#8: Girls Night Out by Toronto
City: Regina, SK
Radio Station: CJME
Peak Month: August 1983
Peak Position in Regina ~ #1
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Girls Night Out”
Lyrics: “Girls Night Out”
Toronto was formed in 1979 when singer Holly Woods met guitar player Brian Allen in 1977. Annie “Holly” Woods was born in Durham, North Carolina, in 1953. She moved to San Francisco and fronting local bands Sass, and then Gambler. She moved to Toronto and initially performed in as Annie Woods and Shivers. Brian Allen was with a band called Rose. Woods and Allen formed the band they first called Sass in 1979. But a bar manager changed the band’s name to Toronto minutes before they went on stage at a concert in 1979. The name stuck. They added Sheron Alton (Brian Allen’s girlfriend) on guitar and backing vocals, Scott Kreyer on keyboards and backing vocals, Nick Costello on bass guitar, and Jimmy Fox on drums. Kreyer, Costello and Fox were each native New Yorkers. Toronto released a debut album, Lookin’ For Trouble, in 1980. The album sold over 100,000 copies. The lead single, “Even The Score”, was a minor hit across Canada which stalled at #104 beneath the Billboard Hot 100. A second album, Head On, spawned three single releases that were not commercially successful. Head On also exceeded sales of 100,000 copies.
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#12: I’ll Forget Her Tomorrow by Witness Inc.
City: Regina, SK
Radio Station: CJME
Peak Month: August 1967
Peak Position in Regina ~ #3
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “I’ll Forget Her Tomorrow” (original by Randy and the Rainbows)
YouTube: “I’ll Forget Her Tomorrow” (cover by Tommy Vann and the Echoes)
Lyrics: N/A
Witness Inc. was a band from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. They formed in 1967 and won the Saskatoon Teen-Town Band Battle. They immediately became a touring sensation in the western provinces. They released a series of singles which became increasingly pop after the second. The band finally caught on in Ontario after several years and many personnel changes. The original band consisted of Kenny Shields on lead vocals, Ed Clynton on guitar, Dennis Tremeer on bass guitar, Les Bateman on organ and piano, and Craig Kaleal on drums. The website, Citizen Freak, “was surprised to learn that the band traveled to New Mexico to record their first 45, probably at Norman Petty’s studio in Clovis.” Their first single release was “I’ll Forget Her Tomorrow”.
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#15: Lady Of The 80s by Loverboy
City: Regina, SK
Radio Station: CJME
Peak Month: June 1981
Peak Position in Regina ~ #5
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Lady Of The 80s”
Lyrics: “Lady Of The 80s”
Loverboy is a band formed in 1979. It has been stated by Mike Reno that their name was chosen due to a dream by Paul Dean. He had come up with the name after spending the previous night with some of the bandmates, including Reno and their girlfriends, before going to the movies. The girlfriends were browsing through fashion magazines, where the guys in the band saw a Cover Girl advertisement. Cover Girl became Cover Boy, and then became Loverboy in Dean’s dream later that night. After being told by Dean about the dream the next morning, Reno agreed to try it out and it stuck.
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#34: Fashion Victim by Rough Trade
City: Regina, SK
Radio Station: CJME
Peak Month: February 1981
Peak Position in Regina ~ #6
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Fashion Victim”
Lyrics: “Fashion Victim”
Kevan Staples was born in Toronto, Ontario, in 1950. His parents were musicians and artists. Carole Pope was born in Manchester, UK, also in 1950. Her father was a stilt walker and her mother a music hall performer. The Popes moved from Manchester to Montreal in 1955. They later moved to Toronto. Growing up, Carole studied sculpture. Kevan Staples and Carole Pope met at an audition in 1968 for Deva Loca Sideshow, a band that never ended up forming. In 1969, Staples and Pope began performing as a folk duo named O. They appeared in clubs in Toronto’s Yorkville neighborhood. In the 1960’s, Yorkville showcased the hippie movement for the rest of Canada, at least on the TV news. Yorkville was hyped as a magnet for intellectuals, artists and musicians. Writers, Margaret Atwood and Gwendolyn MacEwan, and singer-songwriters Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young were all part of the scene. Staples and Pope subsequently formed the Bullwhip Brothers in 1971. Finally, they changed their name to Rough Trade in 1974. O, Bullwhip Brothers and Rough Trade each drew on sexual satire, the latter from gay male iconography. In 1976, Carole Pope appeared in a concert titled Torch Showcase at a venue named A Space, in Toronto. She performed “The One Who Really Loves You” by Mary Wells and “You’re My World” by Cilla Black.
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#37: Where Is This Love by the Payola$
City: Regina, SK
Radio Station: CJME
Peak Month: March 1984
Peak Position in Regina ~ #6
Peak Position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Where Is This Love”
Lyrics: “Where Is This Love”
n 1978 a band was formed in Vancouver by Paul Hyde and Bob Rock called the Payola$. Hyde was born in Yorkshire, England, in 1955, and came to Vancouver in his teens. Bob Rock was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1954, and moved to Victoria, British Columbia, with his family in his later childhood. Rock learned to play guitar. Meeting in the Victoria suburb of Langford, the band settled on a name recalling the American music industry scandal investigated by the US Congress starting in 1959 called Payola. This was an illegal act where record companies paid deejays and radio stations a bribe for playing a single the record company wanted to get promoted. While it was legal for a record company to receive money in exchange for playing it on the radio, such a transaction had to be disclosed and not counted as regular airplay. While the Payola scandal did not spread into the Canadian radio market, as local legendary Vancouver Deejay Red Robinson attests in Robin Brunet’s book Red Robinson: The Last Deejay, Payola still had a bad name in the industry in America into the 80s. Consequently, although the Payola$ sold well in Canada, they met with stiff resistance south of the border.
