One of this year’s more entertaining and innovative RPM albums was Mimi Stockland’s Meat Floss. One of its songs was inspired by Dominion’s “Enjoy Tonight!” stickers on their deli products, and the song escalates the sale sticker to the level of a life philosophy, and some serious soul music.

From there, one of the province’s best good-weird music videos was born, as Mimi is joined by two more fearlessly fashionable and fabulous dancers, in Jen Cake and Chloe Edbrooke.

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“’Enjoy Tonight’ is a song about the awesomeness of finding sweet deals on reduced-for-quick-sale food at Dominion,” says Stockland, “so to make a video it seemed appropriate to go to one of the stores and dress up and dance and act silly, which is what we did.”

It’s origins are more or less a “a TLC/Destiny’s Child-meets pagan ceremonial dance kind of vibe.” They chose the 24-Hour Dominion on Blackmarsh Road because it was after hours, so less people, but also “we figured we’d see all kinds of things there in the late night hours, so our chances of getting kicked out would be slightly lower.”

They had a Plan B if they were kindly asked to stop and leave. It was to “take our dancing selves another rung down on the sketch-ladder, to the 24-Hour Sobeys on Ropewalk.”

The purpose of the video was to rail agasint the typically settings local music videos. “Lots of music videos made in Newfoundland show crashing waves, jagged rocks, and breaching whales, but what about the cans of Vienna sausage, the Billy Boot grocery bags, and the Eversweet margarine?”

They managed to avoid getting kicked out, there were soem rock and roll run-ins with security. “A security guard was kind of creeping around our periphery, and at one point she came up to ask us ‘is that your shopping cart?’ (we had piled our coats and things in it) and we said ‘yes’, and she walked away.” Hard ticket stuff right there.

“Another older guy came up to us and asked where we were from, ’cause I think he suspected we weren’t from around town, since no native townie would care to embarrass themselves in that particular way.”

“It’s funny because grocery stores are private businesses but they are also very open public spaces that pretty much everyone frequents, and it’s a fairly rigidly structured place in terms of social interactions: you get the food, you pay for it and leave. I didn’t feel I needed to ask permission because we were doing a totally harmless thing, just a little out of the ordinary. And I did buy chocolate bars and fruit afterwards.”

Mimi Stockland’s album Meat Floss is as original as her name would imply it should be. It’s strikingly strange and inventive in a way that’s also accessible and well arranged, musically. Another food related hot jam is “Expired Lobster Pate.” Here’s a link to stream the album or download it for free: https://mimistockland.bandcamp.com/album/meat-floss