All you had to say was "stack of 45s" and I'm pretty certain of which Calgary record store you're referring to.
There's a great comp series called "Wild Canada" that's killer. It may have been a blog comp—I don't know if it was ever released. My lovely Canadian former burnt a bunch on to CD-R for me, including The Haunted, Ugly Ducklings, The Quid, The Heart (not the Vancouver/ Seattle band but from Ottawa, I think), and Vancouver's Painted Ship.
Canada is in the top 3 countries for me of most amazing amount of rock music per capita: Canada, Sweden & Australia. All of this list is great, and Teenage Head's first album is so good but I still go to their second, "Frantic City" most—it's a total shame how under-appreciated they are outside of Canada.
So, I'll echo (beach) what Robert C. Gilbert said: as a Canadian transplant, I too appreciate this post (especially the Black Mountain thumbs up; I was just writing some thoughts about them, coincidentally).
Oooh, I don’t know that comp — sounds like I need to seek it out! And what was the name of that store in Calgary? The memory of digging there is still wonderfully vivid, but the name of the place has long flown from my brain…
Yeah those Wyld Canada comps were floating around for a bit but all the DL links are expired. However, they do still live...on Youtube, through this CRAZY archive of comps:
An especially meaningful and extra informational JTL. Perhaps there's a way to honor JTL's that hit a special chord and allow the reader to make a one-time special contribution of $5 to acknowledge that specialness. I subscribe but would certainly be willing to give that extra star$ on occasions such as this one. Thank you.
My pleasure, Dan! Glad to help support your work. Always enjoy every single post. Also, I had a few books ahead in the queue, but I’m almost through the Redd Kross book and it’s really great. Thanks for getting together with Jeff and Steven to get this story out - it’s a really great one
Dan, some tunes there that this Canuck had not heard. Thank you!
Some of those bands cycled through our university bar and I remember seeing Rush play during frosh week in ‘73. Some others perhaps for your consideration are Crowbar - Oh What A Feeling - extended version, Rough Trade - High School Confidential and King Biscuit Boy - Goodun’s album.
Great ode to Canadian rock, Dan! And thanks for the YouTube links. Re: the Guess Who, I had heard them as a kid in the 70s and pretty much forgot about them. One night (early 2000s?) I came home late to my studio in SF, clicked on the TV and it was a Guess Who live concert from Winnipeg, and it almost made me cry. Here were these guys playing to their hometown crowd, the emotional impact was astonishing. One of them said from the stage, hey, we grew up here in Winnipeg just like you guys, and just like us, you can do anything you want to do, live the life you want, etc etc. Very moving, in an earnest, polite Canadian way. Plus, they rocked. They were all older guys, kinda chubby & jowly, the drummer was wearing a headband, and they were still going for it! - https://youtu.be/oNYNYAj4588?si=dGyp3rTRY0_huuOM
I saw them on this tour in Los Angeles — they were fantastic, but I was kinda bummed when the Randy Bachman-led mini-set of BTO songs in the middle of the show got the biggest ovation of the night. I like that stuff well enough, but I've always thought it was several levels below the Guess Who's best work.
"Music and pop culture do not exist in a vacuum; context is often key to understanding a particular artist or record or musical movement, and current events can sometimes make one reconsider or reframe said artists and their work from a new perspective..."
It can be impossible to separate music from politics, and it is, IMO, sometimes both unavoidable and necessary. It's not unreasonable for writers to speak on both. We are, after all, very real people sitting on the other side of the screen.
Yeah, if we're all supposed to "stay in our lane," well, my lane is being a human being. And human beings have opinions — and we're still allowed to express them in this country, at least for now...
Sad and crazy that any folks that read you here would have a negative reaction to your righteous and spot-on Van Halen interpolation revelation. Seems too many have retreated from any desire to participate in intelligent discourse, nor engage in critical thinking, just an insatiable lust for affirmation and nothing more.
!!!Viva Canada!!! As an 18 year resident of Michigan, all my schoolin' years, I always had a few Canadian coins jangling around in my pocket along with the US minted ones. I still haven't seen much of Canada yet, but I sure drove south across the river to Windsor a lot as a teen & college kid, what wasn't to love there? The exchange rate was favorable, the beer was good & strong (we smuggled some back every time, Molson Brador & Carling's), the drinking age was 19 and the strippers were totally nude!
One of those drunken nights we tent camped in the local Windsor KOA on the outskirts of town me and my buddy Todd found every piece of wood, pallet whatever and built the biggest campfire they had ever seen, we got kicked out of Canadian KOA's for life - I wonder if I'm still in the books...
