From Quick Before It Melts archives:
DOMINIONATEDdeux is the second edition of an ongoing series of music compilations where we ask contemporary Canadian artists to cover their favourite Canadian song pre-2006, the year Quick Before It Melts was launched. A number of collaborators make a return appearance on DOMINIONATEDdeux alongside new contributors including Valery Gore, Evening Hymns, Nick Faye & The Deputies, and The Holy Gasp, whose “outside the tickle trunk” version of a classic Canadian children’s television theme song kicks off the compilation on a unique and unexpected note.
“I didn’t grow up listening to Canadian Music. I grew up rejecting it,” says The Holy Gasp’s Benjamin Hackman, describing a particularly telling week of car rides to school with his mother, where Hackman kept spinning the radio dial, never settling on one station for long. “…by the end of the week, my mother had had enough. She turned off the radio and shouted, ‘You haven’t listened to a full song all week and you’re driving me nuts!’ What could I do? Nothing sounded good.” Though he didn’t realize it at the time, Hackman now sees the turning of the dial as “a sort of music-making in and of itself—a collage of pop song snippets, traffic reports, and de-carbonated 90s alt rock. It was a music born of my rejection of music, and of my desire to find myself reflected and represented in what was being broadcasted.”
It wasn’t until later in life that Hackman found his musical reflection in punk rock, free jazz, and surprisingly for him, children’s music, where he says he “…rediscovered the pleasures I felt as a young person hearing music for the first time. I listened and re-listened to many of the nonsense songs and lullabies of my childhood, and attempted to restart my exploration from the ground up.”
After accepting the invitation to be part of DOMINIONATEDdeux, Hackman instinctively knew that he needed to “…capture that radio-collage, that process of rejection, regression, and rejuvenation.” His band teamed up with Canadian recording veteran, Matt DeMattio (Big Wreck, Danko Jones, Hawksley Workman), and, in Hackman’s words, “Set out to put on as many costumes in a minute and a half as possible. From steel pan to sitar, we reached deep into the Tickle Trunk and came out with Donald Himes’ theme song from Mr. Dressup, a show that taught a generation of young Canadians how to express themselves with discarded crap—to turn old socks into caterpillar puppets, and try on as many costumes as are needed in order to find the character one desires to be in this world.” This spirit of play and exploration, along with deep respect and celebration of Canadian music culture and heritage, is at the heart of DOMINIONATEDdeux’s covers and reflected by this year’s contributions.
- The Holy Gasp “Theme Song from Mr. Dressup” (Donald Himes)
- VIRE “Swing Shift” (Nash The Slash)
- Evening Hymns “Sweet Surrender” (Sarah McLachlan)
- Nick Faye & The Deputies “Left and Leaving” (The Weakerthans)
- blackpaw society “Girl With a Problem” (Northern Pikes)
- CHAMPION LOVER “Not Happy” (Jale)
- WHOOP-Szo “The Animals” (Elevator)
- Jonathan Pearce (of Winchester Warm) “Need” (Eric’s Trip)
- Stonetrotter “Constant Craving” (k.d. lang)
- TV SETS “I Just Wanna Stop” (Gino Vanelli)
- Valery Gore “Deed I Do” (Elyse Weinberg)
- Camp David “Nova Heart” (Spoons)
- Venus Sans Fur “I Think Of Her” (Forgotten Rebels)
- Whale Eye “I Hear You Calling” (Gob)
- Alex Bent + the Emptiness “Heaven In Your Eyes” (Loverboy)
- Las Venus Skyway “Have Not Been The Same” (Slow)
- No Museums “Any Sense of Time” (The Inbreds)
- Crossley Hunter “Tripoli” (Matthew Good Band)
- Hollowphonic “Broken Man” (Sianspheric)
- Matt LeGroulx “Rising of the Sun” (The Rabble)
- KASHKA “You Wouldn’t Like Me” (Tegan and Sara)
