National Velvet

National Velvet borrowed their name from the 1944 Elizabeth Taylor movie, and their origin story is pure Toronto after dark: singer Maria Del Mar and bassist Mark Storm met in an alley at a party and started arguing about music. He was a goth who loved Bauhaus; she was into Spanish classical, Motown, swing and punk. Storm introduced her to friends who were looking to start a band, and with Tim Welch working the lights at The Diamond nightclub where Del Mar checked coats, the band was playing the local circuit in no time.

Six months in they had an indie EP on the merch table, and Capitol Records President Dean Cameron liked it enough to sign them to Capitol's Intrepid imprint in 1987. The self-titled debut followed in 1988 with "Flesh Under Skin", and "68 Hours" brought them a CASBY Award in 1989.

Courage, cut in England with producer Zeus B. Held and released in 1990, is where Del Mar's big, brassy wail really took over. It went gold, and "Shine On" and "Sex Gorilla" were all over Much Music and MTV. That second one was originally called "Sarsparilla", but fans kept mishearing it, so the band gave in, and audiences started pelting the stage with bananas. One more album, Wildseed, came out in 1995 on the independent Iron Music and drew little notice. Storm went missing in 2002 and was later found dead in Lake Ontario; the band reunited for a benefit for his family and still plays the odd show.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.