North of America

Influential Halifax post-punk/math rock band North of America were in town playing a special reunion show on Saturday Feb 27th for the Blue Skies Turn Black 10th Anniversary show @ Il Motore.  Here's an old session they did @ CJLO 5 years ago when they reunited for a brief tour with Ted Leo.

When we heard North of America had reunited and was playing a date in Montreal, Hooked on Sonics got to work.

Stalking them out courtesy of Meyer at Blue Skies Turn Black who passed us Micheal's email, we managed to get in touch with them and they were ready to do it. After playing a show for Pop Montreal, they stopped by the CJLO studios on October 2, 2005, the following afternoon before heading to Ottawa for another show.

Known to the Hooked on Sonics listeners as Dr. Lou's all-time favourite Canadian band, and a personal fave of the Goodness, we both had trouble making it to the show making it the ONLY time Lou has missed North of America in Montreal, and another in the long list of times I've had the misfortune of missing them. When I explained that to the band, they remarked that since I got them to play the station I could tell people "now we've played your bedroom." Gooood times.

As for the session, it went over amazingly. We even had some old dude walk into the station from some outdoor activity going on outside the station (the station's windows overlook the Loyola campus' quad). He basically walks into the recording studio's control room, looks at me, the band, and Marko (the station engineer) and goes "Can you close your windows? it's pretty f'ing loud, dontcha think?"...and then he walked right out. Damn right it was loud, and North of America recorded what I think is one of the best sessions we've ever had.