#22: Crying Over You by Platinum Blonde
Peak Month: September 1985
Peak Position #1
16 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Crying Over You”
Lyrics: “Crying Over You”
Mark Holmes was born in the UK and lived in Manchester until the family moved to Toronto. He met several other musicians and formed a punk band that played covers to The Police and other new wave bands. After a lineup change, Holmes was playing guitar and the lead vocalist, Chris Steffler was the drummer and Sergio Galli was a second guitarist. Steffler grew up in Wasaga Beach, Ontario, where his parents owned a 12-acre trailer park and campground called Jell-E-Bean Park. He started playing drums in 1972 and also became handy — learning everything from carpentry to plumbing — from his dad and uncle. At the same time he was playing drums in local bands, one being called Sledge. After high school, he worked at the shipyards in Collingwood and then in 1978 he moved to Toronto and started playing in bands. Sergio Galli had been in a band called Mace in 1979. The trio became Platinum Blonde. They got a record deal with CBS in 1983. Their debut album, Standing In The Dark, earned them two Video Of The Year nominations at the 1984 Juno Awards.
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#26: Let Your Backbone Slide by Maestro Fresh Wes
Peak Month: March 1990
Peak Position #1
16 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #14
YouTube.com: “Let Your Backbone Slide”
Lyrics: “Let Your Backbone Slide”
Wesley Williams was born in 1968 in Toronto. He grew up in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough. His parents were Guyanese immigrants. From the moment he entered public school, young Wes Williams was very conscious of how exotic he was as the only black child in his classroom. This was, after all, the 1970s. At the age of six, a little girl who was a next door neighbor asked him, “Wes, when are you going to turn white?” Wes Williams was curious about the question. He noticed he was growing taller. So, considering his skin might change, he asked his dad the question. Williams remembers, “My dad just said, ‘I’m still waiting, boy!'” When he was twelve years old, young Wes Williams heard “Rapper’s Delight” by The Sugarhill Gang in 1979. From that day forward Williams had a sense of purpose and vision for himself. Even though there was no such thing at that time as a black rapper in Canada.
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#31: Eyes Of A Stranger by the Payola$
Peak Month: July 1982
14 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Eyes Of A Stranger”
Lyrics: “Eyes Of A Stranger”
In 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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#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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#311: Hey You by Bachman Turner Overdrive
Peak Month: June 1975
12 weeks on CFUN’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #21
YouTube.com: “Hey You”
Lyrics: “Hey You”
Randolph Charles Bachman was born in 1943 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. When he was just three years old he entered the King of the Saddle singing contest on CKY radio, Manitoba’s first radio station that began in 1923. Bachman won the contest. When he turned five years he began to study the violin through the Royal Toronto Conservatory. Though he couldn’t read music, he was able to play anything once he heard it. He dropped out of high school and subsequently a business administration program in college. He co-founded a Winnipeg band called The Silvertones with Chad Allan in 1960. In 1962 the band became Chad Allan and the Expressions, and was renamed The Guess Who? in 1965 with their first big hit, “Shakin’ All Over”. The Guess Who dropped the question mark in their title a few years later.
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#38: Superman’s Song by the Crash Test Dummies
Peak Month: September 1991
15 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #56
YouTube.com: “Superman Song”
Lyrics: “Superman Song”
Bradley Kenneth Roberts was born in 1964 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He studied music at the University of Winnipeg. While studying at university and working as a bartender at The Spectrum Cabaret, Roberts began writing his own songs. By 1989, Roberts began performing with his brother Dan in a house band for the Blue Note Cafe in Winnipeg under the moniker Bad Brad Roberts and the St. James Rhythm Pigs. Brad Roberts had a distinctive bass-baritone voice, and played guitar. Dan Roberts was born in Winnipeg in 1967. He joined his brother’s band in 1989, playing bass guitar. Ellen Reid was born in Selkirk, Manitoba, in 1966. At an early age she studied piano. She joined the Brad Roberts band, playing piano and backing vocals in local taverns. Benjamin “Son of Dave” Darvill was born in Winnipeg in 1967. He learned to play mandolin, guitar and harmonica, joining the band in 1989.
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#48: Last Kiss by Wednesday
Peak Month: November 1973
14 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #34
YouTube.com: “Last Kiss”
Lyrics: “Last Kiss”
In the early 70s a group from Oshawa, Ontario, were formed who named themselves Wednesday. The band formed when high school friends Mike O’Neil and Paul Andrew Smith decided to start a band. O’Neil played guitar and banjo, while Smith played guitar and keyboards. Both were singers. They were getting a good reputation as they played covers of contemporary hit songs at gigs across Ontario. They auditioned for a drummer and got Randy Begg, and they soon got bass player John Dufek to round out the band. In 1973 they showed up at Toronto’s Manta Studios in Toronto and made some demos.
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#49: Destination Love by Bobby Curtola
Peak Month: February 1963
14 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Destination Love”
Bobby Curtola was born in Port Arthur, Ontario, in 1943. (The town would become amalgamated into the city of Thunder Bay in 1970). His cousin Susan Andrusco remembers “Bobby would always be singing at our family gatherings. The family loved him. And he loved being the centre of attention. He would sing Oh My Papa, and my grandpa would cry.” Oh My Papa was a number-one hit for Eddie Fisher in January 1954, when Bobby Curtola was still ten-years-old. In the fall of 1959, sixteen-year-old high school student Bobby Curtola went from pumping gas at his father’s garage in Thunder Bay, Ontario, to the life of a teen idol. Within a year he went from playing in his basement band, Bobby and the Bobcats, to recording his first hit single in 1960, “Hand In Hand With You”, which charted in June ’60 in Ontario, but not in Vancouver.
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#50: Roxy Roller by Sweeney Todd
Peak Month: April 1976
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #90
YouTube.com: “Roxy Roller”
Lyrics: “Roxy Roller”
In 1951 Nick Gilder was born in London, England. 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 our the band. Shortly afterward they took the name Sweeney Todd. Their name was inspired by the stage play of the same name by Stephen Sondheim.
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#55: Roll On Down The Highway by Bachman-Turner Overdrive
Peak Month: March 1975
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #14
YouTube.com: “Roll On Down The Highway”
Lyrics: “Roll On Down The Highway”
Randolph Charles Bachman was born in 1943 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. When he was just three years old he entered the King of the Saddle singing contest on CKY radio, Manitoba’s first radio station that began in 1923. Bachman won the contest. When he turned five years he began to study the violin through the Royal Toronto Conservatory. Though he couldn’t read music, he was able to play anything once he heard it. He dropped out of high school and subsequently a business administration program in college. He co-founded a Winnipeg band called The Silvertones with Chad Allan in 1960. In 1962 the band became Chad Allan and the Expressions, and was renamed The Guess Who? in 1965 with their first big hit, “Shakin’ All Over”. The Guess Who dropped the question mark in their title a few years later.
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