Cardboard Brains - The Black EP

Tracks

Side 1

		Track Name	Length
	1	Caesar Drives a Fast Car	02:37
	2	Out, Out, Out	01:49

Side 2

		Track Name	Length
	1	And So I Hide	03:31
	2	The Rescue Crew	02:28

Photos

Videos

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Information/Write-up

Formed in Toronto in 1977, Cardboard Brains were part of the first wave that helped define the Queen Street circuit as punk, new wave, and art-damaged experimentation collided in clubs like The Edge and the Horseshoe Tavern. Built around the writing and restless creative drive of John Paul Young and guitarist Vincent Carlucci, the band moved quickly from raw, primitive blasts into stranger shapes—quirky lyrical angles, jagged arrangements, and early synth colour that marked them as slightly out of step with the more uniformly aggressive posture of many contemporaries. Even the name carried a wink: before settling on Cardboard Brains, the group cycled through candidates including Media Accident, Deadly Alien Foam, and Psychiatric Prison.

Their recorded debut arrived the same year with a four-song 7-inch EP bearing the legend “Cardboard Brains 1977,” later nicknamed The White EP. It captured the band in full early-strike mode—originals like ‘I Want To Be A Yank’ and ‘Can Stress Kill?’ alongside their take on Boyce & Hart’s ‘Stepping Stone’—and it quickly tied them to the emerging Toronto network as they worked constantly and shared bills with scene staples. Onstage, they also stood out visually and theatrically. Young often treated performance as a form of character work, favoring costumes over the standard ripped-jeans uniform, and occasionally pushing the presentation into outright performance-art territory—an approach that dovetailed with his training as a thespian and reinforced the sense that Cardboard Brains were “danceable but weird,” as one observer memorably put it.

In December 1978, Cardboard Brains appeared at The Last Pogo, the two-day Horseshoe event that became a defining marker of the era, with portions of the shows preserved on film and record. That documentation widened the band’s footprint and also revealed their more adventurous instincts in a live setting. The following year they issued a four-song 12-inch follow-up commonly known as The Black EP, by then edging further into a sharper, more structured hybrid—still punk at the core, but increasingly informed by art-rock ambition and an expanding palette of keyboards and electronics. Through these years the rhythm section shifted repeatedly, while Young and Carlucci remained the creative constants at the center of the project.

By 1980, Young was drawn toward a more controlled format for making music and stepped into a solo, self-contained approach with The Life of Ermie Scub, performing the instrumentation himself and leaning decisively into colder, minimal electronic language and conceptual writing. The project’s impact was recognized with a CASBY Award, and it also clarified the larger arc: Cardboard Brains had begun as a punk unit, but the story was always pushing toward synthesis, structure, and a kind of prog-minded tension that didn’t fit neatly inside any single scene category.

Cardboard Brains reunited for The Edge’s brief resurrection and anniversary celebration on April 26, 1981, reconnecting with the CFNY ecosystem that had supported and amplified so much Toronto new wave activity. Recordings from that night were issued as Live at The Edge in a very limited numbered and autographed edition, effectively serving as both a snapshot of a late-period lineup and a bridge between earlier vinyl statements and the direction the material was still trying to travel. After that, the band splintered into other paths: Gregory went on to Woods Are Full of Cuckoos and the Lawn; Carlucci later formed Station Twang with Carl Tafel; and Young’s parallel career as an actor and composer expanded into Canadian television and film work.

The Cardboard Brains catalogue has had a long afterlife in collector culture and in the way Toronto punk history keeps resurfacing for new listeners. Their ‘Stepping Stone’ appeared on Killed By Death Vol. 26 in the mid-1990s, raising their profile outside the local story, and in 1998 their work was consolidated on the John Paul Young And Cardboard Brains compilation CD, which helped trigger occasional revivals of the name for select Toronto dates. In the 2000s the band’s influence even reappeared as a direct homage through Nardwuar the Human Serviette and his group The Evaporators, who recorded a song titled ‘Cardboard Brains’ and circulated liner-note history that reframed the original band for a different generation.
-Robert Williston

Musicians
John Paul Young: lead vocals, keyboards
Vincent Carlucci: guitars, vocals
Patrick Gregory: bass guitar, vocals
Mickel Keena: drums

Production
Produced by Tibor Takacs
Executive Producer: John Gundy

Notes
Brainco Worldwide
149–151 Strachan Avenue
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6J 2S8
Telex: 06-22373

LYRICS

CAESAR DRIVES
A FAST CAR

Caeser drives a fast car today
He’s driving miles away
From the world.
Yes, our man is stuck in overdrive
He wants to stay alive
He’s getting lost.
Everyone wants a part of him.
He has to save his skin
He’s taking off.
Even Caeser needs to have fun
Though he rules his world.
But when Caeser is having fun
Who is watching his world.
All the people waiting
For their special day
And the people waiting
While Caeser’s miles away.
Caeser drives a fast car today
He’s driving miles away
From the world.

© John Paul Young C.A.P.A.C.

OUT, OUT, OUT

Out, out, out,
Onto the streets you go
If something bothers you
cast it far from view
never to return
No more times
will your face be seen
You broke the sacred bound
and now you don’t belong
amongst the chosen few
Out, out, out.
Out, out, out.
Out, out, out.
Never to return.
Soon your face
will be a memory
If something bothers you
cast it far from view
never to return
Out, out, out.
Out, out, out.
Out, out, out.
Never to return.

© John Paul Young C.A.P.A.C.

AND SO I HIDE

You say your past is filled with bodies
All the bones lie around your door
All your life you’ve searched for bodies
When you find them take them home
I would not underrate
your ability to defy
ways of continuing you
to anything but yourself
In the night a cry of passion
Another body bites the dust
Yet another gentle reminder
of the lovely thing you are.
Hey! dodmongel!
bring me despair
I love the emptiness
the void, you bring
I love the callousness
Your “i do not care”
I love watching you
as you destroy
I see your past is filled with bodies
All the bones lie around your door
I ask myself “am i a body?”
I’m not a corpse and so I hide.
And so i hide,
And so i hide,
And so i hide,
And so i hide.

© John Paul Young C.A.P.A.C.

THE RESCUE CREW

You spend all your life just looking for
someone
After all you realize you’re always alone
Someone out there there’s someone
to help you
Make you be a better man you know you
could be.
Everyone you ever meet is in the
same boat man.
Waiting to be rescued –
Just like you
So say to yourself
I guess it’s true:
The rescue crew.
Another day with time to kill,
(feeling: uneasy.)
Make the rounds feel the ropes, the usual
places.
Everyone is all around acting just like
people.
Waiting to be rescued
Just like you
So say to yourself
I guess it’s true:
The rescue crew.

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