Vancouver rockers Crisis find steady club work but want to record and take over the world next week

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON JULY 8, 1983

By Steve Newton

“It was actually pretty simple,” says Gary Langen, describing how he came to be the newest member of Vancouver’s hard-rocking club act Crisis. “I just picked up the phone, called the booking agent, and said ‘Hi, does anybody need a drummer?'”

That phone call has proven a very profitable one for Crisis, as just three weeks ago Langen joined the band and brought with him not only his considerable percussion talents, but strong vocal and songwriting abilities. He joins guitarist/vocalist Brent Knudsen, bassist Craig Soon, and keyboardist Steve Weakes.

“We just weren’t happy with the last drummer,” confides Knudsen, “there were differences of opinion.”

Langen is the fourth player to occupy the band’s drum seat. Soon is their second bassist, and Weakes–formerly of Remote Control, the group that went on to become Bruce Fairbairn‘s latest success story, Strange Advance–their second keyboard player.

“I’m the rock,” says Knudsen, a three-year veteran of the band.

All the members of Crisis are from the Vancouver area, with the exception of Langen, who hails from Regina. He moved out west with his band of ten years, Kick Axe, but left the a few years back because he was more into the melodic end of the music business and they wanted to go really heavy.

“From what I’ve seen in the clubs,” says Langen, “I think they’re the best at what they do. They watch a lot of Judas Priest videos and try to be like that, and they’re playing the part real well.

“I probably could have done it,” he adds, “been a heavy metal singer and a heavy metal drummer. But I didn’t want to–it just wasn’t in me.”

What was in Langen was the desire to play in a unique, semi-original pop band, so he joined up with Face to Face, a group that went on to win recognition as western Canada’s most promising club act.

“We weren’t doing too bad for a three-piece,” Gary says modestly, “but everybody just got tired of it–the direction just wasn’t happening any more. The other two guys were brothers, and I was just sort of a sideman. And we were doing my tunes–those were the ones that got recorded.”

Face to Face had two songs included on the Trans-Canada Rock compilation album, a record that was aimed at showcasing the best in unsigned Canadian talent. One of those songs, Langen’s “Mexico”, was a hit in Halifax, and is now a standard of Crisis’ live set.

“We just do three original tunes right now,” says Knudsen, who cites Brian May and Steve Howe as his favourite guitarists and biggest influences, “but there’s lots there. We’ve got a few things up our sleeves.”

The Moody Blues‘ “Story in Your Eyes” is one of Crisis’ most preferred cover tunes, and they do “quite a conglomeration” according to Langen–“old Stones and Doors and Rod Stewart, as well as more current stuff like Bowie and Roxy Music.”

But it’s not necessarily the bands’ choice that they do so little original material. As Knudsen points out, playing what people already know has become the standard practice in the Vancouver club circuit.

“There’s some definite minuses to the Vancouver music scene,” he says, “as opposed to other cities. I saw in Toronto, when we went there a few years back, that it was much more of an original city–you get to play way more of your own stuff there. Here the city is real Top 40.”

Knudsen is probably right about that, but Vancouver’s tendency towards the familiar sure hasn’t hurt his band’s work record.

“We play every place in town,” he says, adding that Crisis rarely finds the need to go on the road, with the exception of an odd jaunt to Vancouver Island.

And when they do get a night off the musical merry-go-round the members of the band like to take in the sounds of their fellow club-rockers. Knudsen and Langen are especially fond of such other local groups as Trama, 3-D, Secret Service, and Stiletto.

So what are the future plans for Crisis?

“Lately,” says Langen, “we’re just trying to keep our heads above water because of the member changes we went through. But it seems that we have some hold on a formula to work with, and that’s when recording comes into the picture.”

“Yeah,” injects Knudsen, “we just plan to record and take over the world. Next week.”

Crisis will be playing at Gators in Richmond next week, and will perform at the Vancouver Sea Festival on Sunday, July 17th.

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