#1432: Are You Ready For Love by Patsy Gallant
Peak Month: February 1977
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #17
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Are You Ready For Love”
Lyrics: “Are You Ready For Love”
Patricia Gallant was born in 1948 in Cambellton, New Brunswick. Her family was Acadian, and she was one of ten children. From the age of five she was the youngest of four sisters performing as the Gallant Sisters. Her mother coaxed four of the sisters for the group, hoping to earn some funds for the cash-strapped household. By 1956, when the family moved to Moncton, NB, the Gallant Sisters began appearing on TV. This led to appearances in nightclubs when they moved to Montreal in 1958. In 1967 she recorded her first single in French for the Quebec and New Brunswick Francophone market. She continued to release songs over the following five years in French, and then issued English versions. Gallant was featured in numerous TV commercials. And she was a regular on both the French-language TV variety program Discothèque and an English variety show called Music Hop.
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#913: Bring Me Some Water by Melissa Etheridge
Peak Month: November 1988
11 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #13
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Bring Me Some Water”
Lyrics: “Bring Me Some Water”
Melissa Lou Etheridge was born in 1961 in Leavenworth, Kansas. While in high school she was a member of several country bands. She moved to Boston after high school and while in college she performed at clubs in the area. She moved to Los Angeles and caught the attention of Island Records in 1986. In 1988 she made her first appearance on the Vancouver (BC) pop chart with “Bring Me Some Water”. It was from her self-titled debut album.
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#860: Steam by Peter Gabriel
Peak Month: February 1993
8 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #5
1 week Preview
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #32
YouTube: “Steam”
Lyrics: “Steam”
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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#733: No Mistakes by Patty Smyth
Peak Month: February 1993
8 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #33
YouTube: “No Mistakes”
Lyrics: “No Mistakes”
Patricia Smyth was born in 1957 in New York City. In 1981 she became the lead vocalist for the rock band Scandal. In 1982 the band had a minor hit on the Billboard Hot 100 titled “Goodbye To You”. In 1984 Scandal had a Top Ten hit with “The Warrior”. Unfortunately, tensions within the band led to its break-up by 1985. Subsequently, she gave birth to her first child. Meanwhile, Smyth contributed vocals on four tracks from Don Henley’s 1984 album Building The Perfect Beast. In 1987 she released her first solo album Never Enough. The title track climbed to #4 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock music chart and #61 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 1989 Don Henley invited Patty Smyth back to the recording studio and she contributed vocals to one of the tracks on The End of the Innocence.
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#616: Julianna by the Five Man Electrical Band
Peak Month: March 1972
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CKVN chart
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Julianna”
Lyrics: “Julianna”
The Five Man Electrical Band was a Canadian mainstream rock band from Ottawa. They had an international hit in 1970 called “Signs.” Les Emmerson was born in 1944. In 1963 the Staccatos, an Ottawa group, was formed. It included lead singer and local disc jockey Dean Hagopian. After some local hits they got the attention of Capitol Records. When Dean Hagopian left around 1964, Les Emmerson stepped in as lead vocalist. One of their 1965 singles imitated the surfing sound with “Moved To California.” In 1966 their Top 40 hit on the Canadian RPM singles chart, “Let’s Run Away,” won the group the two Juno awards that year for Best Produced Single and Vocal Instrumental Group Of The Year.
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#444: I’m Gonna Capture You by Terry Jacks
Peak Month: July 1970
7 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #2
1 Hit Bound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “I’m Gonna Capture You”
Terrence Ross Jacks was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1944. March 29, 1944, Winnipeg, Manitoba. During his career as a recording artist he became a household name and recognized as a singer, songwriter, record producer and environmentalist. His family moved to Vancouver in 1961 and he formed a band named The Chessmen along with local guitarist, Guy Sobell. The Chessmen had four singles that made the Top 20 in Vancouver, two which were double-sided hits. These included three Top Ten hits: “Love Didn’t Die”, “The Way You Fell” and “What’s Causing This Sensation”. In 1966 Terry Jacks met Susan Pesklevits on a local CBC music show called Let’s Go.
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#445: Happy by The Sunshine Company
Peak Month: September 1967
7 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #2
1 Hit Bound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #50
YouTube: “Happy”
Lyrics: “Happy”
In Ritchie Unterberger’s liner notes for The Best of The Sunshine Company, he writes that “Guitarist/keyboardist Maury Manseau, guitarist Larry Sims, singer Mary Nance, and drummer Merel Brigante met as students hanging around the same cafeteria table at Los Angeles Harbor Junior College, where Maury and Many sang in the choir. Manseau had sung in a folk duo with John Bettis (who later co-wrote Carpenters songs with Richard Carpenter) that often opened for Hoyt Axton. The future Sunshine Company members moved in a circle of acoustic-oriented singer-songwriters based a little south of L.A., in Orange County and beach towns like Huntington Beach. Jackson Browne, Tim Buckley, Steve Noonan, Pamella Polland, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and Steve Gillette, all of whom went on to be recording artists with widely varying degrees of success, were some of their friends in this fertile SoCal scene.”
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#446: Cool Water by Jack Scott
Peak Month: August 1960
8 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #85
YouTube: “Cool Water”
Lyrics: “Cool Water”
Giovanni Dominico Scafone Jr. was born in 1936 in Windsor, Ontario, and spent some of his years growing up in the Detroit suburb of Hazel Park, Michigan. In 1954 he formed a band called the Southern Drifters. In 1957 he got a record deal with ABC-Paramount. He released two singles that year that sold little outside of Detroit and Cleveland. He scored four Top Ten hits on the Billboard Hot 100 and two more in the Top 30 in the USA. In Vancouver Jack Scott was a teen idol with his good looks and classic rock ‘n roll. He enjoyed eight Top Ten hits on the Vancouver charts including “What In The World’s Come Over You” and his most successful hit in town, “Goodbye Baby” that peaked at #2 and spent 17 weeks on the CKWX charts in 1958. At the time, Scott had more US singles in the Billboard Hot 100 (19), in a shorter period of time (41 months), than any other recording artist – with the exception of The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Fats Domino and Connie Francis. Scott charted twenty songs on the local record surveys in Vancouver between July 1958 and November 1962.
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#1127: So Listen by MCJ & Cool G
Peak Month: October 1990
10 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Chart
Peak Position ~ #16
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “So Listen”
MCJ & Cool G were James McQuaid (MCJ), originally part of the Halifax hip hop group New Beginning, and Richard Gray (Cool G). MCJ was the rapper and Cool G mostly sang the choruses. Their sound included new jack swing which was popular at the time. New jack swing originated with Janet Jackon’s 1986 Control album, featuring her hits “What Have You Done For Me Lately”, “When I Think Of You”, “Nasty” and the title track. Other examples of new jack swing are Club Nouveau’s cover of “Lean On Me”, Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up”, “I Like The Way (The Kissing Game)” by Hi Five, “I’m Your Baby Tonight” by Whitney Houston, “My Prerogative” by Bobby Brown, and “I Wanna Sex You Up” by Color Me Badd.
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#447: Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin
Peak Month: January 1971
10 weeks on CKLG’s Vancouver Charts
Peak Position ~ #3
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #16
YouTube: “Immigrant Song”
Lyrics: “Immigrant Song”
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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