Legendary band takes it Slow on reunion tour
In Victoria tonight: First show in 31 years
IN CONCERT What: Slow with Pink Mountaintops and Bad Hoo When: Tonight, 8 p.m. Where: Capital Ballroom (formerly Sugar), 858 Yates St. Tickets: $25 at Lyle’s Place and Ticketweb.ca
For three decades, Slow frontman Tom Anselmi would get asked if his legendary but long-defunct Vancouver rock band was thinking about reforming. His answer was always no.
Not maybe, not let me think about it. Simply no.
“I never even discussed it with anyone else in the group,” said Anselmi, who is now based in Los Angeles and helped rebrand nightclubs for a while. “Literally, [the idea of reforming] has never come up. I suppose the members knew better than to ask.”
While band members were active in various musical projects, such as Tankhog and Copyright — and guitarist Christian Thorvaldson played for a while in the Matthew Good Band — the topic of a reunion remained a nonstarter until recently, when Anselmi got tired of staving off the repeated requests.
Still unsure if a reunion 31 years after the fact was a good idea, he turned to close friend Elliott Lefko, a Toronto-bred, Los Angeles-based executive with the concert promotion company that produces the Coachella festival. “I was blown away by his response,” said Anselmi.
Lefko probably felt the same way many Slow fans did. Those who saw the group in the ’80s generally believe Slow’s career was cut short long before it had reached its potential as the next big rock band out of Canada.
While Anselmi and the original band — drummer Terry Russell, bassist Stephen Hamm, and guitarists Ziggy Sigmund and Thorvaldson, all of whom live in Vancouver — started rehearsing, a tour through Canada was conceived with Lefko’s help.
A series of rehearsals, their first time together as a group since their final show in Vancouver on Oct. 13, 1986, went amazingly well. So good, in fact, that Anselmi called Lefko afterwards and suggested they cancel the tour.
Feeling that the band, once a youthful raw-nerve-ending of music and mania, still had something to offer, even with the members now in their 50s, Anselmi didn’t want to do a one-off reunion tour for inauthentic reasons. “I didn’t want to take the cash-grab money — no one did.”
A short tour was a better fit, Anselmi said, to give the band room to breathe while it readies its approach. Four dates are scheduled, starting with the band’s performance in Victoria tonight, followed by three Vancouver shows at the Fox Cabaret. The Capital Ballroom show, which might very well attract flabbergasted Slow fans from across North America, will be the band’s official return to the stage after three decades of uncertainty. “I’m very surprised,” Anselmi said. “I didn’t imagine this at all.”
Many reunions never get this far, on account of old wounds. Slow had more than most: When the group disbanded, being cited as the cause of a well-publicized mini riot (following a disastrous gig at the Expo ’86 stage in Vancouver) was the least of its worries. Drug and alcohol use and infighting led to the early demise of the group, some of whose members were still in their teens. It was a legacy few thought they could overcome, even after 30 years of silence.
Anselmi had to start with Sigmund, whom he hadn’t spoken to since the day the band split. “There was unfinished business. Whatever mistakes may have been made over the years, with some guy you played with when you were a teenager … it’s one thing to say I’m sorry, but it’s another thing to say let’s get together and fix this right now. That’s tangible. The minute Ziggy realized that, he became completely ready to move forward.”
Initial reunion discussions began once the band’s long-outof-print record, Against the Glass, was re-issued in the fall. Hearing the music again got everyone thinking, Anselmi said. “There is always friction. But the minute we all got in a room together, we were excited and grateful. That’s what I didn’t expect, and that’s why this is happening.”
Slow has plans to record new material in January, having written five new songs together — which amounts to exactly half of their career output to date. More will be forthcoming, with an extensive run of dates being booked for 2018. “It doesn’t even feel like a reunion,” Anselmi said. “Is everyone better? A lot better.”
Slow is often cited as the precursor to Seattle group Nirvana, albeit not in sound. They shared similar philosophies about mixing music with mania, with celebrity and fame sitting at the very bottom of their bucket lists. Both bands drew heavy attention during their infancy from chequewriting major labels; Nirvana eventually took the bait, but flamed out just four years after signing their contract. In a strange twist, Slow has yet to reach its potential.
With the reunion, the band few thought would emerge from the ’80s alive has outlived practically every one of its contemporaries.
“A lot of the stuff that would have happened to the band had we stayed together — we would have been signed, and inevitably we would have diluted what were doing — it ended up being a pure thing. It happened, it was over, and now Slow can be anything we want, as long as it’s true to the chemistry of the band.”
Asked if Slow feels pressure to live up to the legend, he scoffed. “This is probably the best rock ’n’ roll band in the world right now. This is the real deal. I wouldn’t be doing it otherwise. I’m very, very, very fussy, and I don’t give a f--k about money. But this is really, really good.”