Artist: The Age Of Electric, Album: The Ugly EP, Song: Ugly

"Darlings of this primitive age, count your blessings.  You know you're gonna need'em.  All that's been done gets undone today."  Age of Electric were a band from Saskatchewan.  They were made up of siblings Todd and John Kerns as well as siblings Ryan and Kurt Dahle.  They formed in the early nineties and released a couple of indie EP's which included this one.  Bob Rock actually produced their early recordings.  This particular EP, Ugly, benefited from a re-release when they signed on to Cargo Records for distribution.  That along with video rotation for the single, Ugly, helped garner the band some national attention.  Ugly has this heavy metal swagger to it thanks to the strong vocals of Todd Kerns. That guy had quite the prairie howl going on back then.  The band would release two more albums with major label support between 1995 and 1997 but would call it quits in 1998.  Overall, the band had a few singles on the radio that charted well in the mid to late nineties.  Their sound fit nicely between rock and grunge.  However, the Dahle brothers started up another band called Limblifter in 1996.  With the increasing popularity of that band, the writing for the Age of Electric was on the wall so to speak.  The Kerns brothers would go on to form another band called Static in Stereo while the Dahles would emerge again in the New Pornographers.  Quite the family tree of bands that developed from their humble Saskatchewan beginnings.  You can see and hear the Age of Electric legacy at http://www.myspace.com/theageofelectric.  The band's discography is out of print today.  At the time of this blog, there were copies of the Ugly EP on Ebay and Amazon trading between $10 and $50.  You can watch the video for the song, Ugly, on You Tube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKpzNEB2hNU).  As always, you can hear this song as well as others that I blog about each day on Live 365 (http://www.live365.com/stations/raisedoncndnradio).  Thanks for reading and enjoy!