Recording Reviews |
| Camera:
Dimanche (download track) - 2024
Camera is yet another example of Montreal's amazingly fertile - and seemingly endless - experimental music scene. The relatively newish trio of Little Misty co-founder Francois Jalbert (guitars, per... |
| Martha and the Muffins:
For What It's Worth (download track) - 2024
Stephen Stills' iconic 'For What It's Worth' was recorded on Dec. 5, 1966 in response to protests on the Sunset Strip the previous month and rush-released just five days later while the memories wer... |
| The Wesleys:
The Wesleys - 2024
The Wesleys half-flippantly dub their music "a li'l bit of this, a li'l bit of that". Which is revealing if you assume that 'this' refers to the manic drum-heavy indie singles of that C-86 eighties sc... |
| Khora:
Gestures of Perception - 2024
Sifting through Matthew Ramolo's words is an almost Sisyphean task, such is the density of his description of his work. On Gestures of Perception, his latest double LP and complementary book ... |
| Jon Mckiel:
Hex - 2024
Jon Mckiel's post-psychedelic masterpiece Bobby Joe Hope dropped in April 2020, just as we all sat shell-shocked at the developing pandemic and our newly imposed isolation. It served, I recal... |
| Spacecraft 7:
Lonesome Torpedo Redux - 2024
Spacecraft 7's Lonesome Torpedo Redux may seem to have dropped from out of nowhere, but the Toronto-based quartet's two guitarists actually go back decades. "Billy J. Coombs and I formed Spa... |
| Night Plow:
Night Plow - 2023
"It's kind of a funny story...there's so much set up, though."
Gregory Macdonald, one-time Limblifter and long-time Sloan keyboardist, carefully walked Canuckistan Music through his c... |
| Chris Bottomley:
Pull It Together (download track) - 2023
Chris Bottomley is not exactly what you would call prolific these days - this is just his second uploaded song in the last couple of years - but what he may lack in quantity he more than makes up fo... |
| Bob Bryden:
Transcendental Misinformation EP - 2023
Bob Bryden has been keeping himself busy these days. The one-time Reign Ghost and Christmas frontman followed up his excellent Love in the Atomic Age with a... |
| Hilotrons:
Camryn / Pink Window (download single) - 2023
Michael Dubue's occupation ought to more accurately be described as 'soundtrack composer in search of non-existent films' or something equally arcane. The Ottawa-based multi-instrumentalist keeps cr... |
| The Vanrays:
Put It Out - 2023
The Vanrays issued Put It Out in the early part of 2023, at a time when that COVID thing was just a tiny speck in our collective rear view mirrors. But like many records released of late, thi... |
| Bunny and the Lakers:
Creations from the Ivory Tower - 2023
Some forty-four years after the release of their debut album, Numbers, Bunny and the Lakers are back with a follow-up. But while that first record - a left-... |
| Musing:
Somewhen - 2023
Musing is the instrumental vehicle of Devin 'Darty' Purdy, last heard from on these pages as the guitarist on Gone Cosmic's 2019 set, Sideways in Time. On M... |
| The Dave Howard Singularity:
Dark and for Boating - 2023
"I love the Ace Tone but I'm not as drawn to it anymore. I'm just seeing other sounds as well. It's an open relationship we have you see."
Dave Howard and that Ace Tone organ were the... |
| Only a Visitor:
Decay - 2023
Some eight years and three albums into their career, Vancouver's Only a Visitor made the jump from DIY-land to that city's long-running indie label, Mint Records. The five-piece was formed in 2015 b... |
| JOYFULTALK:
Familiar Science - 2022
To the many silver linings that the dark cloud of the pandemic brought us, like bike lanes, work/life balance and, for some anyway, science literacy, you can add JOYFULTALK's Familiar Science... |
| Les Pommes de Lune:
Une fleur / Les chimeres - 7" - 2022
Of all the cool things the nineties introduced us to, from lime green and tropical orange t-shirts and brown leather jackets to bands like Pram, Broadcast and Stereolab, none is perhaps as satisfyin... |
| Esmerine:
Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More - 2022
Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More is another impressive work by Esmerine, Montreal's renowned modern chamber ensemble. It is their first new album in five years and was created "in ... |
| The Shangs:
Sonny Bono Tear Down This Wall of Sound! - 2022
"Playing with him you felt like you were in the coolest band in the world...He was truly underground."
That was how Edgar Breau described the early-seventies David Byers ... |
| Empanadas Ilegales:
Creepy Mambo - 2022
Well, who'da thunk it? Canada now has its very own psychedelic chicha band.
Empanadas Ilegales are Vancouver-based, and Creepy Mambo is their second full-length collection of ... |
| Chris Bottomley:
Summer (download track) - 2022
Chris Bottomley's latest single is the perfect tune for those warm Indian summer days (fingers crossed). It is an effortlessly carefree track, with rich acoustic guitar and sweeping orchestral arran... |
| UWUW:
UWUW - 2022
UWUW (pronounced 'you-you') is a new trio consisting of guitarist/keyboardist Ian Blurton, bassist/keyboardist Jason Haberman and drummer Jay Anderson. Their self-titled four-track disc dropped in t... |
| Sunday Morning:
Junky Don't Care / Explain the World (download single) - 2022
Sunday Morning's latest single is a reworking of Art Bergmann's 'The Junkie Don't Care', originally issued by the BC punk icon on his 1988 Crawl with Me set. And as one would expect, these yo... |
| Automatisme:
Non-representation Field (download track) - 2021
The first incarnation of Constellation's Corona Borealis Longplay Singles Series during the months of October and November 2020 was phenomenal. The weekly experiment was not just an aesthetic succe... |
| Monkey Dragon:
Enter the Multiverse - 2021
Truthfully, for such a consciously multicultural place, Canada outside the Montreal area has been strangely slow to latch on to world music, or whatever it is the kids are calling it these days. If ... |
| Freelove Fenner:
The Punishment Zone - 2021
So nice to hear from Freelove Fenner after all these years. Those who have been paying attention will recall that the Montreal-based trio of Caitlin Loney, Peter Woodford and Michael Wright last tou... |
| High Wasted:
Germ Free High Fives (download track) - 2021
The VU's groundbreaking debut may have influenced everyone who bought it to start a band - 30,000 according to Brian Eno - but it was a later, more obscure release that was the source of inspiration... |
| Hilotrons:
Theme from a Lonely Cinema (download track) - 2021
"This song is inspired by the works of Henry Mancini, Riz Ortolani, Ennio Morricone and the Ventures."
Mike Dubue's description of his latest track ought to perk up the ears of music... |
| Bob Bryden and Long Day Journey:
Love in the Atomic Age - 2021
"We wanted to make something completely shamelessly idealistic."
You would expect nothing less from Bob Bryden, the granddaddy of Canadian psych-rock and the man behind such highly c... |
| Jerusalem in My Heart:
Qalaq - 2021
Qalaq, Radwan Ghazi Moumneh's latest missive as Jerusalem in My Heart, is a stunning array of electronics and electroacoustics that mirrors the beauty and chaos in his homeland of Lebanon. On... |
| Clockwise:
Blow Your Soul Bright EP - 2021
How would things have been different if the overthrow of prog had been engineered by the power-popsters instead of the punks? I mean, if instead of the Stooges and the Velvet Underground our touchst... |
| Van Allen:
The Physical Science - 2021
Jonas Scott has certainly kept himself occupied in 2021, issuing three EP-length records as Van Allen in the first half of the year and then this ten-track cassette just in time for New Year's.
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| Jessica Moss:
Phosphenes - 2021
It's almost two years since the worldwide pandemic started. Some of us are still fighting our demons to make our extra time productive and creative. In busy pre-pandemic routines, many artists were ... |
| Apollo Suns:
A Relationship of Force - 2021
Apollo Suns have been kicking around the Winnipeg area since 2016. The psych-jazz ensemble, whose lineup can stretch from a quintet to a nonet depending on the recording, was formed by guitarist Ed ... |
| Raphael Weinroth-Browne:
Worlds Within - 2020
Cellist Raphael Weinroth-Browne may not be a household name, but more discerning listeners will recognize him as one-half of the Visit, a duo whose fusions of eastern and classical music are certain... |
| Motorists:
From the Wreckage EP - 2020
Motorists may seem to have appeared from out of nowhere, but the guys behind this Toronto trio have been jamming together for the better part of a decade and a half. The three - guitarist Craig Fahn... |
| Void Fill:
EP #2 - 2020
Void Fill straddle a couple of very wide gaps, one temporal and the other spatial. Temporally, they bridge those angular guitar riffs and surly rants of 1980 post-punk with the more playful grooves... |
| Jon Mckiel:
Bobby Joe Hope - 2020
Jon Mckiel is sort of like all those diggers who sift through the thrift shops and garage sales rescuing and developing photographic negatives from the past, bringing back to life anonymous people w... |
| Kamancello:
Of Shadows - 2020
For the third time, Kamancello presents its wide-ranging cultural exchange connecting East and West. With Of Shadows, they prove Macklemore's statement that music has always connected people ... |
| Shahriyar Jamshidi:
My Sunset-Land ROJAVA - 2020
My Sunset-Land ROJAVA is the name of the third solo album by Kurdish-Canadian kamancheh player, composer and vocalist Shahriyar Jamshidi. Jamshidi is a well-known multicultural artist with an... |
| Tough Age:
Which Way Am I? - 2020
"A band that stands still might as well not exist."
Jarrett Samson's thoughts are words to live by. And on their fourth long-player, Which Way Am I?, Tough Age most certainly b... |
| Dana Gavanski:
Wind Songs EP - 2020
Whether you discovered it recently or whether you first heard it back in the day, Robert Wyatt's 'At Last I Am Free' has to be one of the greatest covers ever. His 1980 rendering of the Chic slowbur... |
| T. Gowdy:
Emerald Teeth (download track) - 2020
T. Gowdy's 'Emerald Teeth' is the fifth installment in Constellation's Corona Borealis Longplay Singles series. The Montreal label has been commissioning a 12"-length track for download each ... |
| Princess Century:
Cosmic Minivan (download track) - 2020
Maya Postepski calls Princess Century "my little secret bedroom project". The Toronto/Berlin-based producer may be much better known for her work with Katie Stelmanis as Austra as well as with Robe... |
| The Cosmic Range:
The Gratitude Principle - 2019
If you have ever been referred to - as I often have, though in much less flattering words - as a 'connoisseur of fine freakdom', then the Cosmic Range is probably just your thing. Matthew 'Doc' Dun... |
| Gone Cosmic:
Sideways in Time - 2019
They weren't even born when dinosaurs like Cactus, Dust or Girlschool trod the earth, but these four Calgarians can belt out those bone-crunching chords and ear-splitting caterwauls with the best of... |
| Kiwi Jr:
Football Money - 2019
Bright lights, big city.
That's pretty well the narrative for Kiwi Jr.'s first record. The four members - singer-guitarist Jeremy Gaudet alongside guitarist Brian Murphy, bassist Mike... |
| Nutrients:
Such Slime (download only single) - 2019
What started out as a basement project below Montreal's Boulevard St.-Laurent is now a full-fledged dad-rock outfit based in Toronto's west end. It was Nutrient's singer, Taylor Teeple, who took the... |
| FET.NAT:
Le Mal - 2019
Hull? Who knew?
That is precisely the response I received when I sent a link of FET.NAT's excellent Le Mal to an in-the-know friend of mine. FET.NAT have been kicking around t... |
| Sarah Page:
Dose Curves - 2019
You may know Sarah Page as a long-time member of versatile roots rockers the Barr Brothers, but there is so much more to the Montreal harpist. For Page and her instrument, it was quite literally lov... |
| Pallas Athene:
Pallas Athene EP - 2019
Pallas Athene is the stage name for Breanna Johnston. The Toronto-based musician might seem like a recent arrival on the scene, but as Johnston notes in her bio she had spent "nearly a decade playin... |
| N0V3L:
Novel EP - 2019
You would think that, as latter-day purveyors of that angular, stop-start punk/funk now celebrating its fortieth birthday, the kids in N0V3L might have found sharing the stage with one of the genre'... |
| Blake Hargreaves:
Improvisations on the Pipe Organs of Europe - 2019
The art of improvisation no longer plays a considerable role in classical music as it did 500 years ago or even 100 years ago. But it is still an essential requirement of a church organist. Blake Ha... |
| Jason Sharp:
Stand Above the Streams - 2018
"A sensory experience that extends beyond hearing alone."
That is how Jason Sharp describes his music. And those who listen to either of his (thus far) two Constellation releases will... |
| Peach Kelli Pop:
Which Witch EP - 7" - 2018
Allie Handon makes her home in Los Angeles these days. But what better place to make a bedroom recording than in your old bedroom at your parents' house. This swell EP - specially released for Rec... |
| Hubert Lenoir:
Darlene - 2018
Hubert Lenoir has come a long way since his early days in the Seasons. As a member of that Quebec City quartet - okay, from the tiny suburb of Beauport, to be completely correct - Lenoir helped add ... |
| Dumb:
Seeing Green - 2018
Dumb is the new smart...
...is how the one-sheet cheekily refers to this relatively new BC band. The Vancouver-based four-piece of Franco Rossino and Nick Short (guitars), Shelby Vre... |
| New Vogue:
New Vogue - 2018
Damn! The kids sure can rock out these days.
On their debut cassette, New Vogue channel the ghosts of all those forgotten punk and post-punk bands that never really made it back in ... |
| Automatisme:
Transit - 2018
Under the name Automatisme, William Jourdain has a Bandcamp page that stretches all the way back to 2013, starting with the little-known - but frankly phenomenal - Automatisme 1 EP and runnin... |
| JOYFULTALK:
Plurality Trip - 2018
Jay Crocker is one of the more interesting composers of electronic music in Canada these days. So the fact that he has found his way onto the impressive roster of talent at Montreal's Constellation... |
| Joshua Van Tassel:
Crossworlds - 2018
Joshua Van Tassel's imagination is fertile, if nothing else. His 2015 Understar EP, the first record produced at his Dream Date studio, was a sweeping sonic... |
| Ocean Potion:
Ocean Potion - 2018
Ocean Potion is the newly formed collab of Mike O'Brien (Zeus) and Jason Haberman (Yukon Blonde). The Toronto-based duo bill their work - I'm guessing half-flippantly - as "music for lazy days at h... |
| Dean Drouillard:
Flood - 2017
Though hardly a household name, Dean Drouillard is well known to insiders as one of Canuckistan's quintessential sidemen. As musician and producer, his name can be found in the liner notes of numer... |
| Grej:
I/Variations - 2017
Grej is actually a pseudonym for Toronto-based composer/percussionist Greg Harrison, whose resume includes pieces for the likes of the Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre, Form CDT, Division 85 Film... |
| Faith Healer:
Try ;-) - 2017
Jessica Jalbert first dubbed herself Faith Healer a few years back so that she wouldn't get lumped into that constricting singer-songwriter trap. And there is certainly no danger of that happening. ... |
| Couleur Dessin:
Couleur Dessin - 2017
Name-checking is so much more fun these days, what with a half-century or more of cool musical eras and an internet chock full of obscure recordings just waiting to be unearthed. The pair of Montre... |
| Essaie Pas:
Futur Parle - videp - 2017
Essaie Pas' first missive since their excellent Demain Est un Autre Nuit (2016) is a video project that raises the minimal synth genre to dizzying new heights. On 'Futur parle', the M... |
| Avec Le Soleil Sortant De Sa Bouche:
Pas Pire Pop, I Love You So Much - 2017
Montreal - or to be more precise, the Constellation label - just keeps pumping them out these days. Their latest jaw-droppingly good release is Pas Pire Pop, I Love You So Much, the sophomor... |
| Starving Ghosts:
Starving Ghosts - 2017
With "a heart the size of ten Greyhound buses", New Brunswick's plucky Bored Coast Records is definitely anything but boring. The Fredericton-based label is run by JE Sheehy and is in fact the prim... |
| Those Who Walk Away:
The Infected Mass - 2017
Matthew Patton describes The Infected Mass as "something very genuine and at the same time very wrong."
As the curiously named Those Who Walk Away, the Winnipeg-based compo... |
| Not You:
Misty EP - 2017
The four women behind the band Not You bill their sound - half cheekily, one assumes - as 'slippergaze', which judging from their debut EP is a rough amalgam of nineties alt-rock and shoegaze, with ... |
| Tough Age:
Unclean EP - 7" - 2017
Tough Age may be the quintessential archeologists of lesser-loved guitar rock these days. In fact, the erstwhile Vancouverites have built up a pretty solid discog mining all those classic riffs of ... |
| Big City Cough:
Born at Night - 2017
"Why wait? Just do."
That Nike-esque assertion is how Sean Beresford described the raw bedroom quality of Born at Night, his first solo set as Big City Cough. The Toronto-bas... |
| Isador:
Wayward Sonology - 2017
Wayward Sonology is Isador's second collection of experimental left-field sounds, something the band curiously dubs "lo-fi psych jams from the weirdest corners of your record collection." ... |
| Ostrich Bouquet:
On Time, As Usual EP - 2017
Ostrich Bouquet formed in early 2017 and by all accounts they really mean business. The Montreal four-piece of bassist/singer Davide Ventulieri, guitarist Jeremy Bozzo, keyboardist/guitarist Kyle P... |
| Justin Wright:
Pattern Seeker EP - 2017
The ever-present Mile End string king.
Or at least that's how arts journal Cult Montreal described the prolific cellist, Justin Wright. Wright's resume is certainly impressive, boast... |
| Kaytranada:
99.9% - 2016
Kaytranada first blew up back in 2012 when his unofficial remix of Janet Jackson's 'If' went viral. The deejay/producer, whose real name is Louis Kevin Celestin, would spend the following t... |
| AA Wallace:
In Alpha Zones - 2016
AA Wallace's first long-player, 2013's (disambiguation), was a solitary affair, assembled with samples from broken toys and dollar-bin records from the confines of his Halifax bedroom. With ... |
| L CON:
Moon Milk - 2016
Though she may not be a household name, Lisa Conway has dutifully played her position out in left field for the better part of a decade. The mostly Toronto-based crooner/composer has had her hands ... |
| Lantern:
Black Highways and Green Garden Roads - 2016
"A result of many oversteeped pots of black tea," is how Lantern's Emily Robb describes Black Highways and Green Garden Roads. The most recent missive from this Philadelphia-based trio (whic... |
| Paranerd:
Writ EP - 2016
Paul Goguen, who records as the enigmatic Paranerd, and Port Vanderlay, his most recent label, both seem to be cruising at the same peculiar altitude, one that is well under the range of most radars... |
| Connor O.R.T. Linning:
Reves - 2016
Sometimes the sheer volume of interesting music these days can be overwhelming, especially so given the slow sure death of the industry itself. The phenomenon of Vancouver's Connor Linning and his... |
| Beauts:
Waves / Wash EP - 2016
First off, let's give some credit to Beauts for releasing their music on EP, a format that is nearest and dearest to the hearts up here at CM. The four-song Waves / Wash is their second one i... |
| Fossil Cliffs:
Enter the Realm - 2016
Sixties anoraks eyeballing the cool retro cover won't be disappointed here.
