#56: Go Back To Your Woods by Robbie Robertson

City: Hamilton, ON
Radio Station: CKOC
Peak Month: February 1992
Peak Position in Hamilton ~ #6
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Mainstream Rock chart ~ #32
YouTube: “Go Back To Your Woods”
Lyrics: “Go Back To Your Woods”

In 1943, Jaime Royal “Robbie” Robertson was born in Toronto. His biological father was a Jewish and a professional gambler named Alexander David Klegerman. He had impregnated Robertson’s mother, Rosemarie Dolly Chrysler, a Cayuga and Mohawk woman from the Six Nations Reserve, near Hamilton, Ontario. Dolly soon after met James Patrick Robertson at a jewelry plating factory in Toronto where they both worked. Dolly and James married in late 1942. And Alexander David Klegerman was killed in a hit-and-run accident just prior to their marriage. It wasn’t until “Robbie” Robertson was 14 that he was told who his real biological father was.

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#23: Justified And Ancient by KLF and Tammy Wynette

Peak Month: March 1992
Peak Position #1
17 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #11
YouTube.com: “Justified And Ancient”

Virginia Wynette Pugh was born in 1942 in the unincorporated Mississippi community of Bounds Crossroads. The farm in which she was born was on the Alabama state line. Her father died of a brain tumor when she was nine months old. Her mother moved to work in a defense plant in Memphis, Tennessee. Wynette, as she was called by her middle name, was raised by her grandparents and picked cotton on their Mississippi farm. She learned to play piano by ear. She got married at 17 to Euple Byrd, studied cosmetology and enrolled in a Beauty School in Birmingham, Alabama. In 1964, her uncle worked for the WBRC television station in Birmingham. He helped Wynette secure an audition for the Country Boy Eddie country music television show. The show’s headliner, Eddie Burns, was impressed and agreed to have her on the program. On her first show, she sang a cover of Patsy Cline’s “Sweet Dreams”. In 1966 she got divorced and moved to Nashville.

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#33: There Will Never Be Another Tonight by Bryan Adams

Peak Month: February 1992
17 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #31
YouTube.com: “There Will Never Be Another Tonight”
Lyrics: “There Will Never Be Another Tonight”

Born in Kingston, Ontario, in November 1959, Bryan Adams parents immigrated from the UK in the 1950s. His dad, Captain Conrad J. Adams, was a diplomat in the Canadian foreign service. While growing up his family was posted to Portugal, Austria and Israel. By the age of 15 Adams was playing with the band Sweeney Todd as a frontman.  By the time he turned 17, Bryan Adams had landed work as a background vocalist for the CBC. His first salary came from working for Robbie King, a keyboard musician with Motown. During his senior years in high school he began playing music with his guitarist, Keith Scott.

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#43: The Globe by Big Audio Dynamite

Peak Month: April 1992
18 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #72
YouTube.com: “The Globe”
Lyrics: “The Globe”

Michael Geoffrey Jones was born in London, UK, in 1955. Jones’ maternal grandmother Stella was born in 1899 to Jewish parents in Russia and escaped the Russian pogroms by migrating to the United Kingdom. Growing up, Jones learned to play guitar and in the early 70s was in a glam rock band called The Delinquents. He moved on to The London SS. When that band broke up, in 1976 Jones became an original bandmate with The Clash. In 1983 Jones was expelled from The Clash. Late that year he formed General Public which released a debut album, All the Rage in January 1984. Jones left the band and later that year formed Big Audio Dynamite as lead guitarist.

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#57: Walking On Broken Glass by Annie Lennox

Peak Month: November 1992
19 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #14
YouTube.com: “Walking On Broken Glass”
Lyrics: “Walking On Broken Glass”

Ann Lennox was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1954. Lennox recalls, “When I was very young, we had a salmon pink Dansette record player. Someone gave me birthday money and the first record I think I bought was Mary Poppins followed by Procul Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale“. Both records are magical and transporting. I used to visit my grandparents in the countryside and would always go into the recesses of a cupboard to pull out a box full of old 78 rpm records which I’d play over and over again, especially the Vilja song from The Merry Widow, which I was obsessed with. My dad blew my mind when I was six years old because he built his own Gramophone. He had the albums for every Rodgers & Hammerstein musical and he switched his homebuilt record player on and you heard this crackling sound and then ‘Boom!’ I remember walking to school singing “I Enjoy Being A Girl”. To buy a vinyl album, you had to record player and you have to have speakers, and this is a great thing because that means people are going to listen to your music not on a cell phone, but they’re going to listen to it out of a sound system, which is what we all did when we were growing up. The important thing about vinyl releases is that people buy them and actually put them on the turntable and listen to a side, because we chose the tracks to be played in a particular order, and that was really important.”

