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| The Beginning |
Three young musicians from the small town of Waterloo, Quebec earned a place in Canadian rock and roll history by recording, pressing and distributing their own LP in 1970. The Oliver Klaus album is arguably the first "do-it-yourself" rock and roll LP in Canada, a herald to the DIY punk rock attitude that became prevalent much later in the decade. What makes this story even more interesting is that the band members were between 18 and 21 years old at the time. Brothers Maurice Singfield (guitar, born 1950) and Bryan Singfield (drums, born 1952) were seasoned musicians by then, having already played together in four groups since their first band in 1964-65. As Oliver Klaus, they garnered industry respect by playing gigs at the Canadian Pavilion and Place des Nations at Man and His World in Montreal, as well as by appearing on the Like Young show on CFCF TV.
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| The Mo-Beats emerge from the garage Maurice Singfield, Bryan Singfield and Steven Graves |
The Mo-Beats were formed in 1965. (Incidentally, "Mo" derives from "M.O.," for Maurice Oliver, the first two names of both Maurice and his father.) This young garage band featured Bryan and Maurice with Steven Graves on bass. A second guitarist-Rod Bailey-helped out in live shows, where they would play such early-Sixties staples as "Secret Agent Man," "Oh Donna" and "I Saw Her Standing There."
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| The Mo-Beats, Maurice, Bryan and Rod Bailey |
In 1966 they dropped the bass player and the name, and transformed into a trio called The Abstract, featuring high-school friend Keith T. on keyboards. The Abstract performed mostly instrumentals such as "Moon Over Naples" and "Ebb Tide."
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| The Abstract in the flesh, Left: Maurice, Keith T. and Bryan. Right: Bryan and Maurice. |
Given the French-English mix of Quebec's Eastern Townships, there was also a burgeoning French music scene. In 1966 Maurice and Brian joined Gilles Roberge (guitar) and Jean-Guy Robichaud (bass), also from Waterloo, to form Les Notables. Since this versatile young beat group performed in both French and English, there was lots of work for them every weekend in high schools right across the province. They played in Ste-Adèle (a resort community north of Montreal), Montreal, the West Island and Sherbrooke.
While playing gigs with top French bands such as Les Houlops and Les Sultans, Les Notables were offered a record deal by a Montreal label. During a recording session at Stereo Sound in Montreal, they recorded two songs in both French and English. The label found that Maurice's French vocals were too accented, and suggested they record with a French lead vocalist. Not content to be anyone's backing band, Les Notables packed up their gear and returned to Waterloo. One song from that session in 1966-"Do Love Me Do"-is featured on the CD.
At that time the local pop music industry was replete with gimmickry and novelty acts such as César et les Romans (who wore togas) and Les Têtes Blanches (who dyed their hair white). An enterprising manager from Granby approached Les Notables and suggested a makeover as Les Mini-Mod to capitalize on the explosion of Mod fashions among North American teens. This entailed the four musicians wearing colourful shirts, wide ties and miniskirts. Maurice documented this incarnation of the band in an early group biography:
"While the posters were being designed, the band members were busy choosing miniskirts that they would wear with dress shirts and boy-scout socks. Their pictures were taken, and the posters were printed for distribution in Cowansville, where their first and only concert was fated to take place. They were presented as an English group from Toronto that had completed an extensive tour of their province (i.e., Ontario): how impressive! Actually, they looked pretty decent, except for Gilles Roberge's bow legs, and Bryan's weird expression as he realized for the first time what it was like to sit down in a miniskirt, spreading his legs to reach his high-hat and bass drum pedals.
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| Mods in skirts Left: Clippings in the French press. Right: Gilles Roberge, Bryan,Maurice and Jean-Guy Robichaud. |
For some strange reason, Les Mini-Mod were a great success. Girls were asking for autographs and their manager was elated because he knew that within a few weeks there would be plenty of bookings and the group's performance price would double."
This sudden media exposure lined up many gigs but the guys refused to wear the miniskirts again. Soon the bookings dropped off and they returned to playing as Les Notables, covering such tunes as the Doors' "Light My Fire," and the Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love." However, before 1967 was over, Maurice and Bryan decided to get into more improvisational and original material, influenced by power trios such as Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Following a suggestion by one of the other Singfield brothers, the new band took its moniker from Maurice's middle names-Oliver Klaus. Graham Worden joined on bass and the band began practising in the Singfield basement in late 1967, and gigged throughout the Eastern Townships in 1968.
However, it was getting harder to find places to play. "Once the drug scene hit, dances got cancelled due to rowdiness and the kids were dropping out of school, so the bands had to go into the clubs and the bars, and that's where it turned really seedy in a lot of cases. The scene was so much heavier. So that's where we had to hang out and try to make a living." The band came up with a novel idea: they rented a restaurant in Lac Brome and dubbed it "The Other Side," to compete with a popular nearby club called the Terrace Inn. Maurice, Bryan, and new bassist Jerry Cushen, assisted by numerous friends, ran it for three months during the summer of 1969, serving up food in the day and rock shows in the evening. The lyrics to "For the Boys"-the first track-are about this period in their lives.
The band's first professional recordings were made in the fall of 1969 while Maurice was going to Dawson College in Montreal. A friend introduced him to local sound engineer Chuck Grey, who invited Maurice to the studio. "I just brought my guitar in, set up and played a couple of my originals. He was really impressed, and phoned his producer, Ron Dykhof." The band joined Maurice in Montreal and recorded a number of tracks at Studio Six on St. Antoine St. At that time, Ron Dykhof-former member of the Sceptres-worked as a freelance producer for Trans-World Records, home to such influential Montreal acts as The Haunted and The Rabble. Dykhof chose two tracks-"Feeling Groovy" and "Good Morning (Here Comes the Sun)"-for release. Both were originals, penned by Maurice and released as Trans-World 1733 in early 1970. Many copies of the singles were apparently distributed in potato-chip bags.
