Artist: Fleshpaint Album: Imitate Yourself, Song: Cigarette Religion

"It's your cigarette religion, it's just what it takes to make you see.  So take me higher."  Fleshpaint were an Ottawa band that released their debut album, Imitate Yourself, in 1996.  They were signed to indie label, TOX records and they recorded the album in Montreal.  The band was essentially a three piece in the studio but expanded to 5 members when playing live.  The members were Rick Thomas, Marty Spiro, Jacob Kelly, Kevin Eamon and Dawn Liberty.  Their sound was industrial pop.  The song, Cigarette Religion, is a perfect example of that and received some good airplay on alternative radio when it was released.  As far as I know, the band didn't record another album following this release.  There isn't much on the band but it does appear that some of the players in this band were also members of other bands in the Ottawa area.  I read somewhere that Fleshpaint may have actually been a side project originally.  Nonetheless, they will be remembered for this cool musical nugget in Canadian history.  The album isn't widely available anymore and likely out of print.  At the time of this blog, there were copies trading on Amazon between $20 and $40.  You can hear the song, Cigarette Religion, on You Tube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2Uy4YVYKJ0).  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!