Mad Shadows

Mad Shadows were a Regina band that spent the better part of the 1980s on the road, playing punk, ska and pop to dance floors across the West. Their only record of their own was the 1985 EP Music in the Night.

The heart of the group went back to childhood. Guitarist Kevin Cholerton and drummer Blair Polischuk, known to friends as Spike, had been best friends since they were kids, and by 1981 they were recording with Randy Reibling as Prodigy. Their song ‘Scared of the Future’, written by Cholerton and cut at Studio West with Gerry Galla engineering, landed on Saskatchewan Seeds, a compilation from Moose Jaw radio station CHAB. Reibling played bass, guitar and synthesizer on the session, and Cholerton added 12-string guitar.

As Mad Shadows the three were joined by David McLennan, who sang lead, played guitar and harmonica, and wrote the band’s songs. With McLennan, Cholerton and Reibling all on guitar, and Reibling doubling on saxophone and keyboards, the band recorded and toured for about eight years. In Brandon, Manitoba, they were a favourite bar band in the early 1980s, mixing their own songs with English Beat covers and keeping the floor full, and they played often enough in Manitoba that some fans took them for a Winnipeg group.

In 1985 Mad Shadows went out to Studio West’s Pike Lake facility near Saskatoon and recorded six McLennan songs with Mitchell Barnett engineering and co-producing. Music in the Night came out that year on New Beat Records of Regina as a 12-inch EP pressed at 45 RPM, carrying ‘Gold’, ‘Real Eyes’, ‘Music in the Night’, ‘(Driving My) Jaguar Far’, ‘The River Flows’ and ‘747’. Kevin Hogarth took the photographs and Helen Quan designed the graphics. ‘747’ also appeared on Saskatchewan After Dark, Studio West’s double album for Saskatchewan Heritage 1985, where it follows d’Carot ’n’ d’Boize’s ‘Simply A Dance Band’ on side two and shares the side with the Northern Pikes.

In 2005 Cholerton, Polischuk and Reibling regrouped in Regina as Benskuba. Polischuk was later diagnosed with ALS, and he died in August 2012. Reibling went back to Dubai, where he was performing with several bands. Cholerton kept Benskuba going on his own and made the album Celebration in memory of his oldest friend, playing every instrument himself.

-Robert Williston