artist Simply Saucer

SIMPLY SAUCER will play Hamilton's Westside Concert Theatre on Friday, April 4th to celebrate the release of their new upcoming album Half Human, Half Live.

The band will be playing that evening along with special guests THE BATTLESHIP ETHYL. Ticket prices and more details to be released shortly.

Half Human, Half Live will be released on Sonic Unyon on March 11, 2008.

28 Oct 2007

PRESS RELEASE   Hamilton: The Band will be honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award next month at the 2007 Dofasco Hamilton Music Awards. The legendary roots-rock group, which started out in the Hamilton area as a backup band (The Hawks) for Ronnie Hawkins, had three of the their albums included in the book The Top 100 Canadian Albums written by music critic Bob Mersereau. The Band's Music from Big Pink was fourth on the list while the group's self-titled second album placed seventh. The Band's movie soundtrack of its 1976 farewell concert, The Last Waltz, placed forty-fourth. Songs like The Weight, The Shape I'm In and Up On Cripple Creek remain classic rock radio mainstays and continue to influence generations of musicians. Director of the Dofasco Hamilton Music Awards, Jean-Paul Gauthier, stated, "Many people don't realize that The Band was formed in Hamilton when they split from Ronnie Hawkins," Gauthier continued, "They formed as a group in the Royal Connaught Hotel while meeting with Harold Kudlats, their first agent. They also spent some time living in Hamilton during their formative years."  Kudlats was the recipient of the Dofasco Music Business Achievement Award in 2006. Two other local bands recognized in Mesereau's top 100 -- Teenage Head (Self Titled: No. 50, Frantic City: No. 58) and Simply Saucer (Cyborg's Revisted: No. 36) -- will perform at the Hamilton Place Studio Theatre on November 17th as part of the HMA festival.   These two bands were part of the first wave of punk bands that have influenced countless international fans. Thirty years later, their recordings are revered internationally by everyone from The Tragically Hip to Sonic Youth. Daniel Lanois also made the Top 100 with his solo album, Acadie (No. 20). Lanois, the multiple Grammy-winning producer, will also be part of the HMA events, appearing at Hamilton Place on November 16th as keynote speaker for the Career Day Music Conference. Lanois performs at Hamilton Place Great Hall on November 17th and hosts a screening of his debut film, Here Is What Is, at Silver City Ancaster on November 15th.   "We're celebrating Hamilton's achievements in The Top 100 Canadian Albums by showcasing The Band, Daniel Lanois, Teenage Head and Simply Saucer," Gauthier said, adding, that Mersereau will be speaking at the Career Day conference and attending events throughout the weekend.   The 2007 Dofasco Music Business Achievement Award will be presented to Alan Cross, Program Director of 102.1 The Edge, in Toronto. Alan is probably best known for writing and producing the radio show The Ongoing History of New Music which debuted in February 1993. To date, Alan has produced over 525 episodes of The Ongoing History which is now heard on close to a dozen stations across Canada and has spun off four books and more than a dozen CD's.  Alan has also produced in-flight audio programming for Air Canada, written trivia questions for the Microsoft Network, appeared on numerous TV and radio shows, narrated documentaries and written official biographies for a variety of rock bands. Originally, from Manitoba, Cross was a long-time Waterdown resident and program director at Hamilton's Y108. The Band will be recognized in a musical tribute at the HMA ceremony, hosted by comedian Cathy Jones of This Hour Has 22 Minutes and Tom Wilson, of Blackie and the Rodeo Kings. The Dofasco Music Business Achievement Award will also be presented during the HMA ceremony which takes place on Sunday November 18th at Hamilton Place. A full list of HMA and HMIA nominees, festival performers and other details will be announced at a media conference on Wednesday October 31st at 2PM. In the meantime, people can cast their votes for several People's Choice Awards by an online voting process that is now open. Music fans have until November 9th at 11:59PM to cast their votes by visiting the Music Awards or Industry Awards pages at http://www.hamiltonmusicawards.com/. Tickets are on sale now for all of the Hamilton Music Awards events which take place November 15, 16, 17, and 18 at Hamilton Place, The Hamilton Convention Centre, Silver City Ancaster and various venues throughout downtown Hamilton. Tickets for all events are available at http://www.ticketmaster.ca/, Copps Coliseum Box Office, by phone at (905) 527-7666 or at The Beat Goes On (Upper James).   Tickets for the Teenage Head and Simply Saucer concert go on sale Monday October 29th at 10AM.

