<h1>Equalizing-X-Distort - Studio 3 Sessions</h1>

(Pre-Vinyl History of Career Suicide - Part 2)

Equalizing-X-Distort is a radio show that has been broadcasting on the University of Toronto station CIUT 89.5 FM since May 1999. The show was started by Stephe Perry, former vocalist of One Blood and Countdown To Oblivion and it quickly became one of the hubs of the Toronto Hardcore scene, continuing to this day to showcase and document the city's new bands.

Career Suicide recorded two studio sessions for the show; there was no physical release but CD inlay artwork was designed and is available online with downloadable mp3s, so you can make your own. 

There's more to the story than the actual sessions, so I contacted Stephe Perry to ask about Equlaizing-X-Distort and the connections with Career Suicide...

(Images provided by Stephe, unless otherwise stated).

Flyer for Studio 3 Session.
(Courtesy of Eric Smith)

Hi Stephe, can you let me have some background  into EXD and the Studio 3 Sessions? 

SP: I had done a hardcore show up at York’s radio station CHRY. The show was called Fast ‘n Bulbous, on the spot. The show existed for 13 years. In the last four or five years we had started doing live sets. We set up the band in a room and miced a few instruments and ran them into a mixer which we turned into one output and ran it into a channel on the broadcast board. It was mixed live and we tried to record some of those using an aged tape deck. The idea was to document bands from the Toronto scene and find a way to get bands on air that maybe didn’t have a recording or had limited recordings. We would always follow up the session with an interview. I had heard a few of the Peel sessions that had been released on vinyl like the Gang of Four session. I felt that the UK’s scene had certainly done well because there was people putting the work in documenting the scene, like the BBC. 

I was convinced that this is one of the role’s that campus community radio can play. It also created an open house kind of feel which brought people into the radio station that was in a remote location. The biggest band we ever recorded was Los Crudos. The live sessions gave people a reason to come to the station.

Images of the basement room originally used for Studio 3 Sessions:
 Artwork from fundraising gift CD of some of the best moments of Studio 3.
Left: The mixing board with Ben Edgar who was the first sound engineer.
Ben went on to play guitar in a power violence band called The Endless Blockade.
Right: The studio set-up.

SP: When I decided to start up a show at CIUT I was hoping that this live component could be part of the programming. I knew that CIUT had a space in the basement that had been used to record bands like the Dayglo Abortions. Stacey Case used to do a show called “About Town” and he would try and have bands in using the live recording as a way to have them in. When we started the station was having financial difficulties and the space in the basement was not usable. After two years we were able to use the space and Martin suggested we get in Haymaker. So Haymaker was our first band. Scare Tactic was our second.

CD Artwork for the first two sessions:Provided for people to make their own CDs
 

SP: Martin was instrumental in deciding that Haymaker would be the first band to record. He liked them at the time and felt that if we only had one shot at this it should be Haymaker. He made the CD artwork using the Nunfuckers 7" cover because at the time Haymaker were covering their song "Burning Chemicals" which they did at this session. Nunfuckers were a hardcore band from the Kitchener-Waterloo area that released a demo and an ep. They tried to be like DRI but sounded more like the Descendents.

For Scare Tactic I took their logo artwork and made a CD cover for this as well.

Riot99 were supposed to be our third but they cancelled at the last minute, so Career Suicide stood in and they became our third band. This was partially caught in Martin's on-air introduction to the Career Suicide session. We were trying to work out the kinks and it was good to practice with some bands who were involved in the show. Of course, Martin has a way with provocation and the set was awesome. Martin was definitely a booster of this studio 3 session idea.



Can you tell me a little about the CD artwork for the Feb 3rd 2002 session?

SP: I put together the artwork for the CD, but it was based on Jonah's flyer artwork. Jonah also made a Shirt for the show which was used as the inside piece for the tray artwork. I was that detail oriented about the sessions because I didn't think we would be able to keep going with them and was trying to make memories out of these sessions.

CD Inlays (2002 Session):
Front and back panels with Jonah's flyer artwork

CD Inlays (2002 Session):
Jonah's CS Shirt

CD Artwork (2008 Session)

Pictures of the early Studio 3 Sessions show a cave-like space with stone walls, later sessions seem to be in a small room, have there been two studios?

SP: Yes, the first sessions were in the basement at the original location which was 91 St. George Street. It was an old Victorian House and the Rothmans School of Business owned the property. They figured they could build a bigger building and so CIUT was re-located to Hart House. It is the classic story of business beating up on arts and culture. Hart House is where we record studio 3 sessions now. It is a little more hampered and requires a lot more scheduling but we make it work.






