us. I was always fond of the cults of personality that existed in music culture, and was a big fan of many of the front folk and the persona they’d conjure for audiences. (Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Ian Brown, John Lydon, Tjinder Singh, etc.)
Your sound is hard to classify... extremely hard in fact. You coined the term “Pastiche Pop” in order to describe the genre defying rule shattering soundscapes you were able to craft. If possible, could you please explain your sound?
DC: Always the hardest question we were ever posed. Before the “Pastiche Pop” we had this long definition 60’s Garage/Funk/Soul/Shoegaze/Canadian Fairy tale. I think our name (the dub part) also threw people/promoters for a loop. We’d sometimes get thrown on to hip hop shows at say NXNE. But those shows always seemed to work out. Maybe the masks and the roller coaster of genres we played helped. That being said, I think from the beginning to the end and even though we never actually played dub music, the name always made perfect sense. Taking the logical Vulcan side of music making, the perfected changes and perfected riffs and then contrasting that with very emotional music… the dub side of music.
GW: Yeah.. basically adding the various types of music that spoke to us into the free flowing, post rock / ambient song structures of our early music.
What is 5 Deadly Records?
DC: An extended umbrella for the family members of The Vulcans (past & present),for those who want to dig deeper into what the Vulcan members have done/ are going to do. Kinda like a Vulcan Family Tree.
Your work in documenting the band online. the Bandcamp links and Youtube videos of performances. Explain to me why you have taken up the work of making your work accessible to future generations of fans and musicians?
DC: We are a part of Canadian history - we’re even in the National Canadian archives, and really we’re not like everybody else ;) I’m pretty much the one who spearheads all the online stuff. I think for all of us though, the Vulcans is our child, so we post all the baby pictures, book reports and finger paintings. I guess the web is our refrigerator. Also as connoisseurs and collectors of music, we love the search for more, diving deeper into the art of the whole and the art of each member. Give people a story -- give people a journey.
The Halloween show at the Masonic Lodge when you dressed as mummies?
DC: Very fun show! Two weeks before, I was in a backyard watching our friends The Quadriplegic Twelve play our song “Panicked & Frenzied; Primal”, and knew we had a Halloween show coming up. So I got the idea to dress them up as us have them come out to our intro music and start playing Panicked and then we’d come out half way through in mummie gear
(Costco sized toilet paper) and the we stripped them of their masks and instruments and torn it up starting with the Monster Mash. I got tripped on the way up to the stage area because the audience thought there were some stupid kids trying to mess with the Vulcan’s show. So I guess our plan worked.
DC: An extended umbrella for the family members of The Vulcans (past & present), for those who want to dig deeper into what the Vulcan members have done/ are going to do. Kinda like a Vulcan Family Tree.
Jamie Banks?
DC: Met him at a House party we played (Theo Kapodistrias’ House - singer of Dance Electic) We hit it off immediately with him. When Matt Del Buono left the band Jamie was on the top of our list. To me, Jamie is the younger soul brother I never had. Graham, him and I shared a house for a year. Jamming constantly, the two of us got so tight as friends and as musicians there was even a telepathy created. As he will attest, one of the greatest years of our lives. Love that man!
GW: A tremendous gentleman, and incredibly talented.
What other projects and side projects were the members of the band connected to during their time in the band? Tell us about the VDS family tree?
DC: Early on Andrew Hunter and myself were the rhythm section for a Toronto band called Hollowphonic but there are no recordings out there with us on it. Andrew Hunter also had a band called Paddington which featured Jason Doell on guitar at one point, Matt Del Buono on bass at one point and myself on drums at first and then later, guitar. When Paddington split, some members started a band called Bedtime Sleepyhead, where Graham added some rhythm guitars and I was on drums for a brief stint. After The Vulcans broke up I tried to join Dance Electric as their drummer, but I felt I could not bring the charm that their old drummer Tori Tizzard (now of WTCHS) brought, so I decided not to join. Instead I joined a band called the Wires where I met Brent O’Toole and eventually loured him into the current Snake & Crane project. When Snake & Crane went on hiatus, Brent and I started Lavant.
What are the current projects of the band members?
DC:
Ranbir and myself, with a brilliant musician by the name of
Brent O’Toole (Animatist - 5 Deadly Records) work together as
Snake & Crane. Brent and myself have a project called
Lavant as well. (5 Deadly Records).
Jason Doell is composer/teacher downtown these days.
Brilliant stuff.
jasondoell.com
Your lyrics tend to be very literate. Please explain your dense lyrics.
RG: Thank-you for saying so! It’s great for that aspect to be noticed, because there was definitely a conscious effort to not sing about the usual tropes/narratives, but also to value the power of the word and use it respectfully. That said - our sense of humour/theatre and dark (sensitive) hearts also informed much of the work, not to mention that often we wanted to ‘save/transform’ the world (our naiveté had us idealistic) to better achieve what we thought was our potential as a people.