Love the links! So many memories and more new to me stuff to check out. Boy that Black Mountain song & video are sure nicely done, I'll be looking in to them, do you have album recommends? So stoked to see Trooper here! This song was played at every Sturgis high school dance no matter who the dj was. It was an institution that predated our era, I knew no one who had the record - I eventually found the CD in a cut out bin at Music Plus right after I moved to Hermosa Beach - never saw the video before!
April fucking Wine, one of the top shows at Wings Stadium in Kalamazoo, best dry ice smoking coverage ever and a real bitchin' drum solo (for a change) by the amazing Jerry Mercer. Much later and more than a few years back now, while watching my newly acquired "Festival Express" DVD I was amazed to see ol' Jerry with hair on that train and performing in his old band Mashmakhan. They sure made some good records, I too was thrilled with the Satisfaction/Day Tripper outro. I love to torture prog purists with their "Schizoid Man," which I love.
I'll spare you any of many Triumph accolades and I read here you didn't get into Max Webster, but I must submit some for consideration. My only knowledge of Max Webster was the random and unadorned "RIP Max Webster" mention in the "Exit Stage Left" liner notes until... After suffering a 52+ hour Greyhound bus ride to Fort Lauderdale for spring break in '86 the four of us that took that tortuous bus ride could not tolerate the return trip so we split up and found other transpo back up to Kalamazoo.
I stuffed myself (along with another) into the tiny back seat of this fucking Camaro when at some point somewhere between Knoxville and Lexington on I-75, the driver/owner of the Camaro was playing a cassette of a band I never heard and I was digging it especially when, after listening to several songs, out of nowhere I heard the distinctive wail of Geddy Lee, and it was obvious he was playing bass and sure sounded like Peart in there as well. It was the song "Battle Scar" featuring Rush, from Max Webster's final album "Universal Juveniles" 1980. MW was down to a trio then so it was two power trios killing it man.
At that time Rush was well within their keyboard years so to hear this new to me Rush where it's all loud guitars, drums and perhaps Geddy's last vintage banshee wailing (this came out a year before "Moving Pictures, so pretty much an end of a rocking era). I think it's their best album as a whole as well, they have a bunch of great older stuff too, and some of Kim Mitchell's solo stuff is lovely - enjoy 'em if you feel like it! There's even a little Moxy, w/Tommy Bolin.
Cool man, thanks! And for what it's worth, I had a friend who used to refer to KOA campgrounds as "Killer On Acid," which I always thought was both hilarious and fairly on the money.
Wow, some amazing picks here Dan! As someone who spent seven years in Canada obtaining a four year degree, you’ve hit some of my favorites here. A little surprised not to see any Tragically Hip on here but maybe you haven’t been exposed to them. If you haven’t then I’d highly recommend all of their albums, starting with 1992’s Fully Completely: https://open.spotify.com/album/60peDyBYVk0DWanN2GPxhO
Although I’d never heard them before,I loved those two early garage rock songs. Trooper has always been a nostalgic band for me. I saw them play live in a little dive bar in Halifax in the early 90s. Likewise with Sloan as I was in Halifax when they were coming up and I loved those two albums you mentioned. A couple Halifax bands from the same time frame that I’d recommend are The Super Friendz (their first album 1994’s Sticktoitiveness: https://open.spotify.com/album/2az1slVVwIB4R1QJ0ZtPVW) and JALE (1996’s power-pop gem So Wound: https://open.spotify.com/album/3dohdER9Ic5KB4UyC7YQsA).
Possibly my favorite track here is Echo Beach. I’d never heard it until my wife introduced it to me in the early 2000s. Fantastic song.
Thanks, Mark! Very cool picks - never heard JALE before! There’s a lot of Tragically Hip love in the comments, but I rather disliked the handful of songs I heard by them back in the early 90s - Chicago station WXRT played them semi-regularly - and thus never felt much call to explore further. I’ll check out Fully Completely on your recommendation though.
As a Canadian, I appreciate this and very nice to include the Ugly Duckling's here.
Such a cool band. Their earlier, more Stones-y stuff is really fun as well, but "Gaslight" is just a perfect record.
I hadn't heard of the Haunted or the Ugly Ducklings before- neat.
Oh, cool — happy to be the one to introduce you to them!
The worst president in my lifetime.
Easily. Almost makes Nixon look good by comparison.
Agree and B actor Reagan too for that matter.
Thanks for reminding us of some of the great music to come from up north.
All you had to say was "stack of 45s" and I'm pretty certain of which Calgary record store you're referring to.
There's a great comp series called "Wild Canada" that's killer. It may have been a blog comp—I don't know if it was ever released. My lovely Canadian former burnt a bunch on to CD-R for me, including The Haunted, Ugly Ducklings, The Quid, The Heart (not the Vancouver/ Seattle band but from Ottawa, I think), and Vancouver's Painted Ship.
