The Parachute Club

1983

In the late seventies, Toronto was simmering with the music and politics of a number of subcultures and communities. A potent punk and art music scene was constellating around the Ontario College of Art in bars like the El Mocambo and the Cabana Room in the Spadina Hotel. A powerful reggae and West Indian soca music scene was happening in North Toronto, while dub poets Lillian Allen and Clifton Joseph focused their work on issues of race and language. And at mid-town parties and Jarvis Street bars, members of the women’s movement and gay communities were partying with all-women rock bands. With the opening of the artist-inspired “Queen Street” clubs – The Rivoli, the Cameron Hotel and the Bamboo Club – joining the long-established country and western bar, the Horseshoe, the time was right for an explosive cross-fertilization of the creativity of writers, artists and musicians from Toronto’s previously segregated “undergrounds.”

In the fertile atmosphere of this musical wild zone, Lorraine Segato and Lauri Conger were cutting their teeth on rock and roll and politics with the all-women band Mama Quilla II. Billy Bryans, busy producing tracks for banks like the Time Twins, BopCats and Downchild Blues Band, was also drumming with the new wave trio the Government led by Andrew Patterson. When the Toronto performance artists the Time Twins introduced Billy and Lorraine in 1979, their rapport sparked what would become a long musical collaboration.

Around this time, Billy and Lorraine were introduced to Latin and African music and met Mojah, the lead singer for Toronto’s premier Rasta-reggae band Truth and Rights. Along with Terry Wilkins, they stared “V,” a short-lived but popular radical funk, soca and dub-wise reggae experience that cut across gender and race boundaries by featuring two lead singers: Lorraine, a white feminist and Mojah, a black Rastafarian.

The Parachute Club was formed in the summer of 1982 when Billy received a call to play a party for Toronto’s Film Festival. Lorraine and Billy decided to put a new band together – including the now-famous chef Greg Couillard on percussion – for the party and it received such an enthusiastic response that they thought it would be fun to play a few more gigs. At the very next gig, held at an after hours club, they met Gerry Young, the president of Current Records. Lorraine remembers telling Billy, “That guy says he wants to manage us and can get us a record deal and will give us money to do a demo. Do we really want to do a record?”

Shortly after they released their debut record called The Parachute Club. Rise Up their first single off of the record became an anthem for a generation of people who adopted it as an anthem for empowerment and equality. It remains so to this day. The record was produced by Daniel Lanois at Grant Ave Studio before his meteoric rise as respected producer for such artists as Brian Eno, Bob Dylan, Neville Brothers, U2.

At the Feet of the Moon

1985

Their self-titled debut album parachuted onto the radio waves in Canada in the summer of 1983 and, as the temperature rose, “Rise Up” heated up the charts. By the end of the year, “Rise Up” had become the Number 1 radio song across the country. No one was more surprised than the band. Unprepared for this success, the band scrambled to create a video and live show that would match the energy of the album. Steve Webster left the band and Russ Boswell joined them for their upcoming tour in Quebec and

Ontario. Audiences loved the music and a successful western tour soon followed.

The Parachute Club’s infectious rhythms jumped energetically into Canadian popular music culture, and the band garnered Junos, CASBYs and Black Music awards. They were alternately criticized and applauded for their outspoken social and political statements, but no one could deny the intelligence and danceability of their music.

Their second album, At the Feet of the Moon, produced by New York’s Michael Beinhorn (known for his work producting Material, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sound Garden and Soul Asylum) saw the addition of bass player Keir Brownstone and the increased involvement of Dave Gray in the songwriting process. Released in 1984, the album solidified the band’s success. The first two albums were released in Europe, and the band toured England and Germany, where the band was particularly popular thanks to the promotional moxy of Plane records. Photographer Deborah Samuel’s direction of the Juno-nominated video for the single “At the Feet of the Moon” matched the music with a stunning visual treatment of the song.

Small Victories

1986

Their third album, Small Victories, produced by John Oates (Hall & Oates) and The Parachute Club, was released in 1986 to good reviews and sold over 50,000 records in Canada which, by 1980’s standards, was very good. The band toured Canada, Europe and parts of the U.S. By this point they had a acquired a reputation as a popular hip sub-culture band but they were unable to cross into the mainstream success that the U.S. record company had wanted. The band disbanded in late 1989 but not without making an indelible mark on the music scene as a progressive iconoclastic pop political outfit that was helped bring attention to the ever growing world music scene in Canada and abroad.