Sound FX

Sound FX was a five-piece Saskatoon rock band that worked the city's clubs and hotel rooms in the early 1980s, playing current Top 40 hits alongside original songs with a new wave and power pop edge. Joe Chad sang lead, Rob Worobetz played guitar, Mark Sadlowski played keyboards and saxophone, Tony Parent played bass and Rob "Headdy" Hemsworth played drums. Each member wore his hair a different colour, and the local papers made a point of mentioning it.

By 1982 the band was a regular at the North 40 Inn on 20th Street West, playing both the hotel's show room and Sneakie's, the second-floor discotheque upstairs. Sneakie's promised Top 40 and FM rock "played the way you want," stayed open until 5 a.m. on weekends and switched to soft drinks after 1:30. The club brought Sound FX in for a run starting on a Monday and also booked the band for its party welcoming 1983, with a hot and cold buffet, party favours and midnight treats on the ticket. The group also played Emilio's on Idylwyld Drive and Flanagan's at the Holiday Inn, which billed it as a "dynamic five piece band" with a lively, up-to-date Top 40 show.

In 1983 the band took its own songs to the Lower Hall of the Saskatoon Centennial Auditorium. The preview in the paper's entertainment column called Sound FX a free-wheeling, high-energy Saskatchewan rock band, throwing inhibitions to the wind with coloured hair, mobility and madness on stage.

That same year Sound FX made its first record, a self-titled five-song 12-inch EP produced by Brian Plummer for Cimarron Productions. It was recorded and mixed at Studio West in Saskatoon with engineer Gary Dean. Wayne Wilkins, who owned the studio, was executive producer for BBJ Management, the same role he had taken on Plummer's own album No Questions. The record collected five band originals: 'She Stole My Heart', 'Caramia', '(You're Much Too) Close A Shave', 'Julie's Jewelry' and 'Agent 88'.

CKOM 1250, which billed itself as Saskatoon's only rock station, added the EP to its album chart in December 1983. It entered at No. 20 on December 9 and moved up to No. 18 the following week, in a Top 20 that also held Streetheart, Headpins and Jack Green alongside the Rolling Stones, ZZ Top and Culture Club.

In 1985 Sound FX contributed 'Shape Up' to Saskatoon Rocks, a Rock FM 103 compilation of original songs by eight area bands, produced by Studio West Canada Ltd. at its Pike Lake facility. The lineup was unchanged from the EP, and the song was credited to the whole band. By then much of Saskatoon's independent rock was being recorded at Studio West, where the Northern Pikes had cut their debut EP the year before.

-Robert Williston