3:01 Pick Me Up: Slow

Let’s face it: 3 p.m. is the cruellest time of the workday. The morning latte has worn off, and the post-lunch crash has you staggering around like an extra from a George A. Romero flick. That’s why, each weekday at 3:01 p.m., we present you with a video hand-picked to kick-start your heart. If the following clip doesn’t bring you temporarily back to life and help get you through the rest of the afternoon, chances are you’re dead inside.

Today's offering: That’s weird. We’d been planning for some time to bring Slow to this column, confident that if anyone could perform the neural Heimlich manoeuvre promised by 3:01 Pick Me Up, it would be this Vancouver band /maelstrom from the mid ’80s. In fact, we were thinking about doing that very thing yesterday, but then we got sidetracked by the usual late-morning stuff: catching up on recycling, pathologically checking Twitter, worrying about the polar bears, staring at the calendar and wondering where it all goes”¦

It was only on our way home that we were reminded (by CBC Radio One—hats off to them) that yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of Slow’s profane, often pantless set at Expo 86. On that fateful day, outraged Expo organizers cut the power to the band’s gear partway through the proceedings (right around the time it was leading a “Sieg heil” chant directed at Bill Bennett, who was renowned at the time for being B.C.’s premier as well as the man most responsible for turning the province into a cut-rate tribute to Thatcherism). In so doing, they also pulled the plug on the fair’s Festival of Independent Recording Artists, which had been under way for only a couple of hours at that point.

So here, one day later than ideal, is “Against the Glass”, the title cut from the band’s brilliant EP, released that same year. It’ll definitely wake you up. It will also melt your face.