Canada is in the top 3 countries for me of most amazing amount of rock music per capita: Canada, Sweden & Australia. All of this list is great, and Teenage Head's first album is so good but I still go to their second, "Frantic City" most—it's a total shame how under-appreciated they are outside of Canada.
So, I'll echo (beach) what Robert C. Gilbert said: as a Canadian transplant, I too appreciate this post (especially the Black Mountain thumbs up; I was just writing some thoughts about them, coincidentally).
Oooh, I don’t know that comp — sounds like I need to seek it out! And what was the name of that store in Calgary? The memory of digging there is still wonderfully vivid, but the name of the place has long flown from my brain…
Recordland came immediately to mind. It's a digger's paradise.
https://glidemagazine.com/295435/calgarys-recordland-hosts-1-7-million-records-more-vinyl-lives/
Yeah those Wyld Canada comps were floating around for a bit but all the DL links are expired. However, they do still live...on Youtube, through this CRAZY archive of comps:
https://www.sunnyboy66.com/?s=Wyld+Canada
Oh, shit — it definitely was NOT Recordland, and now I need to go back to Calgary!
No Tragically Hip? Max Webster? Two of the best from my homeland
Only know a few cuts by either band, and never dug them enough to dig further.🤷🏻
Fantastic
An especially meaningful and extra informational JTL. Perhaps there's a way to honor JTL's that hit a special chord and allow the reader to make a one-time special contribution of $5 to acknowledge that specialness. I subscribe but would certainly be willing to give that extra star$ on occasions such as this one. Thank you.
Aww thank you, Toni! I don't know that there's a way to do that on this platform, but I appreciate the sentiment!
This is nice work, Dan, as always. Some new stuff for me to check out. Canada rarely disappoints
Thank you, Brady — and thank you so much for becoming a paid subscriber!
My pleasure, Dan! Glad to help support your work. Always enjoy every single post. Also, I had a few books ahead in the queue, but I’m almost through the Redd Kross book and it’s really great. Thanks for getting together with Jeff and Steven to get this story out - it’s a really great one
Dan, some tunes there that this Canuck had not heard. Thank you!
Some of those bands cycled through our university bar and I remember seeing Rush play during frosh week in ‘73. Some others perhaps for your consideration are Crowbar - Oh What A Feeling - extended version, Rough Trade - High School Confidential and King Biscuit Boy - Goodun’s album.
Nice — I haven't heard any of those. I'll get on 'em, thanks!
Great ode to Canadian rock, Dan! And thanks for the YouTube links. Re: the Guess Who, I had heard them as a kid in the 70s and pretty much forgot about them. One night (early 2000s?) I came home late to my studio in SF, clicked on the TV and it was a Guess Who live concert from Winnipeg, and it almost made me cry. Here were these guys playing to their hometown crowd, the emotional impact was astonishing. One of them said from the stage, hey, we grew up here in Winnipeg just like you guys, and just like us, you can do anything you want to do, live the life you want, etc etc. Very moving, in an earnest, polite Canadian way. Plus, they rocked. They were all older guys, kinda chubby & jowly, the drummer was wearing a headband, and they were still going for it! - https://youtu.be/oNYNYAj4588?si=dGyp3rTRY0_huuOM
I saw them on this tour in Los Angeles — they were fantastic, but I was kinda bummed when the Randy Bachman-led mini-set of BTO songs in the middle of the show got the biggest ovation of the night. I like that stuff well enough, but I've always thought it was several levels below the Guess Who's best work.
Nice, I woulda added this Toronto slab of punk goodness...https://youtu.be/g7GUTdFe0Wk
New to me — thanks!
"Music and pop culture do not exist in a vacuum; context is often key to understanding a particular artist or record or musical movement, and current events can sometimes make one reconsider or reframe said artists and their work from a new perspective..."
It can be impossible to separate music from politics, and it is, IMO, sometimes both unavoidable and necessary. It's not unreasonable for writers to speak on both. We are, after all, very real people sitting on the other side of the screen.
Yeah, if we're all supposed to "stay in our lane," well, my lane is being a human being. And human beings have opinions — and we're still allowed to express them in this country, at least for now...
No Tragically Hip?
I never cared for the few songs of theirs that I've heard. Is there a particular album that I should check out?
Sad and crazy that any folks that read you here would have a negative reaction to your righteous and spot-on Van Halen interpolation revelation. Seems too many have retreated from any desire to participate in intelligent discourse, nor engage in critical thinking, just an insatiable lust for affirmation and nothing more.