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#189: No Regrets by Tom Cochrane

Peak Month: February 1992
18 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position ~ #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “No Regrets”
Lyrics: “No Regrets”

Tom Cochrane was born in Lynn Lake, Manitoba, in 1953. When he was eleven he got his first guitar. In his late teens and early twenties, he performed in coffee houses across Canada in the early 70’s. His debut album, Hang On To Your Resistance, was released in 1974. Then Tom Cochrane made his way to Los Angeles. In 1975, Cochrane got work composing theme music for the movie My Pleasure Is My Business. This was a film about Xavier Hollander, the call girl and adult film star who authored her own memoir, The Happy Hooker, in 1971. Unable to get subsequent work in Hollywood, Cochrane returned to Canada for drive a taxi and work on a cruise line. At a concert at the El Mocambo for Red Rider in 1978, Tom Cochrane met the band. Soon after Cochrane was invited to join Red Rider.

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#226: You Showed Me by Salt-N-Pepa

Peak Month: April 1992
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position ~ #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #47
YouTube: “You Showed Me”
Lyrics: “You Showed Me”

Cheryl Renee James was born in 1966 in Brooklyn, New York. She later went by the stage name Salt. Sandra Jacqueline Denton was born in 1964 in Kingston, Jamaica. She moved to join her family in Queens, New York, in 1970, at the age of six. While she was a child she was sexually molested. Both James and Denton attended nursing school at Queensborough Community College in Queens. In 1985, James and Denton were working as customer service representatives at Sears. The duo recorded their first single “The Show Stoppa”, which was a minor R&B hit in ’85. The duos’ original name was Super Nature. However, they changed their name because in “The Show Stoppa” they rap the lines “Right now I’m gonna show you how it’s supposed to be ‘Cause we, the Salt and Pepa MCs”. This resulted in radio stations getting phone calls requesting “The Show Stoppa” by Salt & Pepper.

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#1233: Love Monkey #9 by Bootsauce

Peak Month: May 1992
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #17
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Love Monkey #9”
Lyrics: “Love Monkey #9”

Sonny Greenwich Jr. was born on January 1, 1962, in Toronto. In his childhood his family moved to the south shore of Montreal and went to high school in the suburb of Longueuil. He got his first guitar on the occasion of his sixteenth birthday and formed a band that became named Dogstar. At a Montreal area Christmas party in 1988, Greenwich met singer Drew Ling (born Drew Thorpe) and guitarist Perry Johnson (who was later billed as Pere Fume). They instantly hit it off and found they shared musical interests. Soon they were playing with each other and formed a band.

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#1339: Keep On Movin’ by Finesse & Showbiz

Peak Month: November 1992
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #13
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Keep On Movin’”

Finesse & Showbiz were a pioneering west coast Canadian rap group formed in Nanaimo, B.C. They later relocated to Vancouver. In January 1991, the group submitted a cassette demo, “Where You At,” to local Top 40 station LG73. This resulted in heavy airplay and hitting #3 on the station’s nightly chart (different from the weekly CKLG Top 40. In 1992, Finesse & Showbiz was the first Vancouver rap group to release full length album with national and international distribution.

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#1279: Touch The Hand by Bryan Adams

Peak Month: June 1992
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #19
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Touch The Hand”
Lyrics: “Touch The Hand”

Born in Kingston, Ontario, in November 1959, Bryan Adams parents immigrated from the UK in the 1950s. His dad, Captain Conrad J. Adams, was a diplomat in the Canadian foreign service. While growing up his family was posted to Portugal, Austria and Israel. By the age of 15 Adams was playing with the band Sweeney Todd as a frontman.  By the time he turned 17, Bryan Adams had landed work as a background vocalist for the CBC. His first salary came from working for Robbie King, a keyboard musician with Motown. During his senior years in high school he began playing music with his guitarist, Keith Scott.

