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In April, as the tour ended back in Vancouver with a show at Luvafair, IIV was asked to open for Roxy Music at Vancouver's Pacific Coliseum and at Edmonton's Northlands Coliseum. It was quite a jolt for the band to go from playing the occasional 1000 seater to performing in front of over 10,000 people. The Vancouver show went well, but Dale lost his voice on the bus trip to Edmonton and barely managed to finish the set. Most band members agree that the Edmonton show might be one of the worst IIV gigs ever. That show turned out to be the last time IIV ever played in Edmonton.
The summer of 1983 was spent negotiating the WEA contract. Meanwhile, tensions in the band had built to the point where some members were hardly speaking to each other. While Glen, Joe, and Dale had started writing new material, including Call It Love, Promised Land, Holiday, and Calling My Name, band members also started working on various side projects. Kevin worked on the new songs too, but he also spent time with Joe learning how to use the Lexicon PCM41 digital delay and TEAC Tascam Portastudio 144 4-track cassette recorder. Kevin and Joe recorded an improvisation at the IIV Powell Street rehearsal studio that Kevin took home and mutated through digital delays into one of the first Skinny Puppy songs, Meat Flavour, which appears on Skinny Puppy's original Back and Forth cassette (30 second edit) and Back and Forth Series 2 CD, as well as on Back and Forth Series 6 as Meat Flavoured Factor, a longer edit of the original piece. Joe was given an official Skinny Puppy member card that Kevin had made, as was Dale Pleven. Glen and Joe went into Mushroom with Dave Ogilvie to record as "The Glen and Joe Show". The song, Lock Me Out, was a New Orderesque dance song which featured Glen on vocals. Don was writing on his own. Joe was producing demos for bands like Mystery Date, featuring Glen's brother Al Nelson on vocals, Dale Pleven on bass, Al's future HILT partner Don Harrison on guitar, Dave Newman on synth and Chris Renshaw on drums. |