Enter the Realm is the second missive from the Halifax-based Fossil Cliffs since their start-up i... |
| Aleem Khan:
Urbana Champaign - 2016
As half of the now-defunct sibling duo Shaani Cage, Aleem Khan explored his love of silky smooth r'n'b, especially on 2015's fine long-player Danyaal. But buried amidst all that slick groove... |
| Monomyth:
Happy Pop Family - 2016
Monomyth's one-sheet cheekily touts the band as "Canada's leading purveyors of mid-fi anthemic bedroom pop". No surprise then that the Halifax quartet seems to have found a permanent home at Vancouv... |
| The Brandy Alexanders:
The Brandy Alexanders EP - 2016
The Brandy Alexanders are pretty upfront about their love of the Beatles, and it certainly doesn't take a musicologist to glean those influences from their music. But even graduates of Liverpool Ho... |
| Isador:
Isador EP - 2016
"Lo-fi psych jams from the weirdest corners of your record collection." That is how Isador themselves label their music, and I suppose it is as apt a description as you'll get for the curiously int... |
| Mercea:
Island Ghost EP - 2015
For those who know their arcane geographic history, Mercea take their name from the former Mersea Township in Essex County just outside Leamington, where the band make their home. As is the case ... |
| Del Bel:
Del Bel - 2015
Del Bel certainly took their sweet time recording their sophomore LP. Those paying attention will recall that their excellent 2011 debut, Oneiric, piqued the ears of many a critic up here in... |
| Michael Feuerstack:
The Forgettable Truth - 2015
Astute scholars of all things Canuckistani will recognize the name Michael Feuerstack from his previous incarnation as Snailhouse and as part of Ottawa indie-rockers Wooden Stars, as well as for his... |
| Kappa Chow:
Jump / SBTD - 7" - 2015
Kappa Chow's first slab of wax was the menacingly titled 'Punk as Fuck' seven-inch, a cool but rather muffled lo-fi jam that was more basement than garage and, frankly, could just as well hav... |
| Mimico:
Incantations - 2015
The cover art on Mimico's first full-length may suggest some sort of overwrought Tolkienesque prog rock, but nothing could be further from the truth. The Toronto-based threesome of Ben Oginz, Jerem... |
| Find the Others:
Empire of Time - 2015
Andy Sheppard refers to Find the Others as a music and video project rather than just a band, and I suppose anyone who has witnessed one of their visually stunning live shows would definitely see wh... |
| Gabrielle Papillon:
The Tempest of Old - 2015
Gabrielle Papillon has been at it since 2001, when she recorded her debut record Songs for a Rainy Day. The transplanted Haligonian, who has been hailed as "one of the finest new songwriters... |
| The Soul Motivators:
Free to Believe - 2015
If on first listen you pegged the Soul Motivators as a collection of vinyl purists obsessing over vintage deep-soul singles and modern day Daptone offerings, you probably wouldn't be too far off the... |
| The Soul Motivators:
Dirt on the Floor EP - 2015
One thing is certain. The Soul Motivators can definitely count themselves lucky to have the hugely blessed chanteuse, Lydia Persaud, fronting things for them. Persaud is swiftly proving herself to... |
| Tough Age:
Plays Cub's Hot Dog Day - 7" EP - 2015
Cub was always something of a curiosity. The Vancouver trio were cute, catchy and cuddly, but mostly bereft of any sort of musical talent. So what happens when you strip away all that cuteness an... |
| Nick Ferrio:
Amongst the Coyotes and the Birdsongs - 2015
Peterborough (ON) singer-songwriter Nick Ferrio is about as old school as you can get. His sophomore disc, Amongst the Coyotes and the Birdsongs, may have been recorded in Sackville, NB and T... |
| Julie and the Wolf:
Ablaze - 2015
Julie and the Wolf are just the latest in a long line of leftfield musicians from the infinitely fertile fields of Montreal. The pair of pianist Julie and singer Wolf Merzbacher are about as incongr... |
| Gypsophilia :
Night Swimming - 2015
Gypsophilia surely must be one of this country's better-kept secrets. The Halifax septet have spent close to a decade honing a sound that melds the gypsy jazz of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grapp... |
| Unknown Mobile:
Chime, Flower & Fountain Cures - 2015
Levi Bruce divides his time between two Canadian extremes, the bucolic shores of the Kootenay River in BC and the urban zoo that is modern-day Montreal. "I was raised in a rural area on a farm in ... |
| JOYFULTALK:
MUUIXX - 2015
Though Calgary's economy may have collapsed along with the price of oil, it hasn't made things any easier for Jay Crocker. The erstwhile Albertan was once a fixture on the western scene, upping th... |
| Castle If:
Transmissions - 2015
By her own admission, Jess Forrest sports a cache of equipment that includes such novel pieces as an Oberheim SEM, a Moog Little Phatty and a Korg MicroKorg vocoder, among many others. No surprise ... |
| Renny Wilson:
Punk Explosion/Extension - 2015
"I had a teenage epiphany," is how Renny Wilson describes what must be one of the more delusional ambitions in the history of pop music. "What would it be like to synthesize Foreigner with Crass?" ... |
| Boogat:
Neo-Reconquista - 2015
The MC known as Boogat has been all over the Montreal hip-hop scene ever since his days fronting the francophone band Andromaick back in the nineties. It wasn't really until relatively recently, ho... |
| Long Distance Runners:
Elements - 2015
This St. John's six-piece have been kicking around the east coast scene since 2009. Billing themselves as one of the hardest-working bands out there, Long Distance Runners have thus far issued an E... |
| Princess Century:
Progress - 2015
Princess Century is the solo side project of Maya Postepski, whose sinewy rhythms as part of the Toronto-based Austra have filled many a dancefloor these past few years. Progress is her secon... |
| Little You Little Me:
I'd Watch the Day Til It Died - 2015
Little You Little Me have been blasting the eardrums of punters out on the east coast since at least 2009. The foursome of guitarists Gavin Downes and Corey Bonnevie, bassist Geoff Smith and drumme... |
| Joshua Van Tassel:
Understar EP - 2015
Joshua Van Tassel can usually be found either perched behind the drum kit, as on 2014's cool Double Tooth 7", or working the controls as producer for the likes of ... |
| Brave Radar:
Message Centre EP - 2014
The good folks over at Fixture are at it again. The Montreal label has built up a pretty solid roster of bands that specialize in mining all those lesser-known eighties sounds and re-packaging them... |
| SWO8 Blues/Jazz:
Monkey of Sousse - 2014
SWO8 Blues/Jazz are a family affair and Monkey of Sousse is their second EP. The Mississauga-based collective is the muse of Leslie Martel, one-time flautist for the Queen's Own Rifles March... |
| The Souljazz Orchestra:
Inner Fire - 2014
The Souljazz Orchestra have been at it for a dozen years or so and on their latest full-length they appear to be once again in fine form. The Ottawa-based afro-jazz sextet have definitely come a lo... |
| Tapeheads:
Bricolage I & II - 2014
Thierry Larose goes by the name of Tapeheads and Bricolage I & II is his first true album of music. The limited-edition cassette of mostly instrumental bedroom recordings is what the young M... |
| The Pinecones:
Ooh! - 2014
After the seventies soft-pop of their We Were Strangers in Paddington Green, Brent Randall and the Pinecones quit the east coast for the big smoke - Toronto to out-of-towners - in 2010. There... |
| The Tower of Dudes:
Make Your Own Culture - 2014
The Tower of Dudes are anything but suburban poseurs. The Victoria-based gypsy punks actually got their start as a more international collective on the streets of Prague way back in 2007. "Origina... |
| The Filthy Politicians:
Modern Man - 2014
I get sent a lot of submissions from musicians that want me review their work, and nothing in my inbox has come close to matching the honesty, intensity, and clear vision of the Filthy Politicians' ... |
| The Darcys:
Hymn for a Missing Girl - 12" EP - 2014
The Darcys latest piece of wax finds the band's fascination with all things seventies - their dystopian rethread of the Dan's Aja was a delight a couple of ... |
| Marie Davidson:
Perte d'Identite - 2014
A true Montrealer, effortlessly bilingual and born and raised in Mile End before the hipsters arrived, Marie Davidson can include on her resume stints with dreamy etherealists Les Momies de Palerme ... |
| Lydia Ainsworth:
Right from Real - Part I EP - 2014
Lydia Ainsworth may be the latest signee to Montreal's uber-hip Arbutus label, but the Toronto-based electronic composer sure took a roundabout way of getting there. As a precocious child, Ainswort... |
| Plastikman:
Ex - 2014
Ex is Ritchie Hawtin's first release under his Plastikman alias since his underachieving Closer album way back in 2003. The seven tracks here, all beginning with the capitalized lette... |
| Alvvays:
Alvvays - 2014
The seeds of Alvvays began to germinate a few years back when Nova Scotia natives and childhood friends Molly Rankin and Kerri MacLellan teamed up with their high school mate Alec O'Hanley and start... |
| Slight Birching:
Cultural Envelope - 2014
Sean Travis Ramsay goes by the name of Slight Birching and this is his first long-playing record. The Vancouver-based singer-songwriter trades in the same sort of lo-fi folk that made Bill Callahan... |
| Coyote:
Proof of Life EP - 2014
Coyote have been kicking around Prince Edward Island for several years now and Proof of Life is their second EP. The Charlottetown five-piece formed around guitarist and singer Josh Carter, ... |
| Absolutely Free:
Absolutely Free - 2014
Fans of Absolutely Free's post-millennial krautrock grooves have had to wait quite a while for the band's full-length version of events. It has now been upwards of three years since the Toronto-bas... |
| Last Ex:
Last Ex - 2014
Simon Trottier and Olivier Fairfield, the talented multi-instrumentalists responsible for much of the eerie imagery on Timber Timbre's recent Hot Dreams set, formed the more experimental Last... |
| The Taste:
Sea Legs EP - 2014
Have you ever wondered what the world would be like today if punk had not happened? I mean if the anger of 1977 had been replaced with romanticism and we had obsessed over bands like the Beatles an... |
| Sea Oleena:
Shallow - 2014
Charlotte Loseth is something of a prodigy in the music world. Recording under the name Sea Oleena, the Saskatchewan-bred, Montreal-based singer-composer dropped her first recordings while she was ... |
| Dean Drouillard:
UFO Houses - 2014
In what probably seems like another lifetime, Dean Drouillard once plucked bass strings in his hometown of Windsor for power pop band Racecar back in the Big Star-friendly nineties. ("We were a ded... |
| Locomotive Ghost:
Seasons - 2014
This Calgary quartet has been kicking around since the late noughts, when Mike Buckley and Ben Nixon met up in the picturesque BC interior as students in Selkirk College's music program. As Locomot... |
| Vogue Dots:
Mauka EP - 2014
Babette Hayward and Tynan Dunfield spend their working days as sound technicians, so the plush electro sounds on their two EPs as Vogue Dots should hardly come as a shock. But what may surprise you... |
| Hiss Tracts:
Shortwave Nights - 2014
Hiss Tracts is a newish collaboration between David Bryant (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Set Fire to Flames) and Kevin Doria (Growing, Total Life). The pair have worked together for at least a deca... |
| The Saffron Sect:
All Lead Back to You / A Pinch of Chalk - 7" - 2014
Well, it certainly is great to hear from the Saffron Sect after all these years. One of Canada's most underappreciated bands released what they call their "lost" second single in the fall of 2014 o... |
| Double Tooth:
You Should Buy Myself a Drink / One Thousand Shapeshifters - 7" - 2014
Toronto-based percussionist Joshua Van Tassel had a particularly busy year in 2014, producing a number of excellent records for the likes of, among others, the Olympic Symphonium and Dean Drouillard... |
| Stefan Christoff and Nick Schofield:
Reves Sonores a Montreal - 2014
When not in the studio recording, Montrealers Stefan Christoff and Nick Schofield seem to have their fingers in a number of different pies. In addition to music, the multi-talented Christoff works ... |
| Fresh Snow:
Mony Mony - split 7" - 2014
This excellent double-sider arrived in shops at the tail end of November 2014, and at a pitifully low price point of just five bucks it has to go down as one of the top-10 record values of the year,... |
| Mimico:
Fate Screen - split 7" with Fresh Snow - 2014
This cool double-sider arrived in shops near the end of November 2014, and with a price tag of just five bucks it has to go down as one of the top-10 record values of the year, if only we made such ... |
| Esmerine:
Dalmak - 2013
Dalmak, the second album on Constellation for Montreal's Esmerine and their fourth overall, is somewhat of a departure for the band...literally, that is. 2011... |
| Dam Ships:
Dam Ships EP - 2013
This Montreal quartet first started plying their hushed guitar-based instrumentals sometime in early 2012, and it took just a few months before the band checked in with their first offering, the int... |
| Rachel Zeffira:
The Deserters - 2013
Fate is a funny thing. At just seventeen, Rachel Zeffira probably hadn't given it much thought, but when the precocious young singer arrived in London to pursue a career in the opera, that "powerfu... |
| Union Duke:
Bandits and Bridges - 2013
Like their contemporaries south of the border, Trampled by Turtles and Old Crow Medicine Show to name a couple, Union Duke can trace their musical heritage all the way back to Dillard and Clark's ep... |
| Saltland:
I Thought It Was Us But It Was All of Us - 2013
Rebecca Foon's latest project, Saltland, veers somewhat from the ethereal minimalism of her previous record for Constellation, Esmerine's frankly stunni... |
| ANAMAI:
ANAMAI cassette EP - 2013
You might know Anna Mayberry as part of Toronto noisemakers (and Buzz labelmates) HSY, but that would hardly prepare you for this three-song cassette EP. Under the shortened name ANAMAI, Mayberry s... |
| Mavo:
Mavo 7" EP - 2013
The good folks over at Montreal's Fixture Records seem to have their fingers all over the pulse...of 1985, that is. Sheer Agony's Pet Crow seven-inch last ... |
| Weaves:
Motorcycle (download single only) - 2013
Weaves has suddenly become the band to watch in Toronto these days after the release of a pair of fine download-only singles, a mesmerizing set at the NXNE fest and a brief but glowing shout-out in ... |
| Fresh Snow:
I - 2013
Toronto's Fresh Snow are everything you would expect from a group formed by indie record store clerks, in this case those at the massive Sonic Boom on Bathurst Street in the city's west end. Named ... |
| Jerusalem In My Heart:
Mo7it Al-Mo7it - 2013
Radwan Ghazi Moumneh's Jerusalem in My Heart project has been kicking around Montreal's ever-fertile experimental scene for the better part of about eight years now. The Lebanese national, who divi... |
| Hooded Fang:
Gravez - 2013
Hooded Fang have come quite a ways since their 2008 debut EP, with their earlier brand of twee pop having long since given way to something more akin to that classic American mid-sixties sound, as o... |
| A Tribe Called Red:
Nation II Nation - 2013
A Tribe Called Red couldn't have dropped this album at a better time. Though the Ottawa collective of Bear Witness, DeeJay Shub and DeeJay NDN make music that is ostensibly for dancefloors, they ha... |
| Freelove Fenner:
Do Not Affect a Breezy Manner - 2013
Freelove Fenner's first stab at a long-player seems to find them pulled in two fairly different directions at the same time. In fact, the band have shot and uploaded a couple of videos for the 18-t... |
| Texture and Light:
The Hard Problem of Consciousness - 2013
Texture and Light are the brainchild of recovering west coast DJ Trevor Refix. The British Columbia native spent much of the early noughts spinning at raves out in the wilds of the BC interior - Ke... |
| The Gertrudes:
Neighbourhood - 2013
Neighbourhood is the Gertrudes' third full-length record. The Kingston (ON) roots-based collective, or folkestra as they are affectionately referred to up in that neck of the woods, checks i... |
| Valued Customer:
Kalpa - 2013
It seems that many a hipster up here in Canuckistan is a dropout from the stuffy and constricting world of classical music. That list would include singers Rachel Zeffira and Austra's Katie Stelman... |
| The Darcys:
Warring - 2013
After a wave of misfortune - like getting robbed of their equipment and then losing their lead singer just as they were about to record their second LP - the Darcys seem to finally have it all toget... |
| Uaxyacac:
Double Seeker EP - 2013
Uaxyacac (pronounced Wa-ha-ca) is the electronic project of University of Moncton music grad Nick Smith and the five-song Double Seeker is his first release. The Montreal-based Smith describ... |
| Absolutely Free:
On the Beach / Clothed Woman, Sitting - 12" - 2013
The twelve-inch single seems to be the medium of choice for Toronto-based astral-rockers Absolutely Free. After forming out of the ashes of noisemakers DD/MM/YYYY towards the end of 2011, the four-... |
| Feel Alright:
Oahu Ohio - 7" EP - 2013
Ah, the end of summer up here in Canuckistan, when those cool evening breezes in August ominously waft in to signal the frigid winter days ahead (except of course for those of you in the Vancouver/V... |
| Eli et Papillon:
Eli et Papillon - 2012
A fortuitous hook-up back in the summer of 2008 gave birth to one of Quebec's more interesting francophone acts, the charming pairing of Eli Larouche and Marc Papillon-Ferland, known simply as Eli e... |
| The Slakadeliqs:
The Other Side of Tomorrow - 2012
The Slakadeliqs are actually the alter ego of one Slakah the Beatchild, whose unique hip hop visions meld jazzy downtempo with some rather nifty beats, and are thus a welcome diversion from the usua... |
| A Tribe Called Red:
A Tribe Called Red - 2012
The Ottawa collective known as A Tribe Called Red started off inauspiciously enough back in 2008 when local deejays Ian Campeau, aka DJ NDN, and Bear Witness threw a party with hopes of gathering up... |
| Sheer Agony:
Pet Crow + 3 EP - 7" - 2012
Sheer Agony are anything but. The Montreal-based threesome ply a lithe, jangly power pop that recalls bands like New York`s dBs, Hoboken, NJ's Bongos or even the crafty eccentricities of the Homose... |
| Plumes:
Plumes - 2012
The Montreal and sometimes Brooklyn-based threesome of singer Veronica Charnley, multi-instrumentalist Geof Holbrook and harpist Eveline Gregoire-Rousseau had been kicking around since 2004, issuing... |
| Bishop Morocco:
Old Boys EP - 2012
Torontonians James Sayce and Jake Farley first explored their love of early-eighties new wave while living in the handsome Dutch university town of Groningen. Their self-titled 2010 debut for the H... |
| The Darcys:
Aja - 2012
The Darcys are nothing if not persistent. In 2010, the Toronto band had their equipment nicked, were mugged at knifepoint and nearly bought it when their van skidded out of control on some black ic... |
| Faunts:
Left Here Alone EP - 2012
Edmonton's Faunts hasn't been heard from since they released their Feel.Love.Thinking.Of album way back in 2008, so this tidy little stopgap EP - four previously unreleased tracks that date a... |
| Mahmood Schricker:
Null - 2012
For such a multicultural place, Canada has had scant few examples of truly ground-breaking world music. With the possible exception of Toronto's fiery Punjabi by Nature back in the nineties, and ar... |
| Godspeed You! Black Emperor :
Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! - 2012
Godspeed You! Black Emperor dropped this record seemingly from out of the sky, unannounced and a couple of weeks ahead of its scheduled release, with copies just sort of showing up on the merch tabl... |
| TOPS:
Tender Opposites - 2012
TOPS released their first full-length record in February 2012 to kudos on both sides of the Atlantic. The Montreal foursome of singer/keyboardist Jane Penny, guitarist David Carriere, bassist Tho... |
| Castle If:
Zwei Hande (Part 1) - 2012
Sometimes fortuity presents itself in the most unlikely of places. In the case of Castle If's Jess Forrest and her stunning first LP, Zwei Hande (Part 1), that place was a bar stool at one o... |
| Zeus:
Permanent Scar / The Darkness - 7 - 2011
'Permanent Scar' is Zeus' second release in what Arts and Crafts calls "an ongoing series of double a-side 7-inches". After the relatively warm reception given 'Hot Under the Collar' / '... |
| Pat Jordache:
Future Songs - 2011
Pat Jordache's brand of avant-pop can be somewhat beguiling at first listen, coming off as messy and cacophonous. But in the case of the Montrealer's solo debut Future Songs, patience can be... |
| Esmerine:
La Lechuza - 2011
After a six-year wait, the Montreal-based duo of percussionist Bruce Cawdron (Godspeed You! Black Emperor) and cellist Beckie Foon (Thee Silver Mt. Zion) offer up their third full-length recording o... |
| Braids:
Native Speaker - 2011
Calgarians Raphaelle Standell-Preston, Austin Tufts, Katie Lee and Taylor Smith met up while still teenagers at Western Canada High School, allegedly forming the synth-pop quartet Braids in the cafe... |
| Austra:
Feel It Break - 2011
Katie Stelmanis' first solo record, 2008's Join Us , was a challenging collection of experimental electro that showcased her operatic vocal talents and a pe... |
| Ohbijou:
Metal Meets - 2011
Ohbijou's allmusic.com entry reads like a yawn - "Canadian indie-poppers with a folksy style bolstered by a group of talented multi-instrumentalists" could describe so many bands that there should b... |
| Duchess Says:
In a Fung Day T! - 2011
There is more than a trace of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks in the music of Duchess Says. Though much more accessible than their New York City forebears, the Montreal quartet of Annie-Claude Deschene... |
| 1-Speed Bike:
Pashto Translator Needed - 2010
When Godspeed You! Black Emperor went on their indefinite (though recently ended) hiatus in the early part of the millennium, for fans it seemed to open a void unfilled even to this day. But for t... |
| The Souljazz Orchestra:
Rising Sun - 2010
Since the Daktaris blasted us with their Soul Explosion LP back in 1998, the embers of afrobeat have kindled across North America with the likes of Antibalas and the Budos Band south of the b... |
| Tim Gilbertson:
Palisades - 2010
Power-pop of the subtler kind often takes a back seat to the more gonad-fuelled, post-Pavement sorts, so the arrival of a single like Tim Gilbertson's 'Chipped Teeth' definitely comes as a pleasant ... |
| Bella Clava:
The Craic: An Ephemeral Record EP - 2010
Bella Clava's claim that U.S. Highway 61, the blues highway, "starts in New Orleans and ends in Thunder Bay (Ontario)", may be stretching the truth somewhat, but only just. The highway technically ... |
| The Connoisseurs of Porn:
The Peasant Terror / Chicken - 7" - 2010
The Connoisseurs of Porn bill themselves as noise rock, and those punters looking to have their fillings rattled can rest assured that the lads here most definitely live up to their end of the barga... |
| Siskiyou:
Siskiyou - 2010
A stint on an organic farm was all it took for ex-Great Lake Swimmer Colin Huebert to make that move from the Swimmers' Toronto base to the more organic climes of Vancouver. Once settled there, he t... |
| Khora:
Silent Your Body is Endless - 2010
Khora is the solo project of Toronto-based Matthew Ramolo, and his sophomore disc Silent Your Body is Restless first saw the light of day way back in 2009 as a privately pressed CD. A copy s... |
