#600: Twist My Arm by Tragically Hip

Peak Month: August 1991
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG’s chart
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Twist My Arm”
Lyrics: “Twist My Arm”

In the early 1980’s bass player Gord Sinclair and guitar player Rob Baker were students at Kingston Collegiate Vocational Institute in Kingston, Ontario. They had performed at the collegiate’s Variety Show in a band they called The Rodents. In 1984 Baker and Sinclair were in their early twenties. The Tragically Hip formed in 1984 in Kingston, Ontario when the duo added drummer Johnny Fay and lead singer Gordon Downie. Their name came from a skit in the movie Elephant Parts, directed by former Monkee’s guitarist Michael Nesmith. The Tragically Hip added Paul Langois, a guitar player, to their line-up in 1986. When they performed at the Horeshoe Tavern in Toronto in the mid-80’s, they were sign to a recording contract with MCA after the company president, Bruce Dickinson, saw the band at the tavern. A self-titled EP (Extended Play) was released in 1987 with a couple of singles that got some airplay. The group was launched.

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#604: Love Becomes Electric by Strange Advance

Peak Month: April 1988
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #8
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Love Becomes Electric”
Lyrics: “Love Becomes Electric”

From 1974 to 1977 Drew Arnott and Darryl Kromm played in a Vancouver band called Stan. The band split up and the pair parted ways. But they reunited in the late ’70’s and in 1979 were playing gigs around Vancouver in a band named Remote Control. The bass player for Remote Control was Paul Iverson. The three met up in 1980 and formed a band named Metropolis. But they changed their name to Strange Advance when they learned another band in Germany had the name Metropolis. Strange Advance was formally launched in Vancouver in 1982. Arnott played keyboards, percussion and usually backing vocals. Kromm played guitar and was the lead vocalist. While touring with Bryan Adams, Kromm gave him a demo tape of the tunes he and Arnott were working on. Adams liked what he heard and passed it on to producer Bruce Fairbairn. Along with Iverson, Arnott and Kromm went to the recording studio and made an album titled Worlds Away. It was produced by Bruce Fairbairn, a producer of Loverboy, Bryan Adams and Prism albums. The sound of Strange Advance was a fusion of progressive rock and new wave. Their debut single from the album, “She Controls Me”, became a regional hit, but not in Vancouver. The single climbed to #3 in Ottawa and the Top 20 in Montreal, Regina and Halifax. The album won Strange Advance a Juno nomination for “Most Promising Group of The Year” in 1983.
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#606: The Last To Know by Celine Dion

Peak Month: May 1991
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #7
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “The Last To Know”
Lyrics: “The Last To Know”

Céline Marie Claudette Dion was born in the Montreal suburb of Charlemagne, Quebec, in 1968. She developed a talent for singing in early childhood. At the age of 13 she recorded an album which included a song she wrote titled “Ce n’était qu’un rêve” (“Nothing But a Dream”). The song climbed into the Top Ten in Quebec. She competed in Tokyo, Japan, at the 1982 Yamaha World Popular Song Festival and won awards for Top  Performer and Best Song. In 1983 she recorded the single “D’amour ou d’amitié” (“Of Love or Friendship”) which became a number one hit in Quebec and peaked at #5 on the national pop chart in France. In early 1984 in Germany, Dion also released a German-language version of “D’amour ou d’amitié” titled “Was bedeute ich dir”. In 1988 she won the Eurovision contest in Dublin for her rendition of “Ne partez pas sans moi” (“Don’t Leave Without Me”). The song was composed by Atilla Şereftuğ, a Swiss citizen, and Dion was entered as a Swiss Eurovision contestant. That same year she gave 75 concerts as part of her Incognito tournée in the province of Quebec to support her latest French-language album.

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#607: Lonesome Mary by Chilliwack

Peak Month: November 1971
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #4 on CKVN
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Lonesome Mary”
Lyrics: “Lonesome Mary”

Bill Henderson was born in Vancouver in 1944. He learned guitar and became the guitarist for the Panarama Trio that performed at the Panarama Roof dance club on the 15th Floor of the Hotel Vancouver. He formed the psychedelic pop-rock Vancouver band, The Collectors, in 1966.