I chuckle at our conceit colliding with the proselytizing yen now, but at the time it was quite earnest. Everything was up for grabs when it came to reflecting life - the absurd and profound were on equal footing, so it was inevitable the lyrics became dense. I’m proud of them. I’ve always wanted to put up the lyrics alongside the videos/tracks. We have online as I think there’s some really witty stuff there of genuine merit, but time, as always, is rarely an ally.
Alpha flight #12 and Canadian representation in American media?
RG: I won’t comment on the 2nd half of your question as it’s out of my scope as a technological recluse, but this track and title directly reflect a couple of things right off - the super creative (comic super heroes) and staunch Canadian pride (Alpha Flight were a Canadian Avengers of sorts, with 1 member taken from each province). As I’ve already said, I spent countless hours reading comics growing up, and one of the striking moments in those formative years was coming across Alpha flight in the X-Men series (Marvel’s flagship at the time), and having the artist John Byrne leave this flagship series to write and draw Alpha Flight’s own title. I loved it for the themes that Byrne had the guts to go for (esp. having given up on the big money and exposure of the X-men) - native issues, homosexuality (the 1st openly gay character in Marvel was Northstar from A.F), Mental health concerns (schizophrenia), physical disabilities (dwarfism & wheel-chair bound characters), and of course, the stunning/shocking death of the ‘main character’ being blown up in front of his wife (!), who eventually becomes the leader of the group (a woman wearing the flag based costume and leading a motley crue of people beset with deep challenges was unspeakably progressive to me at this time) - this shocking death moment occurred in, of course, Alpha Flight #12. The lyrics relate the whole tale of issue #12 in an engaging enough manner, complete w. the numeric countdown to the bomb that blows up Mac Hudson mirrored in the song. All the characters are mentioned, and one could have a lot of fun reading the comic alongside the song as they complement one another splendidly. I smile, that since this garage number was one of our live mainstays, countless people were grooving to A.F, and may have had no idea how indebted the song was to a comic book. :)
What have you guys been up to in the past 9 years?
DC:
Making Music,
Making Movies,
Making Babies…
Life
Why did you break up?
DC: I think at the time we didn’t have anything left to say, the then current way of writing music we were growing tired of. At the Vulcan house there was more improvised jams happening and that was exciting for Jamie and I. A year after breaking up Ranbir and myself got together and just started jamming. And even though Snake & Crane started writing tracks, we based them more off jams at first and then after our first album we’d go play live with basic shells of songs.
Example: here are 3 sections and we’ll segue with these improvised little bits, etc. Doing that really excited us. And playing written tracks statically was starting to get boring to the end result of abandoning the whole writing process. We’d just come in, set up, hit record and play until we felt we should stop. To open up, get out of the way and let the universe unfold through us. Rather than us trying to guide or direct the music, practicing music in the now, letting go, surrendering to the music. The more thinking we’d do the more the music would suck and the less fun we’d have.
Reunion? Maybe?.... the fans want to know.
DC: If a reunion were to happen, it wouldn’t be your box standard reunion where we play “all the hits”. That’s not our style. If any sort of reunion happens it will be all new material. But currently we are remixing “This Nation’s Saving Face”. Due to time and money, we never got that album the way we wanted it to sound. So we are remixing it, adding some overdubs, redoing some parts, trying to get it somewhere closer to our original vision/mix it with the new ideas that are coming to us while we mix it. Can’t say when it will be completed but it is being worked on.
Graham Wilson’s guitar sound?
GW: I always liked Stratocasters and the hot rodded super strats of 80’s heavy metal since I was in my early tweens. That stuck with me through grunge and alternative, particularly through the influence of Billy Corgan, of whom I was a huge fan. So, through the duration of the VDS era I was playing strats and fat strats, mainly for their versatility, durability and classic looks. As time went on I started to appreciate the strat tones from surf rock, garage rock and African music. My early amps were dismal solid-state affairs, with various digital effects racks. Gundu and I gave/had no consideration to classic guitar tone during the recording of the Spock Demos and Marathon of Hope. We were looking for out there soundscapes to suit the feeling of each individual part It wasn’t until we went to record This Nation’s Saving Face with Greg Dawson that things changed. Our music had a lot more traditionally “guitar” elements to it and when Greg heard the harsh digital mess coming out of the rig I was using at the time, I was swiftly plugged into his collection of various tube amps. Afterwards, I decided to up my game and bought the Mesa Boogie Single Rectifier that I recorded the final two albums with. Of course, we continued to experiment with all kinds of guitar pedals and treatments along the way, but the core sound greatly improved.
The other key element of the guitar tone was how well my tone mixed with Gundu’s. You can hear flavors mix really well when you listen to tracks where we’re playing the same rhythm parts together like ‘Confidence, man!’ or ‘Die Dief Die!’.
Weirdest show you ever played?