Simply Saucer Places in 36th Spot in Bob Mersereau's Top 100 Canadian Albums

Neil Young's Harvest tops list of 100 favourite Canadian albums

..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Oct 17, 2007

Neil Young's classic disc "Harvest" tops a list of the 100 best Canadian albums, according to a new coffee-table book coming out Thursday.

Author and music lover Bob Mersereau polled nearly 600 musicians, critics, DJs and retailers to come up with a ranking of the country's best-loved discs for his book, "The Top 100 Canadian Albums" (Goose Lane Editions).

Joni Mitchell's "Blue" comes in at number 2, followed by Young's "After the Gold Rush." Rounding out the top five are the Band's "Music From Big Pink" and the Tragically Hip's "Fully Completely."

Mersereau admits the poll results are very much a "snapshot" of today's Canadian tastes rather than a definitive statement on the history of Canuck rock, and that the list will undoubtedly raise debate among anyone passionate about music.

"That's the whole fun," Mersereau says.

"The important part is to talk about Canadian music and enjoy it. This was tried to be a consensus of as many music people and music fans and big serious listeners across the country that have definite opinions. I'd be shocked if there wasn't complaints and arguments and debates. Half of my (own) list didn't make it."

A quick glance at the book reveals several repeat appearances by well-loved Canadian artists: Young comes up eight times, while the Guess Who, Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot each have five albums on the list. The Tragically Hip have four, while Sloan have three.

"I think it's legitimate that there are so many repeats. I can't argue with any of these artists. I might prefer one over the other but I think it's really good to see albums like Joni Mitchell's 'Hissing of Summer Lawns,' which was career suicide when it came out," says Mersereau, a music writer and longtime arts reporter for CBC-TV in New Brunswick.

The tabulation was fairly simple, Mersereau explains in the introduction to the book, which also includes album artwork and new interviews with many of the musicians.

Each juror was asked to send in a list of their top 10 discs, using whatever criteria they wished. Each number 1 pick was awarded 10 points, with the number 2 choice given nine points, and so on.

A total of 580 responses were tallied, and Mersereau says he took pains to make sure they were drawn from a range of ages, regions and backgrounds.

"I didn't want this to be a music nerd book ... I wanted this to be something different," he adds.

"I wanted popularity to be in it, too, because we are talking about pop music even if it is Oscar Peterson or Glenn Gould. What's popular, what people want, what people like, that is often scorned in critical circles, yet there's a reason things are popular and there's a reason things stay popular like the Guess Who or April Wine. They have the ability to make us feel great and they become important memories for us through our whole lives."

Amid the classics are some modern sensations. Montreal supergroup the Arcade Fire come in at number 8 with 2004's "Funeral," while Broken Social Scene's 2002 disc "You Forgot It in People" lands at 28 and Feist's 2004 disc "Let It Die" is number 43.

"It wasn't just young people that were doing the votes for that, I had people like Stuart McLean, a CBC broadcaster, voting for Arcade Fire. Shocked me. I didn't know Stuart was that hip, but sure is."

Other discs benefited from the passage of time. Hamilton punk band Simply Saucer failed to make a dent in the music scene in the mid-'70s and disappeared into obscurity until being rediscovered by a local music writer in 1987, says Mersereau.

Their early sessions were revived as vinyl copies, and then followed by a CD reissue in 2003. The music insiders who jumped on the disc pushed it onto the 36 spot of Mersereau's list.