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| Good Morning b/w Feeling Groovy <1970> The ultra-rare first Oliver Klaus 45 on Montreal's Trans-World Records. |
Maurice wanted to better the Studio Six recordings when he had more time. A burgeoning recording engineer-he had been recording his various bands since the Mo-Beats-Maurice set up a studio in the basement of a restaurant in Waterloo with recording equipment he and Bryan purchased from a radio station in Granby. There he had the time to experiment until they were satisfied he had the definitive Oliver Klaus sound on tape. "All of the studio side of the LP was recorded in the basement (during the fall/winter of 1969-70). . . . Our little studio there had two 2-tracks, so we just did sound on sound. We'd do the music in stereo, then take the reel and put it on the other machine, then put on the vocals on the way back."
Maurice was the engineer for the sessions, which entailed much running around. "I'd have to set up the band without me playing, then I'd play the rhythm section, and try to imagine where I was level-wise. Then I'd turn the tape deck on, run out the door, put on my guitar and play my piece, then go back and hope that we had something decent on tape." An interesting aspect of the studio side is the comments between tracks, which resulted from the long periods Maurice spent at the controls, readying the Teac deck. "I'd bore the guys silly checking the EQ in the studio. While they were waiting for the setup I'd record them and use their voices as a sound source. When it came time to edit the tapes I had all these snippets such as 'cheese, apple and potato,'" a reference to the food the guys ate while recording: cheese and apple sandwiches, and raw potatoes.
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| Jamming in the basement Maurice, Bryan and Jerry. |
The live side was recorded in the Waterloo hockey arena during the summer of 1970 before 280 people. Since Maurice was unable to engineer this session, Frank Provencher and David Chapman filled in. "They were behind a curtain, wearing earphones and recording us in stereo direct to a Teac R310 stereo mastering tape deck. We had two six-input Grommes tube mixers, with no equalization. Two Sony C38 condenser microphones were placed at the front of the stage and they picked up the whole band in stereo. Two additional mics picked up the vocals."
The live side captures a tougher Oliver Klaus sound. "We'd go into little ramblings such as while we're playing 'Kentucky Woman.' I'd take the other two guys by surprise. Those songs were never worked out in practices." At one point someone in the crowd called out for a slow song, something Oliver Klaus was not known for. They played "Season of the Witch" slow for the first time. That night the group also covered the Jefferson Airplane's "3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds," "Good Morning Little School Girl" and numerous originals.
Once both sides of the LP were mixed down to quarter-track stereo, Maurice went off to the RCA studio in Montreal to master the tapes. The budding sound engineer was in for a disappointment with his first major studio project though. "It turns out that I'd hooked up the tape decks for sound-on-sound over-dubbing incorrectly, and ended up with a master out of phase. In stereo it was okay, but had we pressed it like that it wouldn't have played in mono because we would have lost all the bass and tonal quality." So the RCA engineer remixed the stereo down to mono and boosted the bass. Since the live side had no over-dubs it was in true stereo and didn't require remixing.
Although Oliver Klaus had good contacts in Montreal-they were often booked by the largest promoter, Donald K. Donald-they chose not to pursue a major label contract when Donald offered them one. Putting the LP out themselves gave the band complete artistic control and helped them avoid the pitfalls they'd seen fellow musicians fall into. "Talking to people in groups like The Rabble and April Wine opened our eyes. They were living on a can of beans and a case of beer, and it was just work, work, work. Back in those days I guess we required a certain standard of living and if we could maintain it, we'd rather do it ourselves."
Photographer Marc Jolin took the album's front cover photo, showing, from left to right, Jerry Cushen, Maurice and Bryan. "He decided to do a high-contrast shot. You can tell it's the fall-we're wearing plaid jackets with rolled up jeans. The guys in the background are friends of the band: Richard Reed, Richard Russel, and probably Eddy Cody." Daniel Racine did the artwork and lettering. Five hundred copies of the LP were custom-pressed at RCA for around $700 and sold by the band at gigs.
Juan Rodriguez, the Montreal Gazette's pop-music journalist, included Oliver Klaus in a list of local bands that he put down. Maurice took offence and wrote to him. "I said 'Look, you've never heard us at all,' and I fired him off an album. Like most people in the industry that we approached, he partly took it as a joke because nobody had ever done anything like that. He got in touch with a friend-Michael Whalen, who was a broadcaster at the CBC. They both came down to Waterloo and partied in our studio. We filled up the hash pipe and an interview came out of that, so we were on CBC radio as an oddity or whatever." Popular CHOM-FM deejay Doug Pringle was another early fan, and would play both sides straight through.
Live shows continued, such as at popular downtown Montreal clubs like Le Crash, the Egg Nest, and Laugh In, which was booked by Donald K. Donald.
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| Waiting for the train to Montreal Maurice, Bryan and Jerry. |
"It would be a very select crowd, maybe a few industry people and management people, plus friends and family. Since we grew up on the stage Bryan and I would have our little spats, we'd argue it right out there on stage-not very professional at all. But we had character and people liked that. We used to do all kinds of strange things. I would lie on the floor and the bass player would have his foot on my stomach while I played a lead. They liked that stuff. We were called underground as a result."
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Copyright 1967-2007 Oliver Klaus. All rights reserved.
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