Todd Charron (.com)

Something About Integrity

Existing sometime around 1997, Something About Integrity consisted of myself, Joe Cooke, Derrick Gibson, and Bryon Telka. Only together for about a year, we managed to play roughly twenty-two live shows in that time. Sometimes for large audiences, but mostly for small to none. It was a bad time to be a band in Windsor and we were pretty pissed off about it. We brought something very different and unique to the Windsor music scene. Unfortunately everyone else was at the dance clubs...

The selections below (except for tracks 10 and 11) were recorded live off the floor at some boiling hot warehouse in the Walkerville area between about 12am and 6am one sweaty summer evening. Special thanks to James Tiller for the recordings.

Tracks 10 and 11 were recorded in Derricks' basement they day of or just after conception. Raw Something About Integrity moments (weren't they all?)

  1. Typical (2.5MB)
  2. Volcanic Lust... Ashes (4.3MB)
  3. Interstellar Relay Conductor (3.2MB)
  4. Tall Grass Expwy (studio) (4.8MB)
  5. New Year's Eve '96 (3.6MB)
  6. A Man Who Wakes Up One Morning And Discovers The World Has Fallen Apart Around Him (4.5MB)
  7. What You Don't Know (2.9MB)
  8. Treasure Chest (3.1MB)
  9. The Noise Song (4.6MB)
  10. Save Me (3.0MB)
  11. Tall Grass Expwy (orig) (4.2MB)

Something About Integrity - An evening of live semi-acoustic mayhem at the Spotted Dog

An evening of live semi-acoustic mayhem at the Spotted Dog was recorded live one summer night at... the Spotted Dog. The Spotted Dog was a bar in downtown Windsor which has since been demolished by the hostile corporate types (read: new Chrysler headquarters).

The Spotted Dog was a nice place to play since it was on the riverfront with a garage door that was open during the summer months. However, this show sort of happened by accident. We were supposed to be playing the night before (or week before, I can't remember) but they bumped us for some wanker cover band from out of town. However, our bass player Joe, was going to be away at band camp on the new date (yes, we've all heard that joke already). So Bryon and I decided to play anyway.

Grabbing whatever equipment we could (thanks to Colin for the guitar) we threw together a quick set of songs that might be passable in a semi-acoustic format and decided to wing it the rest of the night. I like how it turned out. It's unfortunate we didn't have a chance to later work some of those jams into full songs, but I think it still stands as a good example of the creative process of the band, how things just kind of flowed into each other, and so on. Bonus points for a) counting the number of people in the audience (you can probably do it on two hands) and b) Counting the number of times I forget/screw up lyrics.

Mayhem indeed.

If you're so inclined I would recommend piecing these tracks together into one big file. They flow very nicely with no breaks on my CD copy here and would highly recommend experiencing it in that fashion if you can.

  1. What You Don't Know (2.2MB)
  2. Typical (2.1MB)
  3. Killer Cars (Radiohead Cover) (1.9MB)
  4. A Man Who Wakes Up One Morning And Discovers The World Has Fallen Apart Around Him (3.6MB)
  5. Interstellar Relay Conductor (2.7MB)
  6. Tall Grass Expwy (6.4MB)
  7. The Noise Song (3MB)
  8. Subterranean Homesick Alien (3.3MB)
  9. Live All Summer (part 1) (4.5MB)
  10. Live All Summer (part 2) (1.7MB)
  11. Live All Summer (part 3) (666KB)
  12. Live All Summer (part 4) (537KB)
  13. Live All Summer (part 5) (1.9MB)
  14. Live All Summer (part 6) (3MB)
  15. Live All Summer (part 7) (1MB)
  16. Subterranean Homesick Alien (again) (3.1MB)
  17. Thinking About You (Radiohead Cover featuring Nathan Marentette) (2.5MB)