| Les Momies de Palerme:
Brulez Ce Coeur - 2010
Multi-instrumentalists Xarah Dion and Marie Davidson have been plying their striking audio/video performance pieces since 2006. The Montreal pair's first musical musings, the self-released CD... |
| Charles Spearin:
The Happiness Project - 2009
The first two quasi-solo releases by Broken Social Scenesters, Kevin Drew's Spirit If... and Brendan Canning's Something for All of Us..., came out under the auspices of "Broken Social... |
| The Hylozoists:
L'Ile de Sept Villes - 2009
The Hylozoists' third long-player, L'Ile de Sept Villes, finds leader/composer Paul Aucoin's already deft arrangements flanked by the lilting strings of the Ashbridges Octet. Taking its name f... |
| Land of Kush:
Against the Day - 2009
Sam Shalabi has been a fixture on the Montreal avant-rock scene - surely one of the continent's most fecund - for some two decades now, contributing to or fronting the likes of Molasses, Detention, ... |
| Timber Timbre:
Timber Timbre - 2009
Timber Timbre is the first release for Torontonian Taylor Kirk on the ever-growing Arts and Crafts label, after being previously issued on the smaller Out of This Spark imprint (along with a ... |
| Do Make Say Think:
Other Truths - 2009
Toronto's post-rock stalwarts Do Make Say Think plough ahead on their sixth LP with more of their stock-in-trade instrumental fare. Here, though, on Other Truths the bucolic guitar and wistf... |
| Years:
Years - 2009
With many of his bandmates in Do Make Say Think and (formerly) in Broken Social Scene taking time to pursue their own projects of late, guitarist Ohad Benchetrit obviously decided it was his turn to... |
| Still Life Still:
Girls Come Too - 2009
Still Life Still grew up together in Toronto's Danforth and Main area on the city's east side, forming as early as 1999 while the boys were still just, well, boys in junior high school. After plugg... |
| Final Fantasy:
Spectrum 14th Century EP - 2008
Spectrum 14th Century is the first in a pair of EPs issued in anticipation of Final Fantasy's third full-length, Heartland. Recorded at various locations in the summer of 2007 along wit... |
| Katie Stelmanis:
Join Us - 2008
Billing herself as a "children's choir survivor', the classically schooled chanteuse Katie Stelmanis jumped ship at the last minute, abandoning her studies in the opera programme at McGill University ... |
| Donzelle:
Parle Parle, Jase Jase - 2008
Taking her cue from the likes of Peaches and M.I.A., Montreal's Donzelle (real name Roxanne Arsenault) takes some hard-hitting electro beats and tethers them to some of the Quebec metropolis' well-k... |
| Crystal Castles:
Crystal Castles - 2008
Toronto's Crystal Castles got their start as a solo project for producer/instrumentalist Ethan Kath as far back as 2003, but a later collaboration with singer Alice Glass led to a few demo tracks, i... |
| Brasstronaut:
Old World Lies EP - 2008
This Vancouver octet curiously anchors its sound around Bryan Davies' brooding horns and Edo Van Breemen's hushed piano stylings. Though the pair go back further, having met up playing hippie jams ... |
| Do Make Say Think:
You, You're a History in Rust - 2007
It has been nearly a decade since Toronto post-rock instrumentalists Do Make Say Think's first sonic stirrings - the spacy meanderings of their eponymous debut and the more chafing guitar work of the ... |
| Friends in Bellwoods:
(various artists) - 2007
A rickety old house in Toronto's Trinity-Bellwoods neighbourhood is indie central - a home, practice space and crash pad for the city's vibrant creative underbelly. And while the besotted world press... |
| Hrsta:
Ghosts Will Come and Kiss Our Eyes - 2007
On Hrsta's third full-length, founder/guitarist Mike Moya (ex-Godspeed You! Black Emperor) has teamed up with Jackie-O Motherfucker's Brooke Crouser to create a riveting and frightening psych-folk ste... |
| Citywide Vacuum:
Pact - 2007
Citywide Vacuum had toiled about the Windsor (Ontario) scene since the mid-nineties, originally as a two-piece, hocking their glitsched-out and trippy electronica to anybody who would listen. Sportin... |
| Feu Therese:
Ca Va Cogner - 2007
Initial spins of Ca Va Cogner, the follow-up to Feu Therese's thoroughly enjoyable debut, may well leave hipsters somewhat flummoxed. The fragmented motorik beats of 2006... |
| Holy Fuck:
LP - 2007
Fortune smiled early on Holy Fuck after hip hop artist Beans caught their raucous live set at the 2005 Pop Montreal festival and invited them as his backing band at California's Coachella gathering la... |
| The Sunparlour Players:
Hymns for the Happy - 2007
Farm-raised in a Mennonite family amidst the tomato fields around Leamington, Ontario, Andrew Penner was exposed as a child to country and bluegrass bands like the Stanley Brothers. But after initial... |
| Kids on TV:
Mixing Business with Pleasure - 2007
Kids on TV were hit with shrapnel from the electroclash blast of the early noughts, taking up positions alongside the likes of Peaches, Chicks on Speed and Le Tigre in the slutty, edgy queercore/elect... |
| Teach Yourself Piano:
Sweet Waltz, Bitter Waltz - 2006
Windsor siblings Kevin and Sarah Atkinson are Teach Yourself Piano (he the tunesmith, she the wordsmith) and this self-released CD Sweet Waltz, Bitter Waltz follows a decade or so of cafe/books... |
| Final Fantasy:
He Poos Clouds - 2006
Multi-instrumentalist pop wunderkind Owen Pallett is Final Fantasy, a pop project laden with the delicate refinements of classical chamber music. However, unlike traditional chamber pop, which typica... |
| Feu Therese:
Feu Therese - 2006
Progeny of that fecund Montreal scene, Feu Therese boast Fly Pan Am guitarist Jonathan Parent and Shalabi Effect sound collaborator Alexandre St. Onge at the helm. Feu Therese's rookie effort, dedica... |
| The Dears:
Whites Only Party +2 EP - 2006
The first single release from Gang of Losers, the Dears long-awaited follow-up to their crucial No Cities Left disc, is a rollicking Smiths clone girded with a quasi-rockabilly beat and,... |
| Lullabye Arkestra:
Ampgrave - 2006
Toronto bass/drum duo Lullabye Arkestra mark their Constellation debut with the aptly titled Ampgrave, a scrappy eclectic platter of lo-fi racket. Kate Taylor's massively distorted bass and Ju... |
| Black Ox Orkestar:
Nisht Azoy - 2006
Cobbled together, as it were, from assorted Montreal collectives, the distinctly old world Black Ox Orkestar place themselves in the forefront of a "new Jewish music". Rooted in the traditions of Ash... |
| Afrodizz:
Froots - 2006
After the inspiring afrobeat of their 2004 debut Kif Kif, Montreal octet Afrodizz have unsaddled themselves from the crushing yoke of Fela Kuti, opting instead for a hybrid of afrobeat, funk an... |
| Ohbijou:
Swift Feet for Troubling Times - 2006
This fetching debut by Toronto-based seven-piece Ohbijou is refreshingly cliche-free - no pasty dishevelled white guys with wrinkled shirts and sensitive expressions earnestly plodding through some gr... |
| Junior Boys:
So This is Goodbye - 2006
Junior Boys followed up the charming synth pop of their debut disc, Last Exit, with more polished, urbane electronics on So This is Goodbye, released in August of 2006. With more than a... |
| The Saffron Sect:
Phosphorus Flash EP - 2006
The Saffron Sect seem to dwell in the same trippy, eccentric universe that the likes of Syd Barrett, Daevid Allen or Kevin Ayers once used to occupy. The band got their start in 2004, and since then,... |
| The Hylozoists:
La Fin du Monde - 2006
After the Hylozoists' debut, 2001's delightful La Nouvelle Gauche, composer/arranger Paul Aucoin fled his native Nova Scotia for Toronto, in the process scotchi... |
| The Russian Futurists:
Me, Myself and Rye - 2006
As far as laptop generated music goes, Matthew Adam Hart's Russian Futurists project stakes out a territory much closer to the idyllic and dreamy pop of the sixties, especially to the sunny hooks of... |
| The Bicycles:
The Good, the Bad and the Cuddly - 2006
The Bicycles had come a long way since their 2000 acoustic EP As Is, recorded when the band was just former high school classmates Matt Beckett and Drew Smith. In the five years it took them... |
| 1-Speed Bike:
A Swimmer in the Ocean Is Not Afraid of the Rain - 7" - 2006
As with most of the members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, drummer Aiden Girt used the band's indefinite hiatus to explore sonic textures no doubt closer to his heart, in this case the humorous mas... |
| Shalabi Effect:
Unfortunately - 2005
Montreal-based Shalabi Effect play a compelling and eclectic mixture of psychedelia and atonal soundscapes, and Unfortunately, their fourth disc, marks a return to the more intense industrial-s... |
| Stars:
Ageless Beauty +2 EP - 2005
A charming EP, this is, clocking in at just over eleven minutes of blissful, airy pop. 'Ageless Beauty', taken from Stars' massively successful long-player Set Yourself on Fire, anchors the di... |
| Stars:
Your Ex-Lover is Dead / Fairytale of New York - 7" - 2005
The second single from Stars' massive Set Fire to Flames LP is a plaintive break-up duet that pits some rather melancholic strings and horns with a majestic guitar build-up. Amy Millan's lush v... |
| Ninja High School:
Young Adults Against Suicide - 2005
Billing themselves as a "positive hardcore dance-rap band from Toronto", Ninja High School and their raucous and rough-hewn mix of indie punk and hip hop first surfaced in 2004 with their lo-... |
| Montag:
Alone, Not Alone - 2005
After dropping his debut LP Are You a Friend in 2002, and a couple of EPs the following year (Objets Perdus and Paperworks), Montag, a.k.a. Montrealer Antoine Bedard, hooked up ... |
| Wolf Parade:
Wolf Parade EP - 2005
Wolf Parade was formed when fellow British Columbians Dan Boekner (ex-Atlas Strategic) and (former Frog Eyes member) Spencer Krug hooked up in Hipsterville, Quebec, a.k.a. Montreal, way back in 2003... |
| Les Georges Leningrad:
Supa Doopa Remix EP - 2005
Twice voted "freakiest local act" by the readers of the Montreal Mirror and well known for their elaborate stage costumes and masks, experimentalists Les Georges Leningrad were always longer on myth... |
| The Dears:
Protest EP - 2004
A reissue of a 2002 tour-only EP, the Protest EP comes drenched in the Dears singular flair for the urgent, the dramatic, even the melodramatic. Recorded in the summer of 2001 - remember this ... |
| The Heavy Blinkers:
The Night and I Are Still So Young - 2004
Spin magazine famously called the Heavy Blinkers "one of the greatest bands you've (probably) never heard". The Halifax quintet once counted the likes of Sondre Lerche, Van Dyke Parks and the High ... |
| Stars:
Heart - 2003
Heart, the second full-lengther from Montreal quintet Stars, is an album dripping with sublime beauty and unabashed romanticism (of the incurable type no doubt), despite the cornball intros pri... |
| The Hidden Cameras:
The Smell of Our Own - 2003
The primary vehicle for hugely talented singer/songwriter/bandleader Joel Gibb, though operating more like a collective encompassing, among others, Owen Pallett ... |
| Manitoba (a.k.a. Caribou):
Up in Flames - 2003
By 2003, armed with a Master's degree from the University of Toronto and the ripples of success from his debut LP Start Breaking My Heart, Dundas, Ontario's... |
| Raising the Fawn:
By the Warmth of Your Flame EP - 2003
As the main vehicle for guitarist and occasional Broken Social Scenester John Crossingham, Raising the Fawn have often had to take a back seat on the increasingly crowded BSS indie bus and its plethor... |
| Boy:
French Diplomacy EP - 2003
Born and bred in the feral wilderness of the Yukon, wunderkind Stephen Kozmeniuk (a.k.a. Stephen Noel) wrote, recorded and produced the music on his debut outing Boy, from which most of this sw... |
| The Constantines:
Nighttime Anytime EP - 2003
Nothing beats the hook-laden pleasures of a great EP, and the Constantines' Nighttime Anytime delivers the goods, with four slivers of gruff and grimy soul/punk. Mostly taken from the band's s... |
| The Burdocks:
Airplane Tracks EP - 2003
The Burdocks plied the same sort of raunchy indie rock that tweaked the ears of so many music critics back in the day, drawing obvious comparisons to the likes of Built to Spill, Modest Mouse and Pa... |
| Godspeed You! Black Emperor:
Yanqui U.X.O - 2002
"U.X.O. is unexploded ordnance is landmines is cluster bombs" - so say the liner notes to what is Godspeed You! Black Emperor's most overtly political yet eminently accessible disc... |
| The Hylozoists:
La Nouvelle Gauche - 2001
Multi-instrumentalists the Hylozoists occupy a universe that fuses Stack-o-Trax-era Beach Boys and later-period Stereolab with Calexico and even Frank Zappa's Hot Rats. Originally formed in Nova Scot... |
| The Dears:
Orchestral Pop Noir Romantique - 2001
With its convenient self-defining title - I don't know about the orchestral part, but "pop noir romantique" just about says it all - this disc arrived in rows stacked 10 thick at HMV stores in downto... |
| Kristian, Shalabi, St. Onge:
Kristian, Shalabi, St. Onge - 2001
A gathering of the "garde" - avant-garde that is - is usually a momentous event, especially in Montreal these days. On this CD, electronics composer David Kristian sidles up to Shalabi Effect members... |
| The Be Good Tanyas:
Blue Horse - 2001
Rustic right from the get-go, Vancouver's rootsy Be Good Tanyas met up in tree-planting camps along the west coast in the late nineties, and then later hooked up at Trish Klein's Chinatown apartment, ... |
| Manitoba (a.k.a. Caribou):
Start Breaking My Heart - 2001
Laptop whiz Dan Snaith spent much of his childhood sequestered just outside Dundas, Ontario, falling victim to the usual small-town suspects of mullets, questionable prog rock and late nights with the... |
| Hangedup:
Hangedup - 2001
To say that the experimental two-piece Hangedup are unique is to go far beyond mere platitude. The Montreal pair of Genevieve Heistek on viola and Eric Craven on drums have concocted a curiously ri... |
| Bran Van 3000:
Astounded EP - 2001
In 1994, James Di Salvio and E.P. Bergen were just a couple of young Montrealers trying to make it in the cutthroat music world of New York City. Barely out of their teens, the pair hooked up when ... |
| Godspeed You Black Emperor!:
Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven - 2000
The heady 1990s under the Clinton and Chretien administrations oversaw a period of robust economic growth, steadily rising housing prices, and rosy employment rates. This, however, was only half the ... |
| Do Make Say Think:
Goodbye Enemy Airship the Landlord is Dead - 2000
Do Make Say Think began as the progeny of a studio project for a university course credit. This eventually spawned a CD, the competent if unspectacular eponymous debut, followed by a bit of local bu... |
| Fly Pan Am:
Fly Pan Am - 1999
Originally a side project for Godspeed You! Black Emperor guitarist Roger Tellier (until he left GYBE altogether in 2004), Fly Pan Am flesh out intense instrumental excursions on this eponymous first ... |
| Godspeed You Black Emperor!:
Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada EP - 1999
After the virtual subatomic explosion in indieland of their debut f#a#oo, Godspeed You Black Emperor!'s star was definitely in the ascendant, and their version... |
| Urban Surf Kings:
...Play El Toro and Other Favourites EP - 7" - 1999
Halifax scenesters Urban Surf Kings have been plying their trademark surf instrumentals out on the east coast since the mid-nineties. The lads became a bit of an east coast phenomenon with a spate of... |
| Nick Holder:
Summer Daze - 12" - 1999
You can't really talk about the Toronto dance scene without mentioning Nick Holder. The man was there almost from its prehistory, deejaying as a teenager in the 1980s and then producing scores of ... |
| Godspeed You Black Emperor!:
f#a#oo - 1998
intro: foreboding background feedback
enter: eerie foreshadowing (this is pre-Sept. 11) of Lee Marvin voiceover
"we're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine and... |
| Plastikman:
Consumed - 1998
To say that Richie Hawtin had already made a name for himself by 1996 would be understating things considerably. The Windsor (ON) native - okay, La Salle, just outside the city - had managed to cra... |
| Atomic 7:
She's Got Haggar Slacks / Regret Nothing - 7" - 1998
Formed in Toronto by ex-Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet guitarist Brian Connelly, the all-instrumental Atomic 7 got down to business from the get-go with this nifty seven-inch debut. Featuring the ... |
| Polaris!:
Polaris! - 1997
"Amazing...a completely gorgeous, gorgeous band," is how Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet's Brian Connelly once described Polaris!. And with such high-level accolades, it really is hard to fathom ju... |
| P.J.:
Happy Days 12" EP - 1996
In early 2013 Toronto's Now weekly included 'Happy Days' in its list of the city's 10 best dance tracks of all time...a no-brainer for anyone who spent time on the dance floors during the mid... |
| Maow:
The Unforgiving Sounds of Maow - 1996
Though often subsumed under the convenient "cuddlecore" label, Vancouver's Maow actually played a much tougher amalgam of pop, punk and country, the latter most probably the influence of the band’s ... |
| King Cobb Steelie:
Project Twinkle - 1994
King Cobb Steelie's first offerings, the gritty indie seven-inch One's a Heifer / Duotang (1992) and their surly self-titled LP the following year, were full of seething indie-rock, drawing obv... |
| Roxanne Turcotte:
Amore - 1994
Montreal pianist/composer Roxanne Turcotte studied electro-acoustic music at l'Universite de Montreal, and her first recording, on Quebec's fine Empreintes DIGITALes label, bears all the hallmarks o... |
| Godspeed You Black Emperor!:
All Lights Fucked on the Hairy Amp Drooling - 1994
The first thing to know about Godspeed You Black Emperor!'s All Lights Fucked on the Hairy Amp Drooling is that no one of any authority out there in cyberland has actually ever heard the damn... |
| Cub:
Betti-Cola - 1993
Young, cloyingly cute and for the most part bereft of talent, Lisa Marr, Robynn Iwata and Valeria Fellini formed Cub in the early part of 1992 and by May were hosting their first gig in somebody's b... |
| The Blue Shadows:
On the Floor of Heaven - 1993
On the Floor of Heaven was the debut album from the Blue Shadows, a quartet that hailed from Vancouver. All of the tracks were recorded there during March of 1993, except for two that were re... |
| Wild Strawberries:
Grace - 1991
Toronto's Wild Strawberries - essentially the vehicle for husband/wife duo Ken Harrison and Roberta Carter-Harrison - first caused ripples in 1988 when their song 'Crying Shame' snagged first prize in... |
| M1:
Feel the Drums 12" EP - 1991
Those lucky Toronto clubkids who trolled places like the Boom Boom Room and the Claremont on Queen West or RPM and the Diamond club downtown probably sweated a drop or two to M1's classic acid-house... |
| John Bottomley:
Library of the Sun - 1990
John Bottomley won a Juno award in 1993 for most promising male vocalist, just after the release of his Songs with the Ornamental Hermits set. But for those in the know there was nothing rea... |
| French B:
Je M'en Souviens - 12" EP - 1990
At first listen, one might be forgiven for thinking of French B's 'Je m'en souviens' as some sort of benign dance track. But when the Montreal duo of Richard Gauthier and Jean-Robert Bisaillon team... |
| Bob Wiseman:
In Her Dream (Bob Wiseman Sings Wrench Tuttle) - 1989
Even as keyboardist with the hugely popular Blue Rodeo, the multi-talented Bob Wiseman must have felt restless early on, releasing his first solo LP In Her Dream around the time the Rodeo's b... |
| Violence and the Sacred:
Dull Knife, Dull Life; Sharp Knife, Short Life / Now a God Dances through Me -7" - 1989
Despite their rather auspicious debut, opening for the mighty Chris and Cosey in 1985 at Larry's Hideaway, Toronto's hyper-experimental Violence and the Sacred have always toiled in the cellars of o... |
| The Pursuit of Happiness:
Love Junk - 1988
They were once described by Mojo writer Mat Snow as "the Toronto band who sang like hornily guilt-ridden nerds yet rocked like jocks". Whatever they were, the Pursuit of Happiness and their blistering... |
| Malcolm Burn:
Walk Don't Run / Josephine the Singer - 7" - 1988
Malcolm Burn has had a successful career as a producer, working over the years with many artists including Emmylou Harris (he produced her Red Dirt Girl album, which won a Grammy in 2001 for ... |
| The Ten Commandments:
Weird Out - 1987
Toronto-based garage rockers the Ten Commandments got swept up in the mid-eighties Nuggets/Pebbles/Boulders craze, co-hosting their own Pagan Strudel-Fest Pit nights at various clubs about town. Wi... |
| A Neon Rome:
New Heroin - 1987
'Wrong time, wrong place' is how A Neon Rome's epitaph should read. The Toronto band formed in 1984, just as the MTV-sponsored (and John Hughes-crafted) eighties were getting underway. Alt-kids ... |
| Odette Doiley:
Comin' at You Boy / Comin' at You Boy (instrumental) - 12" - 1987
The back cover describes Odette Doiley as "sixteen years old, a native of Toronto of West Indian parents", which is about as much as the internet gives up on the young lady. It appears she was acti... |
| The Utopiate:
You've Been Warned / Actions or Misguidance - 7" - 1987
I am going to bet that these days in their hometown of Richmond Hill (a suburb to the north of Toronto) there aren't many people who remember the Utopiate. In fact, even Google's all-powerful algori... |
| Vital Sines:
Big Dark Dreams - 12" EP - 1986
Toronto's Vital Sines showed aggressive tendencies on their 1981 indie debut, the hyper Subway Suicide seven-inch. But when drummer Chris Weekes left to att... |
| The Dundrells:
Nothing on TV / Still, I Run - 7" - 1986
The Dundrells were probably Toronto's ultimate garage-rock band in their day. They formed as far back as 1983 as the Living End, eventually solidifying as a four-piece, with singer Garry Welsh front... |
| Sheep Look Up:
Sheep Look Up 12" EP - 1986
London (Ontario)'s reputation as a sort of stolid, whitebread wasteland was never really fair musically - hell, any city giving birth to and then actually managing to keep the likes of the Nihilist Sp... |
| The Lawn:
Peace in the Valley - 1986
Though long forgotten, along with the majority of all those C86-inspired bands, the Lawn (guitarists Gord Cumming and Patrick Gregory atop the bouncy rhythms of bassist Richard Gregory and drummer M... |
| Chalk Circle:
The Great Lake EP - 12" - 1986
Duke Street was a short-lived Canadian record label that operated between 1984 and 1994. The company carried only Canadian artists on its roster and its releases featured an eclectic variety of musi... |
| P Allen:
Fisherman / Fisherman (version) - 7" - 1986
Peter Allen's 'Fisherman' may not be the best reggae record to come out of this country. But its dirge-like synthesizer intro - not the first use of the instrument in the genre but still quit... |
| Deja Voodoo:
Too Cool to Live Too Smart to Die - mini LP - 1985
Montrealers Tony Dewald and Gerald Van Herk carried the Cramps' fascination with all things rockabilly to the extreme, pairing a four-string guitar with a minimal drum set (no cymbals or hi-hat), cr... |
| Tulpa:
Mosaic Fish - 1985
By the mid-eighties the tight-knit punk scene along Toronto's Queen Street had begun to fray into various musical threads. A more escapist alt-country scene was developing around the irrepressible ... |
| The Nils:
Sell Out Young - 12" EP - 1985
The Nils were chronic underachievers, with their gifted singer/guitarist Alex Soria meeting an early drug-tainted death in 2004 at the age of 39.