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#265: How Do You Do! by Roxette

Peak Month: October 1992
14 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #6
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #58
YouTube: “How Do You Do!”
Lyrics: “How Do You Do!”

Roxette was a duo composed of Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle. Gun-Marie Fredriksson was born in 1958 in a small town in the southern tip of Sweden. When she was seven-years-old, her 20-year-old sister died in a traffic fatality. She remembers the support she got to pursue music from a young age from attending a church. Fredriksson recalls she had been performing “ever since I was little and me and my sister Tina went to Sunday school. We had a wonderful pastor in Östra Ljungby. I’ve got really bright, lovely memories of that place, even when my big sister died. I loved all the songs. It was such a source of freedom for me… for both of us.” At age 17, she enrolled in a music school, and was subsequently cast in a musical that toured across Sweden.

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#1211: Deep Kiss by Mitsou

Peak Month: October 1992
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #19
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Deep Kiss”

In 1970 Mitsou Annie Marie Gélinas was born in Loretteville, Quebec. (The city amalgamated into Quebec City in 2002). She became a child star on French-Canadian television. Canadianbands.com states that she first began acting at age five. She began appearing in the soap opera Terre humaine, which first aired in 1978. The soap opera concerned the lives of the Jacquemins, a large farming family in rural Quebec. In addition to acting, Mitsou also started to explore singing as a vocation in the early 80s. In 1988 she signed a record deal with Isba Records. Her debut single, “Bye Bye Mon Cowboy” was an unusual French-language crossover into the English Top 40 radio market across Canada. The song spent five weeks on the CKLG Top 40 in the summer of 1989, after peaking at #2 in Montreal in 1988.

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#1199: She La by 54-40

Peak Month: September 1992
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #18
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “She La”
Lyrics: “She La”

54-40 is a band from Tsawwassen, British Columbia. Bass player Brad Merritt teamed up with guitarist and vocalist Neil Osbourne had met at South Delta High School in Tsawwassen in 1978. In 1981 they decided to form a band and asked drummer, Ian Franey, to join them. Neil Osbourne’s father had a position with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Consequently, the family moved as Osbourne’s dad got new postings variously from Regina, rural Nova Scotia, Ottawa, Edmonton and finally Tsawwassen. Ian Franey’s father was the director of the Vancouver International Film Festival.

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#1150: Don’t Stop Now by Love & Sas

Peak Month: August 1992
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG Chart
Peak Position ~ #15
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Don’t Stop Now”

Love & Sas was a recording duo comprised of Lovena Fox and Saskia Garel. Lovena B. Fox was born and raised in Vancouver. Her father owned a jazz club on Hastings Street called the Harlem Nocturne. Saskia Garel was born in 1969 in Kingston, Jamaica. She came to Canada in her early childhood, settling in Toronto. After graduating from York University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Honours Degree, she was awarded the Oscar Peterson Award. While at university, Saskia was part of a Latin and world beat group called Coconut Groove. She also performed at nightclubs across Toronto.

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#1166: Show Me The Way by the West End Girls

Peak Month: April 1992
Peak Position #20
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG Chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Show Me The Way”

Camille Henderson was born in Vancouver, BC, in 1970. From the age of ten she was a working actor in film, stage and TV. At the age of fifteen she starred in the Canadian film directed by Sandy Wilson titled My American Cousin. She played the role of Shirley, a preteen girl. Her father, Bill Henderson, was a member of the Vancouver Sixties band The Collectors. He continued with most of his bandmates as they morphed into Chilliwack in 1970.

