{"id":1735,"date":"2017-09-12T10:59:06","date_gmt":"2017-09-12T14:59:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/?page_id=1735"},"modified":"2019-11-26T13:24:25","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T18:24:25","slug":"the-last-house-band-martha-and-the-muffins","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/the-last-house-band-martha-and-the-muffins\/","title":{"rendered":"the last house band: Martha and the Muffins"},"content":{"rendered":"

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[This is the final section of the blog post \u201chow the Queen Street West scene began, pt. 2: OCA bands\u201d<\/a>]<\/i><\/p>\n

The two ideal types that I\u2019ve been developing over these two blog posts \u2014 the Thornhill sound and the OCA band \u2014 converged with the biggest effect in Martha and the Muffins. The group began in May 1977 when Oh Those Pants! member David Millar suggested to fellow OCA student Mark Gane that they write some songs. Both were students of Udo Kasemets, so the offer implied a more serious approach than was typical of QSW bands at the time.<\/p>\n

[David Millar] was another Sound Lab monitor, which meant we had access to it; we could use it in off hours. He had been in a bunch of bands with Martha, and one day he said, \u201cHey, do you want to start a band?\u201d Because I used my guitar a lot for ambient stuff, too, like sort of drony things, almost like a prepared piano, putting things in the strings, and rattling it around, all that stuff\u2026 \u00a0As soon as somebody says that, all these things flash through your head. Like, wow that would be kind of scary, because you\u2019d have to get up in front of an audience, but you\u2019re also flashing back to seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. And all of this is kind of built into your whole experience. So I said, \u201cYeah, that would be cool.\u201d I don\u2019t think either of us had any idea. I think he had some songs ready. [Mark Gane]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The next member was Martha Johnson \u2014 not an OCA student, but Millar\u2019s former OTP! bandmate now fresh from the Doncasters with her Ace Tone organ. The others liked its eerie, reedy sound, but it was agreed the Ace Tone would rarely stand alone, given the effects at Millar and Gane\u2019s disposal. Martha brought in bassist Carl Finkle, who was unengaged after the Country Lads broke up. Others filtered in and out of Millar\u2019s apartment that summer, including fellow OCA students Andy Haas (originally from Detroit), Martha’s brother David, her ex-husband John Corbett, and David Clarkson, contributing sounds and process to the unnamed project at a measured pace \u2014 a contrast to the rapid proliferation of QSW bands in that Crash \u2018n\u2019 Burn summer.<\/p>\n

Mark and Dave were perfect, musical experimenters because they had \u2014 and Andy Haas, as well \u2014 a really open attitude towards music. They had actually more experience playing than any of the guys I had played with to that point in Toronto. And so it was fun to get together and see, like, what we were going to put together that\u2019s not just three chords, you know, and 4\/4, something that\u2019s 160 beats per minute or something like that. So we had a lot of fun for a few times, and I liked playing with them. [David Clarkson]<\/p>\n

Again it wasn\u2019t the Muffins at that time; it was quite a while later that it became the Muffins. But it was just a bunch of people getting together trying to see about putting a group together\u2026 We did these sort of speakeasy kind of things, I guess might be the the best way to describe it I guess. We did a few of those things, we opened for other people, stuff like that. [Carl Finkle]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The opportunity to play the Halloween show at the OCA auditorium prompted two decisions for a new drummer (Tim Gane, Mark\u2019s younger brother) and a band name. The latter would be David Clarkson\u2019s final contribution to the group:<\/p>\n

We had been having some beers at the Beverly Tavern, which is only a block away from the school, and it was a kind of hotbed of, you know, OCA punk bands, Toronto punk music at that time\u2026 I think we were probably talking about the importance of having a great name that stood out, one that would distinctively cut across and be a critique of these punk names like the Viletones and the Ugly. So we were trying to think what would be like the complete antithesis of this black leather band name. And I think it just came out of my head\u2026 I think it was extraordinarily useful at the beginning. Because that is the most foolish name I\u2019ve ever heard for a band, you know? You know, who in their right mind would call themselves the Muffins, you know? Because it\u2019s a feminization of a really masculine pose. [David Clarkson]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Clarkson withdrew from the OCA for a year, but the Muffins\u2019 official debut at the OCA Halloween show went well enough to lead to two dates opening for their friends the Dishes at the Shock Theater in December, then four dates at the Bev in the new year. When Millar dropped out, Andy Haas joined full-time.<\/p>\n

I was living with Millar at the time in those rental houses that I was talking about, and the frustrating part was trying to get David to come to the practices at any regular basis on time. And then he didn\u2019t like practicing and didn\u2019t like the formality of it, so eventually he lost interest in becoming a musician or anything. He was more of the \u2014 I know I keep using Eno as a bit of slang, but he was sort of the Eno part of the band. [Carl Finkle]<\/p>\n

