Matthew Frederick Robert Good
(born June 29, 1971, Burnaby, British Columbia) is a Canadian rock musician. He was the lead singer for the Matthew Good Band
, one of Canada's most successful alternative rock bands in the 1990s, before dissolving the band in 2002. Other band members included drummer Ian Browne, guitarist/keyboardist Dave Genn, and original bassist Geoff Lloyd, later replaced by Rich Priske. In the years since the Matthew Good Band's disbanding, Good has pursued a solo career and established himself as a political activist and blogger.
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Matthew Good Band
Good's early career in music involved a variety of folk demos and a stint as the lead singer of a folk band, the Rodchester Kings. Matthew Good and guitarist Simon Woodcock were discovered at an open mic at Simon Fraser University by manager Brent Christensen. Early Rodchester Kings demos were recorded at Fragrant Time Records in Burnaby by Greg Wasmuth and Steven Codling.
The Matthew Good Band was formed in
Coquitlam, British Columbia in 1993. In late 1993 they recorded a short demo tape called "Euphony", which featured acoustic songs like "Mercy Misses You", "Heather's Like Sunday", and the title track "Euphony". In 1994, they won a prize from a local radio station's band competition. The prize included recording time at a local studio/recording school, where, in September 1994, they recorded "15 hours on a September Thursday". This demo tape included songs like "Second Sun", "Dancing Invisible", and "Push". In December 1994, the band signed a publishing deal with EMI Publishing.
In March 1995, the original band went on tour across Canada. Upon return, the band split up and Matt started over with a new group of backing musicians.
In mid-1995, they released their debut full-length
album,
Last of the Ghetto Astronauts
. Although initially popular only in the Vancouver area, the album began to catch on across Canada in 1996, with the singles "Alabama Motel Room", "Symbolistic White Walls", and "Haven't Slept in Years" becoming significant hits on
radio and
MuchMusic.
Last of the Ghetto Astronauts
, made on a budget of roughly five thousand Canadian dollars, eventually set the mark as the highest selling independent label release by a Canadian artist.
The band's 1997 album
Underdogs
spawned the hit singles "Everything is Automatic" and "Apparitions", the latter of which remains the band's most successful single. Good's political outspokenness and brash confidence were unusual in the Canadian rock scene of the 1990s, and he was soon recognized as much for his seemingly difficult disposition as for his musical talent. As a nod to his reputation, merchandise with the phrase "I Hear Matt Good Is a Real Asshole" was sold at MGB shows. He also maintained a subversive image, sometimes posing for
publicity photos in a
gorilla mask.
Beautiful Midnight
, which saw the departure of Lloyd and the joining of Rich Priske as the new bassist, followed in 1999 and became hugely successful via singles including "
Hello Time Bomb", "Strange Days", and "Load Me Up". The album skyrocketed the band's celebrity status and earned them two
Juno awards in 2000, for Best Group and Best Rock Album. (Good himself boycotts the Juno Awards, and guitarist Dave Genn has been quoted as saying that he only attends for the open bar.)
After touring
Beautiful Midnight
for nearly two years, the band set to work on
The Audio of Being
. The album's creation came during a difficult emotional period for Good. While he struggled to deal with the band's success, he was diagnosed with
sarcoidosis, a disease that causes lesions to form in the lungs, prompting him to temporarily quit smoking.
[1] Following throat surgery to remove a nodule from a vocal cord, Good holed up for three weeks in a hotel in
Whistler to work on songs. Good later wrote that he spent much of the time "trying to keep down food supplement bars, trying to forget the growing tension within the band, the high expectations of needing to produce 'hit songs' (whatever they are these days), throwing up, and trying to find some semblance of direction in my personal life."
The band entered the studio in late 2000 to record the material. The sessions saw a great deal of intra-band turmoil, with
Dave Genn quitting the band before the album was complete. He returned a few days later, however, only to quit permanently not long after the album's release in October 2001. Following Genn's departure, Good dissolved the band in 2002.
Solo career
Good released his solo debut,
Avalanche
, in 2003. The album featured major stylistic differences from those recorded with the previous band, and featured the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra on several tracks, including the first two singles, "Weapon" and "In a World Called Catastrophe". Good recorded the album with long-time MGB producer Warne Livesey, who earned a Juno nomination for the effort.
