The Day Canada Killed Its Greatest Band

By Tyler Morrison

It happens about every ten years, and sometimes you really have to look hard, but when you find them it is the greatest feeling. They have that chemistry that you just know everyone else cannot touch in a million light years, and they are ready to conquer the world. Every once in a while a band comes along, one that has been smoldering in the ashes of the underground and ready to ignite and set off a four alarm blaze that can only be extinguished by circumstance. That is how it felt when I discovered the band Proposterous.

You may not have heard of them thanks to the radio friendly cookie cutter suppression that has since taken a stranglehold of once proud radio stations such as 102.1 The Edge with the dismissal of DJ’s (like Martin Streak and Barry Taylor) who once had a voice. So here for your reading is a firsthand account of the rise and fall of what I consider to be Canada’s greatest band.

I do not throw this title around lightly either, but I have not seen a Canadian band from its inception build itself into a complete juggernaut of musical power and still create songs that are thoughtful and catchy. Fully loaded like a shotgun blast of rock n’ roll aimed in your face with sonic screams and anthem riffs, yet able to straddle the fence walking a delicate tight rope expressing haunting dark poetics with piano and acoustic guitars. If you were to go into a bar and order “The Proposterous Shot” this is what you would get: Imagine mixing the danger of a pre Appetite for Destruction Guns N’ Roses on the Hollywood club scene with the raw grit of early Buckcherry, the showmanship of Kiss, and an ounce of Nirvana if they actually had fun. That is one of hell of a shot, and that is exactly what Proposterous served up for their first five years of hashing it out in Toronto’s famous rock circuit, delivering encore worthy performances at such historic local clubs like Lee’s Palace and The El Mocambo to name a few.

The band consisted of two guys, drummer Hunter Collins from Montreal and guitarist/vocalist Craig Van Kasteren from Lucan, Ontario the little town most famous for one of Canada’s most notorious mass murders where town folk burned alive the Black Donnelly’s who had terrorized the countryside. Proposterous even tell the tale in one of their songs The Roman Line. The maniacal spirit of the band is as if they captured the spirit of their two towns. To experience it what was truly amazing for even a casual fan. They were armed with charisma and an arsenal to keep things interesting such as a blow up doll for a bass player at The Bovine Sex Club, the Tiger Girls who routinely soaked whiplashed head bangers in the front row with whiskey from Super Soakers, and Propostrobot a Robot that was routinely destroyed in mosh pits by their rabid cult following.

The first Proposterous show took place in Etobicoke at The Fox and The Fiddle during a standup comedy show that I was headlining in front of a restless rowdy crowd during NHL Playoffs when the Leafs were facing Ottawa in the first round. After the show it was as if something clicked and when Hunter and Craig decided to form Proposterous I immediately booked them on a double bill of two sold out shows for my No Mercy Tour which they absolutely demolished in true hardcore fashion, the after party saw Hunter disappear into a field to ride a horse bareback because he felt it was necessary. The party life they lived was expressed right through their music and it was all about remaining untamed.

After that they began slashing their way up the ladder in the club circuit hitting venues across Ontario, rocking bars and smashing guitars was not just a lifestyle it was their identity as their shows became a soundtrack to street fights and debauchery. They released their first album Tiger Tits with 8 songs, their first single “Used To Be Cool” made it onto The Punk Show at The Edge several times but it is their dark, epic track “Bloodbath Epiphany” that stands out as the true measure of the album’s worth. Its lyrics “We are the float in the parade on the day you die…” seem to be a good assessment of the tough mindset the duo possessed during this time. The CD Release party for this album at Sneaky D’s remains to be one of the greatest small venue concerts I have ever seen with pandemonium and crowd surfing on par with the riots in Seattle.

The period in between Tiger Tits and their next album was one I got to experience firsthand. Living at 405 Kipling with Craig and Hunter I watched them come into their own jamming in the basement for hours on end, writing and mastering their sound. Craig had also honed his vocal skills too, refining them as they carefully crafted each song. Not long after, they delivered one of the most punishing high tempo albums in Canada to date. The album is called Wicked in Bedlam. With crisp vocals, blistering guitars, and drums that sound like a cyclone of machine guns, it was all served up in a tight 12 track package. The reviews to their CD Release party for Wicked in Bedlam were very strong, gaining them 4 out of 5 Stars in Now Magazine, a better rating than V-Fest who was in town that day with The Smashing Pumpkins and The Foo Fighters on the bill.

Gaining slots on shows like The Punk Awards at The Sound Academy and being featured on Bite TV were to follow, their performance at the Punk Awards proved without a doubt in my mind that they were worthy of a greater fortune than the deal they had been cut by the Canadian Music Industry. At this point record companies were not taking a gamble on anyone, you needed to have a hit on the radio to get signed and the pipe dream was about to die with Barry Taylor’s release from 102.1 The Edge. Barry was one of the band’s biggest supporters and got them airplay when others would not take a chance and I think that needs to be mentioned here as his contribution to this band being successful was appreciated by all their fans.

The whirlwind existence of being in a touring band began to take its toll on Proposterous (you can only headline the same clubs for so long without seeing the light at the end of the tunnel). Still this did not stop them from releasing a ballsy new CD of 23 songs called Human’s Ruin Everything at their North by Northeast Music Festival debut. The album features a very mature new approach to songwriting with Craig Van Kasteren including some more introspective acoustic gems such as “You’ll Never Get To Hear This Song” but does not stray too far from machine that the two built with the uncanny battle track “My Friends Can Beat Up Your Friends” included as a song that could pump up any hockey team.

After a long hiatus from playing live it hurt me today when I heard the band had decided to call it quits. I have been along with them on this journey since the very first show and to see the hard work not pay its dividends is a painful reality in the entertainment field. Not enough support from the music industry after they paid their dues in full was disheartening enough to become the band’s epitaph. Now they are just another footnote casualty of the Canadian Rock N’ Roll Dream, a band whose bloody footprints are now pushed aside and buried in the snow bank of our nation’s musical identity. They join a long list of bands from the Great White North that seem to simply vanish. If you don't sound like Nickelback you just fade away into the Canadian Music graveyard. Like a ride in the electric chair it has to end with the flick of a switch.

The good thing about Proposterous is that both of them are very successful standup comedians. Hunter Collins is a regular on the popular Much Music program Video On Trial, and Craig Van Kasteren is terrorizing the comedy scene with two successful appearances in The Cottage Country Comedy Festival under his belt. Even though Proposterous is gone, expect to see big things from both of these artists in the future.

“They’ll be back, back again, painted black, for revenge.” Proposterous.