{"id":9599,"date":"2014-10-16T01:01:59","date_gmt":"2014-10-16T01:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=9599"},"modified":"2014-10-16T01:01:59","modified_gmt":"2014-10-16T01:01:59","slug":"blunderspublik-an-homage-to-90s-winnipeg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2014\/10\/16\/blunderspublik-an-homage-to-90s-winnipeg\/","title":{"rendered":"Blunderspublik :: An Homage to 90s Winnipeg"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"1024DryMud\"<\/a><\/p>\n

by Victoria King<\/strong><\/p>\n

You probably remember the first local show you ever saw, right? It was probably at the Albert, Ozzy\u2019s, the WECC, maybe even Wellington\u2019s. It was dark and grungy, you were zitty and nervous. But as far as you were concerned, that band onstage were the best thing you\u2019d ever seen.<\/p>\n

Curtis Walker (aka Blunderspublik) remembers his first concert \u2013 it was \u00a0Bulletproof Nothing opening for Sloan when they were touring their first album. The latest release from Blunderspublik, Kittens and Shit<\/i>, pays tribute to several Winnipeg bands from the 90s, taking on a number of different styles to commemorate five local groups: the Bonaduces, Kittens, Shit, Mikimoto, and Hushfeed.<\/p>\n

He explains that the release began like most projects in Winnipeg do \u2013 in the middle of February when it\u2019s too cold to go out. \u201cIt started off with one song . . . I was thinking, \u2018this would be a really fun song to cover.\u2019 Like most albums of mine, it started off with me just playing around at home.\u201d<\/p>\n

The seed was planted, Curtis says, and in the weeks to come whenever he would come across an old song from a Winnipeg band, he\u2019d think, \u2018Oh, this would be a fun song to cover.\u2019 The problem was in actually choosing which tunes to cover, which became a matter of whether he could figure out how to play them.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t just google Red Fisher and find the tabs for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

What innocently began as a one song project eventually turned into a year and a half long recording, producing, and mastering process. Kittens and Shit <\/i>is the result. \u201cUsually it\u2019s about four years between records for me, so this is a new record,\u201d Curtis laughs.<\/p>\n

Between 1990 and 1999, Curtis was aged 12 to 22, which he describes as \u201cprimetime\u201d for discovering music and getting into music. \u201cIt seemed like there was a lot of all-ages shows happening in the 90s, which seemed to me like well established bands . . . It was kind of what we did on Fridays and Saturdays. And they were always dirt cheap too!\u201d The intensity of Kittens shows has stuck with Curtis. \u201cI have vivid memories of seeing Kittens live, especially at the West End. There was mosh-pits and pushing and shoving, a lot of intense energy at those shows.\u201d<\/p>\n

As well as hosting plenty of all-ages shows, the 90s were a time Curtis remembers for its prolific tape production. He remembers bands like Eric\u2019s Trip and Pavement, bands that would record on a four-track in their living room and would release on big labels like Sub Pop. \u201cI remember sitting in my bedroom and flipping the tapes over and over again, trying to figure out some of them at the guitar at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which is what got him into experimenting on his own tapes. Not only did those cult status groups get him excited about music \u2013 so did local shows. \u201cI remember going to the battle of the bands shows that would be promoted at my high school \u2026 When I was a teenager, I got obsessed with music like no other time in my life. When you\u2019re young, music is textual and visceral, and I didn\u2019t have much other things to spend money on,\u201d he laughs, \u201cso I\u2019d go to shows and buy any t-shirt that was there and every single tape, buy a 10\u201d even if my dad\u2019s record player didn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kittens and Shit<\/i> isn\u2019t the type of Blunderspublik release you\u2019re probably used to. On the whole, the album is way more poppy than the regular Blunderspublik, and incorporates traditional songwriting elements in the vocals, pre-posed structure and sound pallet. \u201cI never go into a release knowing a pallet of sounds I\u2019m going to use \u2013 that usually just happens as I go along.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first responses I got were sending it to the bands themselves, which was really nerve-wracking. I wanted to get everybody\u2019s OK.\u201d But as Curtis rationalizes, \u201cIt\u2019s Winnipeg. Eventually you become friends with your heroes.\u201d He got the OK from most of the bands (the others he simply couldn\u2019t track down) and says those reactions were really positive and they were flattered \u2013 Brendan from Mikimoto plays his bass part on \u201cDrunk Monks\u201d as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just started out because it was a fun project,\u201d says Curtis. What\u2019s come out of the EP is a taste of those local bands who have long since laid down their instruments and moved onto other projects. \u201cI\u2019ve lived in a few different places and I think that [the Winnipeg music scene] is actually different and interesting. Despite how self-deprecating it is, I think we actually have a pretty good thing going. There\u2019s the clich\u00e9 of the isolation, I don\u2019t know if there\u2019s much to that. I think that there\u2019s more validity in the idea that because all of the pockets of genres are small, there has to be cross-pollination between bands . . . I also think that the Winnipeg scene is good because there isn\u2019t a lot of potential to be a commercial success so I think most people making music don\u2019t care,\u201d he explains. \u201cBecause the potential for that is so low in Winnipeg, people just write how they want and music is always better that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Check out Blunderspublik\u2019s <\/i>Kittens & Shit EP alongside other Blunderspublik recordings at blunderspublik.com.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victoria King You probably remember the first local show you ever saw, right? It was probably at the Albert, Ozzy\u2019s, the WECC, maybe even Wellington\u2019s. It was dark and grungy, you were zitty and nervous. But as far as you were concerned, that band onstage were the best thing you\u2019d ever seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[563],"class_list":["post-9599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-local"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9599\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}