There are certain songs that take me back to high school. Anything by the Spice Girls, for example. My dear friend Sandi and I spent a lot of time listening to music. We did a lot of duetting Sarah McLachlan songs (see: Teenage Fagatron) while Sandi plucked her acoustic guitar. As years went on, our musical tastes changed. After the Lilith Fair phase, we went through the requisite Can-Rock phase, which included Our Lady Peace, The Tea Party and Moist. We attended EdgeFest. We rocked out.
In our last couple years of high school Sandi started a band and while I remember our time with The Smashing Pumpkins and Jewel, the overarching musical-memory of our teenage experience will always be her band, a pop-rock quartet who pumped out punk-lite songs about secret crushes and bitchy girls from English class. Ironically, I promise. We spent nights at gigs and weekends at indie rock festivals hosted by rural Ontario hedonist campgrounds. Or something. It was a strange and beautiful time.
Sandi's band evolved and got more intense, less poppy. They ditched their Veruca Salt overtones and got a bit dark, a bit first year college. Eventually the group disbanded; one member joined the Green Party, another got married, and the third (an inexplicably tall, blonde girl) got pregnant. Or her sister got pregnant. Or something. It's all a bit hazy.
Sandi and I moved to Toronto and she soon assembled a new band, The Guest Bedroom. Described as "brain-infecting, angular post-punk pop" (Now Magazine, NNNN) they have definitely carved out a place in the Toronto music scene. I won't gush, because Sandi wouldn't stand for it, so take a listen. If you're in the city, check them out live.
But while I'm walking down memory lane . . . Since preparing for our big move, I've been digging through many boxes, purging as much as I can tear myself away from. Out with old movie stubs, but in with the letters and report cards. I was also happy to stumble upon CD-Rs filled with wonderful (read: hilarious) memories. When Sandi was in college studying music production we recorded a few little songs together. Just for funsies. When we lived together we recorded one last song, a cover of Aimee Mann's "It's Not". It's a terribly low-fi glitchy little thing, but it's nice. Take a listen. Sandi and her impromptu white-girl rapping on the bridge will live in my brain as one of the best things to ever happen.
Download: "It's Not" recorded by us in our living room in 2003
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