Does ANYBODY remember the song "Drown" by Vibrolux, a "band" led by a studio rat named Steve Clark?
"Here I drown...don't make a sow-ow-ound..."
DOES ANYONE REMEMBER THIS SONG? ANYONE?
I loved this song so much in high school that I pretty much forced other friends to like it. I was the only won with a vehicle back then & the driver chooses the music, especially if he’s not asking for gas $. Some of my friends liked the song, others hated it. I hated the ones that hated it for hating it.
Why do we want, but seem to need, our closest friends or spouses or lovers to like the things we love? Well, as Virigina Woolf writes in Orlando (a book about a quasi-immortal person who switches genders every 100 years) that “nothing so cuts the root of [one’s] happiness and fills [one] with rage as the sense that another rates low what [one] prizes high.”
I remember my mother liking this Vibrolux song. She loved “Ava Adore” too, dutifully listening to the mushroom jazz & jungle mix-tapes that her daughter/my sister made for her. I preferred Trance, or anything with at-least-more-than-a-passing-interst-in-melody really more than stuff that focuses on primarily on the drums, trip-hop stuff. I think she liked a few Prodigy ones but, for obvious reasons, not “Smack My Bitch Up.” I should have bought her Massive Attack’s “Mezzanine” for Xmas that year. Or Tiesto’s badass remix of that Sara McLauchlan song “Silence:”
This was my palette cleanser for “Drown.”
That Tiesto remix was a watershed moment in dance music. What does “watershed moment” mean? I understand “high-water mark” and “low water-mark,” so are we talking about a stormy song that brings in so much water, it destroys the shed?
I think this Vibrolux song peaked @ as dismal #18 On the Much Music top 30, which aired on either Thursday or Fridays, with replays over the weekend. It was a boring show, to be straight with you. One week they Matched Marcy Playground with Sugar Ray, “Sex & Candy” vs “Fly" (feat. Super Cat)” If you're making a playlist (which Rob Sheffield, a fossilized Rolling Stone writer INSISTS are still called "mix tapes" by EVERYBODY. Okay Rob. Don't your fingers stuck in the rotary dial telephone. As a chaser I recommend “Trampoline,” which is already above waiting for you to “double-click to interact” and THEN press play. It’s a weird set-up, but I’m afraid I’m gonna half to ask you to click the song 3 times. Another good follow-up is Biff Naked’s gorgeous “Spaceman:”
or “Take Me Out” by Elk City, for it’s Neil Young-isms and angular guitar attack:
Sorry. Gotta give ya one more Elk City song. It’s from one of my favourite EPs ever. The Sea is Fierce. Usually I hate boy-girl schtick. It’s lazy:
“I got it!” screams the producer. “The boy sings verse 1! The girls sings verse 2!”
”Well, we stayed up all night, but it was worth it.”
But on this song it works so well.
Just a few more from that era: Econoline Crush’s “Home:”
Love two lines in this one, the first “You can’t always pick the dark you find.” and then “She says I’m the one she really wants but I’ll never be the one that she needs. I’m not here to be the creep. I’m just feeling incomplete. Take me home.”
Steve Clark, the Vibrolux singer CANNOT sing, so he pulls a Billy Corgan and mixes himself so low you can barely hear him. It works on most songs on the album, especially on this one, but there are some rockier tracks that sound fuckin rough.
Here’s another song I’d recommended put on a playlist that leads with Vibrolux’s drown. Vancouver’s Archive with “again,” a beautiful piece of music. There are two versions, a radio edit under 5 mins, but I’ve posted the 16 min one instead. It’s way better. God that haunting harmonica.
Even The Smashing Pumpkins were using drum machines in 1997.
I got the internet pretty late compared to most of my friends. 2005. The web was still pretty disorganized back then. Couldn’t find any new Vibrolux til few years later, at which time it seemed they’d morphed into a straight ahead rock band. So I didn’t pursue them any further, but I wish they’d gotten recognition.
EDIT: A few days after I posted this, my former boss, head of event spaces @ Oliver & Bonacini, wrote the following on my Facebook page:
Steve was in a band with my brother a few years later than this called the Premiums. He was an awesome guy who looooooved oasis. He took his own life in 2017 sadly but he would have laughed at your above comments.
I wrote back:
jesus christ, i had no idea. i'm sorry to hear that.
Great s/t album.
It was like...he was listening to a lot of Portishead & Massive Attack but he still wrote guitar-driven songs? I think there's a song called "Mind" on this first album and it's all sexy Jimi Hendrix wah pedal stuff...really good.
I can't guess as to why he took his life (i've tried once myself) but artists tend to be...more on the fringes of society, both financially & mentally. maybe it all just fell apart for him? i shouldn't speculate. he made great music tho. rip. my condolences to you _____...as it sounds like you knew him
Click on this sentence to visit Steve Clark’s obit page.
R.I.P. Steve Clark. The obits page makes it sound like Vibrolux was a solo thing: Stephen “Stevie Vibrolux” Ernest Clark.
Meandering through the daze of emotion
painting colours….
a red guitar
you’re older than you are
here I drown…don’t make a sound
I’m gonna close out with a song by another Canadian rocker who was found dead in an Edmonton motel room on March 27th 2013. Like Chris Cornell, he killed himself mere hours after playing a show.
Here is a song by Jay Smith, who was a member of Matt Mays touring band. The title takes on a certain poignancy when you know the man who wrote it is dead.
Reach out and talk to someone if you’re feeling suicidal. There is help out there.
https://www.wannatalkaboutit.com/ca/ (This websites helps both past and present survivors of violence while seeking to counsel at-risk populations to hopefully prevent future violence. I don’t mean anything racial by “at-risk,” btw, like how “urban” was/is codeword for anything Black. I’m in several risk categories myself.)
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/find-help (The Lifeline is a free, confidential crisis service that is available to everyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week.)
https://www.mentalhealth.gov/ (They help to connect you to the nearest counselor or doctor or service provider who specializes in whatever you might be struggling with.)
There are hundreds of other reputable places you can contact, I’ll up this page as I remind them, or just Google “mental health services in _______” and fill-in the name of your town/village/city