#44: Teenage Rage by Streetheart
City: Regina, SK
Radio Station: CJME
Peak Month: April 1981
Peak Position in Regina ~ #7
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Teenage Rage”
Lyrics: “Teenage Rage”
Kenny Shields was from Nokomis, Saskatchewan in 1947. When he was six years old he won an amateur talent contest. Once he graduated from high school he pursued music and in 1967 formed a band in Saskatoon named Witness Inc. The band had several Top Ten hits in local radio markets in the Canadian Prairies and in Ontario. These include “I’ll Forget Her Tomorrow”, “Jezebel” and “Harlem Lady”. In 1969 Shields had a near fatal car accident and had to undergo therapy and rehab for a number of years. This meant he had to quit the band. In 1975 Shields was back with Witness Inc. and by that time he was the only original member in the band. But the pseudo-psychedlic sound that Witness Inc. was known for was no longer in vogue. The band changed its name to Streetheart and with it got a newer rock ‘n roll sound. Bass player Ken “Spider” Sinnaeve and keyboard player, Daryl Gutheil, made the transition from Witness Inc. As Streetheart, they were joined by Paul Dean and Matt Frenette who both moved on to form Loverboy.
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#61: Desire by Roni Griffith
City: Montreal, PQ
Radio Station: CKOI
Peak Month: January 1982
Peak Position in Montreal ~ #2
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Desire”
Lyrics: “Desire”
Roni Griffith was born in Bloomington, Indiana, likely in 1960. Wikipedia states she was “one of the original Coconuts in Kid Creole and the Coconuts.” She was is not among the personnel listed on any of the groups first three albums, but may be uncredited as a backing singer and dancer. With Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Griffith appeared on stage when the band was an opener for concerts headlined by the B-52s and Huey Lewis and the News. Finding success as a musician, in 1981 she appeared on SNL with Kid Creole and the Coconuts. That year Griffith decided to go solo, signing a record contract with Vanguard Records and producer, Bobby Orlando.In early 1981, she released the single “Mondo Man” which was a hit in Long Beach and a Top 40 hit on the Billboard Dance Club chart.
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#47: I Will Always Love You by Dolly Parton
City: Toronto, ON
Radio Station: CFTR
Peak Month: September-October 1982
Peak Position in Toronto ~ #3
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #53
YouTube: “I Will Always Love You”
Lyrics: “I Will Always Love You”
Dolly Rebecca Parton was born in 1946, the fourth of twelve children, in Pitman Center, Tennessee. Parton said her family was “dirt poor”. Her father paid missionary Dr. Robert F. Thomas with a sack of cornmeal for delivering her. Dolly’s mother, Avie Lee, was just 35 by the time the she gave birth to her twelfth child. The family lived in a one-room cabin on Little Pigeon River. Her father “Lee” Parton Sr., was a sharecropper who also worked in construction and later started a small tobacco farm. Dolly Parton began performing as a child, singing on local radio and television programs in the East Tennessee area. By ten, she was appearing on The Cas Walker Show on both WIVK Radio and WBIR-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee. Parton made her first professional recording at age 13 when she recorded “Puppy Love” for Goldband Records. The lyrics were distinct from the Paul Anka hit single with the same title in the winter of 1959-60. After making musical connections while performing on The Cas Walker Show, Parton and her uncle, Bill Owens, managed to get a guest spot on the Grand Ole Opry on July 25, 1959. Jimmy C. Newman agreed to give up one of his regular Saturday night spots to allow Parton to perform. Parton was introduced by Johnny Cash before she performed a cover of George Jones’ “You Gotta Be My Baby” and received three encores.
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#4: Strange Way by Firefall
City: Smithers, BC
Radio Station: CFBV
Peak Month: January 1979
Peak Position in Smithers ~ #1
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ #10
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #11
YouTube: “Strange Way”
Lyrics: “Strange Way”
Firefall was a soft rock band from Boulder, Colorado. They were founded by Rick Roberts and formed in 1974. Roberts was born in 1949 in Clearwater, Florida. He was a member of the Flying Burrito Brothers, and on their self-titled 1971 album and 1972 album Last of the Red Hot Burritos. Roberts dissolved the Flying Burrito Brothers in 1973. Concurrently, Roberts released two solo albums in 1972 and 1973. He got the name for the band from the Yosemite Firefall, a summertime event in which burning embers were pushed from Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park to the valley 3,000 feet below. Roberts co-founder was Jock Bartley, who was born in Hutchinson, Kansas, in 1950. His family moved to Colorado Springs in 1959. Later, he began guitar lessons there (notably with jazz legend Johnny Smith), and later became deeply involved in the music scene when he moved to Boulder. When the pair met in 1973, Bartley was in a band with Gram Parsons called Fallen Angels.
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#9: Give Peace A Chance by Plastic Ono Band
City: St. Thomas, ON
Radio Station: CHLO
Peak Month: August 1969
Peak Position in St. Thomas ~ #1
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #14
YouTube: “Give Peace A Chance”
Lyrics: “Give Peace A Chance”
The Plastic Ono Band was formed in 1968 by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. They met in 1966 while Lennon was a member of the Beatles, and Ono was an avant-garde artist and performer. By 1968, the two established a romantic relationship and they began collaborating on a number of musical projects. The Plastic Ono Band name, and the idea of an open-ended plastic band, was conceived of by Yoko Ono in 1967 as an idea for an art exhibition in Berlin. The Plastic Ono Band was realized in 1968 as a multi-media machine maquette by John Lennon, also called The Plastic Ono Band. Ono and Lennon collaborated on several art exhibitions, concerts, happenings and experimental noise music recording projects, before recording and releasing somewhat more standard rock-based albums that were still connected to the Plastic Ono Band concept.
