It’s been a while since a proper Music Monday (which has been replaced for the foreseeable future by Bad Comics day in any case) so I will take the opportunity to feature another of my long standing favourite bands today.
Treble Charger began in the mid-nineties as an alternative band under the name of NC-17, named for the American film rating. Â In their earlier days they were a very melodic band and later turned to a pop/punk aesthetic. Â On their first, independently released album (entitled nc17), there was a song called Red which was re-recorded and included on their full length major label debut, Maybe It’s Me, released in 1995 (there was also an EP called self=title).
The original version above, and the new, below. Â The new version is more familiar to most Canadians though both have their good points. Â Red was one of the first songs my sister learned to play on the guitar and she used it for years to check if guitars were in tune.
There were quite a few songs released from Maybe It’s Me. Â Ever She Flows, Friend of Mine and How She Died are all sterling examples of where music was in Southern Ontario in 1997. Â Following this up proved to be a daunting task, one to which I’m not sure the band was exactly equal. Â They went, as I mentioned above, into a pop/punk mode for their next album, Wide Awake Bored. Â This was probably a more financially successful album and was bigger in the U.S. but I don’t like it as well as Maybe It’s Me. Â American Psycho is apparently about Courtney Love.
One gripe I do have with Treble Charger is that they worked with Sum 41 in their early days and I think the world would probably have been somewhat better off without Deryk Whibley and Co. ripping off  a bunch of other, better bands.  Detox was Treble Charger’s last album and the video for Hundred Million features, amongst others, Avril Lavigne and so I had pretty much given up on them and stopped listening by this point.  It’s a very catchy tune that annoys me immensely.