#172: Share The Land/Bus Rider by the Guess Who
A-side: “Share The Land”
Peak Month: November 1970
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
Peak Position ~ #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #10
YouTube: “Share The Land”
Lyrics: “Share The Land”
B-side: “Bus Rider”
Peak Month: November 1970
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
Peak Position ~ #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Bus Rider”
Lyrics: “Bus Rider”
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 Al & The Silvertones with Chad Allan in 1960.
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#173: Round Round We Go by Trooper
Peak Month: November 1978
17 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position ~ #7
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Round Round We Go”
Lyrics: “Round Round We Go”
In 1967 Ra McGuire and Brian Smith played in a Vancouver band named Winter’s Green. The band recorded two songs, “Are You a Monkey” and “Jump in the River Blues” on the Rumble Records Label. “Are You A Monkey” later appeared on a rock collection: 1983’s “The History of Vancouver Rock and Roll, Vol. 3.” In the early seventies Winter’s Green changed their name to Applejack and added drummer Tommy Stewart and bassist Harry Kalensky to their lineup. Applejack became a very popular band in the Vancouver area, and began touring extensively in British Columbia. The band played a few original tunes such as “Raise A Little Hell”, and “Oh, Pretty Lady”, as well as Top 40 songs by artists such as Neil Young, and Chicago.
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#174: Oh What A Feeling by Crowbar
Peak Month: April 1971
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
Peak Position ~ #1 ~ CKLG
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Oh What A Feeling”
Lyrics: “Oh What A Feeling”
Crowbar’s roots go back to the beginning of Roly Greenway’s career. In 1942 Roly Greenway was born in Guelph, Ontario. By the time he was sixteen in 1958, he had learned to play bass guitar. That year he joined a Guelph-based band called The Centurys. In 1962 he was a member of Joe Pino & The Starlites, then The Ascots in 1963. While he was in the Ascots, Greenway met guitarist Rhéal Lanthier. Born in 1939 in the foothills of the Laurentians in scenic Buckingham, Quebec, Rhéal Lanthier was nicknamed “The Frenchman.” In 1964-65, Greenway and Lanthier played the Las Vegas lounge circuit for a couple of years, backing stars like Liberace and Zsa Zsa Gabor. They came back to Canada in 1966, and Greenway joined Bobby Curtola‘s touring band.
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#185: Indian Giver by Bobby Curtola
Peak Month: June-July 1963
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position ~ #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Indian Giver”
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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#187: Beyond The Clouds by the Poppy Family
Peak Month: November 1968
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position ~ #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Beyond The Clouds”
Lyrics: “Beyond The Clouds”
Susan Pesklevits was born in 1948 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. When she was seven years old she was a featured singer on a local radio station. At the age of eight her family moved to the Fraser Valley town of Haney, British Columbia. When she was 13 years old she had her own radio show. In a December 1966 issue of the Caribou newspaper, the Quesnel Observer noted that Susan Pesklevits had auditioned for Music Hop in the summer of 1963 when she was only 15 years old. She had her first public performance at the Fall Fair in Haney when she was just 14 years old. It was noted she liked to ride horseback, ride motorcycles and attend the dramatic shows. Asked about what she could tell the folks in Quesnel about trends in Vancouver, Pesklevits had this to report, “the latest things in Vancouver are the hipster mini-skirts, bright colored suit slacks, and the tailored look. The newest sound is the “Acid Sound,” derived from L.S.D…. it is “pshodelic” which means it has a lot of fuzz tones and feed back. As an example, she gave “Frustration” recorded by the Painted Ship” a local band from Vancouver. Pesklevits added that on the West Coast “the latest dance is the Philly Dog. It mainly consists of two rows, one of girls and one of boys. The idea is to take steps, move in unison, while doing jerking motions and using a lot of hand movement.”
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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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#198: Echo Beach by Martha & the Muffins
Peak Month: June 1980
15 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Echo Beach”
Lyrics: “Echo Beach”
Martha Johnson was born in Toronto, Ontario, in 1950. Johnson worked in Toronto as a medical receptionist. She started her career playing the organ with cover band “Oh Those Pants”. She then was part of Toronto band the Doncasters in the early 1970s. Johnson joined David Millar, Mark and Tim Gane, and Carl Finkle to form the band Martha & the Muffins in 1977. Martha & the Muffins emerged from the early punk/new wave/art pop scene which was centered around various clubs along Toronto’s Queen Street West and the Ontario College of Art, where Millar and Mark Gane were students. Martha Johnson played keyboards, David Millar and Mark Gane played guitar. Gane’s brother, Tim, was the band’s drummer. And Carl Finkle played bass guitar. The band had their debut performance at the Ontario College of Art Hallowe’en party in October 1977. Some of the clubs they played at included the Beverly and the Rivoli. Regarding the name for the band, Mark Gane recalls “We decided to use it as a temporary name until we could all agree on something better.” They had wanted a name that was edgy, but not aggressive like the Sex Pistols.
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#1360: Take The Blindness by Joey Gregorash
Peak Month: December 1972
Peak Position ~ #16
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG Chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Take The Blindness”
Joey Gregorash was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. His dad played the violin and young Joey took an interest in learning the instrument. In February 1964 Gregorash saw the Beatles perform on the The Ed Sullivan Show and was turned onto rock ‘n roll. He learned how to play the drums and formed a band called The Mongrels in 1965 with childhood friend John Nykon. Later Gregorash went solo and won a 1972 Juno Award in 1972 for Outstanding Performance-Male for his hit single “Down By the River”. For over a decade Gregorash pursued other interests until in 1987 his single, “Together (The New Wedding Song),” became a hit in Canada.
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#214: Sunny Goodge Street by Tom Northcott
Peak Month: August 1967
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #123
YouTube: “Sunny Goodge Street”
Lyrics: “Sunny Goodge Street”
Tom Northcott is a Vancouver folk-rock singer with hits on the local pop charts from the mid-60s into the early 70s. He became known to a Canadian audience by his regular appearances on CBC Television’s Let’s Go music program in 1964-68. He was nominated as best male vocalist for a Juno Award in 1971. Later he co-founded Mushroom Studios in Vancouver and produced records. His hits are played regularly on Canadian oldies music stations.
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#217: Aladdin by Bobby Curtola
Peak Month: October 1962
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #92
YouTube: “Aladdin”
Lyrics: “Aladdin”
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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