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#65: Nothing’s Gonna Stop Me Now by Samantha Fox
City: Montreal, PQ
Radio Station: CKOI
Peak Month: December 1987
Peak Position in Montreal ~ #2
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #80
YouTube: “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Me Now”
Lyrics: “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Me Now”
Samantha Fox was born in London, UK, in 1966. She formed her first pop band when she was 14 and signed her first record deal with Lamborghini Records at age 15. Fox began her glamour modelling career at age 16 in 1982. After she placed second in a Sunday People amateur modeling contest, The Sun recruited her to pose topless for Page 3, where she made her first appearance in February 1983. In the UK you had to be 16 years of age in order to legally be in a photo for public consumption. Named The Sun‘s “Page 3 Girl of the Year” for 1984, 1985 and 1986, she became one of the most photographed British women of the 1980s and a notable sex symbol of the era. in 1983, her recording debut was a non-album non-charting single titled “Rockin’ with My Radio”, credited as S.F.X.
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#7: Old Man by Neil Young
City: St. Thomas, ON
Radio Station: CHLO
Peak Month: May 1972
Peak Position in St. Thomas ~ #3
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ #16
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #31
YouTube: “Old Man”
Lyrics: “Old Man”
Neil Young was born in Toronto in 1945. His family moved to Omemee, Ontario, and he contracted polio in 1951, two years before the polio vaccine was introduced. He learned guitar and dropped out of high school. He played in the Winnipeg based band called The Squires, who toured parts of Manitoba and northern Ontario. They played instrumental covers of Cliff Richard’s backup band, The Shadows. Young moved to California in 1966 where he was a founding member of the Buffalo Springfield. In 1968 he released his self-titled debut studio album. And in 1969 he became the fourth member of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
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#2: We All Need Love by Troiano
City: Smithers, BC
Radio Station: CFBV
Peak Month: July 1979
Peak Position in Smithers ~ #11
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ Playlist
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “We All Need Love”
Lyrics: “We All Need Love”
Domenic Troiano was born in Modugno, in southeastern Italy, in 1946. His family emigrated to Toronto when he was three-years-old. His first professional music work was with Robbie Lane & The Disciples in the early ’60s. That band got a break with they became Ronnie Hawkins backing band. In 1965, Troiano joined a local Toronto band called the Five Rogues, which later found success as Mandala. The Dells backed Mandala on their recording of “Opportunity” which reached #3 on CHUM in Toronto in early 1967. When Mandala dissolved in 1969, Troiano formed a jazz-influenced rock outfit called Bush. In 1970, he appeared on a solo album, Axe, by Guess Who bandmate Randy Bachman. He subsequently joined The James Gang in 1972, and co-wrote their minor hits “Looking for My Lady” and “Had Enough”. The same year he released his debut self-titled solo album, followed by Tricky in 1973. In 1974, Troiano wrote “Just As Bad As You”, a hit in Canada for Shawne Jackson (his then wife).
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#24: Outside The Gates Of Heaven by Lou Christie
City: St. John’s, NL
Radio Station: VOCM
Peak Month: April 1966
Peak Position in St. John’s ~ #6
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #45
YouTube: “Outside The Gates Of Heaven”
Lyrics: “Outside The Gates Of Heaven”
Lou Christie was born in 1943 with the birth name Lugee Alfredo Giovanni Sacco. He was born in Glenwillard, a suburb of Pittsburgh. His first public performance was a first-grade Christmas pageant, in which he sang “Away in a Manger.” While in high school, he studied music and voice, served as student conductor of the choir and sang solos at holiday concerts. His teacher, Frank Cummings, wanted him to pursue a career in classical music, but Sacco wanted to cut a record to get on American Bandstand. At age 15 he met and befriended Twyla Herbert, a classically trained musician 20 years his senior, who became his regular songwriting partner. Lugee Sacco performed with several vocal groups and between 1959 and 1962 released several records on small Pittsburgh labels, achieving a local hit with “The Jury” by Lugee & The Lions (a group consisting of Sacco, Twyla Herbert’s daughter Shirley, and two others) released on the Robbee label. After graduating from high school in 1961, Sacco traveled to New York City and worked as a session vocalist.
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#67: Storm Before The Calm by Luba
City: Montreal, PQ
Radio Station: CKGM
Peak Month: April 1985
Peak Position in Montreal ~ #5
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Storm Before The Calm”
Lyrics: “Storm Before The Calm”
Lubomyra Kowalchyk was born in 1958 in Montreal, Quebec. During her teens she travelled across Canada performing traditional Ukrainian folk songs at weddings and festivals. Growing up she studied piano, guitar, flute and voice. She was a fine-arts student when she formed a band called Zorya in 1973, releasing an album. In 1977 she released her second album titled. Lubomyra. In 1978 she formed a band named Luba with herself as the lead vocalist. Then, when her father died in 1979, she wrote what would become her signature song, “Everytime I See Your Picture”, as a tribute to him.
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