Toronto Club Notes

by Ben Rayner

First, the good news: It looks like local singer/songwriter Dan Bryk's long-mothballed Lovers Leap album might finally get its much-deserved airing on Scratchie Records, the New York-based label partly owned by Smashing Pumpkins James Iha and D'Arcy Wretzky.

The bad news, though, is that this piano-powered blast of witty misanthropy will probably wind up languishing in the can until next spring.

"The album was originally supposed to come out last February or March," admits a weary Bryk. "When that ended, I kind of had to eat crow for awhile."

Without delving too deeply into the details, let's just say Bryk has experienced almost every conceivable music-bit nightmare first-hand since a couple of his recordings his first CD, A--hole, and an advance mix of Lovers Leap landed in the hands of Scratchie boss Adam Schlesinger a little over a year ago.

Contract wrangles and problems between Scratchie and its former distributor, Mercury Records, contributed to the delay. But now, says Bryk, things should look up as soon as Scratchie finds a new distributor.

In the interim, there is some new product from the Bryk factory: A fine four-song seven-inch titled Dan Bryk Rocks Nobody.

"I put it out as a stopgap, just to put out something while I was fighting with Scratchie," he says. "It's actually three songs that didn't make the record they're still really good, but they didn't really fit on the record. That's kind of love/hate songs, and these are a little more abstract."

The fourth track is an amusingly cutting jab at a well-known local modern-rock radio station. Bryk÷who maintains "there's not enough cruelty in pop music" is still not sure in what spirit it's been taken at CFNY.

"I hope people will raise it to infamy," he says. "If I've blown my chances of ever getting on CFNY, I might as well get some notoriety out of it."

If radio's out, you can still catch the Randy Newman-worshipping Bryk playing a solo show tonight at The Free Times Cafe (320 College St.), on a bill with fellow Torontonians Chris Warren and Alun Piggins.

Don't expect diatribes against the evils of the music industry to lash out from his electric piano, though.

"Art Bergmann does a wicked job of that sort of thing," notes Bryk, who admits he's been negligent on the songwriting front during his up-and-down-and-up-again year. "You know what? The whole process of the deal happening and not happening and then happening again just fucking sucked the muse out of me."

Don't panic.

''It's starting to come back now," he adds.