Some of the guys from Career Suicide  have been more directly involved with Equalizing-X-Distort, can you tell me a little more about this; in particular the early days of CS?

SP: Martin Farkas, Mark Rodenhizer, Jonah Falco, Noah Gadke, and Dave Brown were all, at one time or another, cohosts on the show and members of the band.

Martin sent me an e-mail about doing a guest host spot on the show. He told me that he was involved with a show that used to be on CIUT called “Mods ‘n Rockers”. A few members of Fucked Up were involved in that show before Fucked Up. Specifically Damian and Sandy.

Martin said in his e-mail that he was a street reporter with Mods ‘n Rockers. That was the title Damian and Sandy and Martin had been given and they would be asked for opinions, but rarely did they get the chance to program. So I asked Martin what music he was thinking of and the material was surprising. It was short fast hardcore and there was a lot of great piecing together of little known bands and unknown bands. One of those bands was the Neos. I agreed to have him in. The show went really well. He wrote back asking if he could come in again and brought Jonah with him.

Jonah was just learning about hardcore but he was enthusiastic. Both of them craved international material, which has always been part of the structure behind Equalizing-X-Distort. Jonah started bringing in a set of music. I think that Martin and Jonah knew each other from high school. I think Jonah was a year younger. Jonah also had musicians as parents and as we quickly came to find out he could play a bunch of instruments, which included the French horn and an accordion. Jonah had a band with his friend Jesse and Jesse’s brother. They were called As One. They took the name from Warzone so they were a NYHC type of band. They released a four song CD that was pretty good. Later they started changing their sound to reflect Jonah's new found love for hardcore and with that came a name change, Scare Tactic.

Simon Harvey was one of the co-hosts and founders of EXD and he had started a record label at the time called Ugly Pop Records. He was trying to put out local records, once every month. But he was over extended with the number of releases he was putting out and so he convinced his friend Dave to start up a label and release the Scare Tactic demo on vinyl.

Extract from Scare Tactic Demo Insert

So other members of the radio show were involved. I think Mark Rodenhizer was in a band called something like the Turkeynecks. I don’t think Martin was in that line up, but Noah Gadke, who was a co-host on EXD for a couple of years, also played in this band and would go on to be part of the original line up of Career Suicide.

Then there was Fuck Jonah. The name came about because Jonah went camping for part of that summer and the band was mad at him for going, so they called themselves Fuck Jonah. Martin had entered the picture by this point and they may have recorded something called “No Blade, No Thrash”. They put out that demo which was actually a CD-R and they made a cover.

Eric Smith played drums, he was originally from Barrie and played in a band called Phallocracy a while back. Eric had moved to Toronto and he also lived in the house with Noah. Usually drummer’s houses become jam spots because it easier not to have to move your kit around. Jonah played guitar and Martin sang. That was the original line up. I think Jesse and Chris Colohon filled as drumers after Eric left. Incidentally Eric came up with the name Career Suicide. Eric moved to Vancouver and went on to drum in a great band out there called the Neo Nasties.

DIY CD: Career Suicide - Studio 3 Session (Feb 2002)

As Above, with flyer:
Thank you to Eric Smith for this one...

You probably have better sources to fill in how the line up evolved from there, but the last piece of the puzzle was Dave Brown. Dave lived in Nova Scotia and played drums in an awesome band called Capital Death.  Matt was the singer and bass player in Capital Death. They were a three piece from Truro, Nova Scotia. He was the first member of the band to move to Toronto. After he got settled he joined a power violence band (The Endless Blockade) with Andy Nolan (of Shank fame) and Ben Edgar, who was the original soundman for the studio 3 sessions. Dave moved here shortly after that and he first started coming in to the radio show to get to know people in the hardcore scene in Toronto. Dave had played drums in Capital Death and was quickly recruited for the ever evolving Career Suicide line up. Dave carried on as their drummer after he moved back to Truro, he commuted to play shows. He runs a great record label back home called Sewercide Records.

Career Suicide are intricately related to Equalizing-X-Distort. But Public Enemy was the same way - they hosted a radio show in Pennsylvania and the Bomb Squad was the DJ side of that!

Equalizing-X-Distort gave these kids a way to learn about punk, to network with each other, and to work at building a music scene. They all had a lot of talent and made for my favourite band to come out of this city in the last decade and a half. I am always still listening to Career Suicide on my i-pod to this day. Blasting it while I ride.