#392: Games Without Frontiers by Peter Gabriel
Peak Month: September 1980
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG Chart
Peak Position ~ #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #48
YouTube: “Games Without Frontiers”
Lyrics: “Games Without Frontiers”
Peter Brian Gabriel was born in 1950 in Surrey, UK. He learned to play piano and drums in his childhood. In 1965, at the age of 15, Gabriel became part of a trio rock band called Garden Wall. The bandmates were all from the Charterhouse School, a public school in Surrey housed in a Carthusian monastery. In 1967 Garden Wall merged with two members of another band from the same school to form Genesis. The new band sought fellow school alumnus, pop singer Jonathan King, to be their producer. King got Genesis a record deal with Decca Records. But the band’s first album, Genesis to Revelation, was stocked in the ‘Religious’ record section of most stores given the title. Consequently, it sold only in the hundreds of copies.
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#1019: China In Your Hand by T’Pau
Peak Month: April 1988
9 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #13
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “China In Your Hand”
Lyrics: “China In Your Hand”
Carol Ann Decker was born in 1957 in the Merseyside region of Lancashire. She formed the band T’Pau in 1986 with guitarist Ron Rogers. Ronald Phillip Rogers was born in Shrewsbury, England, in 1959. Decker met Rogers in the gigging circuit in 1981. Decker remembers trying to get initial interest even prior to forming T’Pau by sending demos to record companies. “The knock-backs from the labels were never constructive. They would just listen to the cassettes and send them back with a standard letter. Then, towards the end, it got even worse when we would get feedback with a multiple-choice table, and the responses ranged from ‘Not quite what we are looking for,’ to ‘Don’t give up your day job.’ I imagine those punky little A&R guys thought it was funny, but it really wasn’t.”
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#956: Something Good by Utah Saints
Peak Month: December 1992
9 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #13
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #98
YouTube: “Something Good”
Lyrics: “Something Good”
Jez Willis was born in 1968 in Brampton, UK. With Tim Garbutt, Willis formed the electronic music duo the Utah Saints in 1991. The duo met as music promoters and DJs for the Mix club in Harrogate, a 40 minute drive north of Leeds. In 1990 they formed Mega Dance Metal Allegiance. The duo were asked years later in an interview if they’d ever been to Utah in the United States. Tim Garbutt commented, “we did play there once in about 1996 and we had a stage invasion. It’s very different to Dubai; everyone should go there once in their lives. We often get emails from people in Utah with very weird requests.” Their work involved sampling other recordings and weaving them into their tracks. Jez told Digital Spy, “music is all about opinions, but we always try to do something interesting with a sample and put it in a different context, because that’s what’s interesting to us… people recognise it sonically, but they can’t place it initially.”
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#406: Black Dog by Led Zeppelin
Peak Month: January 1972
8 weeks on CKVN’s Vancouver Chart
1 week Preview
Peak Position ~ #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #15
YouTube: “Black Dog”
Lyrics: “Black Dog”
Robert Anthony Plant was born in 1948 in West Bromwich, six miles northwest of Birmingham, England. He became the lead singer of Led Zeppelin, along with bandmates Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham. At an early age Robert Plant was interested in being a pop singer. He said in an interview in 1994 on the Denton Show in Australia, “When I was a kid I used to hide behind the curtains at home at Christmas and I used to try and be Elvis. There was a certain ambience between the curtains and the French windows, there was a certain sound there for a ten-year-old. That was all the ambience I got at ten years old … And I always wanted to be … a bit similar to that.”
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#407: Slow Down by the Beatles
Peak Month: September 1964
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #25
YouTube: “Slow Down”
Lyrics: “Slow Down”
Paul McCartney was born in Liverpool in 1942. He attended the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys and met fellow classmates George Harrison on a school bus. When Paul was 14 his mom died from a blockage in one of her blood vessels. In his early teens McCartney learned to play trumpet, guitar and piano. He was left-handed and restrung the strings to make it work. In 1957, Paul met John Lennon and in October he was invited to join John’s skiffle band, The Quarrymen, which Lennon had founded in 1956. After Paul joined the group his suggested that his friend, George Harrison, join the group. Harrison became one of the Quarrymen in early 1958, though he was still only 14. Other original members of the Quarrymen, Len Garry, Rod Davis, Colin Hanton, Eric Griffiths and Pete Shotton left the band when their set changed from skiffle to rock ‘n roll. John Duff Lowe, a friend of Paul’s from the Liverpool Institute, who had joined the Quarrymen in early 1958 left the band at the end of school. This left Lennon, McCartney and Harrison as remaining trio. On July 15, 1958, John Lennon’s mother died in an automobile accident.
