#17: Bobby’s Birthday by Kensington Market

City: Kingston, ON
Radio Station: CKLC
Peak Month: December 1967
Peak Position in Kingston ~ #6
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Bobby’s Birthday”
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Keith McKie was born in St. Albans, England, in 1947. He moved with his family to Canada in 1953. After high school, he formed a band called The Shades. This later morphed into the Vendettas. After that band dissolved, McKie was sought out by former Paupers manager Bernie Finkelstein who suggested he form a new group. To join McKie, they got former Bobby Kris & the Imperials guitarist and pianist Gene Martynec to sign. Martynec was born in 1947 in Coburg, West Germany. Former Vendettas bandmate, Alex Darou, was added to the emerging band. Darou, who played bass guitar, was born in Sault Ste. Marie (ON) in 1943. The oldest member of the band, he had already been part of a jazz trio. They also added drummer Jimmy Watson, who was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1950.

Kensington Market appeared for the first time in concert at the Night Owl on Toronto’s Avenue Road on June 4, 1967. Writing in the Toronto Star, Sid Adilman reported that the group was “the brightest and most inventive band ever grouped together in Toronto.”

In the summer of 1967, Kensington Market released their debut single titled “Mr. John”. It was released on the Stone label. The mid-tempo portrait of a man named “Mr. John” cracked the Top 20 in both Ontario towns of Kirkland Lake and Simcoe. Kensington Market were at Expo ’67 in Montreal, with the National Film Board. They also played at the Mariposa Folk Festival that summer.

Their second single release was the more rock-oriented “Bobby’s Birthday”.

“Bobby’s Birthday” was written by Keith McKie. In the song, friends of Bobby’s are going to come to the back of his house on the twelfth of the month. At the party everyone has a ball. When it’s over, the friend (narrating the song) says “goodbye Bobby, see you tomorrow in school. We don’t stay out this late as a rule.”

“Bobby’s Birthday” peaked at #6 in Kingston (ON), and made the Top 40 in Oshawa (ON).

After “Bobby’s Birthday hit the airwaves, Kensington Market added Luke Gibson to the lineup. Gibson had been the frontman for Luke & the Apostles. Meanwhile, in September ’67 Kensington Market recorded six tracks in Montreal for the soundtrack to the film Ernie Game. The film, about a man who leaves an asylum and attempts to survive in the ‘normal” world, went on to win awards at the Canadian Film Awards in both Best Feature Film and Best Director categories.

In addition to contributions from Kensington Market,
Leonard Cohen also was featured in the film.

The followup single was “I Would Be The One”, peaking at #12 in Kingston and Guelph (ON). It was also a Top 20 hit in Hamilton and Peterborough (ON) in the fall of ’68. It also climbed to #22 on Canada’s RPM Top 100 Singles pop chart.

Concurrent with the modest success of “I Would Be The One”, Kensington Market played at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto. They also made several trips to the USA. The highlights included performing at the Bitter End in New York City from February 14-19/68 (and later from August 29 to September 2), the Fillmore West in San Francisco on September 7/68 (with the Steve Miller Band and Chuck Berry), Whisky-A-Go-Go in Los Angeles, opening for Spooky Tooth, and the Grande Ballroom in Detroit with Pacific Gas & Electric on October 19-20/68. While in Canada, Kensington Market opened for Jefferson Airplane on July 21/68 at McMaster University in Hamilton.

The winter their single, “Side I Am”, was a minor hit in Toronto. In the summer of 1969, the band released a single titled “Help Me”. By that time they’d added John Mills Cockell to the lineup. However, a second studio album, Aardvark, was a commercial flop. The group split up by July ’69. Gibson and McKie did some performing as a duo in the summer of ’69, but that was it.

In 1971, McKie founded publishing company Sandpebble Music. In 1977, he formed a band called Village. After that band folded, in 1981 McKie released a studio album, Rumors at the Newsstand. McKie was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2019. Luke Gibson reformed Luke & the Apostles, and went on to establish Moonrider Music in 1971. It was reported by Nick Warburton of Citizen Freak that as of 2007 Gibson was living in “Toronto and works as a set director.” Warburton’s 2007 feature on Kensington Market states that after the band split up Jimmy Watson “later suffered from a major breakdown.”

After Kensington Market split up, Gene Martynec started producing albums. His first was the self-titled 1970 album, Bruce Cockburn, for this new rising star in the folk music world. Martynec would go on to produce ten of Cockburn’s first eleven studio albums. The last of these being The Trouble With Normal in 1983. In 1973, Martynec won the Best Produced Single award at the Juno Awards, “Last Song” by Edward Bear. In 1981, Martynec won the Producer of the Year award at the Juno’s for his work on Bruce Cockburn’s “Tokyo” and Rough Trade’s “High School Confidential”. He has also been a producer for Queen City Kids, the Pukka Orchestra, Doug and the Slugs, B.B. Gabor, and others.

In 1977, Martynec was part of Murray McLauchlan’s backing band the Silver Tractors. In the late 70s, Martynec was part of The Glass Orchestra, a group that played glass instruments. In the early 2000s, he was a member of the Rob Clutton Band.

In 2004, Martynec moved to Beijing for two years where he performed in Yunnan Province with Yan Jun, a sound artist, music critic, poet, and organizer, and at several music and art festivals such as the Dashanzi International Arts Festival and at the Bookworm Beijing, a venue for performance. Based in London from 2007 through 2010, he performed with the London Improvisers Orchestra and many small ensembles including string trio Barrel and Triptec. He played with Amsterdam’s Royal Improvisers Orchestra and Wuppertal Improvisers Orchestra in 2009 and 2010.

Gene Martynec, spoke to Nick Warburton around 2007 about the tragic fate of Alex Darou. “He became a real recluse. Eventually, he just locked himself in a room and people we knew would throw some money under the door because we knew he wasn’t doing anything. I think he caught Hepatitis and just passed away.”

A reformed Kensington Market line-up, featuring only two original bandmates – Gibson and McKie. They played at the Toronto Rock Revival concert held at the Warehouse on May 2, 1999.

December 13, 2024
Ray McGinnis

References:
Nick Warburton, “Kensington Market: ‘I Would Be The One…,” Citizen Freak, 2007.
“Kensington Market,” Canadianbands.com, April 11, 2022.
Brian Tremblay, “Keith McKie – A Hysterical Document,” the Borderline, Radio Too, October 6, 2023.
“The Ernie Game,” Wikipedia.org.

CKLC 1380-AM Kingston (ON) Top Ten | December 16, 1967