I went through a bit of a Ceremony trip this week. Since the band now has seven records out, spanning 20 years, the band's place in punk subculture, and really in millennial culture as a whole, feels clearer to me. My friends wearing only black and white, HOAX and Iron Lung shirts, and Vans authentics with no socks felt normal at the time, but I can now recognize that it was indicative of the specific hardcore subculture that manifested in Southern Ontario from like 2006-2016. Ceremony was a huge part of that subculture and an omnipresent band, but TBH it took me a while to come around, and I think that my relationship with the band is different than the norm, or at least the norm as I observed it in the scene I was a part of. There's probably something to that about discovering music pre-algorithm, downloading records on your own, and having more autonomy during the iPod age.
In any case, I felt unable to write a longer discursive post about Ceremony, so here are thoughts on them, organized by their releases.
Violence Violence
In the early days of blogging on here, a bunch of friends posted an early meme that was a picture of Ceremony singer Ross Farrar with two bottles of Sprite photoshopped over his hands and the caption "MY HANDS ARE MADE OF SPRITE." I didn't know that was a Ceremony reference at the time, but I knew there was something bigger going on in hardcore that I wasn't hip to yet because I was listening to Bane and Grave Maker. In hindsight, Ceremony was bigger and more popular than both those bands, but I felt like a poseur at the time.
Later, when I was living in Kitchener and playing in Beat Noir, most of the scene there was in power violence and playing in sloppy noise/hardcore bands. The impression I got was that they all held Ceremony's first record up as a classic of P/V, but lamented the direction they took after (the big homie James once posted a Facebook status that read "Man, Ceremony really fell off after Violence Violence), which is a funny point of view to think about now.
Still Nothing Moves You
When I finally got around to listening to Ceremony in like 2010, Still Nothing Moves You was the record that served as my introduction to the band, but I couldn't tell you why. I think that some haters were in my ear telling me that despite Rohnert Park catapulting the band forward in popularity, it was a dumb record, and the harder SNMY was the place to start. For a time, I said this was my favourite record by the band, which I guess had some benefit as a deep-cut pick that most people don't care about. I have a specific memory of listening to the opening bass riff of "Dead Moon California" in my bedroom in the Dublin House in Guelph, and though there isn't much more to the memory than that, I think that moments of art imprinting in the way you remember your life are worth something. Time, place, and sounds.
Rohnert Park
As much as the release of Rohnert Park was a 'moment' in hardcore punk, it bizarrely felt like my friends didn't talk about it that much. Sometimes you are in the eye of the storm, and you don't feel everything rushing around you. Or maybe I was on the outside. Still, while hanging out with Tanner, my friend who figures the most into my relationship with Ceremony, I got to his house, and he enthusiastically said "Man, listening to Rohnert Park!" About four years later, everyone started admitting that "Sick" was the band's defining song.
Zoo
The album I've listened to the least and that I think about the least, but I can give you another Tanner anecdote and say that he said it sounded like Nirvana after it came out.
The L-Shaped Man
Probably my favourite Ceremony album, as I listened to it a lot during a summer that I spent by myself in Guelph in 2015. That was the only time I've lived alone and The L-Shaped Man is one of the records I associate with that experience. On a weekend in the city, I went to go see Ceremony with Becks at the Garrison. Pity Sex opened, who we were most excited to see, and it was the only time I got to see them. Tony Molina was supposed to open, before I became obsessed with his music, but couldn't make it over the border. Becks had just moved to Toronto after finishing their undergrad and we took the Dundas streetcar and then walked back to their Kensington apartment through downtown. That was nice.
Though I was a confused person at that time, when I listen to this record now, and think about that phase of my life, everything makes a lot more sense. Kind of like how Ceremony makes a lot more sense.
In the Spirit World Now
Duff hated Ceremony for a long time because they were a band that everyone else liked. When The L-Shaped Man came out and people derided it as their worst album yet, he said that while everyone else wished that band would go back to the Rohnert Park sound, he actually wished they would lean more into post-punk. They did and, I believe, he then said that this was the first album of theirs that he liked.
Tell Me Your Dream
Really wish I had something incisive to say about the new record, but I've listened to it a few times and it didn't make a huge impression on me . Not that I think it's bad or that I have a hot take about where it sits in relation to their other records, but I just don't know. It did spur me to write this whole thing out, so perhaps there is something to this record in terms of the band reflecting on their career.
I'll end by saying that I really like the new Cold Gawd EP, Glory2 and that this is one of my favourite songs of the year.