Hatched in the south-shore Montrea... |
| The Gruesomes:
Jack the Ripper EP - 7" - 1985
The Gruesomes were just kids when they started dishing out their freaked-out garage/psych stew. The Montreal teens were the height of cheeky irreverence, with a name culled from an old Flintstones ... |
| Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet:
Love Without Words EP - 7" - 1985
Saturday Night Live's Lorne Michaels once derisively referred to the music of Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet as "cheap strip music". And though they gave the world some of the finest surf i... |
| Sturm Group:
Century Ho! - 1985
Toronto's punk scene exploded sooner and bigger than anywhere else in Canada. Its post-punk scene seemed on the verge of the same success. Today, however, it is littered with forgotten bands whose s... |
| The Fraser MacPherson Quintet:
Jazz Prose - 1985
This delightful record was a live recording from the Concord Pavilion in - naturally - Concord, California. Fraser MacPherson, a tenor saxophone player from Vancouver BC, eventually found a home on ... |
| Rob McConnell and the Boss Brass:
Atras da Porta - 1985
Atras da Porta was the sixteenth release by the Boss Brass. It was issued on the Canadian Innovation label in 1985 and contained eight tracks in total. In addition to the high level of musici... |
| Jolly Tambourine Man:
Apple Strudle Man / Sweater in Sri Lanka - 7" - 1984
The mid-eighties in Toronto were a bit of a fallow period for angry youth. Punk was definitely dead, despite all those mohawk-quaffed kids and their slogan-covered leathers. The promise of new wav... |
| Quite Ridiculous Nonsense:
A Failure... EP - 7" - 1984
This excellent EP comes shrouded in the sort of mystery that can cause mild bouts of arrhythmia in serious collectors. The Montreal band (?) was the brainchild of one Daniel Foley, who after all th... |
| Flesh Columns:
Schweigew Vor Dem Sturm EP - 7" - 1984
Flesh Columns hold the dubious distinction of having been the first Canadians as well as (what must be) the youngest band ever signed to Corey Rusk's then-fledgling, but by now mythical, Touch and Go ... |
| The Asexuals:
Be What You Want - 1984
The Asexuals are part of that secret history of the 1980s, the one ignored back in the day by MTV and its legion of followers, and glossed over today on the comps and tribute nights. As was brilliant... |
| Vital Sines:
Collage - 12" EP - 1984
After an initial stab at more frenetic new wave/punk on their debut Subway Suicide EP, Vital Sines regrouped, hooking up with future Blue Rodeo drummer Gle... |
| Norda:
West Over Seas (+ 2) -12" - 1984
Post-punks Rent Boys Inc ruled the Ontario dancefloors in the early eighties, releasing a pair of excellent records, the hard-hitting 'No Grat' single and th... |
| Bernard Bonnier:
Casse-Tete - Musique Concrete - 1984
Montreal-born composer Bernard Bonnier studied under Pierre Henry, collaborating with the musique-concrete master during the first half of the seventies. On his return to Quebec, Bonnier sequestere... |
| Deja Voodoo:
Cemetery - 1984
Long before the White Stripes or the Black Keys, there was Deja Voodoo.
The guitar/drum duo of Gerard Van Herk and Tony Dewald formed in Montreal in 1981, a time when the Quebec met... |
| The Dub Rifles:
The Boom EP - 7" - 1983
Though largely forgotten, Winnipeg's Dub Rifles are reputedly still spoken of in some circles there with hushed sighs of reverence. Formed in 1980, the soul/ska/punk quintet honed their chops around ... |
| D.O.A.:
Right to Be Wild - 7" - 1983
The first of D.O.A.'s instant benefit singles - this to help pay legal fees for the Squamish Five - is a raucous ode to nihilism. The five, which included long-time pal and former Subhuman Gerry Usel... |
| D.O.A.:
General Strike / That's Life - 7" - 1983
Nineteen eighty-three in British Columbia was a bitter time, with the province's notoriously polarized political arena stoked by the right-wing government of Premier Bill Bennett. His Social Credit p... |
| Rent Boys Inc.:
Squeal for Joy - 12" EP - 1983
In the early days, Rent Boys Inc often straddled two opposing worlds, gigging with Kensington Market hardcore thrashers Youth Youth Youth while effortlessly filling their dancefloors with those duckta... |
| Porcelain Forehead:
Right Now the World Needs a Clear Head EP - 7" - 1983
Windsor (Ontario) record geek Mike Hillis got his first whiff of punk's fumes back in 1975 when he purchased Patti Smith's Horses. "I bought it on the recommendation of [classmate and future... |
| Class Info:
Inside - 12" EP - 1983
Winnipeg's Class Info released this 12" EP in a limited run of 500 copies way back in 1983 on the indie Classified label, and though few outside Manitoba took notice at the time, the stunning new wa... |
| The Trifids:
Brainbroom / Invincible - 7" - 1983
The Trifids were essentially the same unknown Czech woman behind the equally demented and hopelessly obscure One of You, who issued a couple of singles a few years prior to this featuring a terminal... |
| Fifth Column:
Boy, Girl EP - 7" EP - 1983
Fifth Column's G.B. Jones once said, "Queercore started in my apartment at Queen and Parliament," and that is really not too far off the mark. Long before riot grrrls like L7, Huggy Bear and Bikini... |
| Boys Brigade:
Melody / Africa - 7" - 1983
In the aftermath of the initial upheaval caused by the punk movement, especially in the Toronto area, a number of groups who would be categorized as new wave started to become popular. Punk may hav... |
| The Lincolns:
Take One - 1983
If someone was deciding to start a new group in Toronto in 1979, what style of music do you think would be chosen? If you guessed that it would be a soulful, funky and groove-happy form of rhythm & ... |
| Blue Peter:
Don't Walk Past / Newsreel - 7" - 1983
The passing of Blue Peter frontman Paul Humphrey in 2021 at the age of 61 was tragic and untimely. Their single 'Don't Walk Past', with its soaring vocals and synthesizer, was a new wave clas... |
| Urban Scorch Compilation:
(various artists) - 1982
Urban Scorch is an obscure but invaluable document of early-eighties post-punk in Toronto. The cassette-only compilation features four bands, each contributing some 15 minutes of music - it's ... |
| The Dub Rifles:
No Town, No Country EP - 7" - 1982
Colin Bryce recalls the early days of the Dub Rifles, Manitoba's most interesting band in the eighties, as equally a curse and a blessing.
"Living in Winnipeg is like living on an islan... |
| Land of Giants:
Cannibal Dolls / Seven Men - 12" - 1982
When Mark Wonnacott returned to Toronto from the U.K. in 1981, the original '77 punk blow-up had more than fizzled, and in its stead was a growing fashion-forward, gay-friendly, middle-class new wa... |
| Rent Boys Inc.:
Pictish / No Grat - 7" - 1982
By the early eighties, the scene in Toronto was in a state of flux. The original punks had either crashed and burned (the Viletones and Cardboard Brains), lost their edge to new wave (the Diodes) ... |
| L'Etranger:
Innocent Hands - 12" EP - 1982
Guitarist Andrew Cash and bassist Charlie Angus were mere 17-year-olds when they put L'Etranger together. But the pair actually go a lot farther back than that.
"Andrew and I met at 14 ... |
| Mama Quilla II:
KKK 12" EP - 1982
The nascent feminist/lesbian scene found a powerful ally in the Toronto six-piece Mamma Quilla II, whose punk-funk amalgam followed roads paved by Kleenex/Lilliput and the Au Pairs across the pond. ... |
| Deja Voodoo:
Monsters in My Garage + 3 EP - 7" - 1982
This is where it all began for Deja Voodoo. With the rockabilly revival in full swing by 1981 and the Montreal scene finally awakening from its late seventies sleepwalk, friends Gerald Van Herk and... |
| Contradance:
Black Preppies EP - 7" - 1982
*This is an edited and abridged version of a review that originally appeared in the University of Windsor newspaper The Lance in 1982.
In a city like Windsor in 1982, whe... |
| Trespassing Bean Rays:
Trespassing Bean Rays EP - 7" - 1982
As far as the early-eighties dustbin goes, things don't get much more obscure than Ottawa's Trespassing Bean Rays. This hopelessly unknown three-piece seems to have toiled about the national capita... |
| IKO:
'83 - 1982
Montreal's 1980s minimal synth scene was pretty tiny next to those in Toronto or San Francisco. But what it lacked in size, it more than made up for in sheer emotion. Any T.O. knob-twiddler wort... |
| Moral Lepers:
Turn to Stone - 12" EP - 1982
"Five politically conscious people who conduct ourselves in a politically conscious way."
Conny Nowe's description of the Moral Lepers would surprise no one who was hanging around th... |
| Spoons:
Nova Heart / Symmetry - 7" - 1982
The late 1970s and early 1980s were fertile grounds for the growth of new wave music in Southern Ontario. The young musicians at the time were of the right age to have heard of the sixties rock and ... |
| UZEB:
Fast Emotion - 1982
The genre of music in the 1970s known as fusion is usually defined as an amalgam of jazz and rock. That definition is perhaps an oversimplification and probably has more to do with our insistence on... |
| The Dry Heaves:
Shoot Yourself EP - 7" - 1981
To borrow from an old punk cliche, Kevin 'Hevy Kevie' Shannon and his brother Tommy Vomit were bored. And so with 1970s Detroit radio force-feeding them a steady diet of, as a good pal of mine used to... |
| The Government:
How Many Fingers? - 12" EP - 1981
After snapping the late-seventies Toronto scene out of its three-chord-punk sleepwalk with their first two singles Hemingway (Hated Disco Music) and the |
| Martha and the Muffins:
This Is the Ice Age - 1981
Martha and the Muffins were formed around Toronto's Ontario College of Art and the nearby Queen West neighbourhood in what would become the proverbial punk cliche of the late seventies. It was there t... |
| Ceramic Hello:
The Absence of a Canary - 1981
Those who scratch their heads at how such left-field electronica like John Paul Young's The Life of Ernie Scub or The Absence of a Canary by Ceramic ... |
| The Rage:
I've Got Your Number / Stay - 7" - 1981
Not to be confused with the California band of the same name, who recorded a version of John's Children's 'Jagged Time Lapse' several years earlier, the Rage were part of a vibrant Toronto pop/punk ... |
| Vital Sines:
Subway Suicide + 2 - 7" EP - 1981
Not long after forming in Toronto in 1980, Vital Sines were bitten by the D.I.Y. bug, releasing this three-song seven-inch sometime the following year. But this was hardly the band we would later c... |
| One of You:
Life is So Hard / Faded Flowers - 7" - 1981
By rights, One of You's 'Life is So Hard', with its gloomy organ and equally depressive lyrics, should have been an underground favourite amongst the black-clad goth crowd back in the day. Af... |
| The Party's Over:
Tissue Sample (cassette) - 1981
The seeds of what would become Canada's most overtly industrial band started to germinate just as the seventies segued into the eighties. "In 1980 I met some kindred spirits by putting an ad at Rec... |
| Kinetic Ideals:
Reason - 12" EP - 1981
As Mikil Rullman remembers it, Mississauga in 1979 was hardly a hotbed of cool.
"Half the students at my high school were bused in from farms and rural concession lines while the oth... |
| Secret V's:
No Life Like It - 12" EP - 1981
"It was a revolution. Democracy! Let everybody in. Fuck the god damn rock stars!"
Ray Tremblay looked back on his days in the Vancouver punk scene with equal parts spunk and affection... |
| The Spy's:
Underground / Machine Shop - 7" - 1980
The whole of the American Midwest, including Detroit, was a bit slow to latch onto punk. By 1979, though, a handful of bars there, like Lili's 21 in Hamtramck, the New Miami in the seedy Cass Corri... |
| Pointed Sticks:
Perfect Youth - 1980
The quest for the perfect pop single - taut, jumpy, emotive - bequeathed a litany of largely forgotten North American new wave bands in the late seventies. Their breakout from punk's surly stance was... |
| Kinetic Ideals:
Life in Shadow / Maze of Ways - 7" - 1980
By 1979, nearly three years after first-wave punks like the Viletones, the Diodes and the Ugly had set sonic fire to the streets of Toronto, post-punk embers were starting to waft towards the bedroom ... |
| Drastic Measures:
Drastic Measures - 1980
As a founding member of the Dishes, Toronto's mid-seventies art-pop icons, Tony Malone can certainly say he got into the punk/new wave scene on the ground floor. The band were regulars at the Beverl... |
| The Modernettes:
Teen City - 12" EP - 1980
The Modernettes were latecomers even to Vancouver's already unfashionably late punk scene, thus missing out on 1979's scene-defining com... |
| The Bureaucrats:
Feel the Pain / Grown Up Age - 7" - 1980
For would-be punks, late seventies Ottawa was a bit of a dead zone until the Rotters Club opened its doors on Bank Street. But with bands like the Action already creating a bit of a fuss with their... |
| Crash Kills Five:
What Do You Want Me to Do - 7" - 1980
Taking their name from a local newspaper headline, Toronto-based Crash Kills Five got their start in 1980 when transplanted Calgarian Reid Diamond hooked up with singer Don Pyle, leading to the releas... |
| Martha and the Muffins:
Echo Beach / Teddy the Dink - 7" - 1980
It was 1977 and Ontario College of Art students David Millar and Mark Gane had the idea of putting a band together. The two guitarists recruited singer Martha Johnson, who was already a bit of a fix... |
| John Paul Young:
The Life of Ermie Scub - 1980
After founding Toronto-based punk(ish) band Cardboard Brains back in 1976, and leading them through a pair of swell EPs (the frankly formula... |
| Null Set:
New Job - 12" EP - 1980
Null Set recorded their only EP under the auspices of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design between October and November, 1980. The four (Chris Cooper, Ron Dickie, Allan Scarth and Heather Ferg... |
| D.O.A.:
Something Better Change - 1980
By December 1979, the twin punk explosions in New York and London had long given way to the more cerebral no wave and post-punk movements. Vancouver's D.O.A., though, had stuck to their guns, firin... |
| Hi-Fi's:
I Don't Know Why (You Love Me) / Look What You've Done - 7" - 1980
Blue Rodeo's Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor can trace their friendship all the way back to high school at North Toronto Collegiate, but it wasn't until the two had finished university that the idea of fo... |
| UJ3RK5:
UJ3RK5 - 12" EP - 1980
UJ3RK5 may well have been the quintessential nerdy art school band of the punk era. Where most acts back then were filled with the usual poseurs, undergrads and hangers-on, UJ3RK5's roster w... |
| Easy Money:
Standing in Your Shadow / No Stranger to Danger - 7" - 1980
Linda McRae is probably best known for her stint with Canadian folk-rockers Spirit of the West, but in a much earlier incarnation as Linda Humphries, she once plucked bass strings for B.C. power pop... |
| Rot n' Role:
(various artists) - 1980
Like any provincial city worthy of that distinction, Ottawa in the late seventies had its own version of the mods and rockers clashes. When Stuart Smith and Carl Scultz opened the city's first punk... |
| BB Gabor:
BB Gabor - 1980
BB Gabor (real name Gabor Hegedus) was an outstanding musician and singer/songwriter who was part of Toronto's new wave scene in the late seventies and early eighties. Gabor was Hungarian by birth, ... |
| The Kings:
This Beat Goes On / Switchin' to Glide - 7" - 1980
The Kings got their start in the late seventies when Oakville (ON) native Mister Zero (ne John Picard) met up with keyboardist Sonny Keyes while they were living in Vancouver. The pair began composi... |
| BB Gabor:
Nyet Nyet Soviet (Soviet Jewellery) / Moscow Drug Club - 7" - 1980
"Nyet nyet Soviet, Soviet jewellery
I say no no no no no no no no no - they shouted 'Yes!'
And snapped the Soviet jewellery around my wrists."
BB Gabor's 'Nyet Nyet Sovi... |
| Martha and the Muffins:
Insect Love / Suburban Dream - 7" - 1979
By the time of their debut single, the self-released Insect Love / Suburban Dream, Marthas Johnson and Ladly and company were busy elbowing their way onto the more punk-friendly Queen Street ... |
| The Government:
33 1/3 RPM EP - 7" - 1979
The Ramones played two nights at the New Yorker Theatre in September '76 and, as local legend has it, almost single-handedly launched the Toronto punk scene. But that was only half the story. The othe... |
| The B Girls:
Fun at the Beach / B Side - 7" - 1979
The B Girls were a product of the relentlessly forward-looking Toronto of the 1970s, a time when the city would see its homely Victorian charm ruthlessly bulldozed and supplanted by a sleek antiseptic... |
| The Young Canadians:
Hawaii EP - 12" - 1979
The Young Canadians emerged in 1979 alongside D.O.A., the Pointed Sticks, the Dishrags, and the Subhumans in that enormously - if somewhat belatedly - fecund Vancouver punk scene. Born the K-Tels in ... |
| Vancouver Complication:
(various artists) - 1979
By the very late seventies, punk was starting to infiltrate the milk-fed hinterlands of this continent, and no self-respecting scene was complete without a compilation of its own motley assortment of ... |
| The K-Tels:
Automan EP - 7" - 1979
In their infancy the K-Tels were prized in the nascent Vancouver scene for their fiery and frenetic punk, with the cranky 'I Hate Music' finding its way onto the excellent comp ... |
| Active Dog:
Rat Race / Good Filthy Fun - 7" - 1979
Like a fiery comet, Active Dog was a short-lived affair, setting ablaze the nascent Vancouver punk scene for less than two years in 1978 and 1979. Formed out of the embers of psychedelic jam band Ste... |
| The Demics:
Talk's Cheap - 12" EP - 1979
By the fall of 1977, sleepy London, Ontario had already played host to Eddie and the Hot Rods for a notorious three-night stand and was experiencing its own nascent punk scene when transplanted Manc... |
| The Dishrags:
Past is Past - 7" EP - 1979
One of the first post-Runaways girl groups, the Dishrags were there almost from the start, forming as 15-year-olds in Victoria, B.C. in 1977 and then hopping across the Georgia Strait to become a pa... |
| Gordie Uranus and the Universe:
Fear of the Night / It's Only Urgent - 7" - 1979
As further evidence that the dustbin of rock is indeed a bottomless pit, there is this potent little double-sider from Gordie Uranus and the Universe. The band was from Ottawa, a relatively punk-fr... |
| The Government:
Electric Eye - 1979
Nineteen seventy-nine was a fruitful year for the Government, one that included a couple of seven-inch records, the rougher-he... |
| The Government:
Hemingway (Hated Disco Music) / I Only Drive My Car at Night - 7" - 1979
The year 1979 was a productive one for Toronto's top post-punk act. The Government catapulted Canada out of punk and into the quirkier, experimental world of post-punk, releasing this single, the f... |
| The Payolas:
China Boys / Make Some Noise - 7" - 1979
Those who associate the Payolas with their ur-wanker eighties hit 'Eyes of a Stranger' forget that the Vancouver outfit once enjoyed a decidedly hipper cachet thanks to their first single, the fetch... |
| The Fits:
Bored of Education 7" EP - 1979
The Fits were perennial outsiders in Toronto's late-seventies punk scene. Their lone 1979 seven-inch arrived in the shops unfashionably late and the band themselves looked...well...unfashionably un-... |
| Bombers:
Bombers 2 - 1979
Bombers' first album may have been the better of their two LPs, especially for component stereo heads back in the day who hankered for silky synths and fatback gro... |
| The Subhumans:
The Subhumans EP - 12" - 1979
No place in North America took punk more seriously than Vancouver. Anyone who has spent time in that west coast city knows full well the political anger that seethes beneath the picture-postcard vi... |
| The Wayouts:
The Wayouts EP -7" - 1979
Though it was often well ahead of the Canadian curve, the Toronto punk scene, it must be said, was also crawling with petty criminals and brainless thugs. It was precisely such an environment that ... |
| Bunny and the Lakers:
Numbers - 1979
"The most perfect noise and melody I had ever heard."
