What You See Here, Hear Here, Say Here, Stays Here When You Leave Here

Groupoem were an Ontario punk band whose fractured rhythms, absurdist lyrics and unconventional vocal delivery placed them somewhere between hardcore, art punk, spoken word and deliberate musical disruption. Although their original career produced only one officially released record, the band accumulated a much larger body of material and eventually returned three decades later to complete a second chapter that few listeners knew existed.

The group developed from musicians connected with The Sickies, a band associated with the Berkeley Street warehouse scene in Toronto. Guitarist Terry Robinson and vocalist Mark Spragg began working together under the name Mister Science, creating a large catalogue of original material before the project evolved into Groupoem. Spragg became known variously as Mister Science, Marph and Nobody, while his words were credited on the band’s original record under the name Sprague.

The early Mister Science lineup included Robinson on guitar, Spragg on vocals, Brent Ruddy on bass and Dave ‘Surf’ Weir on drums. Darren Katamay later took over on bass, while Christopher ‘Flea’ Lee became the drummer. With Robinson, Spragg, Katamay and Lee in place, the group adopted the name Groupoem.

Robinson and Spragg had already developed an unusual creative partnership. Robinson supplied the group’s abrupt guitar figures and rapidly changing musical structures, while Spragg approached the vocals less as conventional singing than as a mixture of shouting, recitation, character performance and stream-of-consciousness commentary. Their songs were short, tightly compressed and often humorous, but the humour concealed a deliberately confrontational approach to language and arrangement.

The established lineup consisted of Nobody on vocals, Terry Robinson on guitar, Darren Katamay on bass and Christopher Flea on drums. In October 1986, the four musicians entered the studio with engineer Matt Miller and recorded and mixed six songs in only nine hours for a total cost of $109. Glenn Jessamy provided setup assistance, and the record was produced by The Group Home and Illana Gutman.

The resulting 12-inch, What You See Here, Hear Here, Say Here, Stays Here When You Leave Here, appeared in 1987 as a self-released 45 rpm EP. Its first side contained ‘Nice Stunt,’ ‘Drink Beer Till It Hurts’ and ‘Why I’m the Roast Beef,’ while the second featured ‘Told,’ ‘Hammers’ and ‘Frank Sinatra of Misery.’

The record compressed the band’s identity into approximately ten minutes. Robinson’s guitar moved through sharp, disconnected riffs rather than relying on standard hardcore progressions, while Katamay and Lee gave the songs enough momentum to prevent their abrupt changes from collapsing into chaos. Over the top, Nobody delivered Spragg’s words in a voice that could sound mocking, agitated, theatrical or detached from one line to the next.

A contemporary review in Maximum Rocknroll recognized that Groupoem did not fit comfortably within ordinary hardcore conventions. The record was compared with the more improvisational side of the Minutemen, while its lyrics and vocal performance were heard as intentionally eccentric and disorienting. The review captured an important part of the group’s character: beneath the speed and noise was a band experimenting with structure, humour and language.

The sleeve reinforced that identity. Dr. Chris ‘Xerox’ Minz created the cover, Kurt Trent took the back-cover photograph, and Glen Hutchingson appeared as the model. Its strange imagery, handwritten lettering and deliberately confrontational presentation made the package resemble an underground art project as much as a conventional punk release.

Groupoem played throughout southern Ontario and travelled into the eastern United States, at times using a converted camper as a touring vehicle. They appeared with bands that included D.O.A., Agent Orange, SNFU, Painted Willie, Victims Family and Gang Green. Surviving footage also documents the group performing at the Graystone in Detroit at the beginning of 1987.

Although the 12-inch became their only officially released record during the original period, it represented only a small portion of Groupoem’s work. Robinson and Spragg had reportedly accumulated enough songs for several albums, and much of the material was recorded or developed beyond the six pieces selected for the EP. Robinson later estimated that he had written several dozen songs during the Groupoem years.

During 1987, the band recorded another group of songs at X-it Productions in Toronto, again working with Matt Miller. The sessions produced ‘Skulls – Hey Judy,’ ‘The Edge,’ ‘Dirt Church,’ ‘Good Things,’ ‘Sustenance,’ ‘The Barge Comes,’ ‘Likely Story,’ ‘Gagline’ and ‘Ass Bankwardz.’ None of the nine recordings was released at the time.

Groupoem dissolved not long afterward. Mark Spragg worked with Cursed Gerald, formerly of The Absolute Whores, in a revived version of Mister Science. Terry Robinson joined Bunchofuckingoofs. Christopher Lee became a member of Guilt Parade, while Darren Katamay played bass with the Detroit hardcore band Forced Anger.

Lee’s involvement with Guilt Parade became an important part of his later musical history. Brent Ruddy, who had played bass in the earlier Mister Science lineup, also eventually joined Guilt Parade, reuniting two musicians connected with Groupoem’s development. Robinson continued writing, while the original Groupoem recordings remained largely unheard beyond the small number of people who possessed the 12-inch or remembered the group’s performances.

Over time, Robinson, Spragg, Katamay and Lee independently relocated from Ontario to British Columbia. For years, the former members had little or no contact with one another despite eventually living within the same province. Katamay reportedly spent considerable time attempting to locate Robinson before discovering that he was living in the Vancouver area.

The four musicians eventually reconnected and began rehearsing together again around 2014. The reunion was not conceived simply as a nostalgic recreation of their 1980s material. Robinson still had a substantial catalogue of songs, and the band began developing new recordings while revisiting the unreleased Toronto sessions.

Between September 2014 and July 2015, Groupoem recorded nine new songs at Farm Studios and Greenhouse Studios in Vancouver. Tim Crich recorded and mixed the sessions, while Craig Waddell mastered the material at Gotham Studios. Justin Benz played bass on ‘SlimFast’ and ‘Two Bulls,’ with the remaining performances built around the reunited Robinson, Spragg, Katamay and Lee lineup.

At the same time, the nine unreleased recordings made at X-it Productions in 1987 were recovered and prepared for release. Crich remixed the archival tracks in March 2017, and Waddell mastered them alongside the newer Vancouver material.

The complete eighteen-song collection was issued digitally as Dirt Church in 2017. Its first half presented the reunited band’s modern recordings, while its second half revealed the previously unheard Toronto sessions. The structure allowed listeners to hear Groupoem across a thirty-year divide and demonstrated that the band had created far more music during its original existence than the six-song EP suggested.

The older recordings retained the brevity, nervous energy and irregular construction of the 12-inch. The reunion material expanded the same ideas into longer and sometimes more atmospheric pieces, bringing elements of alternative rock, post-punk, psychedelia and spoken-word performance into the band’s established sound.

Despite the decades separating the two halves, Dirt Church revealed a consistent musical personality. Robinson’s guitar remained angular and unpredictable, Spragg’s vocals remained theatrical and difficult to categorize, and the rhythm section continued to shift between punk drive and more fractured arrangements.

-Robert Williston