>>PREVIEW
THE LOTUS GALAXY
Saturday, March 10
The Marquee Room
Ten years ago, the Calgary music scene was engaged in a cold war. As The Lotus Galaxy’s guitarist Aaron Smelski recalls, fans of Primrods were in one corner and fans of Red Autumn Fall were in the other. Lightly poking fun at the past, Smelski captures the youthful spirit by playfully lifting his right hand to pledge allegiance to one style of music forever and ever. Everyone cracks up.
The Lotus Galaxy was technically in the shiny Brit-pop camp of Red Autumn Fall. However, with a rockabilly stand-up bassist and eclectic music influences ranging from The Cocteau Twins, Angelo Badalamenti, The Cranes, The Cramps, to Miranda Sex Garden, they quickly stood out from their peers.
Between 1996 until disbanding in 1998, the quartet packed clubs in Calgary and Edmonton, found a sponsor for a $20,000 35 mm music video and mischievously busked "Bela Lugosi’s Dead" at the freshly opened Eau Claire Market to gobsmacked onlookers.
"I’ve never had that fast of success with a band ever," earnestly explains Smelski. "It was a rollercoaster of success."
"Our second time on stage was for MuchMusic and MuchMusic Argentina," describes the band’s effervescent vocalist, Sheila Mann.
"Remember MuchMusic Argentina? Remember that guy?" Mann asks her bandmates before throwing herself into a hysterical imitation of the veejay. "‘You look like the ’70s, you sound like the ’80s, it’s the ’90s!’"
"Sometimes I’m in heaven, sometimes I think I’m in hell, what’s going on with you guys?" continues Smelski.
Sipping cocktails in bassist Michael McCafferty’s stylish penthouse suite, the band is clearly having fun reminiscing. After the band broke up, Smelski became a psychologist and co-founded Hot Little Rocket. Studiously, Mann barrelled through graduate studies and enrolled in law school. McCafferty continued playing in rockabilly bands, branched off to theatre and became what Mann affectionately calls "the inner city real estate mogul." Former drummer, Jim Buick, retired.
It wasn’t until Smelski ran into Buick and they chatted about a Lotus Galaxy demo that Smelski felt it might be time to resuscitate the band. On the Broken City’s dance floor this summer, he proposed to his former band mates that they re-record the demo for posterity. After hearing the results, they quickly decided to make another go of it. They’ll be gigging and recording new songs for their forthcoming album with their new drummer, Garrett McClure (symbolically, the former lead singer of the Primrods and current singer/guitarist for The Summerlad).
"It was just the right time," says Mann with a warm smile on her face. "I don’t think I realized how much I missed it till we started doing it again. Then it was like, ‘Duh, we should do this all the time.’ We’re doing this. It’s not just a one-off whim reunion salute to the old days or nostalgia."
"Just because we have good day jobs doesn’t mean that we can’t do great art," underscores Smelski. "I could do this till I’m 50." |
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