#1240: Almost Unreal by Roxette
Peak Month: July 1993
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #14
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #94
YouTube: “Almost Unreal”
Lyrics: “Almost Unreal”
Roxette was a duo composed of Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle. Gun-Marie Fredriksson was born in 1958 in a small town in the southern tip of Sweden. When she was seven-years-old, her 20-year-old sister died in a traffic fatality. She remembers the support she got to pursue music from a young age from attending a church. Fredriksson recalls she had been performing “ever since I was little and me and my sister Tina went to Sunday school. We had a wonderful pastor in Östra Ljungby. I’ve got really bright, lovely memories of that place, even when my big sister died. I loved all the songs. It was such a source of freedom for me… for both of us.” At age 17, she enrolled in a music school, and was subsequently cast in a musical that toured across Sweden.
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#296: Live by the Merry-Go-Round
Peak Month: May 1967
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #1
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #63
YouTube: “Live”
Lyrics: “Live”
Joel Larson was born in San Francisco in 1947 and learned to play drums at the age of 12. During high school he played in a number of bands who performed in clubs. When he was 18 years old, Larson joined a San Mateo band called The Bedouins who won a 1965 Battle of the Bands event in that city. The Bedouins were invited to audition at the San Francisco Whisky A Go Go. The nightclub owner, Elmer Valentine, had asked Dunhill Record owner, Lou Adler, to attend the audition. Adler was impressed and soon The Bedouins were renamed The Grass Roots and given a new folk rock sound. While with The Grass Roots, Larson’s band were the studio musicians playing back-up to Barry McGuire’s #1 hit “Eve Of Destruction”. In 1966 The Grass Roots had a Top 30 hit in the USA called “Where Were You When I Needed You”, which only got play listed below the Top 40 in Vancouver for the last week of May 1966.
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#297: Saturday Morning Confusion by Bobby Russell
Peak Month: September 1971
9 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #28
YouTube: “Saturday Morning Confusion”
Lyrics: “Saturday Morning Confusion”
Robert L. Russell was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1941. As he grew up Nashville was becoming a city known for country and pop music. In 1958, when he was 17-years-old, Bobby Russell recorded “The Raven”, backed with “She’s Gonna Be Sorry”. It was a rockabilly number backed with his group, The Impollos. It was not a hit. But his second release, “Dum Diddle”, another rockabilly number, made the Top 30 in Des Moines, Iowa, in the spring of 1959. In 1964 Russell recorded a cover of the 1956 R&B hit “Roll Over Beethoven” by Chuck Berry. However, it got little notice from DJs. Russell kept on releasing solo records and in 1966 his single, “Friends And Mirrors”, got airplay in several states across the USA and Australia. It also made the Top 40 in Edmonton (AB) and Montreal.
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#298: Dear John/Alabam by Pat Boone
A-Side: “Dear John”
Peak Month: December 1960
12 weeks on Vancouver’s CKWX chart
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #44
YouTube: “Dear John”
Lyrics: “Dear John”
B-Side: “Alabam”
Peak Month: November 1960
5 weeks on CKWX’s chart
Peak Position #8
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #47
YouTube: “Alabam”
Lyrics: “Alabam”
Pat Boone was born in Jacksonville, Florida, on June 1, 1934. He was the son of Margaret Virginia (Pritchard) and Archie Altman Boone. The Boone family moved to Nashville from Florida when Boone was two years old. In a 2007 interview on The 700 Club, Boone claimed that he is the great-great-great-great grandson of the American pioneer Daniel Boone. Boone is a singer, composer, actor, writer, television personality, motivational speaker, and spokesman. He won a talent contest on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour. He became a successful pop singer in the United States during the 1950s and early 1960s. He has sold over 45 million records, charted 38 Top 40 hits between 1955 and 1962. Boone has also appeared in more than a dozen Hollywood films. He still holds the Billboard record for spending 220 consecutive weeks on the charts with one or more songs each week.
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#299: Wouldn’t It Be Good by Nik Kershaw
Peak Month: July 1984
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #46
YouTube: “Wouldn’t It Be Good”
Lyrics: “Wouldn’t It Be Good”
Nicholas David Kershaw was born in 1958 in Bristol, England. His father was a flautist and his mother was an opera singer. Kershaw taught himself to play guitar in 1974 and joined a Deep Purple cover band named Half Pint Hogg. He was part of a number of bands in Ipswich in his late teens and early 20s, including a jazz band called Fusion. But in 1982 he went solo.
