Imagine this! It’s 1995. Yourself and a friend are from a small farming community in Alberta, Canada. You dare to act upon a shared dream of giving your own self-penned, performed and recorded music tracks their biggest shot of going to radio.
What is more, you go for it! You and your synthesizers are packed up and move on up to the city, (in this case Vancouver). You walk into one of the Cities biggest pop music radio stations, hand over your little CD to the program director and the next thing you know your own tunes not only made it to air, they are playing in heavy rotation. Owing to the response from radio listeners calling up and asking to hear that new Erasure song again! Also this leads to finding yourselves at #1 on the HMV Indie charts for THREE months unbroken! HOLY WOW!
STOP! We know, it’s got to be dream right?… Biggest BUT ever… it’s the incredible truth and it happens to be the story of Matt Danforth and Ryan Slemko, better known back in the day as Front & Centre.
This awesome story, is truly the stuff of dreams. When Matt reached out to tell us about it, I have to say it was one of the best, heart-warming unheard stories, I’ve ever encountered in all my years as a music blogger.
You don’t have to be a whiz at math to work out, all this happened some actual 20 years ago. Front & Centre fans have not forgotten about it, even though the duo never released anything else. Two decades on, the Front & Centre fans have been calling out to the guys to make these tracks available digitally. So guess what, as they celebrate this 20th Anniversary. On 30th September Matt and Ryan will finally serve their fans a treat for their loyalty, one of their best loved tracks “Everytime” will be obtainable from iTunes & alongside they’ll be remixes too!
Today we have the honour to premiere the “Everytime (Shelter Radio Remix)” here on EQ.
Whether you’re a fan of old or a new listener you’ll be left in no doubts as to why Front & Centre earned the nickname of Canada’s Erasure, that’s for sure.