#292: Here Comes My Baby by the Tremeloes
Peak Month: May 1967
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #13
YouTube: “Here Comes My Baby”
Lyrics: “Here Comes My Baby”
In 1956 at Park Modern Secondary School in Barking, Essex, two school mates, Brian Poole and Alan Blakley, started a band. On family holidays together, they’d tell their parents about their dreams of being on TV. They learned a couple of tunes by Buddy Holly and Everly Brothers, got two acoustic Hofner guitars, and asked their saxophone and bass playing school mate, Alan Howard to join them. Once they started performing at local parties, they met drummer Dave Munden, who soon joined them. Soon Alan Blakley, Dave Munden and Brian Poole found that they could harmonise any song they wanted to and developed a style of their own, with all of them singing and playing and Alan Howard on bass guitar. At this time they did not have a name but soon opted for Tremilos after the sound on the new amplifiers which they could not yet afford. In time, the lead guitarist from Joe & The Teems, Ricky West (born Richard Westwood), was added to the band in 1960.
Continue reading →
#1206: Sandra by Idle Eyes
Peak Month: October 1986
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #16
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Sandra”
Lyrics: “Sandra”
Tad Campbell was born in Vancouver (BC). After high school he found himself in Australia moonlighting for a band called the Daydream Islanders between shifts while working for a luxury liner that cruised around parts of the continent. In 1980 he replied to an ad looking for a guitarist, and ended up with the band playing for months at a resort in the Whitsunday Islands. A chambermaid at a hotel Campbell knew, Donna McConville, became the bands’ lead singer. Though they had other Australian musicians in the line-up, when Campbell and McConville decided to move to Vancouver, the other bandmates chose not to follow. Back in Vancouver the pair got a new lineup and called themselves Idle Eyes. But the lineup kept changing. Tad Campbell recalls that “their first tour was cancelled when the drummer backed out the day they were supposed to leave.” Part of the problem was that Idle Eyes was made up almost entirely of bandmates from New Zealand and Australia who had visa issues. Eventually, Donna McConville returned to Australia and became a backing singer for John Farnham.
Continue reading →
#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 →
#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 →
#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 →
#1241: 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 →
#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 →
#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 →
#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 →
#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 →
