Crash Test Dummies
Live at Markham Village Music Festival
Recently, I went to see Crash Test Dummies play live at the Markham Village Music Festival. In my city, we have a diverse calendar of street festivals almost every weekend in the summer, featuring food trucks, children’s activities, and of course, musical performances. Typically, I expect unknown amateur musicians and/or classic rock cover bands to perform at these types of things, so imagine my surprise when I learned that Crash Test Dummies would be headlining. Apparently, one of the band members grew up around the Markham area—he shouted out his mom and a group of high school friends during the show—which might explain how a free local festival could book such a big act.
Perhaps I’m overestimating the band’s fame, but in my memory, they were quite popular in the 90’s when I was growing up, with several hits in heavy rotation on the radio and on MuchMusic. While it was a thrill to see them play for free, I also pitied them, in a “how the mighty have fallen” sort of way. But it’s really not fair for me to judge the highs and lows of their careers; at the end of the day, they’ve had their success, and more importantly, they seemed to genuinely appreciate their audience and played with energy and joy.
God Shuffled His Feet, their second album, was the first CD I ever got, and for a time, it was the only CD I owned. I must have listened to it over and over, and they were the first band that I would have called my favourite. It really makes me reflect on how my tastes in music were dictated as a child—I’d just listen to whatever Mom and Dad put on—and it was only in my tweens and teens that I formed my own palate. I wonder what it was about Crash Test Dummies that drew me to them. I suspect that it was about the voice: Brad Roberts’ deep, unusual singing still makes me smile. Nobody else sounds like him.
During the concert, I had many moments of recognizing a song, even though I hadn’t heard it in years. I could even sing along with much of the words, which are apparently still embedded in my brain. I don’t think I appreciated as a kid how bizarre and funny their lyrics are… there’s a song (“He Liked to Feel It”) about the various methods (doorknob, dog) that a kid employs to pull out his own teeth!
Beyond the songs themselves, this experience brought back so many memories from that time in my life. Before streaming existed, we discovered music either from the radio or MuchMusic, the Canadian equivalent of MTV. I watched MuchMusic often, but with my finger on my remote, ready to click away to another channel; somehow, I felt like I was doing something wrong, and would need to cover my tracks if my parents entered the room. My parents were kind of strict about the TV that my sister and I watched. Even age-appropriate cartoons that they thought were too violent, like Ninja Turtles or G.I. Joe, were off-limits. As I grew into my teens, I guess I opted for small clandestine transgressions, consuming flashes of the “mature” images offered by music videos—dancing! kissing! long hair!—as opposed to outright rebellion.
Speaking of broadcast media, I used to talk about favourite radio DJs and time slots with a friend in junior high, whose nickname was “Meek.” He had an artistic disposition, with dreams of becoming an actor, and had haughty opinions about films that he was too young to see, like how the black and white cinematography of Schindler’s List made it look amazing. I remember him calling me once because a radio host on our favourite station was getting overly enthused about new Elton John song (“Believe”), and was playing it several times in succession. I ran to my room to tune in. Meek also enjoyed Crash Test Dummies and we would memorize the lyrics and “analyze” them, or make fun of misheard lyrics. There’s a line in the song “Afternoons and Coffeespoons” that goes:
Afternoons will be measured out, measured with
Coffeespoons…
…and T.S. Eliot
Meek joked that he thought the last line said “and here’s Eliot!”—Eliot being the band’s harmonica player because a solo follows that line.
Thank you to Crash Test Dummies for their musical creations, and for giving me such a rich nostalgia trip.