That is how Fifth Column's Carolyn Azar once described Bunny and the Lakers' weirdly iconoclastic LP Numbers. Never heard ... |
| Henri-Pierre Noel:
Piano - 1979
By rights you shouldn't be reading this review. And the few remaining copies of Henri-Pierre Noel's Piano should be in their rightful place, languishing as it were in the dusty corners of so... |
| Pointed Sticks:
What Do You Want Me to Do? b/w Somebody's Mom - 7" - 1978
When they recorded this punchy seven-inch, Vancouver's Pointed Sticks were still more than a year away from cementing their reputation nationally for sprightly, effervescent new wave on their lone 198... |
| D.O.A.:
The Prisoner / 13 - 7" - 1978
Vancouver's D.O.A. were out of the gates early, releasing a pair of seven-inchers by the end of 1978, this after having spent the previous year toiling about Toronto's own nascent punk scene as the Sk... |
| The Diodes:
Tired of Waking Up Tired / Child Star - 7" - 1978
In a perfect world the Diodes would have had a couple of top-10 hits, a few world tours and a best-of compilation stocked in the front racks of HMV shops. Unfortunately, Canada in the late seventie... |
| Bombers:
Bombers - 1978
Two of Montreal's better-known producers in the seventies, George Lagios and Pat Deserio, were behind the disco-funk studio band Bombers. Both were veterans of that city's thriving pop/disco scene,... |
| The Red Squares:
Ottawa Today / Transmitter - 7" - 1978
Ottawa bands like the Red Squares and the Bureaucrats were forever doomed to play second fiddle to Paul Fenton's the Action, whose pogo-friendly scorch... |
| The Curse:
Shoeshine Boy / The Killer Bees - 7" - 1978
Ostensibly Canada's first female punk band (with challenges to that throne by the B-Girls and the Dishrags), Toronto's Curse were there right from the get-go, slotted to open for the Tools on a canc... |
| The Mods:
Step Out Tonight b/w You Use Me - 7" - 1978
The Mods - Greg Trinier (vocals), Scott Marks (guitar), Mark Dixon (bass) and David Quinton (drums) - were one of Toronto's leading power-pop/punk bands of the late 70s. As well as headlining at clu... |
| Teenage Head:
Picture My Face / Tearin' Me Apart - 7" - 1978
In the spring of 1977, when Frankie Venom (ne Kerr), Gordie Lewis, Steve Mahon and Nick Stipanitz, all long-haired rockers from nearby gritty Hamilton, managed to talk their way into a gig at Toront... |
| The Ugly:
Stranded in the Laneway (of Love) / To Have Some Fun - 7" - 1978
Though barely a footnote in the Toronto punk scene, the tragedy of leader/singer Mike Nightmare and his band the Ugly is hands down one of the most fascinating stories in the entire annals of popula... |
| The 222s:
I Love Suzan/ The First Studio Bomb - 7" - 1978
Though it was still the largest and most cosmopolitan city in Canada, Montreal in the late seventies was notoriously indifferent to the sounds of new wave and punk. While scenes in Toronto, Vancouv... |
| Nina Dunn:
If You Want My Love (Do It) / Stay and Dance - 7" - 1978
This amazing double-sider is a holy grail of sorts for modern soul diggers, fetching upwards of 700 bucks a pop for those lucky enough to score a copy. The plucky Nina Dunn and her disco/soul stunne... |
| Paradise Frame:
Paradise Frame - 1978
Paradise Frame's self-titled cosmic disco LP is a holy grail of sorts for collectors of the genre. Tracking down one of the few copies of this rare gem will set you back a good two or three hundred ... |
| Simply Saucer:
She's A Dog / I Can Change My Mind - 7" - 1978
Punk rock turned out to be a saviour of sorts for Simply Saucer.
After three-odd years of equal parts practising and partying with the occasional gig thrown in for good measure, the... |
| FM:
Phasors on Stun / Slaughter in Robot Village - 7" - 1978
FM formed in Toronto in 1976. The first version was a duo featuring Cameron Hawkins (keyboards, bass guitar and vocals) and Jeff Plewman (violin, mandolin, vocals), better known by his stage name of... |
| Cardboard Brains:
Cardboard Brains 77 EP - 7" - 1977
For John Paul Young, Toronto's 1977 summer of punk was an amazing time.
"It was a revolution," the actor-turned-singer told CM. "I was living on top of a film lab on Alexander Street ... |
| The Poles:
CN Tower / Prime Time - 7" - 1977
Toronto artist Michaele Jordana Berman's first fifteen minutes of fame came in 1976 after her solo exhibition of hyper-realist paintings depicting the slaughter of whales (Oceans of Blood) stru... |
| The Viletones:
Screamin Fist EP - 7" - 1977
"The Viletones are not a group of musicians, they are a spectacle."
That is how Globe and Mail scribe Paul McGrath described Toronto's most infamous punk band the day after their debu... |
| The Action:
TV's on the Blink - 12" EP - 1977
The Action were Ottawa's first punk band, and quite possibly Canada's first outside Toronto for that matter.
The group actually trace their roots back to the proto-punk days of 1976,... |
| Amerigo Maras and Bruce Eves:
Raw / War - 7" - 1977
Easily the rarest punk artifact to come out of Canada, the 'Raw' / 'War' seven-inch was the brainchild of Toronto conceptual artists Amerigo Maras and Bruce Eves, who founded the Centre for E... |
| Kebekelektrik:
Kebekelektrik - 1977
The Italian-born Pat Deserio was just seven years old when he left the tiny village of Montelongo and landed with his family in a teeming, vibrant Montreal. It wouldn't take long for the newly arr... |
| Dogs of War:
Dogs of War - 1977
Back in the seventies, Montreal's vibrant disco scene mirrored New York's in many ways, but particularly so in the sheer number of guys of Italian origin who hustled their way onto the scene, spinni... |
| The Diodes:
Red Rubber Ball / We're Ripped - 7" - 1977
When the Ramones visited Toronto in September 1976 to play a couple of shows at a small theatre on Yonge Street, legend has it that everyone in attendance went on to form their own punk band. There... |
| T.H.P. Orchestra:
Two Hot for Love - 1977
Montreal may have been the hands-down disco capital of Canada - "the second most important disco market on the continent, outside New York," according to Billboard at the time - but Toronto also had... |
| The Dishes:
Fashion Plates EP - 7" - 1977
"They play to West Side Story with the sound turned off, lip-synch to Gary Lewis and the Playboys and dress like civil servants."
That is how the Vancouver Province once described the... |
| Montreal Sound:
Music - 12" - 1977
Montreal has always been a party town. But during the seventies, when disco was all the rage, its club scene was on fire and nearly rivalled that of New York City. Ground zero was the Lime Light.
<... |
| Dixie Lee Innes:
Watch Me Fly / Just a Little Love - 7" - 1977
Most people around the world will remember the Original Caste as the one-hit wonders behind the topical sing-songy hit 'One Tin Soldier', a top-ten single u... |
| Sloche:
Stadacone - 1976
After the spacy prog-fusion of their superb debut J'un Oeil the previous year, Sloche eased up a notch on the controls on their follow-up. The Quebec City-... |
| Lougarou:
Lougarou - 1976
Franco-Ontarians Marc and Michel Lalonde formed the nucleus of Lougarou while working as part of a theatre troupe in Prince Edward Island in 1974. The brothers picked up guitarist George Antoniak, ... |
| Boule Noire:
Aimes-tu la vie comme moi? / Kiki d'Hollywood - 7" - 1976
Before succumbing to colon cancer in 2007, Georges Thurston had enjoyed a storied career in Quebec's oft-ignored disco\r'n'b scene, first as leader of bands like les Zinconnus and the 25th Regiment,... |
| Dionne-Bregent:
...Et le Troisieme Jour - 1976
Michel-Georges Bregent and Vincent Dionne never quite broke the sort of ground that, say, John Mills-Cockell did with his bands Interystems and Syrinx, but the Quebec duo's synth-prog opus, 1976's <... |
| Bill Amesbury:
Can You Feel It / Jessi - 7" - 1976
The man most remembered for his 1974 AM hit 'Virginia (Touch Me Like You Do)' was much more than just a one-hit wonder...and, as it later turned out, more than just a man. His talents were i... |
| Norris Vines and the Luvlines:
Give In / Feel the Warm - 7" - 1976
Here is a vinyl dweeb's enigma if ever there was one. Norris Vines and the Luvlines' honey-dripping floor-filler must easily be the Canadian holy grail for modern soul collectors, but with the deart... |
| T.H.P. Orchestra:
Theme from S.W.A.T. (Part 1) / Theme from S.W.A.T. (Part 2) - 7" - 1976
In 1979 Billboard magazine dubbed Montreal "the second most important disco market on the continent, outside New York." And while disco-obsessives will hardly dispute that fact these days, the more... |
| Coyote:
Never Want To Leave You / Just Want Your Love - 7" - 1976
Reaching that elusive brass ring of commercial success can be one of the most frustrating aspects of the music business for many talented artists. While it may seem to casual observers that having a... |
| Fraser MacPherson:
Live at the Planetarium - 1976
Live at the Planetarium was Fraser MacPherson's first small group album as a leader. It is a trio recording featuring guitarist Oliver Gannon and bassist Wyatt Ruther. The Irish-born Gannon m... |
| Biggy Twiggy Band:
Mama Won't Let You b/w I Don't Want That to Change - 7" - 1975
Singer and bandleader Skip Pollard moved to Calgary in 1971 and formed the Biggy Twiggy Band to tour between Thunder Bay and Vancouver. This undiscovered gem, the band's lone seven-inch, was record... |
| Harmonium:
Si On Avait Besoin d'une Cinquieme Saison - 1975
After the sunny textures of their debut LP, Montreal's Harmonium flirted with the complexities of prog on the follow-u... |
| Sloche:
J'un Oeil - 1975
The upper reaches of the St. Lawrence River may be about as far away geographically and culturally from the traditional anglo centres of rock as one can get. And yet in the seventies prog rock flowe... |
| Morse Code:
La Marche des Hommes - 1975
Politicos and pundits trying to prove Quebec's distinct society status might want to look into popular music to prove their case. Exhibit one would have to be the plethora of prog rock that thrived... |
| Major Hoople's Boarding House:
I'm Running After You / Questions in Mind - 7" - 1975
Rocky Howell, Peter Padalino and Rick Riddell formed the Shan-de-leers as high school buddies at Galt Collegiate Institute in 1967 in what is now Cambridge, Ontario. But with the addition of singer... |
| Carla Whitney:
Carla Whitney (with Choker Campbell and the Super Sounds) - 1975
Choker Campbell had his fingers in many pies. In the 1950s, the Mississippi-born, Michigan-raised saxophonist toured with a host of Atlantic acts, like Joe Turner, Billy Ward and his Dominoes and t... |
| Basic Black and Pearl:
White Christmas / Right On Baby - 7" - 1975
Basic Black and Pearl recorded their first seven-inch for Leon Aronson's Montreal-based WAM label in 1975. The contemporary soul ... |
| Lewis Furey:
Lewis Furey - 1975
Though almost as obscure in the seventies as he is forgotten today, Lewis Furey at one point published poetry in Andy Warhol's Interview magazine, collaborated on soundtracks with the likes o... |
| Basic Black and Pearl:
There'll Come a Time, There'll Come a Day / He's a Rebel - 7" - 1975
Though it may seem that she was born to sing or that singing was in her blood or some other overused platitude, in Sharon Lee Williams' case, it would be a lie. "I wanted to act or be a fashion des... |
| Rothadam:
Rebel / Contention - 7" - 1975
Errol Gayle was one of the many Jamaicans who immigrated to Canada in the 1970s. That unlikely wave of islanders brought with them some damn fine cooking skills, a near-obsessive love of music and, ... |
| Bob Carpenter:
Silent Passage - 1975
Guitarist Bob Carpenter was a Canadian folk singer and songwriter active in the early 1970s. Carpenter was born and raised in the North Bay area of Ontario but is generally associated with the West... |
| Black & Ward:
Back Up (Against Your Persuasion) / This Is My Confusion - 7" - 1975
Terry Black's teen idol days have fallen more than a few rungs down the Canrock history ladder these days. His 'Unless You Care' from the summer of '64 was a catchy slab of Beatlesque pop wri... |
| Beau Dommage:
Beau Dommage - 1974
An offshoot of UQAM* performance art ensemble La Quenouille Bleu, Quebecois folk-rockers Beau Dommage began to take shape when songwriter Pierre Huet and guitarist Michel Rivard were joined by bassist... |
| Harmonium:
Harmonium - 1974
The seeds of Montreal prog-folk icons Harmonium began to take root in 1972 when guitarists Serge Fiori and Michel Normandeau met up in the Montreal theatre community, with bassist Louis Valois joining... |
| John Mills-Cockell:
A Third Testament - 1974
After a stint in the avant-garde mixed media project Intersystems in 1968 and forays into the rock forum the following year with the Kensington Market in Toronto and the lesser-known Hydro Electric St... |
| Huckle:
Upon a Once Time - 1974
The singer-songwriter known as Huckle (ne Kelly Cavanagh) was raised in Montreal and Toronto, but by 1973 the self-described freak ("...we didn't call ourselves hippies then - we were freaks") had s... |
| Shawne Jackson:
Just As Bad As You / He May Be Your Man - 7" - 1974
Shawne Jackson's 'Just As Bad As You' is a reminder of just how much fun it was to listen to AM radio back in the early seventies. The effervescent pop/r'n'b crossover smash boogied its way u... |
| Debbie Fleming:
Long Gone / All About You - 7" - 1974
Debbie Fleming grew up in the spanking new Toronto suburb of Etobicoke, a massive post-war construction site of winding streets, single family dwellings and crisp, modern apartment blocks. It was t... |
| Jeff Moore and Friends:
The Youngest Son - 1974
"At sixteen anything seemed possible."
Jeff Moore wrote that about an ambitious high school project of his that by rights should have ended up in the dumpsters but instead turned o... |
| Harmonium:
Pour un Instant / 100,000 Raisons - 7" - 1974
Serge Fiori honed his chops as a teenager filling in for musicians in his dad's 25-piece ballroom orchestra. It was there that the budding guitarist got his first whiff of rock 'n' roll stardom. "... |
| Bachman-Turner Overdrive:
Takin' Care of Business / Stonegates - 7" - 1974
Randy Bachman quit the Guess Who in May of 1970, just as 'American Woman' was topping the charts on both sides of the 49th. The strait-laced Bachman was at constant odds with his hard-partyi... |
| Lisle:
Smile with Lisle - 1974
Lisle was the name of a trio of young men from Simcoe County, just to the north of Toronto, who came to prominence in the early 1970s. Bill Chambers was the guitarist and lead singer, Brian Matthias... |
| Andy Kim:
Rock Me Gently / Rock Me Gently Part II - 7" - 1974
"You're only as good as your last two minutes and thirty seconds."
Those were words that Andy Kim had first heard while working as an assembly-line songwriter at the Brill Building in... |
| Madeleine Chartrand:
Ani-Kuni / Ca tourne en rond - 7" - 1973
Despite the attitude in its title, Madeleine Chartrand's first record, 1971's 'Ah! Comme on s'ennuie', was a rather feeble attempt at chanson that ended up sounding more boring than bored. B... |
| Bregent:
Poussiere Des Regrets - 1973
Montreal keyboardist Michel-Georges Bregent spent the latter part of the sixties at the prestigious Conservatoire de musique du Quebec a Montreal mastering a bevy of instruments from piano and organ... |
| Abraham's Children:
Time - 1973
Jimi Bertucci was just one of the many Canadian musicians who trace their roots back across the pond to Italy. Like fellow Torontonian and Mandala guitar wizard Domenic Troiano, along with Montreal... |
| Greg Mittler:
Hey Miss Maybe / I Will Take You Home - 7" - 1973
Google may know everything about you or me, but that mind-boggling algorithm gives up very little on the mysterious Greg Mittler and his long-lost 'Hey Miss Maybe' seven-inch. What we do kno... |
| Rush:
Not Fade Away / You Can't Fight It - 7" - 1973
Studious followers of all things Rush know that the band who championed the working stiff in their gloriously blue-collar 'Working Man' paid some serious dues of their own. Guitarist Alex Lifeson h... |
| Lee Hurst:
Whole Lotta Your Love / Saturday's Wild - 7" - 1973
When soul singer Lee Hurst first approached Merv Buchanan, it wasn't just Hurst's silky smooth voice that caught the producer's attention. "At the time, Lee looked like a pimp," he told CM. "He ha... |
| George Olliver:
I May Never Get to See You Again / Shine - 7" - 1973
George Olliver's stage show was the stuff of legend back in the day. The Mandala frontman was a soul dynamo whose frenetic, sweat-filled sets held his teenage audiences in a grip that few could matc... |
| Misty Fire:
Cries of a Gambler / Who I Am - 7" - 1973
The pride of New Brunswick back in the early seventies must surely have been Misty Fire, five lads from the Saint-Paul de Kent area whose lone seven-inch is a rather rare little nugget in the world ... |
| Scrubbaloe Caine:
Round One - 1973
One of the more entertaining groups that hailed from Canada during the early 1970s was an eclectic band of musicians who called themselves Scrubbaloe Caine. They arrived at a time when the Canadian ... |
| Copper Penny:
Sitting on a Poor Man's Throne / Bad Manners - 7" - 1973
Anyone who listened to Copper Penny's top-twenty single 'Sitting on a Poor Man's Throne' back in the early seventies would have been forgiven for thinking it was the work of some gritty urban... |
| Catseye:
Catseye - 1973
Everyone loves to boast about their greatest record finds. It might be an album you picked up while digging through a thrift shop for a few cents that is worth hundreds, or if you’re lucky thousands... |
| Skylark:
Wildflower / The Writing's on the Wall - 7" - 1973
After all these years, the name Skylark is hardly what you would call a household name. But the BC group's top-ten single, 'Wildflower', with its tear-jerking opening line of "She's faced the... |
| Gary and Dave:
Could You Ever Love Me Again / Where Do We Go from Here - 7" - 1973
"There's a certain magic that happens and it never ceases to amaze me. Why is something just so right and why does it become so successful?"
Greg Hambleton could have been talking abo... |
| Ian Thomas:
Painted Ladies / Will You Still Love Me - 7" - 1973
"Ooh-ooh, feelin' fine mama / Painted ladies and a bottle of wine mama / Ooh-ooh, feelin' good mama / They took my money like I knew they would."
Ian Thomas' 'Painted Ladies' ... |
| Horn:
On the People's Side - 1972
Largely forgotten, even among the crate-diggers, Horn was a Toronto jazz/rock outfit that seems to have fallen off the musical map even though the band contained drummer Bill Bryans (M.G. and the Es... |
| Roger Rodier:
Upon Velveatur - 1972
Roger Rodier was originally a member of the Mike Jones Group, whose 'Funny Feeling', the b-side of their only single (Jet Records 1967), seems to have struck a cho... |
| Franck Dervieux:
Dimension M - 1972
Franck Dervieux manned the keyboards on some of Jean-Pierre Ferland's earlier works, but by 1972 the gifted pianist had decided to strike out on his own. For Dimension M, Dervieux assembled ... |
| Contraction:
Contraction - 1972
Franck Dervieux's 1972 LP Dimension M is an archeological missing link of sorts in Quebec, managing as it did to bridge the waning world of psychedelia with... |
| Peloquin Sauvageau :
Laissez-Nous Vous Embrasser Ou Vous Avez Mal - 1972
"We were not political. We were planetary. We were beyond the revolution."
That is how the Quebecois poet/provocateur Claude Peloquin described the chaotic, multi-media events that ... |
| Warpig:
Warpig - 1972
The sixties ended abruptly and ceremoniously - in southwestern Ontario at least - on February 2nd, 1969, when Led Zeppelin made their Canadian debut at Toronto's venerable Rock Pile on Yonge Street.... |
| Long Time Comin':
Part of the Season / Funny - 7" - 1972
Stan Cayer started up his SGM label almost by accident. The budding rocker had written a few songs and had decided to make the long drive from Vancouver down to Nashville with a thousand bucks in h... |
| Jackie Mittoo:
Wishbone - 1972
By the time Jackie Mittoo set foot in Toronto in 1968, his future Wikipedia entry would have already been half-written. The young Jamaican, former Skatalite and child piano prodigy had virtually in... |
| Next:
Dusty Shoes - 1972
Listening to Next's Dusty Shoes, one has to wonder how such a hard-driving record - recorded in a professional studio and issued on a major label - could have fallen so deeply down the well o... |
| Edward Bear:
Last Song / Best Friend - 7" - 1972
Unrequited love. There is no greater source of inspiration in pop music. For Larry Evoy, that force was powerful, and as it turns out, quite real.
"That one girl...I don't know how m... |
| Charlee:
Charlee - 1972
"I always used to get the same bullshit story that I should write commercial songs and that I looked too much like a Hell's Angel."