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#408: Woman In Chains by Tears for Fears
Peak Month: March 1990
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #36
YouTube: “Woman In Chains”
Lyrics: “Woman In Chains”
Raoul Jaime Orzabal de la Quintana was born in Portsmouth, England, in 1961. His parents legally changed his first name to Roland Orzabal within a few weeks of his birth. His father had a nervous breakdown early in Roland’s childhood. Later, his father ran an entertainment business, with his mother a dancer in the troupe. Orzabal met Curt Smith when they were in their teens, and both living in Smith’s birthplace of Bath, England. Smith learned to play guitar in his teens. In 1979 Orzabal and Smith became part of a new wave band called Neon. They released a couple of records and were session musicians for recordings by new wave band Naked Eyes. Smith and Orzabal were also part of a new wave band called Graduate who had a Top Ten hit in Spain in 1980 titled “Elvis Should Play Ska”. A grueling tour of Germany temporarily caused the duo to question the viability of a life as pop stars.
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#412: Hot Love by T. Rex
Peak Month: May 1971
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #72
YouTube: “Hot Love”
Lyrics: “Hot Love”
Marc Bolan was born Mark Feld in 1947 – in Stoke Newington, a town in the borough of Hackney, in northeast London. His father, Simeon Feld, was an Ashkenazi Jew whose roots went back to Russia and Poland. His mom’s heritage was English. In September 1956, when he turned nine, Mark Feld was given a guitar and started a skiffle band. By around November of 1958 Feld played guitar in a trio called “Susie and the Hula Hoops”, inspired by a fad that began in July ’58 when 100 million plastic hoops were sold worldwide by mid-December ’58. Their singer was a 12-year-old girl named Helen Shapiro, who at the age of 14 had her first Top Ten hit in the UK in February 1961 with “Don’t Treat Me Like A Child” – followed by others including “Walking Back To Happiness” and “Tell Him What He Said“. In 1962 Mark Feld was interviewed by Town magazine and featured in a number of photos – along with several of his friends – about the new mod scene.
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#415: No Milk Today by Herman’s Hermits
Peak Month: April 1967
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #35
YouTube.com: “No Milk Today”
Lyrics: “No Milk Today”
Peter Blair Denis Bernard Noone was born in a suburb of Manchester, England, in 1947. Keith Hopwood was born in 1946, in the same suburb of Davyhulme. Karl Anthony Green was born in 1947, also in Davyhulme. Derek “Lek” Leckenby was born in Leeds in 1943. Jan Barry Whitwam was born in 1946 in Manchester. Both Leckenby and Whitwam were members of a band called the Wailers who played covers by Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and other early rock recording artists. Peter Noone originally was in an amateur band called the Cyclones. He moved on to the Heartbeats in 1961, a Buddy Holly cover band. Just after he turned 14, Noone debuted on Coronation Street, playing the role of Stanley Fairclough starting in December 1961. In the fall of 1962 Herman’s Hermits was formed. Peter Noone was the lead vocalist. Karl Green played bass guitar. Keith Hopwood played rhythm guitar. “Lek” Leckenby played lead guitar and Barry Whitwam played drums.
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#693: Still In The Game by Steve Winwood
Peak Month: September-October 1982
Peak Position #8
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN Chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #47
YouTube: “Still In The Game”
Lyrics: “Still In The Game”
Stephen Lawrence Winwood was born in 1948 in suburban Birmingham, UK. Winwood began playing piano from the age of four, being raised in a musical family. He joined a boys choir and added drums and guitar to his repertoire. At age 14 he joined The Spencer Davis Group in 1963, with his older brother Muff. In 1965 the band had a number-one hit in the UK with “Keep On Running“. The single climbed into the Top Ten in Vancouver (BC) in 1966. A follow up single, “Somebody Help Me”, also topped the UK Singles chart in 1966, and was covered by Vancouver band the Shockers in 1967. Spencer Davis Group had two more notable hits in both the UK, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia, finally making the Billboard Hot 100 Top Ten with “Gimme Some Lovin'” (#7) and “I’m A Man” (#10) in 1967. “Gimme Some Lovin'” climbed to #1 in Vancouver, while “I’m A Man” peaked at #12. In each case, Stevie Winwood was the lead vocalist.
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#417: Jenny Let Him Go by Antoinette
Peak Month: April 1964
9 weeks on CFUN’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Jenny Let Him Go”
Marie Antoinette Daly was born in Southend, Essex, UK in 1951. She landed her first recording contract, with the Decca label, in 1964, at the age of just 13. Her debut single, “Jenny Let Him Go”, was produced by Charles Blackwell, who worked with a number of gems for girl singers of the period, including French yé-yé singer Françoise Hardy and Britain’s Samantha Jones. “Jenny Let Him Go” sounded like a cover of an American song – albeit with a distinctly British tang – and suited Antoinette’s bratty vocals perfectly.
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