Pest 5000 - Whatever became of...

Here's another one for the "What Ever Happened To" files: Pest Five Thousand (or Pest 5000).

I bought this single (Harriet Records, #043) when the band played at the 31st Street Pub here in Pittsburgh in the late '90s. The record is dated 1997, so the show would've happened either that year or a year later. The selling point for me was the B-side, "Astromental," a keyboard-driven instrumental with a bounce and lines traded between a blooping synth and some kind of analog organ. When they played it live, there was a really great chord change in the "chorus" part, which doesn't exactly come across on the single. Still it's pretty fun. The a-side "Page 43" is pretty good, but my money is on the flip, which still runs through my head occasionally when I'm running around at work.

The band hailed from Montreal. On the inside of the cover, one of them wrote down their contact info, either because I was hoping they might be able to set me up with some Canadian distribution for records I was releasing, or perhaps because I was under the naive assumption that maybe, just maybe I might try to embark on a tour that took me to Canada.

None of that happened, and I never heard a peep from the band again. They're probably easy to find out about online, unlike Thank You Super, another band who played the Pub, sold me a killer single and disappeared.

Dear ex-Pest 5000 members, if you read this, stop and say hi.