The Best Toronto Band. Ever. Elite Eight: Lowest of the Low vs. Teenage Head

We’re down to the Elite Eight in our Best Toronto Band. Ever. Vote-off. Today, the choice is betwen the Lowest of the Low, with beat out the Skydiggers with a vote of 57 per cent to 43 per cent, and Teenage Head, which downed Rough Trade by a vote of 78 per cent to 22 per cent. Take a read of Star Music Critic Ben Rayner’s defence of each band, below. Then email your vote here.

Lowest of the Low

The Lowest of the Low’s brief, turbulent run at the dawn of the 1990s only yielded two albums, but they were utterly inescapable as a live act and an alt-rock radio favourite if you were of a certain age and inclination at the time. Witness, for instance, the tidal wave of nostalgic love for the band’s 1991 classic Shakespeare My Butt that coincided with its 20th-anniversary reissue through Pheromone Recordings earlier this year. For a few years there, the Low was simply the Toronto band – and a band whose principle songwriter, Ron Hawkins, was fairly diligent about mythologizing his hometown in song, to boot. Off and on reunions have yielded a couple more albums and a few tours since the band’s original heyday, but Hawkins et al. have been pretty good about not tarnishing their legacy with unnecessary activity. Which probably explains why so many people in this town still hold the Lowest of the Low in such high regard.

Teenage Head

Yes, Teenage Head hails from Hamilton, not Toronto. Obviously enough of you Star readers are willing to overlook that niggling little fact and vote these working-class miscreants into the final “Toronto’s Best Band” battle, however, so we’ll continue to accept Steeltown as an extension of our fair city, too. We’re happy to claim Teenage Head as our own, anyway, since the late Frankie Venom and Co. were, along with D.O.A. in Vancouver, one of the acts that first let the rest of the world know at the end of the 1970s that there was such a thing as Canadian punk rock. In addition to a catalogue that boasts some truly awesome pop tunes – “Picture My Face” and “Let’s Shake” among them – the band had the right kind of dangerous reputation back in the day, finding itself at the centre of separate riots at the Horseshoe Tavern and Ontario Place in 1978 and 1980, respectively. Rock ‘n’ roll!