#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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#1228: Time Of The Day by Gino Vannelli
Peak Month: December 1990
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #19
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Time Of The Day”
Lyrics: “Time Of The Day”
Gino Vannelli was born in Montreal in 1952. During his childhood he was exposed to jazz music and cabaret. His father was a cabaret singer and his mother had a good ear for music. Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich and Ed Thigpen were among the drummers that inspired young Gino. At the age of eleven, Gino was one of a group of elementary school-age drummers trying to audition for a Montreal band named The Cobras. He arrived home from school later than usual to announce he had been picked to be the new drummer for the band after impressing them with his rendition of “Wipeout”.
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#1252: Chocolate Cake by Crowded House
Peak Month: August 1991
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #15
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Chocolate Cake”
Lyrics: “Chocolate Cake”
Neil Mullane Finn was born in 1958 in Te Awamutu on the North Island of New Zealand. His brother Brian Timothy Finn was born in the same New Zealand town in 1952. Neil began playing guitar when he was eight-years-old, and decided to be a professional musician at age 12. Tim Finn learned to play guitar, drums and piano. In 1972, when Tim was 20 and Neil was 14, the Finn brothers co-founded the rock band Split Enz. Over time the band shifted their sound to New Wave and Art Rock. With Split Enz they enjoyed international hits that included “One Step Ahead“, “I Got You”, and “Six Months In A Leaky Boat”.
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#1205: Sandra by Idle Eyes
Peak Month: October 1986
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #16
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Sandra”
Lyrics: “Sandra”
Tad Campbell was born in Vancouver (BC). After high school he found himself in Australia moonlighting for a band called the Daydream Islanders between shifts while working for a luxury liner that cruised around parts of the continent. In 1980 he replied to an ad looking for a guitarist, and ended up with the band playing for months at a resort in the Whitsunday Islands. A chambermaid at a hotel Campbell knew, Donna McConville, became the bands’ lead singer. Though they had other Australian musicians in the line-up, when Campbell and McConville decided to move to Vancouver, the other bandmates chose not to follow. Back in Vancouver the pair got a new lineup and called themselves Idle Eyes. But the lineup kept changing. Tad Campbell recalls that “their first tour was cancelled when the drummer backed out the day they were supposed to leave.” Part of the problem was that Idle Eyes was made up almost entirely of bandmates from New Zealand and Australia who had visa issues. Eventually, Donna McConville returned to Australia and became a backing singer for John Farnham.
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#1240: Almost Unreal by Roxette
Peak Month: July 1993
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #14
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #94
YouTube: “Almost Unreal”
Lyrics: “Almost Unreal”
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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#1231: If I Was A Dancer by the Rolling Stones
Peak Month: April 1981
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #13
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube:”If I Was A Dancer”
Lyrics: “If I Was A Dancer”
Michael Philip Jagger was born in Dartford, Kent, England, in 1943, some 18 miles east of London. Though his father and grandfather were both teachers by profession, and he was encouraged to be a teacher, the boy had different aspirations. “I always sang as a child. I was one of those kids who just liked to sing. Some kids sing in choirs; others like to show off in front of the mirror. I was in the church choir and I also loved listening to singers on the radio–the BBC or Radio Luxembourg –or watching them on TV and in the movies.” In 1950 Mick Jagger met Keith Richards while attending primary school. They became good friends until the summer of 1954 when the Jagger family moved to the village of Wilmington, a mile south of Dartford. The pair bumped into each other at a train station in 1961 and resumed their friendship.
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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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#1402: Truganini by Midnight Oil
Peak Month: June 1993
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #17
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Truganini”
Lyrics: “Truganini”
Peter Robert Garrett was born in 1953 in Sydney, Australia. He studied politics at the Australian National University, and later law at the University of New South Wales. According to the bands’ website, it was in 1975 that Garrett was asked to join a Sydney-based rock band called The Oils. In 1972 drummer and singer Rob Hirst, bass guitar player Andrew “Bear” James, and guitar player, keyboard player and vocalist Jim Moginie, began playing music together at school. Their band played mostly Beatles covers. Robert George Hirst was born in Camden, New South Wales, in 1955. James Moginie was born in 1956 in Kalamuda, Western Australia. In 1976 guitar player Martin Rotsey joined the band around the time they officially became Midnight Oil. Martin Rotsey was born in Sydney in the mid-50s.
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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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