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#38: Go For Soda by Kim Mitchell
City: Regina, SK
Radio Station: CJME
Peak Month: September 1984
Peak Position in Regina ~ #8
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #86
YouTube: “Go For Soda”
Lyrics: “Go For Soda”
Joseph Kim Mitchell was born in Sarnia, Ontario, in 1952. In his teen years Mitchell learned to play guitar. When he was 14 he joined a band called Grass Company. After high school, by 1970 he was playing in a number of bands in Sarnia. He was in a band called Zooom for a few years. Then in 1973 he formed the Max Webster, a progressive rock and heavy metal band. Max Webster released six studio albums. Though it didn’t get a following in the USA, by the early 1980s the band had Top 20 hits in Hamilton, Toronto, Regina, Victoria, Quebec City, and Top 30 hits in Ottawa and Halifax. Kim Mitchell toured with Max Webster until it dissolved in 1982. Kim Mitchell tested a new sound in the club circuit in southwestern Ontario and formed the Kim Mitchell band.
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#39: Trouble With Normal by Bruce Cockburn
City: Regina, SK
Radio Station: CJME
Peak Month: April 1983
Peak Position in Regina ~ #8
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Trouble With Normal”
Lyrics: “Trouble With Normal”
Bruce Cockburn was born in Ottawa in 1945. He has stated in interviews that his first guitar was one he found around 1959 in his grandmother’s attic, which he adorned with golden stars and used to play along to radio hits. Some of these included songs by the Beau Marks from Montreal. Later he was taught piano and music theory by Peter Hall, the organist at Westboro United Church which Cockburn and his family attended. Cockburn had been listening to jazz and wanted to learn musical composition. Hall encouraged him and, along with his friend Bob Lamble, a lot of time was spent at Hall’s house listening to and discussing jazz. After graduating, he took a boat to Europe and busked in Paris. Cockburn attended Berklee School of Music in Boston, where his studies included jazz composition, for three semesters between 1964 and 1966. That year he dropped out and joined an Ottawa band called The Children, which lasted for about a year.
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#46: Romantic Traffic by the Spoons
City: Regina, SK
Radio Station: CKCK
Peak Month: January 1985
Peak Position in Regina ~ #9
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Romantic Traffic”
Lyrics: “Romantic Traffic”
The Spoons were a band formed in 1979 in Burlington, Ontario. After several lineup changes they released their debut album, Stick Figure Neighbourhood. But they had to wait until 1982 with the release of their second album, Arias & Symphonies to get national attention. By that time the band consisted of Spoons co-founders Gordon Deppe (on lead vocals and guitar) and Sandy Horne on bass and vocals. The Spoons second drummer, Derrick Ross, joined the band in late 1979. The keyboard player, Rob Preuss, was the band’s second keyboard player after Brett Wickens departed.
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#54: Catch 22 by Nick Gilder
City: Regina, SK
Radio Station: CKCK
Peak Month: May 1981
Peak Position in Regina ~ #13
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Catch 22”
Lyrics: “Catch 22”
Nick Gilder was born in London, England, in 1951. In his childhood he moved to Canada and grew up in Vancouver. In the summer of 1973, when he was 22 years old, vocalist Gilder and fellow former high school classmate and guitarist, Jim McCulloch, founded a band called Rasputin. John Booth on drums, Bud Marr on bass and Dan Gaudin on keyboards rounded out the band. Shortly afterward they took the name Sweeney Todd. Their name was inspired by the 1846-47 Victorian penny dreadful The String of Pearls: A Domestic Romance credited to James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest. The main antagonist of the story is Sweeney Todd, “the Demon Barber of Fleet Street”. Todd is a barber who murders his customers and turns their bodies over to Mrs. Lovett, his partner in crime, who bakes their flesh into meat pies and sells them at her pie shop. A Sweeney Todd stage play by Stephen Sondheim appeared on Broadway in 1979.
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#56: Listen To The Radio by Pukka Orchestra
City: Regina, SK
Radio Station: CJME
Peak Month: May 1984
Peak Position in Regina ~ #10
Peak position in Vancouver ~ Hit Bound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Listen To The Radio”
Lyrics: “Listen To The Radio”
The Pukka Orchestra was formed in Toronto in 1979. The core of the band consisted of vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Graeme Williamson (born in Glasgow, Scotland) and guitarists/co-songwriters Neil Chapman and Tony Duggan-Smith. The band’s name is derived from the Hindi word pukka, which means “Genuine”, “Authentic”, “First Class”. The name was coined by Duggan-Smith’s extremely British grandfather who had been the harbourmaster of Calcutta and had later worked for Marconi. When Duggan-Smith told him he was playing music for a living his grandfather replied, “That’s all very nice Tony, but don’t bother with any mediocre bands, get yourself into a Pukka Orchestra”. The band made frequent use of numerous guest musicians, jokingly commenting “Are you in the Pukka Orchestra? Why not, everyone else is.”
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