-Ron Hawkins
This past week has amounted to another drought of shares on behalf of yours truly, and unfortunately this has become the rule rather than the rare exception. I'll be posting my annual best of blog compilation for 2021 shortly, but wanted to put this one into the ether in the meantime.
Dig Circus were part and parcel of Toronto's fabled Queen Street West scene, or at least the tail end of it in the early '90s. A few bands from this circuit garnered minor to moderate mainstream renown including Barenaked Ladies and Lowest of the Low, the latter of whom affectionately name-checked Dig Circus in one of their songs. Not dissimilar to the aforementioned, D/C adopted for a fun and somewhat fraternalistic tenor that was sonically rooted in folk-pop sensibilities that for whatever the reason never translated into mass appeal on either side of the border. That's a real shame, because at least a handful of songs on Shekkie II possessed some real staying power, not the least of which the hooky and socially-conscious "Eighteen Indians," and equally as stimulating "Wishing For a Sail," the closest this six-piece ever came to breaching power pop. "The Story from Kate's Bed" comes in a relatively close third, or at least that's what my ears tell me. Despite an overly-prominent bass-line, a cover of the Velvet's "What Goes On" works quite convincingly, while a radical overhaul of the Sex Pistols "God Save the Queen" is an exercise in sheer irony that only a decade like the anything-goes-90s could've served up. As fate would have it, the closest Dig Circus ever came to tasting success occurred several years after their breakup when the Nickelodeon series Caitlin's Way, tapped "Wishing for a Sail" to be the program's theme song.
01. Eighteen Indians
02. Broken Umbrellas
03. Wishing for a Sail
04. Groove Farm
05. The Story From Kate's Bed
06. Overcome by Love
07. More
08. What Goes On
09. God Save the Queen
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