Show Business Giants

Let’s Have A Talk With The Dead (Essential Noise)
by Jon Sarre

Due to the fact that Canadians look and talk a lot like Americans, I’ve often been tempted to lump them in with us South-of-the-Border lunkheads. At the same time, something about them, some quality, let’s call it “Canadianness,” reminds me that these people are foreigners. I guess that’s why I’ve never really been able to get into Hockeyland punk bands like DOA, the Subhumans, or SNFU (and that goes double for mainstream rockin’ Canucks like Rush, the Band, or even xenophobic country singer Stompin’ Tom Conners). This Show Business Giants stuff, though, is weird and quirky and sounds like it comes from some other country where they only get music in small snippets every thirty years or so. Is that the way it is in Canada?

Actually the Show Business Giants are a “supergroup” (with former or current members of NoMeansNo, DOA, the Hanson Brothers, Hissanol, and some guy named Sam) and they swerve and veer all over the radio dial landscape. They don’t take this project too seriously, but they still know when to cut out the filler. Pop culture curiosities like Russell Johnson (the Professor on Gilligan’s Island), Nancy Sinatra (they cover her “Sugartown”), Ace Frehley, and Star Trek‘s Mr. Sulu are touched upon, inspected, prodded, laughed at, and forced to share space with schlock, smirking bad taste gags, and strange in-jokes (maybe they make sense to Canadians). While all of this is going on, you’ve got bits which recall ? and the Mysterians, ska-flavored Man or Astroman?, surf guitar, Death of Samantha cocktail mock swagger, Tin Pan Alley novelties, fack prog, and good ole SST/New Alliance punk. Rock ‘n’ Roll, eh!