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A Noise Supreme





A short while after Merlin left Spunky Q in 1991, he called to tell me that he was starting a band. He asked if I would be interested in playing guitar. I said yes right away. The original line up was Merlin on vocals, me on guitar, Vilma on bass and Marco on drums. We learned a whole bunch of songs that Merlin had written and we played a few shows around Montreal. At a certain point, there was a lot of downtime. Merlin was away from Montreal, during which time he did a lot of recording. When he came back, he had two demos of drastically different material. One of those demos included two songs that would later appear on his first album called "A Noise Supreme".

Merlin left to record the rest of the songs for the album. When he came back, we put together a new line up which included a DJ, two saxophone players and a new bass player. We did our one and only show with that group at The Peel Pub on Parc.
Merlin and I pressed the first 1000 copies of "A Noise Supreme" ourselves with no concrete plan on what to do with it. I knew a guy who worked at Cargo Records in Montreal so I gave him a copy. He called me the next day to say he loved the CD. Merlin signed to Cargo not long after. Then things really started to take off. We put together a new band with Bruce (Spunky Q, These Hollow Men...) and Snooky (Pain and Pleasure) on drums. We played a show at Canadian Music Week in Toronto which started a huge buzz. We made a video for the song "Pusher" that was in heavy rotation for a while on Muchmusic. We also played at Music West in Vancouver. We then did a short tour opening for No Means No. Our last show of that tour was in Montreal at Les Foufounes Electriques.