[center][h1][b]Rock n’ roll high school[/b][/h1][/center] [center][color=rgb(157, 157, 157)][highlight=transparent]January 20, 2011[/highlight][/color]by [color=rgb(157, 157, 157)][highlight=transparent]Josiah Hughes[/highlight][/color][/center] [center][/center] The Throwaways’ endless antics keep them forever young. “When we started Warren was an old man I was a baby and Jesse was going through menopause” guitarist Arielle McCuaig says in the back room of Broken City. Her bandmates drummer Warren Oostlander and guitarist Jessica Smyth happily play along with the joke outdoing each other with breakneck speed. That it’s nearly impossible to get a straight answer out of the three is exactly what makes their beloved Calgary power-pop punk band the Throwaways so damn charming. The truth is that the Throwaways started in high school when McCuaig and Oostlander were 17 and Smyth was 16. Ask anyone who started playing music at a young age and there’s usually godawful demos hidden under mattresses with strained teen angst and terrible influences. But the Throwaways has been playing its cards right since the beginning basing its youthful musical adventures on the sounds of the Briefs the Exploding Hearts the Undertones and the Buzzcocks. In fact if anything’s changed since the band’s inception Smyth is convinced that the members have gotten worse. “We just practise less” she says adding “We used to practise five days a week at least and now we practise once every three weeks.” Anyone who has seen the band live or heard its split 7-inch with the Spastic Panthers would beg to differ however as this trio has a knack for infectious melodic and timeless punk songs. Still after prodding for a hint of bad taste in their teen years Warren confesses to a brief flirtation with street punk. “When I first met Warren he was the only person at our school with a Sex Pistols T-shirt” McCuaig says. “I thought he was the coolest. Then he upgraded to a cool Casualties shirt.” Oostlander quickly chimes in with a correction. “No it was a Rancid shirt before the Casualties.” McCuaig is full of “when-I-first-met-Warren” stories and it’s understandable. The drummer — and the only male in the group — has a constant grin on his face and a back catalogue full of hilarious anecdotes. As teenagers the girls picked the punk names Jesse Jugular and Arielle Artery while Warren opted for Warren Fellatio because “he heard it in a video game and thought it sounded cool.” With allergies to grass eggs and cornstarch (“actually anything to do with corn” Smyth clarifies) McCuaig jovially recalls stuffing grass down Warren’s pants in high school. Meanwhile Smyth recounts the time Warren came to dinner and begrudgingly ate her mom’s quiche opting to deal with the allergic reaction later on to avoid an awkward social situation. Then McCuaig tops herself with the best Warren story of the evening: “When I first met Warren it was a magical time. We used to torture him by plucking his nipple hairs and making him wear girls’ clothes…. Also the best time of Warren’s life when he was the coolest was when he was going through puberty and his voice was changing. It would change so much like it would get stuck. It used to be that you could just squeeze above his Adam’s apple and his voice would sound like the fry cook from The Simpsons.” All of this goofing off lends itself to an ideal portrait of The Throwaways — it’s a group of best friends who have been together since high school. Still they’re working hard at having fun as they grow up get actual jobs start other bands and move on with their lives. All the while they’ll be regularly meeting up to play shows have the odd band practice and continue to perfect their punky power-pop. And they’ll do it all with grinning faces and constant snickering. [i]Originally published in ffwd.[/i]