DC: The Male Strip Joint in Brampton, “The Foxes Den” / Shield & Sword. Rumour has it that Atlas from that 90’s YTV show Catwalk stripped there. There were no strippers that night but the stage was something else; Neon archways, Disco floors and an overall layer of dirt everywhere in the room. We were told someone got it on video tape but when we asked the guy for it he said he had taped over it by accident.
Another show from the early days, when Graham and I were dancers for the Vulcans, we were all in the men’s bathroom at the Irish Centre in Brampton. Some kid walked in on us, and to paint the picture… half of us are half dressed, a couple with masks, One guy in a Michael Jackson Thriller jacket and Skull mask and another in a Lab coat with pocket protector and a giant Fly head on buzzing around the room. The Kid pipes up and asks what we’re guys doing. One of us yells back ‘Smoking Crack!!!!‘, and the kid leaves. Years later that little joke/rumour we started finally came back around. Didn’t bite us in the ass but good to know that, we can start a good rumour and have it last through the ages.
Favourite thing about Canada?
RG: Countless things to mention!-- and make no mistake, as a social worker I see countless things that we need to work on as a community/city/province/nation …but this summer we’ve had an insane spike in overdoses amidst opiate users in Toronto, and the other day I was letting the EMS wheel in a bed through the front door (to help an elder tenant to the hospital), when one of the street kids in the community comes up to the door before EMS enter, and in an earnest way asks me “Is everyone okay?”, and bear in mind - this is a building with 100 people with various challenges in it, and the kid only runs with a handful of folks....so, needless to say, it was so touching. It’s a taxing job on so many levels, but whenever I see that compassion, I’m always grateful for being Canadian. It’s so supportive as a frontline worker to be working hard to keep someone alive/safe, and have the police, EMS and/or fire services show up and have every one of us doing their best to save a life, etc. I always stand back at these moments and have a burst of humanitarian & nationalistic pride.
Beating hearts festival?
DC: Probably our biggest show size wise. For me probably one that I remember most. It was magical playing outside on a huge stage. Ryan Tobin organized the whole festival. He’s actually the current promoter of the Mississauga Symphony these days. He booked a lot of our shows and every single one was a great success. Our friends the Airfields and I think Woodhands opened up that night. More great bands to add to that local list. Actually the leader David Lush played guitar on and off in the Vulcans over the years.
Any current Peel region bands that you find interesting?
DC: I don’t think any of us have been to a local show in the peel region in years. Animatist are doing some amazing music. The Junction is still strong; their new single City Nights is amazing! Escalate! I believe is in the final stages of their new album which we are excited for. I guess they’re more of a Toronto band but they all originally came from Brampton. Bards are a tough force to be reckoned with. They‘ve got some solid rock tracks with powerful vocals from the great Jamie Banks and a pretty cool story/idea behind them (Bank robbers). They remind me of that early Iron Maiden sound, especially in the vocals which sound really frickin tough! And, how can you not love a band with masks? :)
GW: I really only know of bands of people I’m friendly with so: Bards, of course are amazing. Huge Cosmic are very cool and I really enjoyed The Red Boy the last time I saw them. I also saw Olde early last year and the sound waves from the stage moved my clothes like a stiff breeze; they were awesome.
What can we expect from 5 deadly records in the future?
DC: Snake & Crane have a few releases to be finished up. Lavant has another one just waiting to be released, Animatist have just recorded a few songs and are in the mixing stages. The Vulcan Dub Squad - This Nations Saving Face Remixed…and who knows, maybe more stuff from the current roster maybe some from other family members.
Looking back on your time in the band with all the adventures (Both good and bad), what was the best part of being in the band for you?
DC: Being a part of such a diverse creative environment, the amount learning, and the crazy cracked out shit we’d get up to. And of course brothers for life.
RG: Having the chance to grow from a boy to a young man amidst a band of brothers. Priceless and inimitable.
GW: The camaraderie was a big part for me. Though, there was discord, a lot of tense times, and some really painful moments along the way, overall, there’s nothing like being in a gang with a bunch of funny guys who want to push themselves creatively and put on crazy rock shows.
Advice for up and coming bands who want to take an original and unusual method to creating their art?
DC: You have a better chance of being heard. However, gimmicks can be over looked before given a chance, but stick to your guns and be the diamond in the rough.
Final words to the people?
RG: Do it on your own terms - figure out what it is you actually want and why (don’t just buy into the ‘dream/ideal’ if it isn’t yours to begin with), and have fun. Time is slipping away faster than you can process it, and it won’t come again.
Treasure the opportunity/gifts. Oh, and respect your bandmates/partners -they reflect you more than anyone else does/can.
Forgive quickly - you’re family forever.
The original file:
http://www.5deadlyrecords.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/VULCAN-INTERVIEW-FINAL.pdf
https://thevulcands.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/thevulcandubsquad/
