The Scenics

"When singer-bassist Andy Meyers and singer-guitarist Ken Badger formed the Scenics as Toronto’s first punk band in 1976, Patti Smith’s Horses and Television’s Little Johnny Jewel 45 (suitably honoured here) were all that had surfaced from NYC’s burgeoning scene.

Twelve years ago, this writer enthusiastically reviewed In The Summer’s collection of 1977 studio recordings in these pages. This latest set executed by Meyers includes the Scenics’ earliest compositions, including Jonathan Richman’s fantasy tale, Garth Hudson-inspired Garthuson, O Charlotte, Farm Reports (and Test Patterns) and I’m Sad.

Uncannily, all are charged with that murky NY proto-punk cool, Badger’s scrabbling guitar sometimes presaging Bob Quine in Richard Hell’s yet-to-form Voidoids. Fantastic liner insert too.  4 Stars"    Kris Needs, Record Collector

“Ten tracks recorded in November 1976  in the basement of a student University residence, back when the trio was still called The Scenic Caves. These are the band’s earliest recordings, revealing an energetic attempt at forging their own unique sound, tempered with influences as varied as the New York Dolls, The Band (with ‘Garthuson’ serving as an intriguingly weird tribute), Patti Smith, Duke Ellington, and early progenitors of punk like Pere Ubu, Television, and Modern Lovers. The latter inspired the leadoff track, ‘Jonathan Richman,’ with lyrics reminiscent of ‘Pablo Picasso.’ Badger’s screaming solo is the equal of anything Tom Verlaine was creating at the time, and Meyers’ throbbing bass is astonishing for a nineteen-year-old who had only started playing a year earlier!

‘Tokyo’ is a shambolic crash course in no-holds-barred punk, with a snotty attitude, maniacal drumming from Cusheon, and vicious guitar shredding from Badger. ‘Farm Reports and Test Patterns’ is born of late-night TV binging, jamming like the Velvets during a Chinese fire drill, while the title track oozes Stooges’ snarl. These guys learned well from their mentors and influences without resorting to silly fanboy reproduction.

‘This Day’ allows Badger room for some tasty soloing, and his Verlaine-ish hiccupping, clipped delivery on ‘O Charlotte’ perfectly captures the decadent tale of privileged white kids in Detroit (where he wrote the song in 1972 while playing in a Velvets/Who/Mott covers band!). ‘I’m Sad’ is a coming-of-age tale of youthful angst in the throes of that mysterious thing called love. The set ends with a wild, improvisational ride through Television’s ‘Little Johnny Jewel’ that indeed fulfills a desire to “step out into space not knowing what would happen next.”

I like how they left some of the banter in the final product; it puts us right in that basement room with them, as if we’re being treated to a personal performance by a band still finding their way but ready for prime time. (Their first gig—supporting a poet—was only a month later in their basement room, performed in front of 30 inner-city kids who loved the show!)

The tapes are a little rough around the edges, but that’s exactly what you want from a nascent band’s earliest recordings from nearly 50 years ago. Meyers’ tape transfer and remastering are a big help in appreciating the recordings, which will appeal to fans of the band and anyone interested in hearing a group of young kids getting together to make a joyful noise—and having one hell of a great time doing it."  Jeff Penczak, It’s Psychedelic Baby

"In contrast to London and New York, the thriving Toronto punk scene of the late 70s has seldom been the focus of critical attention. Here’s an interesting sonic document from that time and place, early recordings by garage-roots trio the Scenics.

The group honor their inspirations with songs dedicated to Jonathan Richman and Garth Hudson (The Band). There’s also a cover of Television’s “Little Johnny Jewel”, whose angular guitar dynamics are the most obvious Sonic model for these songs. Lyrically, the album offers slanted perspectives on suburban living, from fast cars to hormonal infatuation and late night television. Not having been recorded in a professional studio, the sound quality may be far from perfect but that enhances the album’s interest as an artifact of a grass-roots musical revolt.

Further worth comes with the inclusion of an extensive illustrated essay by band members Andy Meyers and Ken Badger that nicely contextualizes the music.  3 stars".     Clive Webb, Shindig

“I wish more vintage bands meticulously curated their vaults like The Scenics. Punching in at the absolute dawn of Toronto punk, they wore starting pistol New York proto-punk-to-1975 CBGB punk influences on their sleeve, as per In the Summer; Studio Recordings 1977-1978—the core collection devoted to their back pages. But this is an even earlier document! Recorded  November 1976, this is guitarists/bassists Ken Badger and Andy Meyers plus drummer Mike Cusheon playing seven nascent tunes that haven’t been released in any form, plus three formative others. The influences? One track is called Jonathan Richman; another is a nine-minute detonation of Television’s only release then, 1975’s Little Johnny Jewel single, stretched out into bludgeoning as if they anticipated Marquee Moon! Add in their own intense, weird, sparce ’n’ spiked art-barbs, and this is fascinating. 1977 is coming next.”    Jack Rabid, The Big Takeover Magazine

