After 31 years, Vancouver band Slow reunites for mini tour

Talk about getting the band back together.

It's been 31 years since the punk-rock band Slow shut down a night of festivities at Expo 86 with its onstage performance, which included lead singer Thomas Anselmi stripping down to his underwear and throwing two-by-fours off the stage.

After that fateful performance, the band — known for its song Have Not Been the Same — slowly fell apart during a subsequent cross-Canada tour due to drug-fuelled antics and negative publicity following the Expo 86 debacle.

Fans say the Expo 86 performance cut the band's life. Had they carried on, they would have joined the pantheon of famous B.C.-born musical performers such as Hedley, 54-40, Hey Ocean!, Marianas Trench, Hot Hot Heat, Nelly Furtado, Trooper and Loverboy.

For years, Anselmi insisted the combined musical forces of members Ziggy Sigmund, Christian Thorvaldson, Terry Russell and Stephen Hamm would not be reuniting. The five men had gone their separate ways in pursuit of their own careers.

However, following a re-issuing of the band's album Against the Glass this year, former members began to consider a reunion tour. After a few initial rehearsals, they decided on a short four-show B.C. tour.

"It's been really overwhelming ... What's happened energetically between [the band] ...," said Anselmi during CBC's On the Coast.

"How this thing that exists between people when they play in a room together is just sort of there. Just as though it's been sitting there, not even dormant. It's pretty emotional honestly."

They play in Victoria Thursday night followed by three shows in Vancouver. 

Music enthusiasts widely praise the band as influential to the punk-rock music genre and as forerunners to the Seattle grunge-rock scene which saw the band Nirvana rise to fame.

'A chemical thing'

Anselmi said over the past three decades, the idea of getting the band back together wasn't something that interested him. But Elliott Lefko, an executive of the concert-organizing company Goldenvoice, convinced him that there was a huge demand among the band's fan base for the reunion tour.

"He does a lot of amazing stuff ... he did a lot of stuff with Leonard Cohen, he's a really amazing guy," said Anselmi.

At Lefko's urging, the group decided on a short tour.

"Having a great band to play music with is just a rare thing ... It's not to do with anyone person, lots of people are great, but sometimes you just get a kind of chemical thing and that's what we were fortunate enough to have in that moment."

When it comes to Expo 86, Anselmi said anyone who had seen Slow play before that concert knew the 1986 show wouldn't go well, due to their raucous performance style. He said it was a unique time when alternative-rock bands hadn't yet gained prominence.

"We got offered this show and just thought 'well if they're stupid enough to hire us, let's see what kind of good we can do," said Anselmi.

With files from On the Coast