Jan. 13, 2010 - Issue #743: Broken Embraces

Enter Sandor

The name remains the same

But is it still the same band when the members are all different?

Over the holiday, I bought a present—for myself. Unwrapped it and placed it on the turntable. The gift in question, A Good Year For Hardness, the brand-spanking new record from one of my favourite bands of all-time, Six Finger Satellite.

Even though the press I'd read about the record went anywhere from middling to negative, I couldn't pass on the record. After all, I still think the band's Severe Exposure was one of the great records of the 1990s, mixing dark, foreboding guitars with screeching synths.

The album was better than the reviews had suggested, but not near the band's experimental-synthesizer phases it had reached before its initial break-up a decade ago.

But is the band still  the band when only two-fifths of the original members are still in the line-up? Is it valid to use the name when John MacLean, now known as techno-wizard Juan Maclean, a man who was so much at the centre of the band's sound, didn't come back?
And that's the question: when should a band stop using a name? When key members leave? When there's a massive change in direction? (My answer is no to the second one. Ministry confused enough people in the 1990s with a series of so-called offshoot bands that were, for the most part, just Ministry doing different kinds of dance and cowboy music).

To me, Mclusky was the greatest band of the decade, making loud, crass, brilliant, unapologetic punk rock that the band claimed was anything but punk rock. But, after the departure of just one member, two-thirds of the band reformed as the Future of the Left; and that act, while still brilliant, won't even play one single Mclusky song live. Despite the fact that two-thirds of the membership is the same, leader Andy Falkous has made it clear that a clean break was made.

But too many other times I have seen one band member, sometimes just the drummer or a backing keyboard player, bring together a cadre of touring musicians under the name of the famous band. Back in 1996, I was working for the Athabasca Advocate, and the hamlet of Wandering River had announced that Styx was going to play the community centre there. Now, the idea of Dennis DeYoung belting out “Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto" in a community hall in northern Alberta was an intriguing notion. But the band that was scheduled — the show was eventually, thankfully, cancelled — was led by Glen Burtnik, who was a part-time member of the band at best, and was more known for his songwriting collaborations with DeYoung. No Tommy Shaw. No James Young. None of the cast who made Pieces of Eight, The Grand Illusion or Mr. Roboto.

Chuck D. uses the Public Enemy moniker, without Flavor Flav or Terminator X. Lawsuits erupted when the remaining members of the Doors decided to tour using the name. Creedence Clearwater Revisited was, well, CCR without John Fogerty.

As touring becomes a bigger and bigger part of profit-taking in the music business, there is more and more pressure for older acts to get back on the road. Genesis and the Police showed us with their gate receipts that there is still a ton of money to be made in classic rock. But, with that pressure comes more and more bands being put together with Band-Aids, original member here, new guy there.

Six Finger Satellite definitely don't qualify as a band that is milking its name—it was never big enough to do that in the first place. Still, I think that this new incarnation of the band would have been better served to come up with a new name, and leave the past in the past.

Still, go out and find 6FS' Severe Exposure, Paranormalized and Law of Ruins—all were out on Sub Pop—in the stacks. Thank me later. V

Steven Sandor is a former editor-in-chief of Vue Weekly, now an editor and author living in Toronto.

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