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#348: Sinking Like A Sunset by Tom Cochrane

Peak Month: June 1992
15 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #7
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Sinking Like A Sunset”
Lyrics: “Sinking Like A Sunset”

Tom Cochrane was born in Lynn Lake, Manitoba, in 1953. When he was eleven he got his first guitar. In his late teens and early twenties, he performed in coffee houses across Canada in the early 70’s. His debut album, Hang On To Your Resistance, was released in 1974. Then Tom Cochrane made his way to Los Angeles. In 1975, Cochrane got work composing theme music for the movie My Pleasure Is My Business. This was a film about Xavier Hollander, the call girl and adult film star who authored her own memoir, The Happy Hooker, in 1971. Unable to get subsequent work in Hollywood, Cochrane returned to Canada for drive a taxi and work on a cruise line. At a concert at the El Mocambo for Red Rider in 1978, Tom Cochrane met the band. Soon after Cochrane was invited to join Red Rider.

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#1077: Celebrate by the Infidels

Peak Month: March 1992
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #19
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Celebrate”
Lyrics: “Celebrate”

Margaret Leslie Johnson was born in Toronto in 1959. She became as a child performer in the mid-1960s when, after entering elementary school, she and her brother were chosen by Toronto producer Ed Mirvish to appear as part of the cast in a Royal Alexandra Theatre production of Porgy and Bess. Subsequent musicals featured Johnson as a child performer in South Pacific and Finian’s Rainbow. Later, she was given formal training at the National Ballet School in Toronto, and the Banff School of Fine Arts in the heart of the Canadian Rocky Mountains in Banff, Alberta. According to Molly Johnson’s website bio, in 1974, at the age of 15, she fronted a Toronto disco band named A Chocolate Affair. The band lasted for a year.

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#649: Can’t Truss It by Public Enemy

Peak Month: January 1992
Peak Position #8
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG Chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #50
YouTube: “Can’t Truss It”
Lyrics: “Can’t Truss It”

Carlton Douglas Ridenhour was born in 1960 in the New York City borough of Queens. After the 1977 New York City blackout, he started to put pen to paper. From 1981-84 he attended Adelphi University on Long Island and studied graphic design. While he was there, Ridenhour co-hosted hip hop radio show called the Super Spectrum Mix Hour. On the show he went by the name of Chuck D, which was run on Saturday nights at Long Island rock radio station WLIR. William Jonathan Drayton Jr.was born in 1959 in the small town of Roosevelt, Nassau County, on Long Island. Drayton Jr. taught himself to play the piano from the age of five. In addition he sang in a youth choir at his church. As well, he learned to play drums and guitar during his childhood. In his late teens Drayton Jr. served time in prison once for robbery, and another time for burglary.

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#403: Even Better Than The Real Thing by U2

Peak Month: September 1992
14 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #32
YouTube: “Even Better Than The Real Thing”
Lyrics: “Even Better Than The Real Thing”

U2 is a band formed in Dublin, Ireland, in September 1976. Its members include lead vocalist and rhythm guitar player Bono, lead guitar and keyboard player the Edge, synthesizer and guitar player Adam Clayton, and drummer and percussionist Larry Mullen Jr. The band formed when its members were all teenagers. The band had several name changes before they settled on U2 in 1978. By 1980 they had been awarded a contract with Island Records and released their debut album Boy. With the release of their second album in 1981, October, and the lead Top Ten single in Ireland called “Fire”, the band were emerging as a force.

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#956: Something Good by Utah Saints

Peak Month: December 1992
9 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #13
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #98
YouTube: “Something Good”
Lyrics: “Something Good”

Jez Willis was born in 1968 in Brampton, UK. With Tim Garbutt, Willis formed the electronic music duo the Utah Saints in 1991. The duo met as music promoters and DJs for the Mix club in Harrogate, a 40 minute drive north of Leeds. In 1990 they formed Mega Dance Metal Allegiance. The duo were asked years later in an interview if they’d ever been to Utah in the United States. Tim Garbutt commented, “we did play there once in about 1996 and we had a stage invasion. It’s very different to Dubai; everyone should go there once in their lives. We often get emails from people in Utah with very weird requests.” Their work involved sampling other recordings and weaving them into their tracks. Jez told Digital Spy, “music is all about opinions, but we always try to do something interesting with a sample and put it in a different context, because that’s what’s interesting to us… people recognise it sonically, but they can’t place it initially.”

