1 post tagged “mo=da=mu”
On a high from finding so much long-lost music, I scoured my brain for more to look for, and came up with 54.40. Everything about 54.40's first record, the six-song EP Selection, fascinated me from the moment I found it in the campus radio station record library my freshman year (1982). First there was the cover art: lots of gothic black and unhealthy green, a design combining modernity (the lettering, the electric light in the picture) with antiquity (the decrepit brick building), and even the cover stock itself, that thin, supple white cardboard with the ultra-glossy finish that only came from Canada. Then there was the label: MO=DA=MU, from Vancouver. That seemed so magickal and mysterious, though I now know it's simply a shortening of Modern Dance Music. The music revealed a band who knew their Factory Records, from the Joy Division-ish "snare drum in a big cavern" of "Yank"--
...to the horn-driven mutant funk of A Certain Ratio on "He's Got"--
When 54.40's first full-length LP, Set the Fire, came out in 1984, I was taken aback by the cover photo of the band: dressed in "all those plaid shirts, assorted vintage hats and 1930's depression-era attire" (as label co-founder Allen Moy writes in the notes to the CD reissue), they did not look like the gloomy rockers of Selection. And alas, they no longer were, as was borne out in the grooves of the record. They had adopted the bland, vaguely rootsy indie rock style that they still churn out today (in the vein of my musical nemeses, R.E.M.), and thus ended my 54.40 fandom. They're doing quite well* without me, though, so it's all my loss.
Anyway, I never did get Selection, but it was reissued on CD along with Set the Fire as The Sound of Truth: The Independent Collection (with the earlier tracks from Selection placed last for some reason, hence the high track numbers on my files), so I just got a copy of that. I still don't like Set the Fire, but Selection sounds as fresh as ever, or as fresh as Manchester-derivative post-punk ever sounded. I only wish Sony Canada had included the original cover art bigger than a two-inch square black-and-white copy; check out the hideousness they put on the front:
Oh well, it's the music that matters, and 40% of the music on this disc is great.
Update: oops, forgot something: that cover looks like a David Allan Coe cover, fercryinoutloud! And I don't care if it came out first.
* in Canada
