Hygiene Club

Hygiene Club were a Toronto art-rock and new wave group active around the turn of the 1980s. Their known lineup consisted of Morgan Archer on guitar, Marco Cesari on drums and Warren Sokoloff on bass.

According to Archer’s 1982 interview for the Smash It Up audio fanzine, the group began around 1978 as The Boys Hygiene Club, taking its name from the National Lampoon High School Yearbook. In its original form, the band played punk and appeared at its high school, a community centre and on cable television.

The group later broke up and was revived around 1981 under the shortened name Hygiene Club. Although associated with punk and new wave, Archer’s interests extended well beyond contemporary rock. He named Cole Porter as his favourite songwriter and said he listened to disco and music from the 1920s and 1930s, influences reflected in the band’s unusual melodies, humour and arrangements.

Hygiene Club released the four-song Hawaii EP on their own Sanitary Records label in 1981. It contained ‘Hawaii’, ‘Girls at the Bank’, ‘Sea Monster’ and ‘Pantechnicon – for Gary’. All four songs were credited to Archer and published through Sanitary Music. Most surviving copies appear without a picture sleeve or insert.

The EP earned a reputation for its rough, eccentric sound and uncompromisingly homemade presentation, and remains one of the more distinctive Canadian independent releases of the period.

The best-known song, ‘Sea Monster’, was inspired by a radio report predicting the discovery of such a creature. Archer imagined it being exploited, taken on tour and turned into a commercial attraction, giving the song a satirical edge.

In 1982, Hygiene Club contributed ‘Sea Monster’ and an altered version of the Ramones’ ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ to SMASH IT UP – Oral-Aural, the twenty-fourth issue of Toronto’s Smash It Up fanzine, issued as a compilation cassette. The tape also included an interview with Archer, which remains the principal first-hand source on the band.

The accompanying insert suggested that further Hygiene Club recordings might be released, but no subsequent commercial issue has been firmly documented.

-Robert Williston

Lineup:
Morgan Archer: guitar, vocals
Warren Sokoloff: bass
Marco Cesari: drums