DEJA VOODOO (Canada)

GUMBO
-CS
1983 (OG!)


Re-Up


"OG Music meisters Gerard Van Herk and Tony Dewald are rock's answer to Bela Lugosi/Peter Laurey. Deja Voodoo brewed up their zany, and often trying, sludgeabilly swamp rock with enthusiasm of Buddy Holly and the charm of Herman Munster. Raw guitars, drums and vocals are all that grace their records and contain no studio trappings leaving them live and harsh." - canoe.ca



"Deja Voodoo (and the Gruesomes) were probably the Canadian underground bands from the 1980's who generated the most affection from their fans partly through the good-natured silliness of their music and image which could still rock no matter how goofy it was. Their mixture of rockabilly, garage, 'B' horror movies, comic books, cartoons, and junk food was not the first such (the Cramps were already there), but they pursued it with such irreverent vigour in an decade full of sombre, gloomy music or wimpy synth bands. Deja Voodoo also toured heavily all over Canada as well as the USA and Europe (especially Scandinavia), the first Canadian underground band to do so. Their Deja Voodoo BBQs became an institution in Montreal, Toronto, and elsewhere in southern Ontario. They also further encouraged a scene to develop by founding their own lable OG! Records and putting out a series of comps. of similar minded Canuck bands called It Came from Canada, which introduced a number of bands such as the Gruesomes, UIC, Ray Condo, Harold Nix, the Deadcats, the Shadowy Men, the Cowboy Junkies, the Smugglers and more.

"In their groundbreaking two-man, trash-rock attack, they led the way for a number of other one and two man bands such as The House of Knives, Leather Uppers, Fuck Y'all, Bloodshot Bill, Mississippi Grover, Slim Sandy, Duotang, (all Canadian BTW) Flat Duo Jets, and Bob Log 111 to open up garage rock by stripping it down. Now of course we have the mega-successful White Stripes and Death From Above, but Deja Voodoo did it first." - Carl Wilson



"If Og broke new ground for the Canadian indie scene, pop music is only now catching up to the weird and wonderful world inhabited by Deja Voodoo. They weren't the first guitar-drums duo -- Marc Bolan's original Tyrannosaurus Rex comes to mind -- but their incoherent mix of The Cramps, The Kingsmen, The Sonics and "the episode of The Incredible Hulk where he marries Mariette Hartley and she dies" seemed to come from another dimension." - Allan Wigney


"We had tried to do a band with more people and it hadn't really worked out, and we did figure out that we could make enough noise with the two of us.

If Tony didn't spend a lot of time hitting symbols we would have bottom all the time; if I only had the four fat strings we would have a sort of bassline happening all the time. I've heard other people play with just guitar and drums playing with a full drumkit and with a full six strings and it sounds very thin and tinny. But then again, we sounded like we were playing in your basement with the door closed. So it all evens out." - Gerard Van Herk



Gerard Van Herk - Screams & Gut Strings
Tony Dewald - Skins & Bones


Tracklist:
01 - Into The Gumbo
02 - Duh Papa Duh
03 - Van Gogh's Ear
04 - Baby Honey
05 - You're No Fun When Your Head's All Mushy
06 - Deja Voodoo Train
07 - Someone In My House
08 - Boppin' 88
09 - ifugao
10 - Baron Samedi
11 - Full Moon
12 - Big Black Bus
13 - A Girl I Know
14 - Pyramid
15 - Wall of Paisley
16 - Vegetables
17 - Surfing on Mars


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