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#981: Jeremy by Pearl Jam

Peak Month: November 1992
9 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #11
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #79
YouTube: “Jeremy”
Lyrics: “Jeremy”

Jeffrey Allen Ament was born in 1963 and grew up in a village in northern Montana. He began to play guitar in his teens. In the early 80s he had a band called Deranged Diction. They moved from Montana to Seattle. In 1984 Ament was asked to join the Seattle grunge band Green River. In 1988 he formed a band called Mother Love Bone. The band was recording their debut album in 1990, but the lead singer died of a heroin overdose, and the band split up. In 1990, Ament cofounded grunge band Temple Of The Dog, featuring Soundgarden lead singer Chris Cornell. Concurrently, Jeff Ament cofounded Pearl Jam. The “Jam” came from attending a Neil Young concert where the musician had extended “jams” of different songs on stage.

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#581: Martika’s Kitchen by Martika

Peak Month: February 1992
13 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #7
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #93
YouTube.com: “Martika’s Kitchen”
Lyrics: “Martika’s Kitchen”

In 1969 Marta Marrero was born in Whittier, California. Her parents were born in Havana, Cuba. At the age of 12 she had an uncredited role in the comedy-musical film based on the Broadway show Annie. From 1984-86 she was cast as Gloria in the children’s television show Kids Incorporated. In 1984 she appeared, along with other Kids Incorporated cast members in the motivational video Be Somebody… or Be Somebody’s Fool! hosted by Mr. T. In the video Ice T and New Edition were also featured. In 1987 she signed a record deal with Columbia.

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#540: Come As You Are by Nirvana

Peak Month: April 1992
11 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #32
YouTube: “Come As You Are”
Lyrics: “Come As You Are”

Kurt Donald Cobain was born in 1967 in Aberdeen, Washington. By age two he was singing and at age four started playing piano. His parents divorced when he was nine. Before the end of grade nine Cobain dropped out of school and lived homeless for several years. His uncle gave him a guitar for his 14th birthday. In 1985 Cobain fronted a punk band from Aberdeen named Fecal Matter. One of his friends in the punk scene was Krist Novoselic, who listened to a demo by Fecal Matter. Novoselic convinced Cobain to join with him in a band they called the Sellouts, a Creedence Clearwater Revival tribute band. The band was short-lived as Cobain wrote new material and they subsequently formed a band they called Nirvana. But before they settled on this name, the band was variously called Skid Row and Ted Ed Fred.
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#453: An Emotion Away by Alanis Morissette

Peak Month: December 1992
14 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG’s chart
Peak Position #9
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “An Emotion Away”

Alanis Nadine Morissette was born in Ottawa in 1974. At the age of six she began to take piano, and the following year took up dance. In Junior High School she appeared on five episodes of a local CTV comedy show called You Can’t Do That on Television. In 1987 she recorded a demo with the help of Rich Dodson of The Stampeders. Four years later she released her debut album, Alanis. Her debut single was titled “Too Hot“.

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#721: Nice To Luv You by 54-40

Peak Month: July 1992
13 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #11
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Nice To Luv You”
“Nice To Luv You” lyrics

54-40 is a band from Tsawwassen, British Columbia. Bass player Brad Merritt teamed up with guitarist and vocalist Neil Osbourne had met at South Delta High School in Tsawwassen in 1978. In 1981 they decided to form a band and asked drummer, Ian Franey, to join them. Neil Osbourne’s father had a position with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Consequently, the family moved as Osbourne’s dad got new postings variously from Regina, rural Nova Scotia, Ottawa, Edmonton and finally Tsawwassen. Ian Franey’s father was the director of the Vancouver International Film Festival.

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#829: Music Man by 54-40

Peak Month: November 1992
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #10
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Music Man”
Lyrics: “Music Man”

54-40 is a band from Tsawwassen, British Columbia. Bass player Brad Merritt teamed up with guitarist and vocalist Neil Osbourne had met at South Delta High School in Tsawwassen in 1978. In 1981 they decided to form a band and asked drummer, Ian Franey, to join them. Neil Osbourne’s father had a position with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Consequently, the family moved as Osbourne’s dad got new postings variously from Regina, rural Nova Scotia, Ottawa, Edmonton and finally Tsawwassen. Ian Franey’s father was the director of the Vancouver International Film Festival.
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#980: Enid by Barenaked Ladies