"Things change and people pass (albums) back and forth," notes Mersereau.

"(Simply Saucer) never went anywhere, gave up in 1979 and (it's a) sheer fluke that they have become so influential to a new generation."

Music lovers can debate their own favourites at a series of book launches to be held across the country over the next week.

Mersereau promises that a stop in Halifax this weekend will feature a special musical guest from the list

Debate is sure to follow the release of "The Top 100 Canadian Albums," a book based on a survey of nearly 600 musicians, music critics and fans. A look at what made the Top 20:

1. "Harvest," Neil Young (Reprise, 1972)

2. "Blue," Joni Mitchell (Reprise, 1970)

3. "After the Gold Rush," Neil Young (Reprise, 1970)

4. "Music From Big Pink," The Band (Capitol, 1968)

5. "Fully Completely," The Tragically Hip (MCA, 1992)

6. "Jagged Little Pill," Alanis Morisette (Maverick, 1995)

7. "The Band," The Band (Capitol, 1969)

8. "Funeral," Arcade Fire (Merge, 2004)

9. "Moving Pictures," Rush (Anthem, 1981)

10. "American Woman," The Guess Who (RCA, 1970)

11. "Songs of Leonard Cohen," Leonard Cohen (Columbia, 1967)

12. "Reckless," Bryan Adams (A&M, 1984)

13. "Five Days in July," Blue Rodeo (Warner, 1993)

14. "Twice Removed," Sloan (Geffen, 1994)

15. "Up To Here," The Tragically Hip (MCA, 1989)

16. "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere," Neil Young with Crazy Horse (Reprise, 1969)

17. "2112," Rush (Mercury 1976)

18. "Court and Spark," Joni Mitchell (Asylum, 1974)

19. "Whale Music," Rheostatics (Sire, 1992)

20. "Acadie," Daniel Lanois (Opal, 1989)

Copyright © 2007 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved. ..:

http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/Artists/S/Simply_Saucer/2007/06/13/4256752.html 
World ready for Simply Saucer By ALLAN WIGNEY - Sun Media It's been repeated so many times its originator has long since been lost to history.
Few people bought The Velvet Underground's debut album, some witty soul famously observed, but everyone who did went out and formed a band.
Alas, the same cannot be said for Simply Saucer, the band that dared to provide a short, sharp shock to Hamilton's oski-wee-wee facade some 33 years ago by taking the Velvets, Syd Barrett and The Modern Lovers as a starting point and developing a fierce proto-punk sound years ahead of its time.
"There probably was a desire to shock people," Simply Saucer's frontman Edgar Breau reflects, "but I think when the band was formed our hopes were pretty high. We did a demo and our manager shopped it around to all the labels. And we got turned down by everybody."
Hence, the influential album that might have been failed to materialize until 1989, a decade after Simply Saucer's demise. And even that release, essential though it is, was a piecemeal collection of demos (recorded by Hamilton's Lanois brothers, one of whom would later achieve notoriety), live recordings and (on the CD release) the band's lone, uncharacteristic single.
Too little, too late, seemingly.
Yet, it's safe to say at least one band was formed in the wake of Cyborgs Revisited's much-belated release. And that band is, again, Simply Saucer. Last fall, Breau and original bassist Kevin Christoff introduced a new lineup of their old band at a Hamilton club. Friday, a mere 33 years after one of Canada's greatest bands first failed to take its hometown by storm, Simply Saucer will finally bring their renewed high hopes to Capital City.
"We never played Ottawa, but we did play the arena in Carleton Place in '75 or so," Breau recalls. "We pretty much emptied the arena by the end of our set. But our manager had started booking us mainly in unlikely venues like high schools, because there was nowhere for us to play."
Breau admits that following the breakup of Simply Saucer he "totally withdrew from playing live," sold his equipment and eventually returned to the stage as a much quieter artist armed with an acoustic guitar.
Breau maintains his separate identity as an acoustic-based solo act. But time heals all. Moreover, three decades later, Canada might finally be ready for a band like Simply Saucer.
"It's entirely different now," Breau says of the climate he and his reformed band have encountered during the new Simply Saucer's few live shows. "People can learn about punk rock in college (now)."
True. But they might be better advised to learn about punk rock first-hand by checking out Simply Saucer. The band's live set comprises, of course, material familiar to Cyborgs Revisited owners, as well as vintage material the band did not commit to tape, plus new material worked up in anticipation of a first 'proper' Simply Saucer album, to be released later this year.
"I look at it all as I'm performing the material I wrote," Breau says of the band's setlist. "When that album came out it brought up a lot of things I'd buried in the past -- all those what-if questions -- and I wasn't ready for it. Now, I think we're ready." 