"First wave late-’70s punk rock included bands whose sound may not be technically punk, but whose approach to their music, and lasting influence, was indeed as punk as fuck. Artists like Patti Smith and Jim Carroll, bands like Television and Talking Heads—all of these found refuge under the punk banner from a recording industry that never really got what they were about, which was simply making rock’n’roll music the way they envisioned it. Hailing from Toronto in the summer of 1976, The Scenics were also one of these bands. Songwriters Andy Meyers and Ken Badger were both enamored with the new direction that rock music was taking up with bands like The Stooges, Roxy Music, Pere Ubu, Modern Lovers, and Velvet Underground. Andy and Ken's crossing paths was the beginning of The Scenics, leading them down their own path of rock’n’roll discovery. 
 The old tape transfers that make up this album were recorded just a few months after the band’s inception.  Standout tracks for me here are “Tokyo,” “New Part in Town,” and “In the Summer.” The oversized booklet details the band’s history from both Meyers and Badger, with some amusing situations told along the way. Fans of the above-mentioned artists should find this of interest. It’s well worth checking out."   Designated Dale , Razorcakes

1976. That mythic year.  …Ahh, yes, what a time. A time for what, you might ask? Why, for revolution, of course, though not from the masses, far too lost and buried in an abiding wave of self-satisfied indifference but, who else, the youth, and only a relatively daring, particularly disaffected handful at that. Yes indeed, dear reader, we’re talking punk with a capital P-U-N-K exclamation point.

It was, in short, a wonderful time to be young and freshly obsessed by music whether as a player or an avid fan, or both…and it’s at that crossroads we meet The Scenics, a scruffy eager and utterly earnest trio from the then-relatively exotic outpost of Toronto, Canada.

Poignantly, pertinently, our story begins the last week of high school in the early summer of that fêted year when the soon-to-graduate guitarist Andy Meyers tacked up a hand-lettered sign that read “Are you tired of being in bands that aren’t doing anything different? Do you want to hear something new?” and, as fate would have it, a 25-year-old bass player named Ken Badger responded and in a flash The Scenics were born and, as per the generative churn of the times, a mere four months later, with one Mike Cusheon behind the kit, they banged out the ten tracks – six by Badger, three from Andy, one by some guy named Tom Verlaine – that now make up this historic recording, a document rife with verve and a nascent, nervy proto-punk mastery. Essentially a live-cut ‘let’s see what we can do’ effort with eight of the nine originals never available in any form before, New Part In Town bristles and punches and pushes itself with vigor and temerity toward the forefront of that moment, that movement, to become as crucial a dispatch as any of those others that we all know by heart.

Blasting right off into the ionosphere with “Jonathan Richman,” a chipped-tooth tribute to the singular Boston troubadour whose work flummoxed and charmed in equal measure…“Farm Reports & Test Patterns,” a sharp choppy treatise on what could be considered punk’s most pressing concern (ie existential boredom)… then the irrepressibly classic-of-its-form title track which is as irreverent as it is essential and as such rips a new hole in the known punk universe.   Equally innovative  are both the next-up “O Charlotte” – groove-heavy, moody, a bit Lou Reedy – and the 5-minute, highly lo-fi “I’m Sad” that pretty much defines that post-adolescent, early adult slog through the existential soup, it’s “and I don’t know why” that follows the title lyric broken up in varying manners like a mantra of an early-life crisis. Then there’s the throw-off nature of “Garthuson”  that in its brief duration embodies every snotty-but-sincere garage band that ever was; the jewel that is “In The Summer” that, tellingly, is the only song here that’ll make the cut when debut full-length Underneath The Door hits the streets in 1980 and then the finale, The Scenics faithfully experimental go at the lengthy (and then-current) Television classic “Little Johnny Jewel,” a lean devotional take swathedl in an earnestness that – rather sweetly – defies whatever measure of punky attitude that has preceded it …

All said, in the quasi-endearingly naif way of these earliest era-adjacent efforts, there’s something almost uncannily prescient about The Scenics in just about their every aspect, from that classic bulletin board birth through their risky take-no-prisoners determination to the fact they recorded this batch of what are in essence live demos without any sense of them being ‘captured for posterity’ (and certainly not prosperity) yet here they – and therefore we – are, and not least the unabashed bashingness of their sound, all of it truly does rather evince an accidental North Star quality that others with similar intentions could have drawn from had they heard it. Best of all, it all leaps out at you from the speakers in that unmistakable way wherein ambition seems subsumed by fun to a degree that exactly matches it being the other way round. In that sense, like so many of their peers be they soon-to-be or contemporaneous, The Scenics were ahead of their time while in the very same instant they were exactly of their time. New Part In Town, an historic document? Yes. Brilliant in its fearlessness and will? Even more yes."   Dave Cantrell, Stereo Embers

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