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FALL2016
words ::TomThwaits
Back when the only surfable wave inMeaford, Ontario was the NewWave onslaught, you
had to buy your records at Becker’s convenience or Stedman’s department stores. Or you
could press your own at World Records in Bowmanville. In the summer of 1985, while
most opted for buying Duran Duran, five high school students calling themselves Sons
of Ishmael (SOI) were mailing out their own 7” EP record entitled
Hayseed Hardcore
at a rate of six per day. Three months later the band had sold out of all 550, more
than half of which crossed the pond to Europe. Three dollars or a trade got you what
the seminal San Francisco punk zine
Maximum Rock n' Roll
called “fast, aggressive,
thinkingmaterial which has become known in hardcore circles as ‘theMeaford sound’.”
By the end of the decade, the work of Kenny Campbell (bass), Andrew Brideau
(guitar), Dave Nanderam (drums), Glenn “Ditch Dog" Poirier (guitar) and Tim Freeborn
(vocals) hadmade
Thrasher
zine's Puszone Unofficial Top 100 of the Eighties.
Since its first pressing (which will now run you anywhere from $50 to $130 online)
on SOI’s own Death Enema label,
Hayseed Hardcore
has been reprinted twice: in
'87 to fund a 64-day Canada-U.S. tour, and in 2010 by Hamilton's Schizophrenic
Records in both stock and deluxe editions. This EP, and its opening track “Small
TownMentality,” at once skewers Meaford and puts it on the hardcore map of
NorthAmerica, if not the world.
The band rehearsed only a half-dozen times and performed just once with the
original dual-guitar lineup. Most went their separate ways after graduating
Meaford’s Georgian Bay Secondary School. Tim and Ditch Dog (named for a
quote from the outcast lunatic Poor Tom in
King Lear
) moved to Toronto, kept
the SOI name, picked up newmusicians, and signed deals withAmerican,
German and U.K. labels. On their '87American tour, Kurt Cobain and Krist
Novoselic, then in a band called Bliss, opened for them in Tacoma, WA. They
put out two full-length albums, appeared on numerous comps, andmounted
European tours in '90 and '91. Ditch Dog donned the guitar for his last
showwith SOI, opening for SNFU in '89. Tim and the rest of the band kept
shredding until their last show in ’92.
RE
WIND
Shun the
Monoculture
The story ofHayseedHardcore and homegrown
high school punk bandSons of Ishmael
