Canadian Kings of Indie Rock

Well my title is not entirely correct because for most of Sloan’s career, the band has been signed to the major label SonyBMG Canada. So some may question just how “indie rock” they are. However, for me, the phenomena is that regardless of having that corporate backing throughout their careers Sloan has managed to keep their credibility with their initial fans, as well as influence the upcoming generation of indie rockers.

I have got a long running personal history with Sloan that was finally revealed to the band the night of the Orange Lounge interview. I’ll let you into the life of “Sway” a bit here. I used to be an intern for the man!

Yes, my affinity toward Sloan began after I started interning at SonyBMG in early 2000 within their “Lifestyle Marketing” department, better known as the “Street Team”. One of my first jobs was to put up posters around Toronto. Fortunately for me, Sloan had just dropped the “Pretty Together” record but regrettably our promotion was quite the contrary.

We had overshot our poster order by about 10,000 and I had the delightfully rewarding task of putting up 15,000 posters up around the city. I don’t think you can imagine 15,000 posters in one room. They were all in boxes of 50 and stacked in some places to the ceiling. Talk about a waste of money!

I had them stored in my car, in my house, in the storage room at the office, in my friends cars, in my friends’ houses. I had enlisted the help of my buddies on weekends to put posters up. I threw poster in dumpsters, gave them away as Christmas gifts, cut them up and used them as coasters. It was ridiculous and couldn’t get rid of them! I became so sick of Sloan that I began to love them. All I could think about was Sloan. So it was if after the promo ended a large part of my life had been stripped away from me.

I order all of their albums and just went on a Sloan diet. I was in withdrawal! My friends notice the problem and stopped driving in my car because I refused to play anything else on the stereo. They would make Sloan cracks at random and purposely hide my albums around the house when I was in the washroom.

I can’t recall just how I eventually kicked the habit, although I do remember a situation involving a new girlfriend and a burning pile of plastic.

For me the interview with band was somewhat of a therapeutic release. I was able to really close that door to the past and move on (almost 8 years later).

It was great to finally receive some acknowledgement and tell them just how integral of a role that I’ve played in their careers face to face.

Now I can comfortably listen to old Sloan records again without going into remission. It’s a beautiful thing!

Sway
Toronto, June 2008