So perhaps you think, "Yes, I suppose it's about time for a best-of package as some ambitious, last-gasp cash-grab." Ha! You evidently don't know TPOH very well. Like Moe told Liisa Ladouceur in eye, "...it's not like we're the kind of band to think of this ourselves." Fortunately, somebody else thought of it and got it together. We may all have our favourite omissions, but considering the minefield of various record labels to negotiate, this is quite the achievement. Here are the tracks, where they came from, reviews of the CD and some other compilations in which TPOH have been involved.

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1. I'm An Adult Now

The 1988 Love Junk version, not the 1986 version released independently. How does an average doof tell them apart? In the original, after the line about "some guy screaming in a leather jacket," Moe doesn't scream.

2. Cigarette Dangles

From The Downward Road, and immortalized in an episode of "Beavis and Butthead". Said Beavis: "The angle of the dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of the beat."

3. Two Girls In One

The big single from One Sided Story

4. Ten Fingers

From Love Junk

5. She's So Young

The other big single from Love Junk, and the song they eventually performed on "The New Mickey Mouse Club", after much wrangling about unsuitable lyrics in other songs.

6. Pressing Lips

From The Downward Road, and the last TPOH song I saw on the U.S. charts (that's when the mess with Mercury got going).

7. Kalendar

The one entry here from Moe's favourite TPOH album, Where's the Bone. Kalendar is a restaurant/coffee house on College Street in Toronto often named in various polls as one of the most romantic places to take a date.

8. Let My People Go

The B-side on the single for "She's So Young." (Y'see, kids, once upon a time, records were on something called "vinyl"...) Has been making appearances in recent reunion shows.

9. Hard to Laugh

The other-other single from Love Junk.

10. Nobody But Me

From The Downward Road. The one song Moe successfully requested for inclusion in the compilation.

11. She's the Devil

The lone entry from The Wonderful World of the Pursuit of Happiness, which is especially strange because it's like nothing else on the album. Nevertheless, it was the first single from that album. Moe's voice is distorted almost to the point of being unrecognizable and there's no female backup singing, causing some people to offer the backhanded complement: "I love that song! I had no idea it was you."

12. Food (live)

An acoustic version (just Moe, Kris Abbott and Rachel Oldfield) recorded at a studio at CBC Vancouver in January of 1996. One of TPOH's many appearances on the CBC Stereo radio show "Realtime," which has since morphed into "Radiosonic."

13. Wake Up and Smell Cathy

From the original demo for Chrysalis (before Love Junk), and the only track on the compilation featuring the original TPOH lineup: Moe, Dave Gilby, Johnny Sinclair, and Tam and Tasha Amabile.

14. Take You With Me

Recorded during the sessions for Love Junk, but didn't happen to make it on the record, although it would've fit in quite well.

15. Walking in the Woods

This one did make it to Love Junk. Somehow had its genesis in a game called "Cutest Girl in the Laundromat."

16. Consciousness Raising as a Social Tool

Also from Love Junk

17. Edmonton Block Heater (live)

Recorded at the Legendary Horseshoe Tavern, on Queen Street West in Toronto, as part of Canadian Music Week, again by that beloved CBC show "Realtime" (the rest of the show is now in our MP3 Archive). TPOH originally recorded this song as part of a quasi-tribute album for the title band in the brilliant Bruce Mc Donald film (and Michael Turner book) Hard Core Logo.

18. All I Want

One of TPOH's most romantic songs, from One Sided Story.

Reviews of Sex & Food (just click on the arrow)

by Jeffery Lee Puckett, Louisville Courier-Journal, January 8, 2000

by Jordan Hoffman, LeisureSuit.net, January 10, 2000

by Shannon McCarthy, Real Detroit Weekly,
January 13, 2000

by Jon Niccum, Pitch Weekly, January 13, 2000

by Lydia Carole DeFretos, Aquarian Weekly,
January 19, 2000

by Vic Savage, bangSheet, February, 2000

by Bill Holmes, Cosmik Debris, March 2000

by Kevin Matthews, MTV Asia Online, March, 2000

by Claudio Sossi, Shake It Up!, April 2000

Other Compilations With TPOH

An Elpee's Worth of Productions (Rhino, released 1992)

Features "I'm An Adult Now" (the Love Junk version) in this collection of tracks scratching the surface of Todd Rundgren's career as a producer.

Into the Black: An Electric Tribute to Neil Young (Sony, 1994)

TPOH contributed a version of "Violent Side" (the original is on Landing On Water) in the cassette version of this all-Canadian tribute double album (the other half of the double, Out of the Blue, was all acoustic).

A Tribute to Hard Core Logo (BMG, 1996)

Where you can find the original cover (there's a strange term) of "Edmonton Block Heater." Other bands paying their respects include 54-40, Odds, Chris Spedding and Fishbone.

Poptopia! Power Pop Classics of the '80's (Rhino, 1997)

"She's So Young" is included among gems by the Plimsouls, the Smithereens, Utopia and Marshall Crenshaw. Part of a three-part set.

Lost Hits of the '80's (EMI, 1998)

"I'm An Adult Now" (the Love Junk version) is at the top of a strange list of obscure tunes, including those from the Tubes, Red Rider, Glass Tiger and Vixen (yes...Vixen). The last volume of a four-decade series.

Gzowski In Compilation (Analekta, 1999)

"Gretzky Rocks" is part of this eclectic collection of music featured in the recent TV interview series by Canadian broadcasting legend Peter Gzowski. The song was played at the end of a repeat episode of an interview with Wayne Gretzky (subject of Gzowski's classic book The Game of Our Lives) - repeated at the time of Gretzky's retirement to give the lie to his denials in the interview.

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