“Their musical imprint or DNA is sewn into a lot of the current wave,” says Warner, who hopes the band is rediscovered somewhere down the line, their contributions to Canadian music properly recognized. “It’s got nothing to do with what the band is.”īut their brand of raw, hook-filled indie rock is often credited with paving the way for groups such as Tokyo Police Club, Born Ruffians and Arkells. “It’s all about luck and timing,” says Abraham. Yet they soldiered on, completing another two albums, including last year’s Bones of Things, which Warner released on We Are Busy Bodies.ĭespite critical accolades, respect from their peers and a relatively small but dedicated fan base, Meligrove Band never became a household name. But when Universal Music swallowed up V2 in 2007, the Meligroves were cut loose. The record sold well and the group played the U.K. In 2006, Richard Branson’s V2 Records - where Warner worked in A&R - released Planets Conspire, making the band label mates with both the White Stripes and Moby. They also became road warriors, perpetually on tour. They released a pair of well-regarded albums through local indie labels Duct Tape and Endearing in the early 2000s, generating significant buzz in the Canadian underground. “We played an afternoon matinee that none of our friends came to because that same day, the Inbreds were playing around the corner at the Rivoli,” says Small, “which was also where we wanted to be.” “They were keeping indie rock alive at a time when there wasn’t a lot of indie rock.”įormed by Small, singer-guitarist Jason Nunes and drummer Darcy Rego while the trio was in high school in Mississauga in 1997, Meligrove Band played its first show at the now-defunct Club Shanghai the following year.
“They were the inheritors of the East Coast Canadian indie rock sound,” says Damian Abraham, lead screamer in local hardcore heroes F-ed Up, who has known the band members since they were teenagers. But widespread fame, which always seemed just around the corner, eluded them. They were among the hardest-working and most-beloved bands in Canadian music, both as artists and as people. The decision marks the end for one of Canada’s great “perennial underdogs,” says label owner Eric Warner, who first met the group in 1998. Their gig Thursday night at the Garrison for the 10th-anniversary celebration of their label, We Are Busy Bodies, will be one of band’s last shows. “A police officer was killed in front of our motel while we were in our room.”įive years later, Small points to that blown transmission as the genesis of the band’s recent decision to quit performing live altogether. “As a sheltered Canadian, I thought I knew what a crime-ridden neighbourhood was,” he says. Warned against walking in the area, the McDonald’s next door became their only source of food. With their vehicle’s transmission in pieces and an East Coast tour scrapped, the members of Meligrove Band were holed up for five days in what bass player Mike Small describes as the worst motel in Orlando, Fla. It was the beginning of the end, although no one knew it at the time.
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