Spent Youth’s John Mead likes rockabilly, but his heart is in country music

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON MARCH 25, 1983

By Steve Newton

“Like every band knows,” says Spent Youth singer John Mead, “it’s really difficult to find a name. I was at the practice space one day, sweeping the room by myself, and it just dawned–like a light went on–and I thought ‘Spent Youth. Misspent Youth. Spent Youth. Sounds alright.’ It’s just the idea of spending it. Energy, that is.”

If Mead’s idea becomes a reality tonight the walls of the Commodore Ballroom will be fairly dripping with energy well spent. Billy Mitchell’s Trainwreck, Buddy Selfish and the Saviours, and Rocky Craig and the Rockabilly Kings will join headliners Spent Youth for a full night’s boogie at the Rockabilly Re-Bop show.

“The group came together in the bar one day,” says lead vocalist/guitarist Mead, sipping heavily on a cold brew in the band’s Kitsilano rehearsal room. Built from scratch by band members and friends, the soundproof structure is decorated with dozens of local concert posters–most of which happen to be advertisements for Spent Youth gigs. From the ceiling hangs a dry, shrivelled up old plant that has long ago shuffled off. Someone has attached a sign to it that reads “Spent Plant”.

“It came together,” Mead continues, “when the former drummer sidled up to me and asked if I wanted to get together and play some punk music  So I said ‘great’, and we went out and formed a band that never should have been. It wasn’t a punk band–it was actually kind of square. That was in ’79. It was just me, Marko on bass, Patrick O’Neal on drums, and a couple of other guys who shall remain nameless.”

The Marko Mead refers to is Spent Youth bassist Mark Armanini, currently working on his Master’s degree in Composition at UBC. O’Neal has recently been replaced by Kirk Smith, who has played with the Westside Feetwarmers, Eugene Smith and Friends, and Alberta Crude. The fourth member of the group is Mead’s older brother Ted, who blows saxophone, sings background, and plays rhythm guitar.

Reaching for another cold one from the group’s soundman, Dean “Rock Lobster” Wilson, Mead comments on his early musical experiences.

“Our parents were really onto us to play music. We both had classical training and Ted continued at it for longer than I did. I played trumpet for years in the Prince of Wales High School band and community bands, so I can read music, but I have to study it closely to read nowadays.

“Ted and I really got turned on to country music during family trips to the Interior. My heart is in country music, so we’re definitely country influenced. We get all these rockabilly gigs but we’re not exclusively a rockabilly band. We’ve got maybe 30 rockabilly tunes, but we also have 30 tunes that are right from somewhere else.”

Mead surely isn’t wrong in declaring Spent Youth’s musical diversity. They can pull off chunky, waltz-like reggae tunes like “Slow Dance” and flat-out rockers like “A Place For Everyone” with equal flair and originality. And there are funk, R&B, blues, and even gospel overtones in many of their compositions, most of which were co-written by Mead and former drummer O’Neal.

All the members of Spent Youth are from the Vancouver area, and Mead says that he believes the city is unique in its ability to open up to and embrace various musical forms.

“Vancouver’s sort of a hipper scene, I think, than the rest of Canada. The Vancouver audiences seem to dig what the English put down first–even before places like Los Angeles, and definitely before eastern Canada. They got onto punk first, and they’ve been onto rockabilly for a long time.

“And we’ve done quite well because we were there too, at its inception, when people were just starting to get hip to it. I’ve been playing it for about four years–buying the records and listening to it. But I’m still old enough to remember Elvis and all that stuff.”

Mead says that he gives rockabilly an 85 (out of 100) “because you can dance to it. It’s melodic, and I can’t relate to stuff that isn’t melodic. There’s the popular cliche about people getting tired of all those heavily produced, longhaired bands from the seventies, and I agree with it. But rockabilly is roots rock. Rock and roll has to be rebel music, and when it loses that it just becomes like a bourgeois wanker trip.”

All the Spent Youth members are in their thirties. “I got my first guitar when I was 13,” sings Mead, “I’m over thirty and still wearing jeans.” But the band still has lots of youth and music to spend.

“We’ll just keep on playing as well as we can,” says Mead, “and if somebody takes an interest in it, and if we can earn enough money, then maybe we’ll make a record or whatever. It’s basically the same as any band wants to do–you want to be able to make your living by playing music. And it isn’t easy.”

Spent Youth will be playing a benefit concert for the Pacific Ballet Theatre next Saturday, April 2, at the Oddfellow’s Hall on Gravely, and will be at the Railway Club on Dunsmuir from the 4th to the 7th.

To read over 100 of my interviews with local Vancouver musicians since 1983, go here.