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#300: Sugar Plum by Ike Clanton
Peak Month: August 1962
11 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #95
YouTube: “Sugar Plum”
Lyrics: “Sugar Plum”
Ike Clanton was the brother of teen idol Jimmy Clanton, and was born in 1940 in Raceland, Louisiana. In September 1958, Ike Clanton was part of a band that backed then 17-year-old John Fred in Fred’s first recording studio. Fats Domino, who had just recorded “Whole Lotta Lovin'” was also in the studio backing John Fred. The setting was Cosimo Matassa’s J&M Studio in New Orleans. Nine years later in 1967, John Fred & his Playboy Band had a #1 hit with “Judy In Disguise (With Glasses)”. In 1958 Ike Clanton was in Duane Eddy’s band when they recorded “Rebel Rouser” and Eddy’s proto-surf-rock instrumental album Have ‘Twangy’ Guitar Will Travel. “Rebel Rouser” climbed to #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #2 in Vancouver. Ike Clanton was also part of Eddy’s band when the singles “Cannonball”, “Peter Gunn”, and “Forty Miles Of Bad Road” were recorded. The latter was a #9 hit on the Billboard Hot 100.
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#301: If I Had $1000000 by the Barenaked Ladies
Peak Month: February 1993
15 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “If I Had $1000000”
Lyrics: “If I Had $10000000”
Lloyd Edward Elwyn “Ed” Robertson was born in Scarborough, Ontario, in 1970. He began to play guitar when he was in grade five. Steven Jay Page was also born in Scarborough in 1970. He took piano lessons for ten years and was a member of the Toronto Mendelssohn Youth Choir. Page and Robertson crossed paths in elementary school. But they didn’t become friends until 1988 when they found themselves co-counsellors at a summer Scarborough Schools Music Camp. Later that year there was a charity and Robertson asked Page to join him in a performance. The duo named themselves the Barenaked Ladies.
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#1231: If I Was A Dancer by the Rolling Stones
Peak Month: April 1981
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #13
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube:”If I Was A Dancer”
Lyrics: “If I Was A Dancer”
Michael Philip Jagger was born in Dartford, Kent, England, in 1943, some 18 miles east of London. Though his father and grandfather were both teachers by profession, and he was encouraged to be a teacher, the boy had different aspirations. “I always sang as a child. I was one of those kids who just liked to sing. Some kids sing in choirs; others like to show off in front of the mirror. I was in the church choir and I also loved listening to singers on the radio–the BBC or Radio Luxembourg –or watching them on TV and in the movies.” In 1950 Mick Jagger met Keith Richards while attending primary school. They became good friends until the summer of 1954 when the Jagger family moved to the village of Wilmington, a mile south of Dartford. The pair bumped into each other at a train station in 1961 and resumed their friendship.
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#302: Story In Your Eyes by the Moody Blues
Peak Month: October 1971
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
Peak Position #1
1 week Preview
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #23
YouTube: “The Story In Your Eyes”
Lyrics: “The Story In Your Eyes”
Born in 1941 in wartime England, Ray Thomas picked up harmonica at the age of nine. He was in the Birmingham Youth Choir and in October 1958 he joined a skiffle group called The Saints and Sinners. The band split up in June 1959. The Saints and Sinners helped Ray discover how well his vocals were received by audiences. Next, he formed El Riot and the Rebels, featuring Ray Thomas as El Riot dressed in a green satin Mexican toreador outfit. The band won a number of competitions in the Birmingham area. It was here that Ray became known for making an entrance onstage by sliding to center stage on his knees. On one occasion Thomas sent a row of potted tulips flying into the audience. El Riot and the Rebels appeared several times on a local variety show called Lunchbox. They made their debut on Lunchbox on November 14, 1962, and played “Guitar Tango” and “I Remember You”. Mike Pinder joined El Riot and the Rebels on keyboards. On April 15, 1963, El Riot and the Rebels performed at The Riverside Dancing Club in Tenbury Wells as the opening act for The Beatles. Pinder went off to serve in the British Army. When he returned, Thomas and Pinder left El Riot and the Rebels and formed a new band called the Krew Kats.
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#303: Armageddon by Prism
Peak Month: September 1979
15 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #7
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Armageddon”
Lyrics: “Armageddon”
In 1967 a new rock group appeared on the Vancouver scene called the Seeds of Time. They had several local hits including “My Home Town” and “Crying The Blues”. There were a number of lineup changes, but the bands personnel included drummer Rocket Norton, guitarist Lindsay Mitchell, and bassist Al Harlow. These three reunited after the Seeds of Time disbanded in 1974. After a brief stint as an R&B band called Sunshyne, they became Prism under Lindsay Mitchell’s initiative. In the band were new singer Ron Tabak, bassist Tom Lavin, keyboard player John Hall and drummer Rodney Higgs. Higgs was actually a pseudonym for Jim Vallance, the future songwriting partner of Bryan Adams. The band released a self-titled album in 1977 that included two local singles “Take Me To The Kaptin” and “It’s Over”. Anther single, “Spaceship Superstar”, made the Top Ten in Ottawa, Hamilton and London (ON) in the winter of 1977-78.
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