The forgotten story of the Asteroids: the Maritimes' rock 'n' roll recording pioneers

The year 1957 was a simpler time in Saint John.

Young Senator John F. Kennedy was passing through town on his way to receive an honourary degree from the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. Mom-and-pop shops like the Star Ice Cream Parlour were doing brisk business. A drive-in movie cost 15 cents.

And rock 'n' roll music was still brand new, dominated on the local airwaves by country and western and big-band sounds.

But four teenagers — Jon Everett, Mel Clark, Alan Reid and Bob Seely — were obsessed with the new sounds of Elvis Presley and Little Richard that trickled in, fuzzed with static, over the airwaves via U.S. radio stations like WKBW in Buffalo, N.Y., and WINS-New York.

The band they formed — a peppy, Bill Haley and the Comets-inflected outfit called the Asteroids — was one of the first groups ever to record rock 'n' roll in the Maritimes, according to music historian Ryan Edwardson in Canuck Rock: A History of Canadian Popular Music.

Sixty years later, the band's music endures in obscure corners of YouTube and CD compilations of vintage Canadian rock — and the recordings represent a small, but groundbreaking, New Brunswick contribution to Canadian music history.

From CHSJ-TV to variety shows

On Friday nights in the 1950s, Clark remembers, teens desperate for live entertainment would pack themselves into sweaty high school auditoriums and the YMCA gym to see their friends perform at variety shows.

"Maybe it was driven by things like the Ed Sullivan Show," said Alan Reid, "but the variety shows were big. They would pack the school auditoriums. It was a couple of bucks to get it, and people seemed to thrive on it."

Clark entered a variety show at Saint John Vocational School with two Elvis covers: "Don't Be Cruel" and "Heartbreak Hotel." With his friends packing the front rows to help him win by applause, he said, it went over so well that he appeared the following Saturday on CHSJ-TV.

"Jon and Alan Reid caught the program," said Clark, "and asked me if I'd come with them and do some gigs."

Everett brought in friend Bob Seely, a classically trained pianist.

The Asteroids quickly progressed from playing covers of rock 'n' roll hits to writing their own songs.

'The kids loved it'

The band would rehearse at Clark's place on Manawagonish Road, where his mother, herself an accomplished musician, would have the boys gather around the piano and harmonize "How Great Thou Art" before their jam sessions.

It was an innocent time. "TV shows like Happy Days," said Everett, "weren't too far from the truth."

Their musical stylings were a little more rock 'n' roll.

"Elvis, Little Richard, the Comets: that was the type of music that we were listening to," said Clark. "The doo-wops were coming out too, and Alan did a lot of doo-wops behind me as I was singing."

"We didn't do anyone else's material," said Reid. "It was all stuff we wrote."

The group started landing gigs at local high schools and the YMCA, occasionally being asked to fill in for half an hour or so when big-bands were taking their break between sets at high school dances.
"The kids loved it," said Clark.

Blastoff

After a short while, Doug Stanley, the station manager at Saint John radio station CFBC, called the kids and asked them to come play on the radio.

Hal Sample, host of the popular program Hal's Hacienda, heard the gig, and "suggested we put something on tape," said Clark. The recording ended up in the hands of Halifax country music recording studio Rodeo Records.

Rodeo invited the boys to the city to cut a record of brand-new songs .

Mel Clark recalls the trip to Halifax — in the days before four-lane highways, a nine-hour journey by car — as quite the odyssey for four teenage boys from Saint John.

"Here we were in this little Hillman Minx car, none of us small boys, with the driver and all our equipment. And it was breaking down, and we'd get out and push it, start it again."

The session resulted in two singles: "Don't Dig this Algebra," about a girl-crazy teen boy too busy daydreaming to focus on math, and "Shhhhh Blast Off," about the out-of-this world experience parking in mom and dad's car.

"It was Sputnik time, experimenting with putting rockets into the air. The inspiration came from what was happening in the world at that time," said Clark.

The Asteroids headed home, half-believing they were on the road to stardom.

'Never saw a dime'

But what happened to the record after that is "an interesting question," according to Clark.

"In short, I don't know," he said. "It did get distributed."

Clark's sister once reported hearing the song on a jukebox in Montreal, "but we never saw a dime," Clark said. "We never saw a cheque. Doug Stanley left town shortly after the record was made. He went to England, and we haven't heard from him since!"

The two singles were the only things the boys ever recorded.

After graduation, their paths diverged. Alan Reid became a lawyer. Mel Clark went into the insurance business, and still lives in Rothesay with his wife, Judy. Jon Everett, a journalist and prolific author, moved to Israel in 1982 and took the Hebrew name Dov Ivry. Bob Seely made his name in the construction industry before his death in 2015.

But while the Asteroids didn't enjoy a meteoric rise to fame — the songs have never totally faded from memory.

From time to time, Clark said, they'll resurface in unexpected places: on compilation CDs of early rock tunes, in research papers and books on music history — and, more recently, on YouTube — where Clark said his grandchildren like to put them on and dance.

"There was no question that we were the first in Atlantic Canada," said Clark.

But that distinction isn't as important as "the feeling they evoke," he said, of nostalgia for Saint John at the dawn of rock 'n' roll.