Walter Rossi spoke the way he played guitar: he was... |
| Bob Boyer:
Look What You’ve Done for Me / We Got the Power - 7" - 1972
Bobby Boyer may be the farthest thing from a household name these days, and this obscure single is probably of interest to soul completists only. But he was once one-half of a pioneering rap duo kno... |
| The Magic Bubble:
The Magic Bubble - 1971
Toronto's Yonge Street by the late sixties was a cauldron of blistering soul and scorching rhythm & blues, a fire no doubt lit years before by the likes of the young David Clayton-Thomas and his mento... |
| Mashmakhan:
The Family - 1971
By 1971, with a massive-selling, self-titled debut (half a million copies stateside) under their belts, Mashmakhan had dived headfirst into the heavy blues/jazz currents fashionable at the time. Unfo... |
| Lighthouse:
One Fine Morning - 1971
Until the release of their best-selling One Fine Morning LP, Lighthouse was clinging tenuously to brass rock's second rung, behind Blood, Sweat and Tears, the Electric Flag and the Chicago Tran... |
| Syrinx:
Long Lost Relatives - 1971
After the spacy textures of their groundbreaking debut, Syrinx (the trio of John Mills-Cockell, Doug Pringle and Alan Wells) set about exploring the possibilities o... |
| Jean-Pierre Ferland:
Soleil - 1971
After the release of the best-selling LP Jaune the previous year, Quebecois chansonnier Jean-Pierre Ferland followed up with a sprawling double-vinyl effort. Soleil, like its predece... |
| Fear:
Wildwoodin' / Ace - 7" - 1971
This stormer of a seven-inch dropped off the radar years ago, with barely a mention of it anywhere out in cyberland. What gives? The Concept label was run by former Trend honcho Merv Buchanan afte... |
| David Wiffen:
David Wiffen - 1971
His songs have been covered by the likes of Rumer, the Cowboy Junkies, the Black Crows, the Jayhawks, Roger McGuinn, Harry Belafonte, Tom Rush, Ian and Sylvia Tyson and Jerry Jeff Walker. Yet despit... |
| The Band:
Life Is a Carnival / The Moon Struck One - 7" - 1971
By the tail end of 1970, the Band were pretty well sitting on top of the world. In just a few short years, they had managed to place three albums (Music from Big Pink, The Band and |
| Dionysos:
Le Grand Jeu - 1971
Montreal was still the largest and most happening city in Canada at the end of the 1960s. Toronto may have gotten all the press with its burgeoning scene in Yorkville, but a movement of a different... |
| Pagliaro:
Lovin' You Ain't Easy / She Moves Light - 7" - 1971
"At one time, it was believed that Michel Pagliaro would become an international rock star," Quebec journalist Helene de Billy once wrote. "Then he disappeared, long enough to become a true artist.... |
| Wishbone:
You're Gonna Miss Me / Riverboat - 7" - 1971
YouTube must be getting slack these days. When I clicked on Wishbone's 1971 hit 'You're Gonna Miss Me', there was not a single reference to the Grass Roots in the Suggestions sidebar. That ... |
| Beverly Glenn-Copeland:
Beverly Glenn-Copeland - 1971
Beverly Glenn-Copeland's life was certainly not without its struggles - he was born a black female and now lives as a transgendered man. But what really stands out is the huge role that music playe... |
| Syrinx:
Tillicum / Melina's Torch - 7" - 1971
Like many a teenager back in the fifties and sixties, John Mills-Cockell was hit with that proverbial epiphany, the one where you realize that music is all you want to do in life.
Ex... |
| Smyle:
Glory Glory / Will I Get Back Home Tomorrow - 7" - 1971
The Smile came together around 1967 in Burlington (ON), a bedroom community just to the east of Hamilton. Under the tutelage of Herb Lock, the four - singer/guitarist Ron Demmans, guitarist Ray Durr... |
| Uproar:
Different Drummer / Look Who We Are - 7" - 1971
Uproar formed in Vancouver in 1970 and included a couple of local alumni, Jeff Ridley (United Empire Loyalists) and Glen Hendrickson (Mock Duck, United Empire Loyalists). 'Different Drum' is ... |
| Soma:
Train / Welcome Love - 7" - 1971
Soma were formed in 1969 by former Stitch in Tyme keyboardist Bob Murphy after his return from Toronto to the East Coast. There, Murphy switched to rhythm guitar and took on a host of musicians incl... |
| Morse Code Transmission:
Morse Code Transmission - 1971
"Where have Christian, Jocelyn, Michel and Raymond been hiding?"
That was the reaction of CKOC (Hamilton) music director Nevin Grant upon hearing the debut album by four francophones... |
| The Hitchikers Featuring the Mighty Pope:
Mr. Fortune / I May Have Been a Fool - 7" - 1971
"I came in December. Now I've never seen snow, and just the darkness. I was totally depressed for months, you know, I wanted to go home."
Earle Heedram was in shock when he arrived in... |
| It's All Meat:
It's All Meat - 1970
Despite those crotch-grabbing allusions, not to mention nods to the Animals song of the same name, It's All Meat actually took their name from a 1960s dog food commercial extolling the virtues of it... |
| Mashmakhan:
As the Years Go By / Days When We Are Free - 7" - 1970
"It was like we were the Beatles or something," Jerry Mercer would tell former deejay Rick Keene about the time Mashmakhan landed in Japan on the heels of their single, 'As the Years Go By'. ... |
| Syrinx:
Syrinx - 1970
The birth pangs of electronic pop music were often tentative affairs. Bands like the Fifty Foot Hose and the Silver Apples had to absorb such obtuse luminaries as Karlheinz Stockhausen or Morton Sub... |
| The Souls of Inspyration:
The Souls of Inspyration - 1970
From Red Lake, Ontario, near the Manitoba border, these soft-psych rockers made the requisite bar slog all across Central Canada before deciding to set up shop in, of all places, Sherbrooke, Quebec ... |
| Troyka:
Troyka - 1970
Troyka's discography is rather slim - just one LP and a single - but the group actually trace their origins back to the mid sixties and a band called the Royal Family. The quartet issued a couple of s... |
| Bruce Haack:
The Electric Lucifer - 1970
Isolation is often a recipe for madness. However, in the case of electronics pioneer Bruce Haack, a solitary childhood tucked away in the shadow of the Alberta Rockies merely stoked his knack for inv... |
| The Gainsborough Gallery:
Life Is a Song - 1970
There seems to have been plenty of sun in those early-seventies Calgary skies. For a brief period, the relatively tiny city - only 400,000 back then - was the sunshine-pop capital of Canada, fillin... |
| La Nouvelle Frontiere:
La Nouvelle Frontiere - 1970
From the eastern Montreal area of Pointe-aux-Trembles, La Nouvelle Frontiere formed in 1968 when the Seguin twins, Richard and Marie-Claire, met up with guitarist/songwriter Robert Letendre while perf... |
| Christmas:
Christmas - 1970
Formed in Oshawa, Ontario by guitarist Bob Bryden amid the ruins of psych-rock outfit Reign Ghost, whose two Allied Records releases fetch hefty sums in collectors' circles, Christmas initially record... |
| Motherlode:
When I Die - 1970
As an offshoot of the massive nine-piece Grant Smith and the Power, the four original members of Motherlode (guitarist Ken Marco, saxophonist Steve Kennedy, keyboardist William "Smitty" Smith, and ... |
| Happy Feeling:
Happy Feeling - 1970
This Calgary-based band would probably be even further buried in the sands of time if it weren't for the fact that they were produced by the great Norman Petty down at his famous studios in Clovis... |
| Windsor Tunnel:
Windsor Tunnel - 1970
For the Viscounts, a move from Amherst, Nova Scotia to the gritty Detroit area in 1966 - in this case to Windsor, Ontario on the Canuck side of things - proved to be just the thing Clayton Moore and... |
| L' Infonie:
Vol. 33 Mantra - 1970
Walter Boudreau's electronic/freak/jazz collective L'Infonie held sway over the burgeoning Montreal arts scene from 1967 until their demise in 1974, issuing four full-length LPs with the rather pros... |
| Life:
Life - 1970
Few people took notice when Montreal band Life's lone eponymous album slipped out on Polydor Records in the early part of 1970. Arguably one of the era's most obscure releases, this criminally overl... |
| Cheyenne Winter:
Second Thoughts / Sit Awhile - 7" - 1970
Cheyenne Winter were the first band to release a record on Randy Bachman's now long-forgotten Molten label, which the former Guess Who guitarist founded along with Wes Dakus. Bachman had seemed to b... |
| Rick Wilkins and the Mutual Understanding:
Christmas with Rick Wilkins and the Mutual Understanding - 1970
Having first wet his feet with local dance bands led by Jack Ryan and Gav Morton, the Hamilton (ON)-born saxophonist Rick Wilkins decided to make the move up the Q.E.W. to Toronto in 1957. It was t... |
| Luke and the Apostles:
You Make Me High / Not Far Off - 7" - 1970
As the story goes, Luke and the Apostles had been kicking around Yorkville for several years with limited success outside their home base in Toronto. Some excellent garage rock (the acerbic single ... |
| The Dorians:
Help for My Waiting / Means and Ways - 7" - 1970
Though the Dorians managed to get their records released all across Europe in the early seventies, they have been curiously excised from the annals of pop history, including in their hometown of Win... |
| Trevor Dandy:
Don't Cry Little Tree - 1970
Trevor Dandy's revelatory soul/gospel album Don't Cry Little Tree is about as close to the bottom of the dustbin as you can get.
A collaboration between the budding producer ... |
| Paul Baillargeon and Dean Morgan:
Viens, Mon Amour (Original Soundtrack) - 1970
While much of uptight English Canada - most specifically Ontario - was battling censor boards filled with aging, scissor-toting moralists parsing every inch of film entering the country, our French-... |
| Cat:
Solo Flight / We're All in This Together - 7" - 1970
Cat evolved out of a band called the Spasstiks, a Toronto-based combo who issued a criminally overlooked slab of blue-eyed soul call... |
| Someone:
Le Magicien / Selon le Bible - 7" - 1970
Someone issued two impossibly rare singles around the turn of the decade, 1969's 'Chante et danse avec moi' on Visa and this one the following year on the Canama imprint, which aside from bei... |
| Judy Singh:
A Time for Love - 1970
Judy Singh's A Time for Love is a deliciously rare recording that fetches upwards of $800 a pop in the high stakes world of record collecting. The little-known gem was recorded in Edmonton's... |
| Canada:
I Don't Believe / Coochy Coo - 7" - 1970
Clyde Harvey spent the bulk of his childhood in Tacoma, Washington, but after finishing high school the classically trained pianist made his way up the Cascadia coast to the equally cloudy skies of ... |
| Howie Vickers:
Uncle Wiggley / Come Away Melinda - 7" - 1970
Howie Vickers was a well-known figure throughout much of 1960s Vancouver, first as a member of the Classics, a group that appeared numerous times as the house band on CBC's popular Let's Go p... |
| The Guess Who:
American Woman - 1970
1969 was a very good year for the Guess Who, and the culmination of much hard work and dedication. By 1967 the group had established their classic lineup of Burton Cummings (lead vocals, keyboards),... |
| The Guess Who:
American Woman / No Sugar Tonight - 7" - 1970
The story of how 'American Woman' came about is now fairly well known. The Guess Who - singer/keyboardist Burton Cummings, guitarist Randy Bachman, bassist Jim Kale and drummer Garry Peterson... |
| Randy Bachman:
Axe - 1970
Over three days in March of 1970 (the 16th, 17th and the 18th) at RCA's Mid-America Recording Centre, Studio B, in Chicago, Randy Bachman recorded his first solo album. With tongue planted firmly in... |
| Tranquillity Base:
If You're Lookin' / Fun - 7" - 1970
Everyone of a certain vintage has memories of Ian Thomas' 1973 hit 'Painted Ladies', a song that spent a few weeks up in the single digits on the powerhouse... |
| The New Creation:
Troubled - 1970
"The devil has the best music."
That is how the New Creation's Chris Towers summed up the difficulties of fusing psychedelic rock music with Christian ideals. He and his deeply spiri... |
| Christmas:
Heritage - 1970
"I wanted to find the best players in Oshawa and put together a total no-compromise, original psych band."
Bob Bryden had the bar set as high as possible when he formed Christmas. The... |
| Illustration:
Upon the Earth / Our Love's a Chain - 7" - 1970
Though it probably peaked around 1969 or 1970, brass rock actually had a pretty good run, beginning with the Electric Flag's appearance at the Monterey International Pop Festival and stretching at l... |
| Oliver Klaus:
Oliver Klaus - 1970
The history books list Waterloo, a tiny town (pop. 4,410) in Quebec's Eastern Townships, as having once been a hotbed of anglo notables, like railway baron and parliamentarian E. B. Forster, and Joh... |
| The Robert E. Lee Brigade:
Far Enough - 1970
Though they managed to issue an entire album for Columbia Canada, not too much is known about the forgotten Robert E. Lee Brigade and that equally scarce LP.
The Toronto-based group... |
| Barbara Gryfe:
What the World Needs Now - 1970
Record execs usually sign artists based on three things: talent, charisma and marketability. But for the CBC's Jury Krytiuk, it took a few hot bagels and a good Jewish mother to ink the deal.
|
| The Robert E. Lee Brigade:
Merry-Go-Round / Certain Tears - 7" - 1970
Toronto's Robert E. Lee Brigade released one middling LP, Far Enough, in the latter part of 1970 and then pretty well disappeared from the pages of CanRock ... |
| The Original Caste:
Mr. Monday / Highway - 7" - 1970
By rights the Original Caste ought to have been a household name around the world for their topical 1969 single, 'One Tin Soldier'. That record, about two w... |
| Tobi Lark with Toronto Together:
We're All in This Together / Freedom Train - 7" - 1970
They jammed every nook and cranny of St. Paul's Church in Toronto that night in the summer of 1970. The motley group of 500 singers - "long hairs, short hairs, no hairs, suits, saris, shorts and jea... |
| The Poppy Family:
That's Where I Went Wrong / Shadows on My Wall - 7" - 1969
When 17-year-old Susan Pesklevits asked former Chessmen guitarist Terry Jacks to accompany her on CBC's mid-sixties TV show Music Hop, she probably had little idea of the great things to come... |
| The Churls:
Send Me No Flowers - 1969
The chord-crunching blues-rock on the Churls' self-titled debut was hardly a million-seller for A&M. Still, that didn't stop Herb Alpert from issuing a second set of songs for the lads the followin... |
| 49th Parallel:
The 49th Parallel - 1969
Calgary's torch bearers in the great sixties rock sweepstakes were 49th Parallel, whose 1969 chart success, 'Twilight Woman', garnered them a few deserved rays of limelight.
... |
| Shame Tree:
Junior Saw It Happen / My Little Buttercup - 7" - 1969
There is not a heck of a lot out there in cyberland on Edmonton's Shame Tree. It appears that the group was most probably a five-piece consisting of singer Ed Kilbride, guitarist Al Mix and keyboar... |
| The Lyme:
Measles / I'm Only Dreaming - 7" - 1969
The Lyme's only release, the superb double-sider 'Measles' b/w'I'm Only Dreaming', was purportedly the first stereo 45 released in Canada. And the record might even have scaled some local c... |
| La Revolution Francaise:
Quebecois / Shoo-Doo-Bee-Do - 7" - 1969
After quitting Les Sinners in October of 1968, singer Francois Guy teamed up with Les Jaguars guitarist Jean-Guy Cossette to form the ominously titled La Revolution Francaise. With one-time Sinners... |
| Bent Wind:
Sussex - 1969
Bent Wind's Sussex is phenomenally rare, with those few surviving copies fetching upwards of (USD)4000 bucks a pop.
Sussex traces its origins back to a drug-addled hous... |
| Five Man Electrical Band:
Five Man Electrical Band - 1969
With 1967 turning out to be a fruitful one for the Staccatos - their 'Half Past Midnight' had cracked the top ten in Canada - the band headed down to New Yo... |
| L' Infonie:
Vol. 3 - 1969
The Montreal-based electronic/free jazz/avant-garde collective L'Infonie formed in 1967 under the direction of Walter Boudreau and featured Quebecois singer/poet Raoul Duguay in his recording debut.... |
| Rockadrome:
Royal American 20th Century Blues - 1969
A near-mint copy of Rockadrome's lone 1969 LP will probably set you back at least a month's rent - and we're not talking a one-bedroom in up Wawa (ON), either. Recorded in the early months of 1969... |
| The British North-American Act:
In the Beginning... - 1969
The soft-psych sounds on the British North-American Act's 1969 LP In the Beginning... now fetch upwards of a thousand bucks a pop, though this must be due more to the record's obscurity than ... |
| David:
David - 1969
From the same label that gave us Rockadrome comes the six-man, one-woman David. Their sole album is one of those wonderful, flawed surprises from the era, an overreaching blend of orchestral pop wi... |
| Mother Tuckers Yellow Duck:
One Ring Jane / Kill the Pig - 7" - 1969
Though Toronto may have gotten all the press back in the day (try googling these: the Yorkville scene, the Festival Express, the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival), it seems that by the late sixties the... |
| The Stone Circus:
Stone Circus - 1969
The Stone Circus LP has long been one of the holy grails to collectors of the legendary Mainstream label, but so little is known about it that the misconceptions have grown along with its monetary v... |
| Cargo:
Front Side Back Side - 1969
Merv Buchanan originally started up his now-sought-after Trend label in 1965 in a crusty old studio out in the wilds of suburban east Toronto. The enterprising dee jay and producer half-flippantly ... |
| Cathy Young:
A Spoonful of Cathy Young - 1969
When local Diggers' David DePoe and Brian (Blues) Chapman organized the Queen's Park Love-In in May of 1967, the budding singer-songwriter Cathy Young was barely a busker on the streets of Toronto's... |
| Doomsday Machine:
Ain't Nobody Else (On My Mind) / Toe Nails - 7" - 1969
Doomsday Machine put out a couple of professionally recorded singles for the Dot label in 1969. The five-piece from Kingsville, just to the south of Windsor (ON), consisted of guitarist Jerry Alice... |
| Merryweather:
Merryweather - 1969
The mid-to-late 1960s California rock landscape was littered with Canadian expatriates jostling for a record deal and the allure of fame and fortune. By the end of the decade, Canadian musicians we... |
| Edward Bear:
Bearings - 1969
The group responsible for one of the seventies' most saccharine songs, the interminably sappy (though secretly pleasurable) 'Last Song', might have ended up... |
| The Village S.T.O.P.:
North Country / Vibration - 7" - 1969
If we are to believe guitarist Paul Marcoux, the Village S.T.O.P. were pretty much the cutting edge of Canadian freakdom back in the day.
The Hamilton quintet had just landed... |
| The Original Caste:
One Tin Soldier / Highway - 7" - 1969
As a child, Bruce Innes was something of a prodigy in his native Calgary, performing professionally at the tender age of eleven, with his father chauffeuring him to and from gigs and making sure tha... |
| The Five Bells:
Big City / Moody Manitoba Morning - 7" - 1969
Anyone alive in the early seventies will no doubt remember - and not necessarily fondly - the Bells' 'Stay Awhile', perhaps the most syrupy love ballad ever to ooze from all those transistor ... |
| Strange Movies:
(I Can) Feel It Coming / What a Drag - 7" - 1969
The origins of Strange Movies can actually be traced back to the mid-sixties and the sunny British Columbia interior. It was there that a couple of long-forgotten bands, Jimmy and the Rebounds and... |
| Suzanne:
Suzanne - 1969
Like many a teenaged Toronto musician in the mid-sixties, Greg Hambleton could be found in Yorkville making the scene in the clubs and cafes of that city's buzzing enclave. The would-be singer-songw... |
| Reign Ghost:
Reign Ghost - 1969
Bob Bryden was just twelve years old when his family shifted down the old Highway 7 from white-collar Ottawa to the gritty factory town of Oshawa, just outside Toronto. But after a brief spell of c... |
| Garry Garnette:
Have You Heard the News / Sick and Tired - 7" - 1969
Garry Garnette's 'Have You Heard the News' is about as tough to find as a record can get these days. Its silky supper club soul has found its way onto the UK dance floors and that of course ... |
| Sugar and Spice:
Cruel War / Not to Return - 7" - 1969
Sugar and Spice's 'Cruel War' was a cash cow of sorts for Frank Weiner and his tiny Franklin label. The Winnipeg band's hokey version of Peter Yarrow and Neil Stookey's love-in-a-time-of-war... |
| The Circle Widens:
See About Dreamin' / Weird Understanding - 7" - 1969
The Circle Widens' blistering b-side 'Weird Understanding' has been creating a bit of a stir amongst collectors of late. But what the cratediggers may not know is that the authors of that long-lost... |
| Le Triangle:
Deux miroirs / Les montagnes russes - 7" - 1969
Pierre Senecal, Rayburn Blake and Jerry Mercer had been kicking around the Montreal music scene since 1960, playing under various names like the Phantoms, Ray Blake's Combo and the Dominoes. By 1965... |
| The Trials of Jayson Hoover:
King Size / Baby I Love You - 7" - 1969
Unlike R&B-obsessed Toronto, Vancouver in the 1960s was more heavily affected by the electric sounds emanating out of northern California, with the Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Co... |
| The Paper Dream:
My Mind's Eye / She's No Good - 7" - 1969
Tiny Smiths Falls, Ontario (pop. 8,780) may not mean much to most of us, but to those music insiders of a certain vintage, it was home to the massive RCA record pressing plant. From 1953 until its ... |
| Marie Claude:
Un Peu Beaucoup / La Lecon D'anglais - 7" - 1969
A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Or something like that.
Marie Claude's lone seven-inch, the deliciously dreamy 'Un peu beaucoup', is about as obscure as a reco... |
| Rhinoceros:
Apricot Brandy / When You Say You're Sorry - 7" - 1969
Michael Fonfara is not exactly the first person to come to mind when you hear the word 'legendary'. Nor, I suppose, are many of the bands he played in, from Jon and Lee and the Checkmates and Rhinoc... |
| Eric Mercury:
Electric Black Man - 1969
When he passed away in March 2022, Eric Mercury was unknown outside of a tiny niche of hardcore Canuckophiles. There were few if any mentions in the international or the music press. But here in Can... |
| Dianne Brooks:
Walkin' on My Mind / Need to Belong - 7" - 1969
Dianne Brooks is probably the best Canadian singer you've never heard of.
