FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1998 All Rights Reserved.
| MUSIC Dino Martinis You're in a place called the Blue Lizard in the old Waldorf Hotel in Vancouver. Heavy velvet paintings of topless island women grace the walls, and tiki carvings abound. It is in the midst of this plush, mellow luxury that Calgary's darling sextet, the Dino Martinis, find their element. As bassist Don McSwiney says, "It's like a lounge heritage site." And the Dinos are definitely a lounge heritage band. Such a pampering environment is a natural for the four-year-old group, who, like the soft armchairs of the Blue Lizard, go easy on their audience. McSwiney expounds on how deliberate this happy fact is. "When we started, we were a different school of thought than a lot of bands that we came from," he says. "We looked to bands like Louis Prima's, they went out with the intent to entertain, and we sort of believe our whole band to be an entertainment force." Boasting, or perhaps grimacing over, the bands in the group members' collective past, McSwiney and blonde diva Nicole Brennan come up with: His Dog Spot, New Guinea Pig, Vince, Monster Zero, Planet Bruce, Rain for a Day, and even the U of C Red Band, a skeleton hidden in the closet of the newest addition to the Dinos, drummer Tyler Hornby. Hornby joined the group a little more than two years ago, just in time to record Bottle Collector's Lounge, their first CD. Along with guitarist Brent Kawchuk (who creates a teacher's manual as mean as his riffs), sax player Jordan Kawchuk, and the ubiquitous Pat McGannon (King of the Keyboard Cheese), Brennan, McSwiney and Hornby were all stunned by the success of the disc. "It definitely exceeded our expectations," Brennan beams. "We were just doing the recording for us, just to get something down on a disc. We didn't think much beyond that." The release received copious airplay on the CBC across Canada, sold well in Vancouver and other Canadian markets, and eventually the band repeated several 1000 unit pressings. The follow-up, Steak and Comedian Night, is awaiting its birthing party on April 3 at the swanky Panther Club. The 14 tracks showcase a well-oiled group of proficient musicians at ease with their talent, and the songwriting is pure craftsmanship, quite a few notches above most stuff written locally. In fact, the music is so fun and so good that McSwiney seems almost uncomfortable with how easy the band makes it look. "People embrace it out there, but if you look too much at the cocktail thing, the James Dean thing, the tongue-in-cheek business, you lose sight of the fact that for us, it's really hard to write songs like that. You have to be so literal, to say what you mean and mean what you say, to do it within swing and shuffle beat and this kind of thing. Because it really is about the music for us." The show at the Panther should be hot, because after playing chains of gigs around Christmas time, the Dinos laid off a bit and are ready to go. "As we played more and more, you're not really looking at making everybody have a great time," says McSwiney, "you're more clocking it to the end of the set, then getting outta there, so we're playing less now." Having saved themselves for the release party, Brennan adds one final thought on the new project. "I'd be happy if it did as well as Bottle Collector's. But it's really satisfying to just get something recorded, get it out. The rest is a bonus." And for the Dino Martinis, that bonus this time around should be bigger and better than ever. |