V/A "ONLY IN CANADA, EH 77-81 - volume one" CD

While many consider England and parts of the U.S., most notably London and New York City, as the core of the punk movement, Canadian youth quickly became embroiled in this new breed of sound. From coast to coast bands spung up, some short lived, others around even today. The one thing in common with all these bands is that they left a mark on the Canadian punk scene for years to come.

With Canada being such a large nation, the interpretations, influences and the geographical diversity, lead the bands to create a unique and distinctly Canadian version of punk. While many of them went relatively unnoticed on the international scene and to an extent Canada due to the distances between cities, the bands left their mark on their fans. To this day, some of the bands appearing on this CD are highly sought after by collectors of punk music.

When we, Punk History Canada, decided to put this project together, we wanted a fair representation of bands from across Canada. Even though some of the bands appearing on this CD are decidedly not punk sounding in today's terms, they were integral parts in their local music scenes. These bands were groundbreakers that inspired their fans to pick up an instrument and say "I can play in a band". They were part of a musical birth where the directive was "Let's have fun and make noise", instead of sitting back, smoking a joint and being bored by aging rock giants.

This CD is a tribute to the early punk bands and their fans who persevered through verbal abuse and beatings to spawn the second generation of punks to follow in their footsteps; It is also a tribute to the band members and their following who have died along the way without hearing their songs released.

So sit back, enjoy and take in a bit of Canadian punk history. Hopefully this is only the first installment in a series of CD's that we are planning on releasing. The next one will focus on the years of 1982-1984 and the subsequent one covering 1985-1987 and then we will repeat the process all over again with volume 2, 3, 4 etc. After all, there were a lot of punk bands in Canada, eh?

Steve Cowell
Nicole McCreary
Tony van Lieberg
www.punkhistorycanada.ca

The only band I know on that CD is D.O.A. They're a typical/stereotyped Canadian punk band. But there have been a lot of unknown other bands in Canada since the dawn of the punk rock era! Amazing.

You can buy this CD at their online store.