Moscow fish was originally the name of a band which included Ted Hall, Ea Birkett, and a host of friends including Annabear the singing dog. The band played many venues in the Vancouver, BC area but especially the Railway, a club that has long supported local and international music from diverse influences.

Now the name "Moscow fish" is an umbrella title for the various content-oriented activities of Ted and Ea, such as music production ,film and photography, and artist development.

If you've never heard of us before, you may wonder about the name, and if it has any significance related to the work we do. The short answer is "no". We are not Russian and we can't survive very long under water.

That being said, the term "moscow fish" does have a source, and maybe in a weird way it does encompass some of the philosophy that guides our explorations.

In the summer of 1986 I (Ted) was standing in a food line across from Oppenheimer Park in Vancouver where every day the Sisters of Infinite Mercy provide a sandwich and a muffin to the ever-growing population of street people on the downtown eastside. As I awaited my lunch I overheard a conversation between a fellow with an Eastern European accent and another Canadian: "I hope it's Moscow fish today", to which the other guy replied "What's that?" The first one went on to explain that in the former Soviet block, giant floating fish factories plied the oceans catching, processing, and canning their catch, but without ever separating the species. The end product was simply labelled "fish", and people from all over the Soviet world knew it as "Moscow fish".

Now the sandwiches that the Sisters handed out were made daily at a local penitentiary where the inmates dumped all the canned fish collected by a local charity into large mixing bowls, without separating sardines from salmon, and slapped it between two slices of bread, often of different types as well.

Whether the expression "Moscow fish" was in common usage or was a poetic invention of the guy in the food line, we'll never know, but the way we create content for this website is not unlike the process used by the prisoners to create sandwiches.

Hopefully it tastes better.