Learn all about the obscure and mostly anonymous rock band known as The Disgruntled. Hear why they were that way.

The band

From 1986 to 1990 The Disgruntled (aka: Unemployment, The Flatlanders, The Toe Pyjamas) were originally a songwriting duo consisting of me, Brian Porter, and Martin Wells. Martin primarily wrote the lyrics, which I often–er–modified and I wrote the music which he offered opinions on ("Needs more beat! More beat!")

The songs

Since my sister (Jennifer Scott) and her then husband (Craig Scott) were—and still are—very talented jazz musicians, it seemed natural (at the time) that they should help me record some rough demos of the songs Martin and I wrote. So every once-in-a-while we set up in the upstairs practice rooms of a music store for some late-night sessions and recorded about 20 songs.

The "reunion"

In 1998, after an eight-year break—and strictly for posterity—16 songs from the original tapes were stripped down to as few tracks as possible and rebuilt with better recording technology. The result is an amateurish-sounding CD called Coming and Going.

The sound

Here are five of the songs (click a song title to download an MP3 of that song):

Coming and Going - Lyrics

This was a shameless attempt at a pop song, complete with lyrics like "Oh yeah." We figured we’d make our millions writing songs like this, and then do the type of music we really wanted to. What never occurred to us, however, was we didn’t actually know what kind of music we wanted to do. I think Martin was leaning towards a sound more like Benny Goodman. I figure now that I was after something like a blend of rockabilly, pop, and wanker rock (you know, what Mark Knopfler called "Free Speech Tourists.")

Shave and a Haircut - Lyrics

Martin wrote the lyrics to this directly from a newspaper story that appeared in the Victoria Times Colonist from around the beginning of the 1900’s. Apparently a handgun-toting man burst into a barber shop shouting things like "Grab your razors and shave my celestial ox! Braid me with diamonds! Eat a mirror!" and then fired off all six rounds in his gun. I don’t know if anyone was hurt, but the shop got all shot up. The music (which is really just one riff over and over again) was written in the car on the way to record it.

I Didn't Think - Lyrics

This is what I think we would have sounded like if we hadn’t been trying to sound like everyone else. This is my favorite of all the songs we did. Although there is a more professional-sounding demo of this song that was done as a duet with my sister, Martin and I don’t like the arrangement, so we used the rougher-sounding solo version on the CD. It’s also one of the songs where I really meant what I sang. In the unusable vocal track from 1989 I sound right pissed off.

You Are So Pretty - Lyrics

Good grief, this song sounds so...so...EIGHTIES! Jangly guitars and Yamaha synthesizers. It also has those rather non sequitur but angst-ridden Gen-X lyrics. Martin's original lyrics were something to behold: punitive in their violent pretense and nerve-damaging in their grating near cliche-like meaninglessness. ("The concentration of your features / Makes me want to touch such a delicate creature" Gag!) So we sort of rewrote them. The music is nice, and Jennifer had the great idea to end the whole song in a perfect fifth, which was really neat. I kind of like this one just for its historical value. The harmonies are pretty, too.

Pan Fried 'Taters - Lyrics

I don't really know how this ever got recorded, but here's how it got written: I worked as a security guard part-time during my university years, and one of my "assignments" was to guard a gate to the backstretch of a horse-racing track. I used to watch the farmers come and go with their horses, donkeys, and goats all loaded up into their beat-up hay-covered trucks while country music blared out the grimy pitted windows. Then one day I flashed back to a time when I was a teenager riding the SeaBus (a ferry-like catamaran that travels between North Vancouver and Vancouver) while two very drunk men sang a song about driving a truck full of potatos. It all coalesced into this song, which was written down on the back of a (blank) Security Incident Report. I still have the page, and I notice that at the bottom I added the disclaimer, "I have never done any of these things in my life."

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