Matthew Good Band

“I just decided it was crap and never went back,” says Matthew Good of his brief foray into art school.

It was the late-80s in British Columbia and soon the young Good found himself in “the usual places that anyone who just has a high school diploma can get jobs at.” Working as a petroleum transfer engineer, among a variety of archetypal slacker jobs, he managed to subsidize his career as an aspiring writer and eventually, a burgeoning songwriter. Though he’d never before tried his hand at rock n’ roll, Good then began putting his words to music at the behest of friends in a Vancouver folk-rock combo. The group soon booted out their lead singer and invited Matthew to step up to the mic.

“I had no aspirations towards music as a youth,” says the Coquitlam, B.C.-based Good. “I was a writer. So I listened to some Simon and Garfunkel records and then went and sang. After a while, I realized that the band sucked and, basically, I could do it better myself.

Today, with no less than six top 5 rock/alternative hits in Canada over the last three years, Matthew Good Band are without question the country’s most exhilarating and popular new band. Now Atlantic Records is set to unveil “BEAUTIFUL MIDNIGHT,”the Vancouver-based quartet’s hotly-tipped U.S. debut. Produced by Warne Livesey (Julian Cope, Midnight Oil, The The), the album sees MGB serving up a distinctive and powerful modern rock sound, marked by massive guitars and oceanic string arrangements – all crowned by Good’s sly vocals and always acerbic lyricism. Thrillingly urgent tracks such as the majestic “Strange Days” and the volatile first single, “Hello Time Bomb” evince a brash, confident sound which virtually guarantees that Matthew Good Band will achieve equivalent sensation here in the Lower 48 and beyond. “I fell into this, really,” notes Good. “To be quite honest, I wanted to be a history professor.”

Back in the early 1990s, as the folk-rock group he’d been working with started to implode, the increasingly confident Good sat down and penned the songs that would make up “LAST OF THE GHETTO ASTRONAUTS,” the debut album from his as yet unformed new band. “I wrote it in a week,” he says of the album. “From there, it was a matter of getting all the right people together to make it happen. We went off, recorded it, and put it out. We’d never played a live show together! We thought, maybe 1,000 people will buy this, but who cares? Next thing we knew, we had a song on the radio and we were on tour trying to think of a better name than the Matthew Good Band!”

Released in November 1995, “LAST OF THE GHETTO ASTRONAUTS” went on to become the most successful independent Canadian rock record… ever. The album – recorded for $7,000 (Canadian!) – featured three national rock radio hits, a remarkable accomplishment for an independent release that led to the group becoming one of 1996’s “Most Played New Artists.” Soon after the record’s release, Good and drummer Ian Browne welcomed ex-DSK guitarist Dave Genn into the MGB core roster (bassist Rich Priske joined later, just as the “BEAUTIFUL MIDNIGHT” sessions were about to begin). “It’s hard to say when anyone joined the band,” Good grins. “Everyone was kind of aloof about it, and then went, ‘Oh, okay…’

“Originally we weren’t really a band, don’t forget. It was just me, and the guys came in and played because they were friends of mine. We put MGB on the CD, but on the radio, they said ‘Matthew Good Band.’ So people would go to the record store and it’d be confusing, so we just rectified it by putting Matthew Good Band on the record. We just thought we’d write some better songs and then change the name of the band. But it did so well, we were stuck with it. I’ve hated it ever since. But it’s cool, because most people just call us MGB anyway. Not only that, it’s completely ambiguous. A lot of bands, when you hear their name, it pigeonholes their music. At least with us, it could be anything. We can be an art rock band or we can be a metal band or we can be anything we want to be.”

Buoyed by that very sense of artistic liberation, MGB proceeded to record both the five-track “RAYGUN” EP, as well as the full-length “UNDERDOGS.” The puckishly titled (and double platinum certified) 1997 album featured three top 5 Canadian hits, including “Everything Is Automatic” and “Apparitions” – both of which are included on Atlantic’s “BEAUTIFUL MIDNIGHT.” Riding the album’s critical and popular heat, MGB received a pair of Juno nominations in 1998 – “Best New Group” and “Best Video” (for “Everything Is Automatic”) – plus a quartet of additional nods the following year – “Best Group,” “Best Album,” “Best Single,” and “Best Video” (for “Apparitions”). The “Apparitions” clip also scored three nominations at the 1999 MuchMusic Video Awards, ultimately winning the “Best Direction” trophy. On their home coast, the MGB won a pair of Pacific Music Awards, for “Best Male Vocalist” and “Best Live Performance.” Other honors garnered that year include topping the “Artist of the Year” tally in Chart magazine’s annual reader’s poll.

