Hey pals/friends of The Stand GT,
This summer we lost one of our best friends. Rodney was our childhood pal and a brother to us. He was also an early champion and supporter of our band.
Doug, Glen, Colin and I have decided that on November 6, during Bandcamp Day, all funds raised from The Stand GT's digital music will be donated to Beyond 21, an organization that helps adults with developmental disabilities. Rodney's family requested donations to this organization in his memory.
Also on November 6, we're releasing our first EP, Another Round, available for the first time in the digital format. Rodney was around the band a lot during the time these songs were written and recorded, so we thought it was fitting to re-release this online, thinking of our pal.
Thank you for considering donating to this organization, in Rod's name, by purchasing downloads of our back catalogue here.
Our pal Rockin' Rodney Craig
Another Round was cassette-only and our first release for a label, the fledgling En Guard records out of Montreal. It was the third release (ENG 003C) on that label and came out before the better known 7" EP, Sad Bunch Of People.
It was recorded at CSDX studios, which was a basement studio in the Bryan building at Concordia University. The building was home to Journalism and Communications studies, where I spent most of my time while at Con U. I had met Pierre Perrault who was a Comms student (I was J-school) and he was learning to be an engineer and in the process, keen to record our band. Pierre got access to the studio after hours for what became our first ever recording session. I honestly don't remember it, but I know we were pretty excited with the results.
The songs on Another Round demo a bunch of young kids learning to write songs. Only 2 of these 5 ever got re-recorded: Jamie's Mile for the Blur Your Cool cassette and Thursday, which became The Trouble With Thursday Ann on my solo record Sell Out Slow. It should also be noted that our pal Tom Foreman played bass and sang backup vocals on these tracks!
We enjoyed hearing them all again and while the mix isn't where we wish it could be, the raw performances are exciting and careening just a little out of control; much like the band at the time. The digital versions were dubbed in real time directly from a cassette that has been sealed since 1990. There is a bit of tape hiss, but considering this music has lived in its cocoon for 30 years, it's not bad. There was a wee bit of EQ and compression tweaking to give it a bit of volume and sparkle for the digital world.
You can actually feel the excitable energy, raring to take flight onto bigger and better things, which we most certainly did.
Rodney on the B-side of the Toasting Gears 7". "Effects of the essential 'G' chord on a true Rock God". He sure was.
Mark Legpage's review of Another Round in the Montreal Gazette. We were pretty excited to get this review for our indie cassette. And imagine being able to dial a phone number, enter a code and listen to some of the cassette. Talk about support for indie bands.
Doug and Rod. Doug is wearing the very first Stand T-shirt.
Me and Rod around the time Another Round was coming together. You can see my Concordia shirt which helped me date this pic.