Ray Charles called her "the greatest voice I've heard since Dinah Washington", while to The Toronto Star's Ja... |
| Buckstone Hardware:
Pack It In / You're Still Feelin' Better - 7" - 1969
Jake Thomas first picked up his brother's guitar while he was just a kid in North Bay (ON), and by the age of seventeen he was already on the road touring northern towns like Timmins and Rouyn-Noran... |
| Tony Kosinec:
Processes - 1969
Tony Kosinec may not exactly be a household name. But he is author of one of the most enduring songs in Canadian history: the 'Okay Blue Jays' song, co-written with Jack Lenz in the early eighties a... |
| The Sedum Shadows:
Thinking Away / Anatomy of a Shadow - 7" - 1969
'Thinking Away' was the third release on Merv Buchanan's tiny Trend label, mostly known to the outside world for having issued Bent Wind's mega-ra... |
| The Looking Glass:
Get It Down / Waterfall - 7" - 1969
The Looking Glass formed in the Niagara Peninsula in the spring of 1968, and it certainly didn't take long for their riveting live sets to get noticed.
"The Looking Glass, from St. C... |
| The Folklords:
Release the Sunshine - 1968
The Folklords were a sort of tripped-out We Five. In their brief existence, the Toronto band issued just one LP, the vaguely psychedelic Release the Sunshine, which for what it's worth seems t... |
| The Media:
Girl, I Want You / Endless Dream - 7" - 1968
A mint copy of this insanely obscure psych nugget would probably set you back a few thousand bucks if you managed to track one down. What little is known about the record comes from a YouTube post ... |
| Mandala:
You Got Me / Help Me - 7" - 1968
Toronto's Mandala started things off as the Rogues in early 1965 when singer George Olliver teamed up with former Robbie Lane and the Disciples guitar whiz kid Dominic Troiano. A couple of years spen... |
| The Underworld:
Bound b/w Go Away - 7" - 1968
Toronto's Underworld were a garage band managed by Jed MacKay (of It's All Meat) along with fellow Meatster Rick McKim. McKim's father was rather conveniently positio... |
| Mock Duck:
Do Re Mi / Playing Games - 7" - 1968
Guitarist Joe Mock got his start fronting the folky Joe Mock and No Commercial Potential, but by 1967 the blossoming Vancouver scene was already starting to attract some of the more talked-about Cal... |
| The Mutual Understanding:
In Wonderland - 1968
"Welcome to Wonderland - momentary abode of the Mutual Understanding - a happy moment in time where all can share in the magic of a mighty and cheerful sound. And meet the Mutual Understanding - as... |
| J.K. & Co.:
Suddenly One Summer - 1968
Until its reissue onto CD (Beatrocket, 2001), J.K. & Co.'s Suddenly One Summer was one of those impossibly rare records that seemed to find its way onto every collector's want list, but which f... |
| The Paupers:
Ellis Island - 1968
Following the tepid response to their 1967 debut LP Magic People, and the near-mythical meltdown at The Monterey Pop Festival that followed it, the Paupers ... |
| Kensington Market:
Avenue Road - 1968
A late night jam with the Lovin' Spoonful's Zal Yanofsky in 1967 would prove to be the big break for Toronto's Kensington Market.
As Nicholas Jennings tells it ... |
| Expedition to Earth:
Expedition to Earth / Time Time Time - 7" - 1968
On the Garage Hangover site, Expedition to Earth's Dan Norton recounts how the band took small-town Canada by surprise, in this case the booming metropolis of Canora, Saskatchewan (pop. 2200). "...... |
| Mandala:
Soul Crusade - 1968
After the success of their top-ten corker 'Opportunity', the Mandala seemed destined for opportunities of their own. Their manager Rafael Markowitz (aka Ra... |
| The Plastic Cloud:
The Plastic Cloud - 1968
In July of 1967, the Jefferson Airplane took up a week-long residence at the massive O'Keefe Centre in Toronto. They followed that up with an additional free concert in the sun-drenched and still ne... |
| The Adanac Reply:
What Would It Be Like? / The Other One - 7" - 1968
Guitarist Thom Nelson originally formed the Nocturns in Calgary in the early sixties, and like many a budding rock star at the time, plied a Shadows-influenced brand of instrumental rock and roll. ... |
| The Rabble:
Give Us Back Elaine! - 1968
The Rabble, a criminally obscure assortment of hippies from Montreal's western suburbs, were riding a wave of popularity in 1968 after having scored locally with their fetchi... |
| Evolution Expantion:
Blow Up / Blues Finding - 7" - 1968
The orthographically challenged Evolution Expantion unleashed this devilishly rare seven-inch on Art Young's hip Montreal-based Trans-World label, home to local faves the Haunted and the Rabble, som... |
| Intersystems:
Free Psychedelic Poster Inside - 1968
As the experimental electronic duo Intersystems, synthesizer pioneer John Mills-Cockell and performance poet Blake Parker put out three records in the late 1960s: the relatively acoust... |
| Witness Inc.:
Harlem Lady / I Put a Spell on You - 7" - 1968
Saskatoon's Witness Inc were no doubt riding high after the success of their second single, the Frankie Laine classic 'Jezebel' - that one sold a surprising 50,000 ... |
| The Nihilist Spasm Band:
No Record - 1968
Taking their cue from the spasm bands of early New Orleans, essentially motley collections of musicians performing on found objects, London, Ontario's Nihilist Spasm Band are a fine example of both ... |
| The Fringe:
Plastic People / Nancy Brown - 7" - 1968
The Toronto-based Fringe were one of the most celebrated and exciting Canadian psych acts to emerge in Canada in the late sixties, so much so that Quality Records at the time hailed them as "Canada'... |
| The Grass Company:
Once a Days / Once a Child - 7" - 1968
In May 1967 The Windsor Star featured a story in its Saturday entertainment section with the hyperbolic headline "Sarnia's Answer to the Beatles". The fact that it was about a group that were barely... |
| Les Loups Blancs:
Je sais que tu mens b/w Sylvianne - 7" - 1968
Les Loups Blancs were so far behind the times that they almost seem like trailblazers. The Montreal band used to deck themselves out in matching Beatles suits and bleached-blond coiffures (hence t... |
| The Churls:
The Churls - 1968
Somewhere over the years the Churls ended up near the bottom of history's overcrowded dust heap. But back in late 1967 the heavy-hitting rockers had quite a presence on Toronto's Yorkville scene, at... |
| Influence:
Influence - 1968
Montreal, in French-speaking Quebec, is not the obvious place you would find British musicians at the height of the 1960s rock explosion. But that's exactly where two expatriates reunited by chance ... |
| Sweet Somethings:
He's My Soul Baby / Pot of Gold - 7" - 1968
It may not be widely known, but one of the first all-female rock and roll acts - anywhere in the world - was a group of five Montrealers called Les Beatlettes. That band formed in February 1964, iss... |
| The Valhallla:
Witch Doctor b/w Mister Fantasy - 7" - 1968
The Valhalla got their start in Toronto back in 1967 and issued this hyper-rare single the following year for Merv Buchanan's now sought-after Trend label. The band were a six-piece consisting of s... |
| The Mongrels:
My Woman / Sitting in the Station - 7" - 1968
Most people who know Winnipeg at all probably know it for the Guess Who, or perhaps as the place where a teenaged Neil Young cut his first record. But the prairie capital famous for its bitterly co... |
| United Empire Loyalists:
No, No, No / Afraid of the Dark - 7" - 1968
By the time the United Empire Loyalists got around to releasing this deliciously rare seven-inch - the only piece of wax they would ever make - they were already fixtures on the west coast undergrou... |
| Gordon Lightfoot:
Black Day in July / Pussywillows, Cat-Tails - 7" - 1968
It was actually more of a black night in July.
The Detroit riots of 1967 were certainly not the first there - the city had previously erupted in the summer of 1943 leaving 34 dead a... |
| Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers:
Does Your Mama Know About Me / Fading Away - 7" - 1968
In his autobiography, Tommy Chong described the Calgary of his childhood as "more like Mississippi than California in the way that black people were treated." It was precisely in such an environmen... |
| The Poppy Family:
Beyond the Clouds / Free from the City - 7" - 1968
Susan Jacks (nee Pesklevits) started out young - at the age of seven to be precise - and by fifteen was singing regularly on TV. But the cherubic singer with the most beguiling of voices had to be ... |
| Le Pouvoir des Fleurs:
Je ne sais pas pourquoi / Va t'en chez toi - 7" - 1968
It is probably to no one's surprise that a band with a name like Le Pouvoir des Fleurs came into existence in 1967. But what many may not know is that the roots of this Quebec group actually go bac... |
| Grant Smith and the Power:
Thinkin' About You / You Got What I Want - 7" - 1968
Grant Smith and the Power are barely a footnote these days in the annals of Canuckistani scholarship, but in their time they were a popular group plying rock and soul at teen clubs around Toronto an... |
| Guido Basso:
Christmas Today - 1968
For people of a certain vintage, Yuletide used to mean Yukon Cornelius battling the abominable snowman, Andy Williams in turtlenecks, and the wholesome music of Henry Mancini, the Swingle Sisters or... |
| The Five Shy:
Try to Be Happy / Saints and Angels - 7" - 1968
Toronto's Five Shy were a rare example of sunshine pop in a city much better known at the time for sweaty, driving r'n'b and guitar-heavy garage-psych. Though the Five Shy are about as close to the... |
| Andy Kim:
How'd We Ever Get This Way / Are You Ever Coming Home - 7" - 1968
The world can probably be divided into two camps: those who will and those who will not admit to secretly loving Andy Kim's jubilant sing-alo... |
| The Willapuss Wallapuss:
To Jone / Sacrificial Virgin - 7" - 1968
Singer/keyboardist Bruce Ley had his fingers in a number of pies back in the day, from Hamilton garagesters the Gentle Touch and their scorchi... |
| Mary Saxton:
Sad Eyes / Take My Heart - 7" - 1968
She may have been as white as the snow that blanketed her hometown of Edmonton for much of the year, but Mary Saxton could belt out blistering northern soul with the best of them.
T... |
| The Fringe:
Flower Generation / Token for My Mind - 7" - 1968
The Fringe formed in 1967 and are mostly remembered, if at all, for having as a founding member the late Chuck Cadman, a thrice-elected Member of Parliament who died of cancer in 2005. They also ha... |
| Les Items:
Foxy Lady / J'aimerais tant te revoir - 7" - 1968
Throughout the 1960s in Quebec, Denis Pantis was the Man...well, sort of.
Pantis was actually one of three erstwhile pop idols from the early sixties who had turned their attentions a... |
| Tyme and a Half:
It's Been a Long Time / Magic Island - 7" - 1968
There must have been a bit of a Netherlands connection up in Trenton, Ontario. It was in that tiny military town some two hours to the east of Toronto that Dutch-born Barry 'Buzz' Vandersel hooked ... |
| The Sound Box:
Warm Your Mind and Soul / I'm Learning - 7" - 1968
The Sound Box issued a couple of decent psych singles on the Regency label at the tail end of the sixties. The Montreal quintet was formed in 1968 by drummer Brian Redmond, along with guitarist M... |
| The Tiaras:
Foolish Girl / Surprise - 7" - 1968
The Tiaras' two singles are virtually unknown outside of a handful of northern soul anoraks on the other side of the ocean in Britain. But here in Canuckistan, the Toronto group is important for be... |
| Simple Simon and the Piemen:
People of Time / Anyhow - 7" - 1968
Simple Simon and the Piemen from Montreal's Notre-Dame-de-Grace neighbourhood are probably best remembered today - if at all, truthfully - for having been the launching pad for guitarist Robert Stan... |
| The Tiaras:
Where Does All the Time Go / All I Ever Need Is You - 7" - 1968
Brenda Russell was just 12 years old when her musical parents (her father Gus Gordon was once a member of the Ink Spots) left Brooklyn for the relatively colour-blind city of Hamilton, Ontario. And ... |
| Rings and Things:
To Me: To Me: To Me / Strange Things Are Happening - 7" - 1968
Martin Hillman had his fingers in a number of pies back in the day. He left his native Montreal in the late 1950s to pursue his singing dreams down in the U.S. There, as Marty Hill, he recorded a h... |
| The Wee Beasties:
Something to Do with the Weather / The Cherry Tree - 7" - 1968
The Wee Beasties may be about as close to the bottom of that proverbial dustbin as a band can get these days, but that is certainly no reason to ignore this swell popsike seven-inch.
... |
| The Pinkerton Colours:
Strange Things / Girl by the Bay - 7" - 1968
The Pinkerton Colours released just one middling forty-five in their brief existence. That record, the vaguely psychedelic 'Strange Thing' with its whirling organ and searing guitar, seems t... |
| Jay Telfer:
Life, Love and the Pursuit of Happiness / Watch the Birdie - 7" - 1968
Though he was once a household name in Canrock circles, Jay Telfer seems to have fallen a little deeper than most down the well of pop history. As the singer and principle songwriter for A Passing F... |
| Paul Anka:
Can't Get You Out of My Mind / When We Get There - 7" - 1968
From a distance, it would seem as if Paul Anka's fall from the pop charts in the 1960s was precipitous. But that was only half the story. The Ottawa-born wunderkind, who at fourteen 'borrowed' his m... |
| The Raja:
Realize / Drifting in the Wind - 7" - 1968
Brian Russell's musical pedigree stretches all the way back to 1961, when he strummed guitar for the initial version of Vancouver's Classics (or, as they were also known, the CFUN Classics after the... |
| The Guess Who:
These Eyes / Lightfoot - 7" - 1968
The late 1960s was an exciting time for rock and roll, and the popular music scene in Canada was no exception. While Britain and America had numerous groups and singers dominating the radio and the ... |
| Eddie Spencer:
You're So Good to Me Baby / If This Is Love (I'd Rather Be Lonely) - 7" - 1968
It may not be the first song that comes to mind when you think of northern soul. But once you get past the more obvious Wigan classics - from stone-cold floorshakers like Dobie Gray... |
| Eddie Spencer:
Dream Lover / Whiter Shade of Pale - 7" - 1968
Of the dozen or so top-twenty hits that Bobby Darin enjoyed in his career, perhaps none is more durable than his silky smooth 'Dream Lover'. Indeed, the song has been covered countless times... |
| The Midnight Angels:
I'm Sufferin' / (I Wish) in the Moonlight - 7" - 1968
Charles Nabess first cut his guitar chops way up in the tiny hamlet of Thicket Portage, Manitoba, a good 600 km to the north of Winnipeg. The young Metis, who grew up as the second youngest in a f... |
| The Young Society:
Games / Flyin' Away - 7" - 1968
The Young Society were a short-lived concern, lasting just a couple of years towards the end of the sixties. But thankfully the BC band managed to bequeath a rather nifty seven-inch on the tiny Arre... |
| The Andantes:
Today's Fool / Lady - 7" - 1968
The Andantes were once considered to be the most talented band in Regina.
That may sound like a joke - I mean, the Saskatchewan city in the mid-sixties had barely 125,000 souls - but ... |
| Chicho Valle and His Orchestra:
Latin Lustre - 1968
Long before there was Hilario Duran or Evaristo Machado or even Jane Bunnett, there was Chicho Valle. In the 1950s and '60s, decades before concepts like 'world music' or 'globalization' were part o... |
| Winter's Green:
Are You a Monkey? / Jump in the River - 7" - 1968
Winter's Green trace their roots back to early 1966 and the merging of two little-known Vancouver bands, the Citations and the Continentals. By the following year, Winter's Green started finding the... |
| Jaye's Rayders:
No Chance / I Still Love You - 7" - 1968
These Brantford ON lads - and I do mean 'lads' as they were all still in their teens - seem to have taken a page out of the Paul Revere and the Raiders schtick book. The Oct. 25, 1965 issue of RPM ... |
| Gloria Kaye:
Weather / Child - 7" - 1968
The year 1968 was a banner year for Greg Hambleton, or so said RPM. In its November 11th issue, the music magazine wrote that "Greg Hambleton, singer, composer, engineer, publisher and producer has ... |
| Meddy's People:
Fantasy World / Mister Sister - 7" - 1968
Meddy's People actually trace their lineage to southern England, where they formed as the Traces in 1964. But the BC group didn't qualify for CanRock certification until the following year when 16-y... |
| Carnival Connection:
Poster Man / Alfred Appleby - 7" - 1968
"We were entertainers," J.B. and the Playboys' singer Allan Nicholls told the Montreal Gazette. "We took it seriously."
Nicholls formed the group with guitarist Bill Hill in 1963. The... |
| The Chosen Few:
Footsee / You Can Never Be Wrong - 7" - 1968
In the fall of 1974, Russ Winstanley gave an obscure US instrumental 45 a spin at the legendary Wigan Casino. It was a long-forgotten throwaway song called 'Footsie' by a group of Montrealers called... |
| The Ugly Ducklings:
Somewhere Outside - 1967
Nineteen sixty-six was the year pop's voice cracked, when its squeaky clean Beatles complexion broke out in the pimply scruff of garage rock all over North America. From the Chocolate Watchband out in... |
| The Rabble:
The Rabble - 1967
The Rabble were five boho lads from Pointe Claire on Montreal's west island who played a nominally funky, oddly eccentric alternative to the Haunted's straight-on garage rock. Their first album is ... |
| The Rabble:
You Come On Too Strong / Golden Girl - 7" - 1967
The Rabble got their start in 1966 when guitarist Mike Harris teamed up with singer John Pimm and guitarist Rick Metcalfe in Pointe Claire over on Montreal's west island. However, despite releasing... |
| Les Sinners:
Sinerisme - 1967
Les Sinners flitted between English and French-speaking Montreal, a place where the stone structures along Rue St.-Jacques, once the storehouse of stolid anglo wealth, sat just around the corner from ... |
| The Haunted:
The Haunted - 1967
Mid-sixties fuzzbox-driven garage rock was ubiquitous across North America in 1966 and the Montreal area was no exception. Local legends the Haunted, with guitarists Jurgen Peter and Al Birmingham at... |
| The Ugly Ducklings:
Postman's Fancy / Not for Long - 7" - 1967
The Ugly Ducklings' fourth single saw them dabbling in psychedelia to limited success. The b-side, 'Not for Long', is the better of the two tracks here, a summery slice of pop existentialism, languor... |
| The Amen:
Carnivals and Cotton Candy / Peter Zeus - 7" - 1967
The Amen got their start up in Sault Ste. Marie in the early part of 1966. The band were weekly regulars at their local Teen Centre and spent much of that year toiling about northern Ontario, venturin... |
| (Those) Rogues:
Wish I Could See You Again / Girl - 7" - 1967
Like the Amen, (Those) Rogues came out of the tiny, though curiously fertile, Sault Ste Marie (Ontario) scene. The five-piece is known to have played at a place called the Sundown Room as well as i... |
| Les Miserables:
Les Miserables - 1967
If the Ugly Ducklings were Canada's Rolling Stones, then Les Miserables were Quebec's.
