Audience Reflections by The Painted Ship

#1432: Audience Reflections by The Painted Ship

Peak Month: May 1967
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN ALL CANADIAN TOP TEN chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “Audience Reflections (From Polyanna’s Dreamworld)

In 1965 a local Vancouver band emerged calling themselves The Wee Beasties. Co-founder, William “Bill” Hay told It’s Psychedelic Baby Mag in 2011 about how the band began. “I met Rob Rowden at the University of British Columbia. I was writing a lot of poetry, mostly bad, at the time. Rob was playing in a commercial R&B band. We became friends over the period of a few months and I told him that I was thinking of starting a band. We talked about it. I warned him that it would be unlike anything that he’d done previously.” Bill Hay got the name The Wee Beasties from 17th century scientist, Van Leeuwenhoek, who looked through a microscope at one drop of water and found it teeming with microscopic life. Leeuwenhoek called the microscopic life – microbes – the “wee beasties.” However, the band changed their name before they began performing. The new name was The Painted Ship.

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Frustration by The Painted Ship

#640: Frustration by The Painted Ship

Peak Month: January 1967
10 weeks on CFUN’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #7
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Frustration
Lyrics: “Frustration”

In 1965 a local Vancouver band emerged calling themselves The Wee Beasties. Co-founder, William “Bill” Hay told It’s Psychedelic Baby Mag in 2011 about how the band began. “I met Rob Rowden at the University of British Columbia. I was writing a lot of poetry, mostly bad, at the time. Rob was playing in a commercial R&B band. We became friends over the period of a few months and I told him that I was thinking of starting a band. We talked about it ;I warned him that it would be unlike anything that he’d done previously.” Bill Hay got the name The Wee Beasties from 17th century scientist, Van Leeuwenhoek, who looked through a microscope at one drop of water and found it teeming with microscopic life. Leeuwenhoek called the microscopic life – microbes – the “wee beasties.” However, the band changed their name before they began performing. The new name was The Painted Ship. Bill Hay was a poet and liked Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rhyme Of The Ancient Mariner”. In Coleridge’s poem was the line from the twenty-eighth verse “… as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean.” Bill Hay was drawn to it. The “Ship,” as they were called for short, were comprised of Robert “Rob” Rowden on guitar, William “Bill” Hay on vocals, Barry Rowden on drums and Ken Wain on keyboards.

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