>>PREVIEW
THE COLLAPSE
Friday, April 7
Liberty Lounge
When most bands, especially independent bands, put together their debut album, it’s largely a do-it-yourself affair. Even after the recording finishes, band members will be up all night assembling the packaging, haggling rates from printing companies, and frantically searching for a venue that will let them launch the CD properly. Without the help of a label, most bands have little choice but to knuckle down and get it done themselves.
The Collapse, a group of northern Alberta expats who have been playing in Calgary for the last two years, apparently forgot about all that. Through a combination of old acquaintances and good luck, they found an army of college students to do the grunt work for them. The band, composed of John Hadley, Pat Palardy, Ken Price and Mike Angus, all sharing instrumental and vocal duties, were recruited by a group of first-year Public Relations students at Mount Royal College as a class project.
"We just met with them yesterday," laughs Angus. "And they were like ‘yeah, we’re totally ahead of schedule, we’re ahead of everyone else in the class, and everyone else is totally jealous because they’re stuck working for conservative think-tanks.’ So we’re totally the envy of the PR class."
The extra help feels especially odd to the band, because The Collapse wholeheartedly embrace the DIY esthetic. Their debut album, which blends influences as diverse as the alt-country of Wilco and the Weakerthans with the anything goes approach of Canadian legends the Rheostatics, is a completely home recorded effort. Rather than pursuing a record deal and searching for more immediate success, The Collapse value creative control above all else, and want a hand in every aspect of their band’s promotion. But even with this reluctance to give up control, they’ll admit that the experience with the class has been beneficial.
"They’ve given us some help as far as gruntwork," explains Palardy. "Getting the posters ready, finding out things we need to find out. But the main thing that they’ve done for us is given us some hard deadlines. They might have been a little too tight, because we’ve been sweating, but it’s quite likely that it would take another year to get the album out otherwise."
For a band that admits they’re just as likely to let a rehearsal session turn into a backyard barbecue as get down to real work, the presence of deadlines can be a huge benefit. But even while the students are teaching The Collapse about a work ethic, the band hopes to open the PR class to the world of independent music.
"I think it’s interesting for them because they’re being introduced to a whole indie rock scene that they weren’t really aware of," says Hadley. "They’ll ask us, ‘so, you guys want to get signed to a label?’ And we’ll kind of laugh. They don’t really know what to make of that."
For now, The Collapse are content with their independence. But don’t think that means they want to be low-key – their upcoming CD release show at Mount Royal’s Liberty Lounge promises to be a pure rock ’n’ roll spectacle.
"Ultimately, I think (the PR students are) going to help us throw the kind of CD release party we really want to have," Angus says. "We really want to have an explosive, crazy, theatrical event that’s going to spread word of mouth."
"We’ve lined up some pseudo-pyrotechnics which should be awesome," Palardy continues excitedly. "We have a licensed professional coming to do it. There’s no fireballs involved, just psychedelic clouds of colour, which will be good. We want it to be a good time, like a party." |
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