FEATURED: Saturday, September 2nd, 2000
FORMED: 1981, Vancouver, Canada
DISBANDED: 1994
REFORMED: 1999

Grab yourself a cup o’ joe and a smokie treat; here comes a long explanation as to why Moev is this week’s Feature Artist.

Back in 1988, I was in a record pool. This is a service where you pay a yearly fee and receive a box of records (yes, records!) every month, and the records are the releases that the record companies feel have the best chance of getting air play. So we DJ’s play them for a while (or not), see how you folks like 'em (or not), and then submit a feedback sheet to the record companies by way of the pool. Based on that feedback from 1000’s of DJs all across the country, a record either gets played on the air until you’re sick of it or gets sent to vinyl heaven. So, the pool sent me a Moev album, "Yeah, Whatever". It wasn’t my kind of music at that point (although that would all change when my brother Pete sent me a tape of "Pretty Hate Machine" later that year, but that’s a whole 'nother story), so I gave it to Pete after a five-minute listen.

Fast-forward to 1995. I had just started DJ’ing at Vertex, and in walks Pete with a pile of vinyl. "You gave me this stuff back in the 80’s, and I don’t have a turntable any more but I though that your crowd might like this stuff," he says. Hmm, what do we have here? The Housemartins, Propaganda, Gene Loves Jezebel, Blancmange, Skinny Puppy… and look, a Moev album! Which I promptly throw on the turntable, and I fall in love with the song "Crucify Me". I played it for about three months of Thursdays, just like I shoulda back in 1988… and then forgot about it again.

Fast-forward to 2000. I am DJ’ing pretty much exclusively with two laptop computers these days, and so I’m in the process of recording my vinyl collection into MP3 files. I blow the dust off of the last stack, sitting untouched for about five years, and what do we have here? Why, it’s the Moev album! So I record it.

Now, in between 1995 and 2000, the band Sequencial released a pretty popular tune called "House of the Dead", a dancy-stylee-techno number full of samples from the Evil Dead films. And the music itself, in case you didn’t know, is Moev’s "Crucify Me". The Gil-monster asked me to play it a couple of times at Vertex just before the fire, and it was an instant hit. So on a recent Wednesday, I found myself at Vertex on the Road at GQ with a copy of "House of the Dead" and a copy of "Crucify Me". What’s a DJ to do? Mix 'em, of course! And it went over so well that you’ll be hearing it every Wednesday for the next couple of months.

During the course of that night at GQ, several people came up to the booth and said "damn, I forgot all about that band; it’s good to hear 'em again". "Me too," says I. "We should do something about that". So I put on my research hat and jumped on the internet, and was absolutely floored by what I found out about Moev. I bet you will be, too.

• Moev was founded in 1981 in Vancouver, Canada, where they were part of the same scene as fellow Vancouver-ites Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly. Better drinkin’ buds a man could not ask for.
• The band could not find a record label that they were happy with, so in 1984 they started their own. You may have heard of 'em: Nettwerk Records, home to Skinny Puppy, Consolidated, Sarah McLachlan, Delerium…
• Moev’s 1990 release "Head Down" was produced by one of my all-time favorites, John Fryer (Nine Inch Nails, Stabbing Westward, Die Krupps, Gravity Kills, Sister Machine Gun, White Zombie…) and features vocals by Sarah McLachlan, who also appears on several Delerium releases.
• The aptly-named 1991 release "Obituary Column" was Moev’s last as a working band. Lead singer Dean Russel died in 1994 after a lingering illness, and surviving founding member Tom Ferris dismantled the band shortly thereafter.
• In 1995, Tom Ferris started one of my favorite bands, Vancouver-based Econoline Crush, which at the moment is also Canada’s favorite band. You can’t turn on Much Music without catching an EC video these days. And by the way, if you haven’t heard their album "The Devil You Know", you should go buy it right now. Go ahead, I’ll wait 'till you get back. Anyway, Tom and EC front man Trevor Hurst had a difference of opinion about where the band was going after their first Front Line Assembly-produced album, and so he left to start yet two more favorite bands of mine, Blackland (with Michael Balch of Front Line Assembly and Ministry) and Waiting For God (now defunct, but damn they were good).
• In 1998, Tom and his wife Julie decided to resurrect Moev, and in 1999 they released the EP "Suffer". They are currently in the studio working on a full-length release which should be out any day now.