Old-school homecoming
Dave Williams
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Fluid Waffle's '80s get-up
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Ottawa punk rockers of yesteryear hit the stage after 20 years
Since the earliest days of the genre, Ottawa's punk rock community has had its share of incredible bands. Local legends Porcelain Forehead led the first charge of capital city punk rockers in the politically charged early 1980s, playing alongside such local acts as Last Prayer, Civil Terror, Raw Sewage, and the Red Squares, helping create a passionately DIY community whose spectre haunts the scene to this day. Ottawa punk's next wave, a more eclectic yet equally proactive group of bands, including The Trapt, Fluid Waffle, Flag Of Truce, Honest Injun and others, laid the foundation for the broad spectrum of punk and post-punk groups that would inhabit Ottawa's underground music scene throughout the 1990s and up until the present day.
While some of these groups were immortalized on hard-to-find singles and LPs, hearing most of these punk rock predecessors, let alone seeing them, is now an impossibility. That is, until recently.
"Les from The Trapt called me about a year ago and said that his 40th birthday was coming up and he wanted to do a reunion show with The Trapt, Honest Injun, Fluid Waffle and Flag Of Truce," recalls Tom Stewart, founding member of Fluid Waffle and seminal Ottawa group Furnaceface.
Fluid Waffle, which featured Stewart along with drummer Dave Dudley and guitarists Steve D'Annunzio and Pat Banister, routinely shared the stage with the aforementioned bands and were more than happy to take up the Trapt bassist's offer.
"It's been so fun and surprisingly easy," remarks
Stewart. "It definitely doesn't seem like it's been 20 years."While Fluid Waffle were indeed a part of Ottawa's alternative underground - simply due to their power-pop-by-way-of-British-Invasion sound not fitting into the popular music community - they're the first to admit that they were never a punk band. The Trapt and Flag Of Truce, on the other hand, proudly bore the influence of such second-wave U.K. punk bands as Stiff Little Fingers and Angelic Upstarts while incorporating the 2-tone ska sounds of groups like The Specials.
All three bands - unfortunately Honest Injun won't be appearing - will be hitting the stage November 30 for the first time in two decades. For those who were there the first time around, this is likely your last chance to see the bands that shaped a community and eventually led to the creation of Furnaceface, Illegal Jazz Poets, godspeed you! black emperor and many others. For those who weren't there (or weren't yet born), here's your chance to experience a piece of the scene upon which your current community was built. So show up, buy the Trapt CD, say thanks and have fun. This won't likely happen again.
The Trapt
w/ Fluid Waffle & Flag Of Truce
At Babylon, Nov. 30
Honest Injun pictures I took in the 1980s.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ragamuffin1984/sets/72157602217460111/
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Pam Corey
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