!!!Viva Canada!!! As an 18 year resident of Michigan, all my schoolin' years, I always had a few Canadian coins jangling around in my pocket along with the US minted ones. I still haven't seen much of Canada yet, but I sure drove south across the river to Windsor a lot as a teen & college kid, what wasn't to love there? The exchange rate was favorable, the beer was good & strong (we smuggled some back every time, Molson Brador & Carling's), the drinking age was 19 and the strippers were totally nude!
One of those drunken nights we tent camped in the local Windsor KOA on the outskirts of town me and my buddy Todd found every piece of wood, pallet whatever and built the biggest campfire they had ever seen, we got kicked out of Canadian KOA's for life - I wonder if I'm still in the books...
Love the links! So many memories and more new to me stuff to check out. Boy that Black Mountain song & video are sure nicely done, I'll be looking in to them, do you have album recommends? So stoked to see Trooper here! This song was played at every Sturgis high school dance no matter who the dj was. It was an institution that predated our era, I knew no one who had the record - I eventually found the CD in a cut out bin at Music Plus right after I moved to Hermosa Beach - never saw the video before!
April fucking Wine, one of the top shows at Wings Stadium in Kalamazoo, best dry ice smoking coverage ever and a real bitchin' drum solo (for a change) by the amazing Jerry Mercer. Much later and more than a few years back now, while watching my newly acquired "Festival Express" DVD I was amazed to see ol' Jerry with hair on that train and performing in his old band Mashmakhan. They sure made some good records, I too was thrilled with the Satisfaction/Day Tripper outro. I love to torture prog purists with their "Schizoid Man," which I love.
I'll spare you any of many Triumph accolades and I read here you didn't get into Max Webster, but I must submit some for consideration. My only knowledge of Max Webster was the random and unadorned "RIP Max Webster" mention in the "Exit Stage Left" liner notes until... After suffering a 52+ hour Greyhound bus ride to Fort Lauderdale for spring break in '86 the four of us that took that tortuous bus ride could not tolerate the return trip so we split up and found other transpo back up to Kalamazoo.
I stuffed myself (along with another) into the tiny back seat of this fucking Camaro when at some point somewhere between Knoxville and Lexington on I-75, the driver/owner of the Camaro was playing a cassette of a band I never heard and I was digging it especially when, after listening to several songs, out of nowhere I heard the distinctive wail of Geddy Lee, and it was obvious he was playing bass and sure sounded like Peart in there as well. It was the song "Battle Scar" featuring Rush, from Max Webster's final album "Universal Juveniles" 1980. MW was down to a trio then so it was two power trios killing it man.
At that time Rush was well within their keyboard years so to hear this new to me Rush where it's all loud guitars, drums and perhaps Geddy's last vintage banshee wailing (this came out a year before "Moving Pictures, so pretty much an end of a rocking era). I think it's their best album as a whole as well, they have a bunch of great older stuff too, and some of Kim Mitchell's solo stuff is lovely - enjoy 'em if you feel like it! There's even a little Moxy, w/Tommy Bolin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fShR3KQ82G8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxqId5ujKl8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SI6UuwQtcUE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4e2WiM_WfE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4e2WiM_WfE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQYEOeC2nPg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4buijAXNyT0
Cool man, thanks! And for what it's worth, I had a friend who used to refer to KOA campgrounds as "Killer On Acid," which I always thought was both hilarious and fairly on the money.
Wow, some amazing picks here Dan! As someone who spent seven years in Canada obtaining a four year degree, you’ve hit some of my favorites here. A little surprised not to see any Tragically Hip on here but maybe you haven’t been exposed to them. If you haven’t then I’d highly recommend all of their albums, starting with 1992’s Fully Completely: https://open.spotify.com/album/60peDyBYVk0DWanN2GPxhO
Although I’d never heard them before,I loved those two early garage rock songs. Trooper has always been a nostalgic band for me. I saw them play live in a little dive bar in Halifax in the early 90s. Likewise with Sloan as I was in Halifax when they were coming up and I loved those two albums you mentioned. A couple Halifax bands from the same time frame that I’d recommend are The Super Friendz (their first album 1994’s Sticktoitiveness: https://open.spotify.com/album/2az1slVVwIB4R1QJ0ZtPVW) and JALE (1996’s power-pop gem So Wound: https://open.spotify.com/album/3dohdER9Ic5KB4UyC7YQsA).
Possibly my favorite track here is Echo Beach. I’d never heard it until my wife introduced it to me in the early 2000s. Fantastic song.
Thanks, Mark! Very cool picks - never heard JALE before! There’s a lot of Tragically Hip love in the comments, but I rather disliked the handful of songs I heard by them back in the early 90s - Chicago station WXRT played them semi-regularly - and thus never felt much call to explore further. I’ll check out Fully Completely on your recommendation though.