The highly-anticipated follow-up only confirmed what fans and critics had already figured out: MGB had unquestionably become one of music’s most consistently interesting and inventive new groups. Marked by a refreshing blend of smart cynicism and poignant humor, “BEAUTIFUL MIDNIGHT” chronicles Good’s life in those difficult years between the ages of 16 and 26. Songs such as the haunting “Suburbia” and the vitriolic “Failing The Rorschach Test” are passionate, provocative, and often pissed-off, chronicles of the ups and downs of adolescence, of teenage kicks and crises.

“I can go through the record and everything means something,” he says. “From ‘Hello Time Bomb,’ which is me sitting around the gas station daydreaming about getting laid, to ‘Jenni’s Song,’ which is about going out with a girl and getting loaded at 9AM on a Tuesday morning. I don’t really think that you should write records where people can’t put themselves in your shoes. As a writer, you’ve failed if that’s the case.” Fuelled by a diverse array of influences ranging from Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and Noam Chomsky, to Francis Bacon, U2, and the Pixies, Good is gifted with the ability –in songs, writings, and conversation – to spew scathing cultural satire in addition to profound personal truths (his monthly rants – known as “The Manifesto” – on the very popular www.matthewgoodband.com site will soon be gathered together in the upcoming book, Black Market Surgery). The turbulent “A Boy And His Machine Gun” has taken some heat for its expression of youthful violence in the wake of Columbine, but Matthew says the song is about something else altogether. On the other hand, he’s glad the song can be used as a starting point for discussion.

“I wrote it before school shooting became a prevalent thing,” he explains. “It’s actually about being checked into a mental institution. But I don’t know, the First World is a really stupid place. Algerian rebels can walk into some mountain village and hack the legs off kids because they’re pissed off about the International Red Cross vaccinating them, but if some kid walks into a school in Denver and shoots some people down, it means morality is coming to an end! Because, what, we’re so much better than them? That’s just horsesh**.”

Awash in music and arrangements as potent and richly textured as Good’s lyrics, “BEAUTIFUL MIDNIGHT,” like “UNDERDOGS” before it, was produced by Warne Livesey. “Warne’s like a real producer/engineer,” Good says. “He’s not one of those producers who says ‘Everybody dress up in renaissance clothing, and I’ll be right back with the wine and hookers!’ He actually produces and engineers the whole record. The thing about Warne is, I talk to him every week, I stay at his house when I’m in England, and it has nothing to do with him being a producer anymore. He’s just one of my friends and he makes records with me.” “BEAUTIFUL MIDNIGHT” debuted atop the Canadian SoundScan chart upon its September, 1999 release, ultimately reaching double platinum certification. The album was an enormous success, spawning a #1 rock/alternative smash in “Hello Time Bomb.” MGB received a record 11 nominations at the 2000 MuchMusic Video Awards – with “Load Me Up” scoring two trophies for both “Best Video” and “Best Rock Video.” In addition, the quartet were honored with a pair of Juno Awards, for “Best Group” and “Best Rock Album.”

MGB have also cemented their status as an extraordinarily intense live act, with any number of their own sold-out headlining treks, as well as an acclaimed main stage stint on 1999’s Edgefest Tour. They’ve also supported a wide range of artists, including the Who. “We’re probably the hardest working band in this country,” Good declares. “We busted our asses big-time. Played a lot of shows. And this country is the worst country in the world to tour! I’ve toured in negative 50 degree weather. Fourteen-hour drives are commonplace – and that’s in a van with nine guys! So the States are going to be easy.”

The proud battle cry of Victory Through Sheer Volume is MGB and their fans’ rabble-rousing reaction to the New Pop Explosion, not to mention Nu-Metal or today’s purveyors of po-faced pretentiousness. Like any rock n’ roller worth his salt, Good regularly rails against the disposability of modern music, while at the same time worrying about the future of the form. “The second largest record buying demographic is between the ages of like, 9 and 17, and of course they’re going to buy bullshit, just like kids that age always do,” Good says. “The trick in all this is, those kids, when they’re in their late teens and going into college, are they going to go looking for music that means something? Are they going to desensitize themselves, rather than going ‘Oooh, that Patti Smith record I heard about from the Seventies, I’m going to check that out.’ At least we had bands, when I was young, that you could listen to and go ‘That blows my mind in a way that I can’t explain to you.’ It’s a generation that doesn’t know from putting on vinyl and sitting in your room and really listening. I miss buying records to listen to what someone’s going to say next. I find it unfortunate that in this day and age, I have to go out and buy new Bob Dylan records to get that feeling. I mean, for fuck’s sake, the man’s three hundred and twelve years old!”

With the mission to inspire and inflame both hearts and minds, Matthew Good Band are poised to teach the kids a thing or two about rock n’ roll’s power and purpose. The fuse has been lit…