Local Discs - Live at the Press Club

Listening to bands at the Vancouver Press Club can be a painful experience because of the many musicians - especially drummers - who are so flaming stupid they don't realize you don't have to pound the sound to the max when the room is only eight metres across.

Producer Tom Carter and engineer Craig Stauffer have done a heroic job of capturing 20 different acts in a venue not well suited for music, and revealing that someone other than the drummer was playing all those times. Some sophisticated and subtle song writing and playing emerge, and with each act getting one chance to show its strengths, the overall quality is excellent.

There is a surprising continuity of musical texture, and one would conclude from this sampling that 1960s psychedelia is alive and well in Vancouver. Rising a bit above the rest are Paul Hyde, Happy Man, Cinnamon, and Velour 3, but no one is embarrassed in this snapshot of alternative original music acts of the past two years. - Verne McDonald, The Georgia Straight, 30 July 1998.