http://www.voir. ca/musique/ musique.aspx? iIDArticle= 51912

14 juin 2007

Simply Saucer / CPC Gangbang

Brève musique

Olivier Robillard Laveaux

Disparu avant que ses sonorités à la Velvet Underground et son imagination digne de Syd Barrett ne soient reconnues, Simply Saucer (1973-1979) n'aura produit qu'un 45 tours de son vivant. Ce n'est qu'avec l'album post-mortem Cyborgs Revisited, édité d'abord en vinyle (1989), puis en cd (2003), que la presse alternative découvrit tout le talent du combo d'Hamilton. Lors d'un concert présenté dans le cadre du Festival Suoni Per Il Popolo, le mythique groupe reprendra du service pour donner son premier spectacle montréalais à vie. Le coeur de la formation originale, le guitariste-chanteur Edgar Breau et le bassiste Kevin Christoff, y sera accompagné de nouveaux musiciens. Les rockeurs de CPC Gangbang, dont des ex-Sexareenos et l'acteur-comé dien Paul Spence (Fubar), assureront la première partie. CPC lancera son disque Mutilation Nation, le 26 juin, sur Swami Records (Rocket From The Crypt, Hot Snakes). Avec Plastic Crimewave Sound, le 14 juin, à la Sala Rossa.

and this one...

http://www.montreal mirror.com/ 2007/061407/ music2.html

Back here but still out there

>> The world is finally ready for psych-punk pioneers Simply Saucer

YESTERDAY'S TOMORROW, TODAY: Simply Saucer

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

The name's a nod to Pink Floyd's A Saucerful of Secrets, but when Hamilton , Ontario 's Simply Saucer first played in 1974, they must have struck many as a musical UFO. Singer/guitarist Edgar Breau and his bandmates offered up an idiosyncratic blend of the Velvet Underground' s gritty cool and the Stooges' troglodyte riffage, with Hawkwind's electronic oscillations, Can's trance jams and Terry Riley's avant-garde darkness tossed in alongside odd sci-fi references.

Today, of course, these names are touchstones for fans of alternative rock. "They've become the pantheon of cult sainthood," says Breau, over the phone from Hamilton . "It's come full circle, and I think that probably had a lot to do with the interest paid to the Saucer, because all those influences became much more mainstream as time went on."

In the early '70s, though, the names were known only to truly obsessive connoisseurs (such as Breau and co.), and bringing the trippy sextet jams they'd been concocting in their practice space out to a skeptical public had its challenges. "The six-piece band never played out. Too weird and wild, I guess. We did our first show, as a four-piece, in '74 at an Anglican church basement. There was one hour-long song we did called `Noise,' which was pretty well just that. Sometimes the shows went over really well, at other times people seemed a little bewildered by what we were doing."

At the time, there was no scene to be part of, and certainly no Internet to network on. "It was very isolated. Teenage Head were in the west end, we were in the east, and they were almost like two different cities, two different cultures, and the twain didn't meet. I used to correspond with the bass player from Rocket From the Tombs, Craig Bell, in the early '70s, because we were both members of the Syd Barrett Appreciation Society. It's funny how we both ended up in bands that have been compared to one another-and both operating in isolation."