Well, Millar quit because he hated playing live. And he started doing our live sound, because he was just too nervous. We were all really nervous, but I think he just went, \u201cOh man, I can\u2019t; this is just too much for me.\u201d So I remember it was on the annual bus trip to New York every maybe March, April. It was on the bus, and we were all on it, and Andy was there\u2026 I have this memory of us having this sort of fairly serious conversation about Millar. We all knew each other, and I said, \u201cDavid doesn\u2019t want to do it anymore. Do you think you might be interested?\u201d I think [Andy] was just learning the sax, basically teaching himself. And he would be in the Annex and have himself up against the wall to hear the reflections, and doing all this crazy stuff. [Mark Gane]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Martha Ladly, another OCA student and Gane\u2019s girlfriend at the time, was added on Wurlitzer organ, cementing the classic Muffins six-piece line-up. Two keyboards, two female vocalists \u2014 two Marthas! \u2014 plus saxophone atop a tight, melodic trio distinguished the band from even the template established by the Dishes. Here was a real OCA band with three enrolled students bringing to bear sound effects, compositional experimentation, and a gender challenge on the traditional rock format. Even their smartly designed flyers reflected their art school training. At the same time, they were fundamentally suburban (in addition to the two seasoned Thornhill musicians, the Ganes and Ladly were from Etobicoke), with a lyrical and visual commentary that highlighted the suburban framework of so much activity in the QSW.<\/p>\n

Downtown wasn\u2019t necessarily family oriented or had young people living there. The phenomenon of repopulating the downtown is due to the artists and the musicians, who all obviously came from elsewhere. They were not downtowners. They were not urban in that respect, so they would be suburban. Suburban within the outskirts, within Toronto \u2014 although Toronto is like very residential very close to the downtown \u2014 but outskirts like Thornhill, Willowdale, a bit closer than Thornhill. But also from outside of Toronto\u2026 So the people that came to Toronto to join the art community came a bit farther, but they came from suburbs as well. So yes, [the new art scene] was a suburban movement that found ironic reference back to their adolescence. You know, their late childhood, adolescence. All these were the signifiers \u2014 you know, the late 1950s, early 1960s were signifiers that new wave picked up on. [Philip Monk]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Elsewhere I\u2019ve written in greater detail<\/a> about the story of the Muffins\u2019 rapid commercial ascent, from a 1978 demo tape sent to Interview<\/i> magazine to a 1980 top ten hit in the UK, Australia, and Canada with \u201cEcho Beach.\u201d Here I focus on the QSW art scene\u2019s embrace of the Muffins. As 1978 rolled on, the Dishes broke up, the Viletones split up, with Steven Leckie keeping the name and sputtering into a rockabilly pose, and the Diodes battled their Canadian major label to get effective promotion. Meanwhile the Muffins were headlining the Beverley, playing 12 shows there that summer alone.<\/p>\n

These occurred in the context of the waning of the Crash \u2018n\u2019 Burn generation of QSW punk bands, a story told in Liz Worth\u2019s oral history Treat Me Like Dirt<\/i>. The local art community would still seek out QSW music for entertainment, inspiration, and socializing, but punk bands had become less its focus. A comparison of two music-heavy issues of General Idea\u2019s FILE Magazine is suggestive. Whereas the Fall 1977 \u201cPunk Till You Puke\u201d issue<\/a> drew photo subjects and participants from the Crash \u2018n\u2019 Burn set, two years later the \u201cSpecial Transgressions\u201d issue<\/a> featured a wider-ranging set of musicians (the Muffins\u2019 lyrics to \u201cInsect Love were the basis for one piece) as well as artistic practices that, from a distance, can be included into Toronto new wave.<\/p>\n

The art scene\u2019s embrace of a new wave aesthetic is prominent in David Buchan\u2019s \u201cvariety show\u201d Fruit Cocktails<\/i><\/a>, a September 1978 event taped for Tele-Performance, a festival of the emerging QSW video art community. Buchan stages lip-sync performances to classic 50s\/60s pop for the camera: e.g., his alter ego Lamonte Del Monte croons \u201cGoing Out of My Head\u201d in a straightjacket, Anya Varda vamps to \u201cMy Heart Belongs To Daddy.\u201d Predictably there are Dishes present: Murray Ball sings a number, while Steven Davey serves as sleazy emcee Red Sublime. The break-out stars of Fruit Cocktails<\/i> were the Clichettes<\/strong><\/span>, whose lip-sync of Leslie Gore\u2019s \u201cYou Don\u2019t Own Me\u201d would later be recognized as a milestone in Toronto art.<\/p>\n