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#610: Still Got This Thing by Alannah Myles

Peak Month: January 1990
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #11
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Still Got This Thing”
Lyrics: “Still Got This Thing”

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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#735: A Little Salvation by Luba

Peak Month: March 1990
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position: #12
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “A Little Salvation”
Lyrics: “A Little Salvation”

Lubomyra Kowalchyk was born in 1958 in Montreal, Quebec. During her teens she travelled across Canada performing traditional Ukrainian folk songs at weddings and festivals. Growing up she studied piano, guitar, flute and voice. She was a fine-arts student when she formed a band called Zorya in 1973, releasing an album. In 1977 she released her second album titled. Lubomyra. In 1978 she formed a band named Luba with herself as the lead vocalist. Then, when her father died in 1979, she wrote what would become her signature song, “Everytime I See Your Picture”, as a tribute to him. The first studio album for the band Luba, Chain Reaction, was released in 1980. A Luba (EP) was released in 1982 containing “Every time I See Your Picture”.  The song climbed to #1 in Ottawa, #3 in Halifax, #6 in Montreal and #11 in Kitchener (ON). She performed in front of 12,000 rock fans at the Montreal Forum in January 1983. She was the opening act at that concert for the headliner Chris de Burgh.

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#1486: These Are The Words by The Unforscene

Peak Month: May 1967
3 weeks on the C-FUN-TASTIC FIFTY
Peak Position: #46
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN ALL CANADIAN TOP TEN chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “These Are The Words”

Terry Robotham lived in the Vancouver area. As he tells it online, “I was writing songs since i was 13 and a friend called Dan Yard was in a band called The Mods that i was giving songs to, so they could perform originals. They went down to LA to shop some demo tapes and the result was that there was interest in the songs more than in the band. So the singer, Dan Yard and myself… ended up with the contract, originally with Momentum Records that was a small independent label owned by Don Perry. Don later did quite well in movie soundtrack production. We released a few songs under that label then he handed us over to a friend of his called Mike Curb, who had started Sidewalk Records.”
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#1488: Man In The Street by Gillian Russell

Peak Month: January 1967
7 weeks on the C-FUN-TASTIC FIFTY
Peak Position: #26
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN ALL CANADIAN TOP TEN chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “Man In The Street”

Gillian, Brian and John Russell were siblings who grew up in Vancouver and later Penticton, British Columbia. Their parents were musical. Gillian recalls, “We grew up in a very musical family. Our father played the piano, our mother had a lovely soprano voice.” In 1961, while they were in high school, they formed The Russell Trio. All three sang and the brothers both played guitar. They performed at Penticton High School and Teen Town. CFUN 1410-AM had a house band in the mid-’60’s named the CFUN Classics. The lead guitar player on the CFUN Classics was Brian Russell. His sister, Gillian, was a featured singer on the local Vancouver CBC late afternoon variety show Let’s Go. On the show’s debut on July 17, 1964, Gillian Russell sang a Doris Day hit from 1958 titled “Everybody Loves A Lover”.
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#1489: Baby’s Gone by Terry Black

Peak Month: November 1966
7 weeks on the C-FUN-TASTIC FIFTY
Peak Position: #23
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN ALL CANADIAN TOP TEN chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “Baby’s Gone”

Terrance Black was born in Vancouver in 1949. Local DJ, Red Robinson, has said about Terry Black: “Back in the British Invasion days, a young Vancouver singer took the city by storm. He was discovered by Buddy Clyde on Dance Party, a teen show on CHAN TV (now Global). Buddy was able to get the attention of the owner of Dunhill records, the same label that the Mamas and Papas recorded for as well as P.F. Sloan (Eve of Destruction) and others of the day.” Terry Black’s first single, “Sinner Man,” was a minor hit in Canada in 1964. His vocal style mimicked the sound of many male vocalists who were part of the British Invasion. While he was fifteen years old, Black had a #2 hit in Vancouver with “Unless You Care”. His single was kept out of the #1 spot in September ’64 by Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman”. “Unless You Care” was written and produced by P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri. Two of the studio musicians on the single were Glen Campbell and Leon Russell, who both went on to have recording careers. The song was a major hit in Canada and also cracked the Billboard Hot 100 at #99. In Canada, Black was awarded the Male Vocalist of the Year award at the Maple Music Awards in 1964.

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Peak Month: December 1966
6 weeks on the C-FUN-TASTIC FIFTY
Peak Position: #19
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN ALL CANADIAN TOP TEN chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “I Symbolize You”

In the early 60’s three high school friends from Clarkson, Ontario, formed a band called The Beachcombers. They were guitar player Graeme Box, piano player Noel Campbell and drummer Ron Gunther. In 1963 Graeme Box met Bill Dureen while attending an art school. Dureen played keyboards and the foursome soon billed themselves as The Nighthawks. Sometime in 1964 Noel Campbell left the band, but his younger brother Brad was added on bass, while Dureen took over piano/keyboards. The band changed their name again to The Shamokins. In 1965 the band wanted to try to make a record. Graeme Box’s father, Keith Box, introduced the band to Dave Marden, the former leader of Jack London and The Sparrows. The Sparrows latter became known as Steppenwolf. Marden became the band’s manager and, together with Keith Box, named them The Last Words. As Dave Marden was known in the music business, he arranged for The Last Words to get gigs at clubs in Toronto’s trendy Yorkville.
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