When punk broke in '77, culture caught up with the Saucer, or at least should have. The band jumped into the punk scene on Toronto 's Queen St. , with mixed results. "It was as if there were some unwritten rules. The songs had to be short. They had to be fast. And they had to be ugly. We did some songs like that, but we had others too. It was also more a fad, and fashion-conscious, which was not where we were at."

Add that to stolen gear, pulled plugs and line-up shifts, and it was the beginning of the end-or rather, the end of the beginning. Simply Saucer broke up in '78 with only a seven-inch single to their name, but in 1989, their LP Cyborgs Revisited (recorded by Bob Lanois!) was released posthumously. "Almost immediately, it got great reviews," recalls Breau, citing hype from Spin's Byron Coley and Edwin "Savage Pencil" Pouncey's NME column. "When Sonic Youth came to town to open for Neil Young, they dedicated their set to Simply Saucer."

In 2003, the Hamilton-based Sonic Unyon label dropped the expanded reissue of Cyborgs with spectacular results. Breau had long since moved in an acoustic solo-singer direction, and was quite leery of strapping a Strat on again. Thankfully, he bit the bullet, and now not only is the Saucer flying again, the band has an album of new material, Half Human, Half Live, on its way.

"Once I was doing it again," chuckles Breau, "it all just came back. I'd forgotten how much fun it is to crank it up."

With CPC Gangbangs and Plastic

Crimewave Sound at la Sala Rossa

tonight, Thursday, June 14, 9 p.m., $15

To all Saucer people out there, greetings and salutations;

  On  Saturday June 23rd, 2007 @ 8 p.m. @ The Catherine North Studios  in Hamilton, ON. Simply Saucer will be recording the live portion of their Half Human, Half Live CD, slated for an Oct. release on the Sonic Unyon label.   This is a chance for you to be part of our - literally - studio audience?  

Tickets are available from the individual Saucer members or from Bruce "e-Mole" Mowat. If you are not fortunate enough to live Hamilton, ON., Canada, though you can purchase tickets via PayPal . The cost is $20 + $2 (service charge) Canadian funds, and should be sent to chris@sonicunyon.com   Please put Simply Saucer Studio Show in the subject line, if you're paying with Pay Pal   Since seating is extremely limited for this event, we strongly encourage you to ACT NOW.

Simply Saucer - Live Session & Interview @ CIUT-FM Sunday May 27th 10 p.m. on Equalize & Distort

http://exd.sohc.org/TO10.php

..". they will play live on EXD on Sunday May 27th followed by an interview done by Imants Krumins & Rob Sikora."

Imants is one of the handful of people who actually saw - and enjoyed - seeing the Cyborgs era Saucer play live.

Listen on the web at http://www.ciut.fm/

or - for those of you in Southern Ontario - on the old-fashioned analogue radio set at 89.5 FM

William McGuirk of Durham Region talks about Simply Saucer

Watch the video here

Read Liz Worth's review of the recent Ciao Edie gig  here

We are pleased to welcome...

STEVE FOSTER

..as the new guitarist for Simply Saucer.

If you were at the band's Ciao Edie's club appearances in Toronto, you might have already seen Steve in action. He' s been playing professionally for 20 years now, with such outfits as The Crawling Kingsnakes and Stoked (the latter of which appeared on the 1996 CFNY-FM Talent Search CD). He is involved as a partner in the Catherine North Recording Studio, where - odd-fellowy enough - Saucer is recording Half Human, Half Live. He is also an sound engineer at Hamilton Place Theatre.

Steve fills the role of Steve "Sparky" Parks in Saucer...he even has the same first name! The band is, pardon the pun' quite "stoked" about having him on board.

Click here for a full bio. (An Aside: B.F. Mowat, the ad hoc manager for Saucer, once doled out a decidedly negative print review of one of Steve's early bands, The Oddfellows!)

Click here to see Steve's MySpace