Four or Five Ways to Play These Chords

A while ago I wrote a post about the Ontario Punk scene at the time that I was most involved in it and going to a lot of shows. Consequently, that was also when I wasn't in an Ontario punk band. Funny how life works that way.

So, yesterday I was wearing my !ATTENTION! hoodie and listening to the whole !ATTENTION! discography, as well as Our Fathers by Wayfarer and This Month's Rent by The Decay and I was filled with the same feeling of nostalgia and and local pride that I was when I was writing the aforementioned post. It just seemed like every band who formed in that time and every band that I saw was just amazing and had this knack for writing songs about exactly where I was from and exactly what I was doing.

No song better fit this mold than "Basements" by Junior Battles from their Self-Titled EP, which is one of my favourite releases ever.



This is the first song I can remember hearing from Junior Battles and is the one that stuck out most when I saw them for the first time, opening for Shook Ones, Make Do and Mend, and We Are the Union. They immediately became one of my favourite bands and this song kind of became the Ontario song. Now, to be sure this song is much more about their group of bands/friends at the time, that was mostly made up of the bands that I linked to above, and I knew that, but still felt that I was part of all of that by going to shows. It really felt like I was part of something and I'm not sure that I really feel that way anymore. Maybe I just need to go to more shows? Who knows?

But this song remains as the signifier of that time. This song is that time in Ontario and I know that I'm not the only one who thinks so.

I saw Junior Battles in April of last year (shameless plug, Beat Noir opened that show) and they played a ton of older deep cut songs, highlighted by "Basements", though they still usually play it. I spent almost all of the set in the embrace of Erik of The Decay and that feeling I was talking abour came back in spades. It's cool that this whole thing; the bands, the songs, the people, the feelings, the experiences; are still there, if they aren't always there. Sometimes you just need the right thing to stir them up.

Basements

There seems to be an inevitable lifecycle as a punk where you go from curious to nervous to invested to jaded to bitter. We all try to avoid this as much as possible, but it is apparently failsafe. If you've been interested music and ever involved in a particular scene, there is always a certain time period or group of bands that evoke the most nostalgia. You start to think "Back then, it was different. It mattered", but in reality everybody thinks that about something. The punk kids older than you thought that about what came before you and the kids younger than you think about right now. Life, of which punk is of course a part, is always changing

It's really easy to look back on a certain time period as the "Golden Age" of a scene simply because you were there to experience it. Maybe just being there is what really matters.

For me, that time was about 2005-2012 or so (or maybe now? I guess?) in Ontario. I went to a lot of shows, though more importantly I went to a lot of shows that featured local bands from Ontario. I have vivid memories of the first times I saw Junior Battles, !Attention!, and The Decay and when I think about that now, it's more or less like there's a rose-coloured lens over the whole thing. I couldn't believe how good the music and bands around me were. I made unforgettable memories in weird and awesome places. It mattered more than anything to me.

With that, I give you this collection of music made by my peers that affected me in a major way. I have strong memories tied to all of these releases and the people who made them. I tried to limit it to one release per band for the sake of it not being overwhelming and tried to go for 7"s or EPs when I could. It can sometimes be a little daunting to jump into a giant collection of music, or at least thats the way I find it, so I tried my best to curb that as much as possible. I hope you like these songs, because they were a big deal for me.

The Essential Ontario 2008-2012.