Jun

6

Show Business Giants is a quirky, humor-laden independent western Canadian rock band with a rotating lineup centered around guitarist,vocalist and main songwriter Tom Holliston. with most frequent collaborators Scott Henderson (Hissanol) and Ford Pier (D.O.A., Jr. Gone Wild). Contributions have also come from such other well-known western Canadian musicians as Craig Vishek (Pigment Vehicle), Keith Rose (Hard Rock Miners, Royal Grand Prix), Carolyn Mark, and brothers John and Rob Wright (Hanson Brothers, NoMeansNo).

Show Business Giants recordings typically display energetic top-notch musicianship, bursting with musical in-jokes and obscure pop culture references, covering a wide range of genres, from doo-wop and faux folk to heavy metal and punk. Press information, biographies and photos are always wildly inaccurate and humorous, reflecting Holliston’s songwriting bent towards the silly, surreal and trivial. While of a novelty nature, many of the songs have an intellectual depth and such quality playing as to have created a minor cult following around his recordings.

Holliston released the debut Show BUsiness Giants recordings ‘Gold Love’ in 1989 and ‘The Benevolent Horn’ in 1990 as cassette-only releases. His 1991 release ‘I Thought It Was A Fig’ included contributor Andy Kerr, then-guitarist for NoMeansNo, bringing his work to the attention of that band who subsequently released ‘Maybe It’s Just Me’ on their independent Wrong Records label. When Kerr left NoMeansNo in 1993, Holliston was recruited to join that band, which he has remained with since (Holliston also is ‘Tommy Hanson’ in the NoMeansNo side project ‘The Hanson Brothers’).

In 1995 Essential Noise Records, a short-lived Virgin Records subsidiary, released the album ‘Let’s Have A Talk With The Dead’, and worked Canadian radio promoting ‘I’ve Got A Crush on Wendy Mesley’, a humorous ballad about an iconic female CBC television newscaster. Subsequent releases were ‘Will There Be Corn’(1997) and ‘Self-Aggrandizement Keeps Us Going’ (2000), which were released independently in Canada and Europe. The band has sporadically toured, when members can coordinate their schedules, playing in Europe in 1997 and 2000, the USA 1989-2001, and semi-regularly in Canada.

In recent years Holliston has released several solo albums, while leaving the possibility open for future recordings by the Show Business Giants.


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