Peak Month: September 1992
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #9
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Enid”
Lyrics: “Enid”

Lloyd Edward Elwyn “Ed” Robertson was born in Scarborough, Ontario, in 1970. He began to play guitar when he was in grade five. Steven Jay Page was also born in Scarborough in 1970. He took piano lessons for ten years and was a member of the Toronto Mendelssohn Youth Choir. Page and Robertson crossed paths in elementary school. But they didn’t become friends until 1988 when they found themselves co-counsellors at a summer Scarborough Schools Music Camp. Later that year there was a charity and Robertson asked Page to join him in a performance. The duo named themselves the Barenaked Ladies.

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#1052: Song Instead Of A Kiss by Alannah Myles

Peak Month: November 1992
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #12
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Song Instead Of A Kiss”
Lyrics: “Song Instead Of A Kiss”

Alannah Byles was born in Toronto in 1958. She rode horses in the Royal Winter Fair by the age of twelve. At age nine she began to play musical instruments and write songs. She performed some songs at a Kiwanis Music Festival in Toronto when she was twelve. Later, in her teens, she formed a band and began to perform in concert by her late teens. At the age of 19, she changed her surname from Byles to Myles. In 1984, she made a guest appearance in the Canadian TV show, The Kids of Degrassi Street. Her role was a single mom who wanted to become a singer. In 1989, Alannah Myles released her self-titled debut album with the single, “Black Velvet”, a power ballad that became an international hit. For that performance she would win a Grammy Award in 1991 for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. Another single, “Love Is”, was a prior single release in Canada, but was released after “Black Velvet” in America.

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#1058: Grade 9 by Barenaked Ladies

Peak Month: November 1992
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #12
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Grade 9”
Lyrics: “Grade 9″

Lloyd Edward Elwyn “Ed” Robertson was born in Scarborough, Ontario, in 1970. He began to play guitar when he was in grade five. Steven Jay Page was also born in Scarborough in 1970. He took piano lessons for ten years and was a member of the Toronto Mendelssohn Youth Choir. Page and Robertson crossed paths in elementary school. But they didn’t become friends until 1988 when they found themselves co-counsellors at a summer Scarborough Schools Music Camp. Later that year there was a charity and Robertson asked Page to join him in a performance. The duo named themselves the Barenaked Ladies.

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#1103: High by The Cure

Peak Month: June 1992
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #8
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #42
YouTube.com: “High”
Lyrics: “High”

Robert James Smith was born in Blackpool, UK, in 1959. At the age of eleven he began to play guitar and made music his primary focus. Over time he learned to play rhythm guitar, six-string bass and keyboards. Michael Stephen Dempsey born in 1958 in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia. His family moved to Surrey, UK, in 1961. From 1970 to 1972 he went to Notre Dame Middle School with Robert Smith, Marc Ceccagno (lead guitar) and Lol Tolhurst. In 1972 the four performed as a band they named The Obelisk. Dempsey, a bass player, was a founding member of Malice in 1976 and remained with the band as it morphed into The Cure, leaving in 1979. Laurence Andrew “Lol” Tolhurst was born in 1959 in Surrey, UK. He met Robert Smith at St. Francis Primary School. He co-founded Malice with Robert Smith and was continuously with The Cure from 1976 to 1989 Tolhurst played drums and keyboards. Paul “Porl” Stephen Thompson was born in Surrey, UK, in 1957. He learned to play the six-string bass, lead guitar, keyboards and saxophone. He was also an original member of the band from 1976-1978. He left The Cure to go to art school, but rejoined them from 1983 to 1994.

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Peak Month: January 1992
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG’s chart
Peak Position #9
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “Say You’ll Be Mine”

Camille Henderson was born in Vancouver, BC, in 1970. From the age of ten she was a working actor in film, stage and TV. At the age of fifteen she starred in the Canadian film directed by Sandy Wilson titled My American Cousin. She played the role of Shirley, a preteen girl. Her father, Bill Henderson, was a member of the Vancouver Sixties band The Collectors. He continued with most of his bandmates as they morphed into Chilliwack in 1970.
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