The Largely Unnecessary History of Mid Digit
By Dr. Thomas P. Hunterson
In the winter of 1979, when arena rockers still wore scarves indoors, four young musicians from Surrey, B.C. decided that something had to change. They called themselves The Front.
The Front would go on to become a college radio band that almost nobody outside of B.C. has heard of, a hallmark of their misunderstood genius. The original lineup was led by current Denman Island resident Mid Digit, as vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter. The Front’s members shared a vision of artistic integrity and the necessity of looking English. They wanted to dismantle capitalism through three-minute pop songs, but a compromise was reached where they would simply pretend they were from England.
In 1979, The Front released its debut EP, “A Diagnosis of Ordinary Existence”, recorded in one afternoon, attracting attention from a local college station whose listeners suspected that The Front were a local group, and not the English synth-pop outfit they were pretending to be. The band’s label Pretentious Records had a philosophy of releasing records by bands that no one had heard of, then complaining that major labels weren’t interested.
In 1980, The Front released its first full-length album, Medicated Anxiety. The album represented an artistic departure from the band’s earlier work. Gone was much of the raw exuberance, and in its place came even more synthesizers, a romantic pessimism, and a growing fascination with the possibility that modern civilization might be suitable for their musical grifts. The record received local airplay, but sales remained mostly non-existent. This was generally interpreted as evidence that the public was not yet ready for Mid Digit’s songwriting brilliance.
Frustrated by the limitations of the recording industry, a cocaine-fueled Mid Digit established his own label, Absence of Pretence Records. Its first release was The Front’s album “Desperate For Success”, featuring a single that was banned for its racist title. The banning of the song with the offending title was meaningful because it demonstrated that the band could achieve recognition without compromising its independence.
The Front’s next album, “Plummeting Towards Rehab” was released in 1983. Produced by the celebrated British producer Nigel Pithe-Greystone, the album represented The Front’s artistic culmination. The sound was expansive, and occasionally indistinguishable from an expensive cocaine binge in a recording studio. Mid Digit was the only remaining member of The Front’s original lineup, and the album contained what became his signature song, “Forgetting The Past.”
The video for “Forgetting The Past” was an ambitious production featuring atmospheric lighting, and several people walking purposefully without appearing to have anywhere to go. It received some attention on Canadian television, and for a brief period, The Front appeared poised for mainstream recognition. The band opened for a few international touring acts, while failing to cultivate much of a following of their own. By 1985, Mid Digit was exhausted, primarily from his addiction to cocaine.
His time with The Front and drug use had taken their toll on Digit when The Front had begun work on a fourth album, provisionally titled Binge, but the project was abandoned. There was no public falling-out, and no final performance. The music industry moved on, as it tends to do when nobody is paying attention. In the decades following The Front’s dissolution, Mid Digit acquired something that had eluded him during his active years, as his underground celebrity had become mythological. Memorabilia was posted to Facebook, and a retrospective compilation record was considered, with the working title, “A Long Time Ago.”
Mid Digit had moved on to a career as a producer, working with artists whose careers mirrored The Front’s lack of artistic or commercial success. The Front’s existence had been relatively brief, but history has been kind, where today Mid Digit is remembered as a pioneering musical force from a Canadian new-wave outfit whose influence can’t be detected. This may be the ultimate measure of artistic achievement of never inconveniencing entire generations with the burden of actually listening to your records.