Good and co-director Ante Kovac were also nominated for a Juno Award for Best Video of the Year for "Weapon". Ante Kovac received the award alone on stage. In later commentary, Good related that Kovac's first edit of the video was far too standard, with gratuitous and generic fades. After firing Kovac, Good flew to Toronto and worked with video editor J.D. Shaw to re-craft the footage. While working on the edit, Good began to experiment with overlaying text and adding still frames and stock photos to help deliver the message. Good noted that he felt that the video was his favourite from his catalogue.
Good's second solo album, the politically-charged
White Light Rock & Roll Review
, was released June 15, 2004. Video singles included "Alert Status Red" and "It's Been a While Since I Was Your Man". For the album, Good elected to take a stripped-down approach. Rather than record each instrument separately, Good and his new band (which consisted of himself, former MGB bassist Rich Priske, guitarist Christian Thor Valdson and drummer Patrick Steward) recorded the songs as a unit, with Good adding vocals and additional guitar parts later. Good later noted that he loved the freedom of being able to write a song, enter the studio, and have a recording completed almost immediately, rather than having to deal with the sometimes arduous process of recording layers and layers of music for a single song.
Good encountered controversy with the video for "Alert Status Red". Initially, the video was intended to be a concept piece, directed by Good. However, upon entering the editing stage, he realized he hadn't shot enough footage to make his concept work. He opted to turn all of the footage over to Kyle Davison, who directed the video for "In a World Called Catastrophe", to see if anything could be made out of it. Davison came up with his own concept, edited it together, and sent the finished product to Good. Good approved of the video, and made it available for download on his website. Good, however, was unaware that Davison had utilized several short clips of surveillance footage of the
Columbine High School shootings in the piece. Upon hearing about the clips from individuals who felt the use was insensitive, Good pulled the video from his website. After watching it again, he decided to enlist the opinions of others, including MuchMusic, to see if they had any objections. Most felt it was reasonable, granted that the use wasn't exploitative and helped to support the message of the video, a message that they believed was decidedly relevant. Good agreed. He then returned the video to his website and expressed his support for the work of his co-director.
In March 2005, Good brought in Ryan Dahle and Meegee Bradfield of
Limblifter to join his band (replacing Christian Thor Valdson and Rich Priske). Good noted that he was concerned his previous line-up had run its course creatively, and that, as a solo artist, he was graced with the freedom to change direction by involving different musicians. He hoped that Ryan and Meegee might be able to lend a new perspective to familiar material. In April, the lineup entered the studio and recorded two tracks for the Matthew Good best-of, "Big City Life" and "Oh Be Joyful". However, when Good undertook a brief tour of Ontario in July 2005, he was rejoined by Priske and Valdson.
A compilation of Good's work with the Matthew Good Band and on his own was released in September 2005, titled
In a Coma: Matthew Good 1995-2005
. The first single from the album, "Oh Be Joyful", was released at the end of July.
Good took particular care in the production of the expanded deluxe edition of
In a Coma
, which included an additional CD and a DVD. In April 2005, Good entered the studio and recorded nine songs from his catalog, reworked and performed acoustically. As a nod to fans who were unable to find them, the CD also included all of the tracks from the out-of-print EPs
Lo-Fi B-Sides
and
Loser Anthems
. The DVD featured the complete library of Good's music videos, including a new video for "While We Were Hunting Rabbits" from
Avalanche
developed by animation students at
Sheridan College.
Following the release of
In a Coma
, Good began demoing songs for a new album. While promoting
In a Coma
, Good noted that he might use the release of the compilation to mark the end of the first era of his career, where he could then move on to write "weirder" music. In December 2005, Good previewed a demo called "Black Helicopter", which he recorded at home using
GarageBand on an
Apple Power Mac G5.
In March 2006, Good embarked on a solo acoustic tour of Canada, which featured smaller crowds and more intimate settings. Good spent several weeks leading up to the tour reworking many of his older songs to fit a solo acoustic format, including rarities such as "Fated" and "Life Beyond the Minimum Safe Distance". He was joined on tour by opening act
Melissa McClelland, with whom he played a cover of
Johnny Cash's cover version of the
Nine Inch Nails song "Hurt" at the end of his solo performances.
