Next Plane To London by Rose Garden

#293: Next Plane To London by Rose Garden

Peak Month: November 1967
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #2
1 week Hit Bound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #17
YouTube: “Next Plane To London
Lyrics: “Next Plane To London

In 1964, a couple of students at a local Los Angeles high school discovered their mutual interest in making music. All born around 1949-1950, John Noreen and Jim Groshong both played guitar. Bill Fleming played bass guitar and Bruce Bowdin was a drummer. They decided to form a band and named themselves the Blokes. A ‘bloke’ is British slang for ‘an ordinary guy, man.’ Noreen, Groshong and the others chose their name after a British slang word, hoping to get in on the musical craze surrounding the British Invasion in ’64.

Continue reading →

I'm Still Searching by Glass Tiger

#294: I’m Still Searching by Glass Tiger

Peak Month: May-June 1988
14 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #4
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #31
YouTube: “I’m Still Searching
Lyrics: “I’m Still Searching

Discovered in the summer of 1984 when a band from Newmarket, Ontario called Tokyo spent two evenings performing before capacity crowds at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens opening for Boy George and Culture Club. Their dynamic original sound captured the moment, and the race to sign them was on. Tokyo, which had become a major force in suburban high schools and the Ontario club circuit, officially became Glass Tiger early the following year when a record deal was finally signed with Capitol Records. The band consisted of Alan Frew on vocals and guitar, Sam Reid on keyboards, Al Connelly on guitar, Wayne Parker on bass and Michael Hanson on drums.

Continue reading →

I Missed Again by Phil Collins

#295: I Missed Again by Phil Collins

Peak Month: May 1981
13 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #2
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #19
YouTube: “I Missed Again
Lyrics: “I Missed Again

Philip “Phil” Collins was born in 1951 in Middlesex, England. From the age of five he began to play drums. He never learned to read and write conventional musical notation, and instead used a system he devised himself. He later regretted this, saying: “I never really came to grips with the music. I should have stuck with it. I’ve always felt that if I could hum it, I could play it. For me, that was good enough, but that attitude is bad. He formed a band at the age of 14, and was an extra in the Beatles film A Hard Days Night. Collins played one of the screaming teenagers in the audience for a concert at a TV station. In 1967 Collins played a lead role as one of Farmer Grant’s children in the film Calamity the Cow. Also in 1967, he acted in a scene in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, where children storm a castle, but the scene was cut to shorten the film.

Continue reading →

Almost Unreal by Roxette

#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.

Continue reading →

Live by the Merry-Go-Round

#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.

Continue reading →

Saturday Morning Confusion by Bobby Russell

#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.

Continue reading →

Dear John/Alabam by Pat Boone

#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.

Continue reading →

Wouldn't It Be Good by Nik Kershaw

#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.

Continue reading →

Sugar Plum by Ike Clanton

#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.

Continue reading →

If I Had $1000000 by the Barenaked Ladies

#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.

Continue reading →

Sign Up For Our Newsletter