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Classic Vinyl

With John Gardiner

Strange Brew and the Basement Band......typical garage band stuff.....

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Strange Brew circa 1968........John Sweeney, vocals, Allan Day, percussion and vocals, Glen Pupich, lights and sound, John Gardiner, Kent bass guitar and Paul Mercey, guitars and vocals.......

Classic Vinyl columnist Allan Day is breaking in a new computer this week, and, as usual in the world of computing, having all kinds of problems....So, he's asked me to pinch hit for him here in this space this week......I originally did Classic Vinyl when cktimes first started but Al has done a much more masterful job than I could have – he has such a wealth of knowledge and such neat stuff....

So, here I am wondering what to write about....and finally deciding to write about the garage band I'm most familiar with – Strange Brew – the band that Al and i both played in and which rehearsed in my parents' basement at 436 6th Avenue, Hanover. It was my first "real" band and the one where I caught the "bug" that would infect me for a lifetime...

I met Glen Pupich when I was in Grade 7...he moved to Hanover from Toronto when his parents bought the Queen's Hotel in my hometown...It was Glen was plunged me into the world of rock 'n' roll. We started out listening to music in Glen's room.....stuff like the Beach Boys and Safaris, early Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan...Beatles. And next thing you know, Glen had ordered one of those Silvertone guitars and the little lunch box amp from Simpsons because he wanted to be a rock star.

He didn't really catch onto the guitar, and it fell by the wayside, evetually sitting forelornly in the corner of his room with the top three stirngs broken and in a real state of neglect. But Glen moved on and decided he'd rather be a drummer. So, he bought an old set of Ludwigs with a 26" bass and started practicing. He wanted to start a band in the worst way as soon as he thought he could keep a beat.....rounded up a couple of guitar players and a singer.....and was looking for a bass player......enter yours truly on the three-string Silvertone. And that's how my career started...

Anyway, we were practicing away in the basement of the Queen's, and one day in swaggered these other rock star wannabees led by guitarist Paul Mercey....Merce....I remember his good friend Jay Bamforth being with him and possibly someone who was playing bass for them....Tom Schellenberger (?). Anyway, somehow out of that meeting, Paul Mercey and I started Strange Brew with a drummer we'd met at school....Allan Day.

I think at the start of Grade 11, we met John Sweeney, who had moved to Hanover during the summer with his family....He was a singer who somehow fell in with us and so the four of us formed that original group. And we worked up our repertoire, stuff like Ugly Ducklings, Mandala, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett, Jefferson Airplane, Hedrix, Cream.....a great list of tunes. And in those early days, Paul Mercey was taking guitar lessons from Richard Knechtel, so he'd learn a song from Dick, then come teach it to the rest of us.....

We did a couple of parties, a memorable one at Murray Eydt's and another (which I don't remember) at Sue Kraft's.......first real gig was in the basement of the Hanover town Hall for a coffee house operated by a youth group from the Red Lutheran Church. It was on a Sunday afternoon and the place was packed.....We were nervous wrecks, especially when Richard Knechtel's band, Finley's Wake, all walked in to check us out.

But we really rocked, brought the house down, if I remember it right. We played great and Glen Pupich who'd become our sound and light man, was kept busy trying to control a strobe-light he'd built out of his Dad's power drill. It was a great performance and I still remember the feeling it gave me and perhaps that's the feeling I've been chasing for the last 42 years....

I could keep writing for quite a while about Strange Brew....We played all around the midwestern Ontario area.....Chesley, Neustadt, Ayton, Mildmay, Formosa.....all of the area hotspots. Had a pretty good following. Not sure how good we were, but think we were okay.

I remember Paul Mercey as being a really great lead guitarist and he must have been pretty good to tackle tunes like Manic Depression and Purple Haze by Jimi and a lot of Clapton stuff and even Jeff Beck's Shapes of Things. I think John Sweeney was outstanding...looking at the set list that included stuff like "When a Man Loves a Woman" and "One is the Loneliest Number", he simply had to be outstanding. And I think Al Day and I were a pretty good rythym section....remember Al doing Jimi Hedrix's "Fire"..

Al Day was the first to leave the band, seeking the greener pastures and real money of country music. The band picked up an outstanding replacement in Bill Kerr, a friend of John Sweeney's from Fergus. We renamed the band, Charlie Gardiner's Basement Band, and did some fairly impressive gigs over the next little while – the Old Boys' Reunion in Teeswater and a similar reunion type event in Fergus.

At the end of Grade 12, John Sweeny's Dad accepted a new job in Napanee, Ontario and that finally ended the Strange Brew/Basement Band run. Huge fun while it lasted and days I will never forget......It was, I think, a pretty typical garage band experience for the 1960's....Good to share it with you and, as I said earlier, I could have written quite a bit more.....

Sure wish I had a tape of the band....if you see anything on youtube, let me know........



John Gardiner is a 25-year-veteran of the community newspaper business, but he is also a prolific writer of moralistic short fiction he refers to as "emotional thoughtscapes" or "adult fables". Samples of his fiction can be found at:

He has also produced a noteworthy piece of humanist philosophy which can be found at:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~aboiten/ad502.htm

He welcomes comments on his work.