Demo 1982: Réflexe Conditionné

Conditioned Response were an early-1980s Toronto post-punk band tied to the city’s Queen Street West independent scene. Active roughly between 1981 and 1985, the group moved through the same underground circuit that included Larry’s Hideaway, the Beverley Tavern and the Horseshoe. They were an activist-minded band, with Derek Christie and guitarist/songwriter Dann at the centre of a sound built on tense guitars, driving rhythms and direct political commentary.

The recently surfaced cassette documents a seven-song live set recorded at Larry’s Hideaway, Toronto, Ontario, on May 3, 1982. The tape lists 'Red Boys', 'The Fallout', 'On The Road To Babylon', 'Your Life Is A Mess', 'Atlanta', 'Ammunition' and 'Fear In The Third World'. It's a privately circulated live tape, with a typed insert, handwritten cassette label and the band’s Toronto contact address at 167 Lowther Ave., Toronto, Ontario, M5R 1E5.

Conditioned Response did not leave behind a conventional album or single. Their known recorded output was scattered through Toronto’s cassette underground, with 'Are You Responding' appearing on the 1983 cassette compilation Sounds From The Streets: 12 Toronto Bands, and 'Death And Taxes' and 'Accidents' appearing on F. Noise Issue 4.

The Larry’s Hideaway cassette gives a fuller look at the band than the compilation tracks alone. Its song titles point clearly to the group’s political and social concerns, with references to Babylon, ammunition, fear, fallout and life under pressure. Rather than fitting neatly into Toronto’s new wave or synth-pop side, Conditioned Response occupied a sharper, more confrontational corner of the scene: live, cassette-based, politically alert and rooted in the clubs where Toronto’s early-1980s underground was taking shape.

In later years, the band’s name resurfaced through online “lostwave” discussions, after listeners searching for the identity of an unidentified 1980s Toronto radio song compared it to Conditioned Response’s sound. Derek Christie was eventually contacted and ruled out the mystery track as a Conditioned Response recording, but the search brought renewed attention to the band’s scarce surviving material. After Conditioned Response, Christie went on to Mayday, then later solo work and DarkRide.

-Robert Williston