However, behind the scenes, Good began to be affected by his ongoing mental health concerns, particularly following the unexpected separation from his wife in February 2006. For years, Good battled off and on with bouts of mania and anxiety, many of which he credited to the stresses of popularity. In early 2006, prior to the tour, Good was prescribed
Ativan to help counter his anxiety. During a solo tour stop in Kingston, Good was rushed to the hospital following an adverse reaction to Ativan. The last two shows of the tour were cancelled for what Good later explained was a "nervous breakdown".
[2]
The following summer, Good planned to spend several months in Europe to write a book. However, just a few days into the trip, Good found himself overwhelmed emotionally. He returned to Vancouver, moving into his parents' home. While there, Good began to find himself with an increasing dependence on Ativan. One night, Good was discovered unconscious and rushed to the hospital, having taken upwards of forty Ativan tablets and suffering an overdose. During a brief stay in the hospital's psychiatric ward, Good was diagnosed with
bipolar disorder.
[3]
Good eventually channeled the emotional turmoil into his next album, 2007's
Hospital Music
. The album included thinly-veiled allusions to his divorce ("I Am Not Safer Than a Bank" and "She's in It for the Money") as well as darker subjects, such as Good's close friend losing his father to cancer ("99% of Us Is Failure"). The album also featured two cover songs, a radically reworked version of the
Dead Kennedys' "Moon Over Marin" and
Daniel Johnston's "True Love Will Find You in the End".
Hospital Music
debuted at the top of the Canadian albums chart, Good's first number one album since
Beautiful Midnight
.
[4]
Good noted that
Hospital Music
marked the end of his recording and publishing contracts.
[5] He is as yet unsure whether he will sign to another label, but is continuing to work on demos for a new album. Good embarked on a brief solo tour of the US in March 2008, and began a full-band tour of Canada in May.
Good recently commented on his blog that he is nearly finished his next studio album, which is to be titled
Vancouver
.
[6] After entering the studio in early 2009 to record Vancouver, Good confirmed that he has resigned with Universal Music Canada and the new album would no longer be an indie release, as it was originally believed to be.
Writings
Beyond his music career, Good has also been a writer and blogger. From late 1997 through the end of 2000, Good published a series of monthly "manifestos" on the band's website. Many of these were later compiled and released in his debut book
at last there is nothing left to say
, published in 2001 by Insomniac Press (ISBN 1-894663-08-X).
Throughout his life, Good has found a passion for politics and history. He once commented that he would have become a history teacher had he not found success as a musician. In recent years, he has made his political views far more public, and has used to express his generally left-leaning conspiratorial opinions (see
Left of Normal) about the Canadian government, the effects of the United States' foreign policy, and world crises like the
conflict in
Darfur,
Sudan. Good has also been heavily involved with
Amnesty International, bringing Amnesty representatives on the road with him during his 2004 tour and offering a limited-edition
soccer jersey on his website with proceeds going to Amnesty.
In 2008, Good created a new website entitled
Dear San Diego
, on which he writes fictional journal entries. In an interview, Good said regarding his writing: "It comes from the need inside of me to make fun of people. And my need to make fun of myself.
I like writing things that are both intelligent and subversive. There's so much for me to write about - society has become so absolutely ridiculous."
[7]
Discography
Matthew Good Band discography
- Last of the Ghetto Astronauts
(1995)
- Raygun (EP)
(1997)
- Underdogs
(1997)
- Lo-Fi B-Sides (EP)
(1998)
- Beautiful Midnight
(1999)
- Loser Anthems:B-Sides & Rarities (EP)
(2000)
- The Audio of Being
(2001)
Solo discography
- Avalanche
(2003)
- White Light Rock & Roll Review
(2004)
- In A Coma: 1995-2005
(2005)
- Hospital Music
(2007)
- Live At Massey Hall
(2008)
- Vancouver
(2009)
See also
- Canadian rock
- Music of Canada
- List of musical artists from Canada
References
- Tour Queries on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
- Good, Matthew. "Hospital Music". MatthewGood.org. April 22, 2007.
- Good. April 22, 2007.
- Williams, John. "Matthew Good has great chart debut". JAM! Showbiz. August 2007.
- Good, Matthew. "An Actual Entry About Music". MatthewGood.org. March 6, 2007.
- Good, Matthew. "Music - I Do That Too". MatthewGood.org. July 19, 2008.
- http://www.voxonline.com/alternative/mgb/index.html