Like the Stones in the mid-sixties, Les Miserables were a five-piece. They were also known as th... |
| M.G. and the Escorts:
A Someday Fool / It's Too Late - 7" - 1967
From suburban Pointe-Claire, on Montreal's west island, M.G. and the Escorts saw some chart action at local radio station CFCF with their 1966 debut seven-incher, the rather lame merseybeat of 'Plea... |
| Inferno 5 Plus 1:
I Can Take It / Fay's Gig - 7" - 1967
As Inferno 5, guitarist Lance Whitman, singer John Bell, bassist Wayne Wallace, drummer Leslie Maki and Dave Powers on keyboards, were in charge of keeping the locals entertained at the Inferno club... |
| Witness Inc.:
Jezebel / Not You Girl - 7" - 1967
Out of the prairies - Saskatoon to be exact - came local heroes the Witness Inc., who got their 15 minutes' worth with their second seven-incher for Apex, a cover of the Frankie Laine hit 'Jezebel' th... |
| The Quiet Jungle:
Ship of Dreams / Everything - 7" - 1967
Doug Rankine and the Secrets scored a huge hit in early 1966 with a rather goofy novelty tune called 'Clear the Track, Here Comes Shack'. The song was a quintessentially Canadian ode to the bur... |
| Threads of Fybre:
Mama / Believe Me - 7" - 1967
From the tiny village of St. Clement's near Kitchener, Ontario, Threads of Fybre were a rather fleeting concern, allegedly performing not more than ten times in their entire career. Nonetheless, in t... |
| The Staccatos:
Half Past Midnight / Weatherman - 7" - 1967
Following on the success of early rock 'n' rollers the Esquires, Ottawa's most successful sixties group got their start in 1963 as the backing band for local DJ and singer Dean Hagopian, releasing a... |
| The Northwest Company:
Hard to Cry b/w Get Away from It All - 7" - 1967
Things were happening big time on the west coast in 1967, not just in California, but all the way up the Pacific to places like Vancouver. Bands like the Painted Ship and the Collectors had their r... |
| The Eyes of Dawn:
Little by Little / Kaleidoscope - 7 - 1967
After the modest success of their debut seven-inch 'Time to Be Going', which had seen some local chart action earlier in the year, the Eyes of Dawn lost the... |
| The Mike Jones Group:
Each and Every Day / Funny Feeling - 7" - 1967
The Mike Jones Group was originally formed in the early months of 1966 by a couple of high school buddies, singer Michel Lachance (a.k.a. Mike Jones) and guitarist Bob Panetta. The Montreal five-pie... |
| The Mandala:
Opportunity / Lost Love - 7" - 1967
With the Rogues, keyboard player Josef Chirowski, bassist Don Elliot and drummer Whitey Glan cut their soul teeth in the clubs on Toronto's Yonge Street, most notably at Club Bluenote, where they we... |
| The Stonemen:
In the Evening / Faded Colors - 7" - 1967
The Stonemen's lone single is criminally obscure, with only a handful of copies known to have survived the sixties. For years there was such a paucity of information out in cyberland that even the ... |
| The Nocturnals:
Do What You Want / Detroit - 7" - 1967
The Nocturnals were actually part-owners of the cleverly named Grooveyard, a happening nightclub over in New Westminster, B.C. that played host to r'n'b acts from 1965 to 1968. The band had been ki... |
| The Painted Ship:
Audience Reflections / And She Said Yes - 7" - 1967
After the regional success of their fantastic double-sider 'Little White Lies' / 'Frustration', William (the Captain) Hay and his Painted Ship sailed into t... |
| Les Lutins:
Je cherche / Elle n'a rien compris - 7" - 1967
Back in the early 1960s, Saint-Hyacinthe was sort of Quebec's version of Liverpool. The charming city of 50,000 just east of Montreal punched way above its weight, giving birth to a number of cool ... |
| Chapter V:
Dolly's Magic / The Sun Is Green - 7" - 1967
This obscure little single marked one of Brian Ahern's first trips into the studio, both in front of the microphone and behind the controls. The mega-famous producer, who by now is renowned for ha... |
| The Paupers:
Magic People - 1967
For someone giving Magic People a spin for the first time, there is a point midway through the track 'It's Your Mind', precisely when the blithe rhythms segue into the sort of sunshiny chorus... |
| The Eyes of Dawn:
Time to Be Going / Ignorance and Hardship - 7" - 1967
Formed in Ottawa in 1966, the five-piece Eyes of Dawn won a Big 9 battle of the bands contest across the river in Hull, Quebec, leading to a six-month stint as the house band at the La Petite Souris... |
| R. Dean Taylor:
There's a Ghost in My House / Don't Fool Around - 7" - 1967
R. Dean Taylor started singing at various open-air country and western shows when he was just 12 years old, and by 21 the Toronto native had already issued his first record, the pop/rockabilly floor... |
| Our Generation:
I'm a Man / Run Down Every Street - 7" - 1967
In the mid sixties Montreal's anglo suburbs on the western part of the island were a hotbed of garage rock, with bands like the Haunted and M.G. and the Escorts kicking up quite a storm locally. Th... |
| Our Generation:
Out to Get Light / Cool Summer - 7" - 1967
Right about the time that Montreal's Our Generation were enjoying their first quarter hour of fame, courtesy of their version of Muddy Waters' 'I'm a Man' o... |
| The Footprints:
Never Say Die / Mama Rand's - 7" - 1967
This totally forgotten Montreal band released a few singles in the 1960s on the Columbia and Capitol labels, the best of which is probably this cool double-sider, which according to Billboard magazi... |
| The Collectors:
Looking at a Baby / Old Man - 7" - 1967
The Collectors were probably Vancouver's premier psychedelic band and the only one at the time, aside from the Poppy Family, to have the bulk of their records also released south of the border. The... |
| Christine et Ses Copains:
Mon mini-croulant / Parce que je suis petite - 7" - 1967
The very short-lived Christine et Ses Copains recorded at least three groovy singles on the Elysee label in Quebec before seemingly vanishing into thin air. The Montreal five-piece was fronted by t... |
| Les Talmud:
Avoir raison / Un autre ami - 7" - 1967
In the summer of 1967, while Expo '67 was drawing in hordes of visitors over on Montreal's Ile Ste-Helene and anglophone bands like the Rabble and the Haunted pushed envelopes over on the west islan... |
| The New Wing:
The Thinking Animal / My Petite - 7" - 1967
The fertile late-sixties Alberta scene saw a number of bands head south to record at recognized American studios. That list would include Wes Dakus and the Rebels, Barry Allen, Happy Feeling and th... |
| Les Chanceliers:
Le p'tit popy / La generation d'aujourd'hui - 7" - 1967
The seeds of Les Chanceliers started to germinate in Montreal as far back as 1963 when guitarist Gilles Briere formed an instrumental quartet and dubbed it Les Chancellords. But it wasn't until 196... |
| Luke and the Apostles:
Been Burnt / Don't Know Why - 7" - 1967
Mike McKenna had found fleeting fame fronting a blues band called Mike's Trio, playing regular nights at the Cellar Club in Toronto's rapidly changing Yorkville neighbourhood. But sometime in 1964,... |
| Jerry Toth:
A Place to Stand b/w A Place to Stand - 7" - 1967
Had it not been for Ontario's one-time unofficial provincial anthem, the talented musician, composer and arranger Jerry Toth would be even more forgotten than he already is.
The Winds... |
| Jack Hennig and the Breaking Point Group:
Busy People / Maybe Tomorrow - 7" - 1967
Edmontonian Jack Hennig, a blond hunk of a singer who kept good ol' Albertans hopping throughout the seventies with his country and western sounds, actually had a secret psychedelic past that few kn... |
| Mini Robin:
Pourras-tu me pardonner / Personne - 7" - 1967
Singer and record producer Martin Hillman went by many names back in the day, including Billy, Billy Blue, Martin Martin and most notably Marty Hill. Under the latter pseudonym, the enigmatic Montr... |
| Lucio Agostini:
Once Upon a Hundred Years - 1967
It is doubtful whether Giuseppe Agostini spoke much English or French when he arrived in Montreal in 1915 with his wife and one-year-old son Lucio, but one thing is for sure. As a former bandleader... |
| The Fifth:
Yesterdays Today / Something You've Got - 7" - 1967
The Fifth were one of the most popular acts in the Winnipeg area throughout the latter half of the sixties. But as Vance Masters, who drummed for the group in one of their many incarnations, recalle... |
| Sandi Shore:
Like A Madness / Until You're Home Again - 7" - 1967
If not for a brief obituary in the weekly Vancouver Courier, Sandi Shore might have died a completely forgotten woman.
The Vancouver singer (who was actually born as Sandra Loranger... |
| The One Way Street:
Listen to Me (Bring It on Home) / Tears - 7" - 1967
The One Way Street got started in 1966, which for those few keeping track was the year Vancouver lost its innocence. The once-sleepy burg got its first whiff of the Haight-Ashbury freakfest in Janu... |
| Michele Richard:
Un jour, un jour / Hey Friend, Say Friend - 7" - 1967
Michelle Richard started her recording career as a young teenager, and from the late fifties to the mid-sixties had managed to tweak the Quebec charts under a plethora of musical guises, from romant... |
| For Keeps:
Morning Town / Highest Degree- 7" - 1967
Doug Hutton may be a forgotten man these days, but at one point in the 1960s, he had his fingers in a number of pies. The northern Saskatchewan native ran successful Calgary nightspots The Haunted H... |
| The Power of Beckett:
Lost Soul in Disillusion / Back to Me - 7" - 1967
There is not much out there in cyberland on the Power of Beckett, but what we do know for certain is that this Montreal garage band issued a couple of singles in the late sixties on Quality that are... |
| The Spasstiks:
Love's Got a Hold on Me / If That's What She Wants - 7" - 1967
The Spasstiks' big moment came at precisely ten in the morning on September 24, 1966, when they opened the Toronto Sound revue at Maple Leaf Gardens. That massive show ("14 Hours - 14 Big Groups in... |
| The Shags:
Smiling Fenceposts / Dr. Feel-Good - 7" - 1967
The Shags were part of the hopping mid-to-late-sixties rock and roll scene in southern Manitoba that included, in addition to the obvious Guess Who, groups like the Quid, the Deverons, the Jury, the... |
| The Mood:
Train's Late / Who Do You Love - 7" - 1967
The Mood were a short-lived quartet from the Welland (ON) region that issued this lone forty-five in 1967. The nucleus of the band got their start in 1965 as the Sinners, who spent the better part ... |
| The Luv-Lites:
Where It's At / Born in Chicago - 7" - 1967
The Luv-Lites may be barely a footnote in the annals of CanRock, but that doesn't excuse fans of r'n'b from not knowing about their scorching version of Nick Gravenites' 'Born in Chicago'. Gravenite... |
| Les Mystics:
Je m'sens bien, je m'sens mal / Mon pere est millionnaire - 7" - 1967
Les Mystics were a group of teenagers from Grand-Mere, just to the northeast of Shawinigan. The five - singer Marc Bouchard, guitarists Bertin Saint-Amand and Mario Gelinas, bassist Denis Lahaie an... |
| Three to One:
See Emily Play / Give Me Love - 7" - 1967
The Pink Floyd's 'See Emily Play' is one of the greatest pop songs ever written, psychedelic or otherwise. Syd Barrett's dreamy nugget, ostensibly about a free-spirited fifteen-year-old but with fa... |
| The Kidds:
You Were Wrong / Children in Love - 7" - 1967
Allegedly, the Kidds got their name from the British Modbeats' singer Fraser Loveman, who often referred to them as 'kids'. The St. Catharines (ON) five-piece was originally formed in 1965 by guita... |
| Lords of London:
Cornflakes and Ice Cream / Time Waits for No One - 7" - 1967
Lords of London are best remembered for their bubble gum hit 'Cornflakes and Ice Cream', which was one of the very few Canadian records to top the prestigious CHUM-AM charts.
... |
| The Rabble:
Please Set Me Free / I Still Can Hear Them Laughing - 7" - 1967
The Rabble's proverbial fifteen minutes of fame was more like a year...from May 1967 to April 1968 to be exact. The Montreal five-piece had barely arrived back from Toronto after playing to thousand... |
| Les Asteks:
On N'est Pas Bien Compris / Oui Je T'aime - 7" - 1967
Like Les Lutins before them, Les Asteks' shtick was to have a preteen singer as their frontman, in this case the cherubic Michel Champoux, who was just eleven years old when they formed in 1966. (Al... |
| The Unforscene:
These Are the Words / You and Me - 7" - 1967
"In 1966, two members of a band from Canada called the Unforscene brought some demo records to me," producer Don Perry recalled in his 2016 memo... |
| Tomorrow's Keepsake:
High And Mighty (Here We Stand) / Elevator Operator - 7" - 1967
The White Knights were one of the most popular bands in Regina in the mid-sixties, so much so that RPM featured them on the front cover of their March 11, 1967 issue. The four-piece of singer/guitar... |
| The Scene:
Scenes (from Another World) / You're In A Bad Way - 7" - 1967
'Scenes (from Another World)' is a criminally overlooked record, especially since it is one of the few Canadian productions of songwriter/producer/arranger Neil Sheppard.
Born... |
| Lisa Taan:
Simon Simon / No One 'Cep' Me - 7" - 1967
Both sides of this obscure seven-inch come from the pen of Martin Hillman, a.k.a. Martin Martin, the Montreal producer whose sixties resume boasted such gems as Rings and Things' groo... |
| Bill Marion:
Flower Girl / Give Me More Love - 7" - 1967
Bill Marion was a founding member of the Paupers along with Skip Prokop, and he was even responsible for the band's name ("We had 50 cents among us," Prokop has said. "Bill said, 'Why don't we call ... |
| The Five D:
Baby Boy / Good Time Music - 7" - 1967
"We were just another band that was hacking away doing the top 40 or whatever was on the chart."
The Five D, as singer Dave Poulin would tell Jim Hurcomb in his boo... |
| Alex Fontaine:
Goodbye / Tu N'es Pas Sincere - 7" - 1967
Alex Fontaine's garage corker 'Tu n'est pas sincere' has long been a holy grail of sorts for fans of Quebec francophone 45s, and decent copies will set you back upwards of 200 bucks these day... |
| Susan Taylor:
Don't Make Promises / Twelfth of Never - 7" - 1967
'Don't Make Promises' was the first song on side one of Tim Hardin 1. And while it is now overshadowed by the heart-rending 'Reason to Believe' (which kicked off the other side of that LP), i... |
| Tom Northcott:
Sunny Goodge Street / Who Planted Thorns In Miss Alice's Garden - 7" - 1967
'Sunny Goodge Street', Donovan's jazz-tinged ode to the magical pleasures of weed, was first issued in October 1965 on his Fairytale LP. The world took note almost immediately. Just a few mon... |
| A Passing Fancy:
I'm Losing Tonight / A Passing Fancy - 7" - 1967
High school mates Jay and Ian Telfer, Phil Seon, Brian Price and Greg Hershoff formed a group called the Dimensions on the northern fringes of Toronto in the summer of 1965. They had the good fortun... |
| David Clayton Thomas and the Bossmen:
Brain Washed / Barbie-Lee - 7" - 1966
Even back in the day, when David Clayton-Thomas was riding high as the frontman for Blood Sweat and Tears with their string of top-ten international hits, few knew that the golden-throated singer wa... |
| The 409:
They Say / Born in Chicago - 7" - 1966
What's strange about the 409 is that, though the group were francophone and recorded mostly in French, they are best remembered today for their sole English-language disc. Equally odd is that nearly... |
| Douglas Rankine with the Secrets:
Clear the Track Here Comes Shack / Warming the Bench - 7" - 1966
The Secrets were just a bunch of teenagers playing at the Toronto Pressmen's Club sometime in late 1965 or early '66 when the CBC's Brian McFarlane approached them with an idea he had. Singer and g... |
| The Ugly Ducklings:
Just in Case You Wonder b/w That's Just a Thought That I Had in My Mind - 7" - 1966
By late 1966, the Ugly Ducklings were ascending the throne of Toronto's Yorkville scene, with their debut single 'Nothin'' having shot to #18 on the CHUM radi... |
| The Painted Ship:
Little White Lies / Frustration - 7" - 1966
Vancouver's Painted Ship first hit the water in the summer of 1965. That was when singer and budding poet William 'The Captain' Hay teamed up with guitarist Rob Rowden out at the University of British... |
| The Sparrow:
Tomorrow's Ship / Isn't It Strange - 7" - 1966
In Canada, if you couldn't get tickets to see the Beatles, there was always Jack London and the Sparrows.
The Oshawa (ON) band was formed in 1964 with London, who was actually born in ... |
| Les Sultans:
La poupee qui fait non / Il n'y a rien au monde que... - 7" - 1966
Like most francophone pop bands in Quebec during the 1960s, Les Sultans were busy churning out French-language versions of all those popular anglo hits, starting with 'Toujours devant moi' (a cover ... |
| Gilles Vigneault:
Mon Pays - 1966
Singer-songwriter, poet and Quebecois icon Gilles Vigneault got his first break in 1958 when folk singer Jacques Labrecque agreed to record his song 'Jos Monferrand', written in 1957 and marking the y... |
| The Haunted:
1-2-5 / Eight O'Clock in the Morning - 7" - 1966
As Haunted guitarist Jurgen Peter tells it, the Beatles-era Montreal music scene was not much different from the rest of Canada at the time, rife with garage bands of varying talent, yet constricted b... |
| The Mynah Birds:
It's My Time / Go On and Cry - 7" - 1966
Though they were never actually released at the time, these obscure Mynah Birds sides are probably two of the most important unreleased songs in the entire history of pop music. And if that sounds... |
| The Ugly Ducklings:
Nothin' / I Can Tell - 7" - 1966
Toronto's Ugly Ducklings were hatched in the proverbial backwaters of suburban Scarborough, but it wasn't long before they would become the most popular band in the hip Yorkville neighbourhood downt... |
| The Plague:
The Face of Time / We Were Meant to Be - 7" - 1966
Thunder Bay's Plague were a quintet consisting of guitarist Donald Brown, singer/saxophonist Tom Horricks, bass player George Stevenson, keyboardist Joel Stapansky and drummer Lynn McEachern. The b... |
| Gilles Vigneault:
Enregistre a Paris - 1966
Released the same year as Gilles Vigneault's iconic Mons Pays LP, Enregistre a Paris finds the Quebecois chansonnier in the City of Lights, where he... |
| Thee Deuces:
You Gotta Try / Hung Up on You - 7" - 1966
Originally from the small town of Almonte (about 40 km southwest of Ottawa), Thee Deuces started out as an instrumental combo in 1964. A forty-seven-week residence at the Inter-Provincial Hotel acro... |
| Les Loups:
Pour tout dire / De toi - 7" - 1966
During their brief existence, Les Loups put out four singles between the years 1965 and 1967. But for the Quebec five-piece of singer Maurice Paquin, guitarists Robert Paradis and Daniel Giroux, ba... |
| The Checkerlads:
Baby Send for Me / Shake Yourself Down - 7" - 1966
In their March 11, 1967 issue, RPM featured a front-page story on two of Regina's hottest bands. "Are the White Nights the most popular group in Regina, or are the Checkerlads on top of the heap?" ... |
| The Gentle Touch:
Visitors Parking Only / One Way Ride - 7" - 1966
The Gentle Touch were formed in the Hammer - that's Hamilton to the tourists - roundabout 1965. The quartet of Jeff Snider, Alex Harrington, Ron Boyes and Bruce Ley were originally known as the Ph... |
| Les Fleaux:
Gloria / Ma Lili hello - 7" - 1966
These barely pubescent youngsters from Lachute, just to the west of Montreal, would likely never have committed any music to wax had it not been for a fortuitous hook-up with the fledgling music mog... |
| Sandi Shore:
I'll Know Better (Next Time) / Roses and Heartaches - 7" - 1966
Brian Wilson once admired him and Phil Spector was allegedly scared of him, but these days no one really remembers Gary Paxton. The erstwhile svengali behind such early hits as 'Alley Oop' b... |
| Mike Campbell:
Remorse / One Girl - 7" - 1966
This is one record that was definitely well worth all the cyber-research.
A little digging reveals that Mike Campbell was once a bit of a teen idol on the west coast, making upwards... |
| The Big Town Boys:
August 32nd / My Babe - 7" - 1966
Tommy Goodings joined his first band way back in 1958, and with a bit of perseverance, had managed to work his way up the Toronto club scene, eventually gigging regularly at Toronto's legendary Club... |
| The Quid:
Crazy Things / Mersey Side - 7" - 1966
The Quid's lead singer Ron Rene was allegedly such a stage dynamo that the Guess Who name-checked him in their acid stormer 'Friends of Mine' (with Burton Cummings belting out "...and fade away / li... |
| Les Dabsters:
J'en ai assez / Tu le sais bien - 7" - 1966
Les Dabsters hailed from the hardscrabble neighbourhoods of St-Henri and Verdun in the southwest corners of Montreal. In a rather tough-to-find promo piece from the January 1967 issue of Photo Vede... |
| The Last Words:
I Symbolize You / It Made Me Cry - 7" - 1966
The Last Words got their start in Clarkson, Ontario, in what is now Mississauga, just as the fifties rock and roll of Bill Haley, Elvis Presley and Little Richard was about to give way to the Beatle... |
| Les Intrigantes:
Mets chinois / Le seuil du soleil - 7" - 1966
Les Intrigantes got their start in Quebec City in 1964. It was in that year that the four - guitarists Diane Gallichand and Carole Boutin along with bassist Claire Gallichand and drummer Ginette Do... |
| Pat Hervey:
Can't Get You Out of My Mind / Givin' In - 7" - 1966
Pat Hervey passed away in 2016, quietly as it were with nary a peep about it in the mainstream media. Like many of the stars of the pre-Beatles era, her achievements have been largely forgotten save... |
| The Skaliwags:
365 Days a Year / Turn Him Down - 7" - 1966
This monster of a double-sider is reputed to be one of the rarest and most sought-after garage records in all of Canuckistan. The band behind it, a Gatineau quintet called the Skaliwags, had been ki... |
| Paul Anka:
I Can't Help Loving You / Can't Get Along Very Well Without Her - 7" - 1966
You knew Paul Anka was Canadian, right? And of course you knew he was responsible for a string of sappy hits like 'Diana', 'Lonely Boy' and 'Puppy Love' in the late fifties and ... |
| The B + 3:
Taboo / Why Oh Why - 7" - 1966
The guy on the cowbell.
Any rock and roller worthy of the distinction knows Corky Laing as the percussive force behind that mother of all power trios, Mountain. Or maybe even as one-... |
| The Eternal Triangle:
It's True / Watch Me Go - 7" - 1966
If you bend the truth just a little bit, you could probably make the case for the Eternal Triangle as Canada's first supergroup. The trio got their start when Tom Northcott, who at the time was hea... |
| The Luvin' Kind:
That Jungle Sun / It's Not Always That Way - 7" - 1966
The Luvin' Kind were a Winnipeg group - from the Norwood/St. Boniface area to be more specific - that featured a couple of brothers, Ed and Jerry LeClair. Their first single, the faux-primiti... |
| The Willows:
My Kinda Guy / Hurtin' All Over - 7" - 1966
Save for a few northern soul anoraks in Britain, the Willows are not talked about much anymore. Though their 'My Kinda Guy' climbed the charts in the summer of 1966, the Toronto trio are pro... |
| Mary Saxton:
Is It Better to Live or to Die / Losing Control - 7" - 1966
Mary Saxton may not exactly be a household name up here in Canuckistan, but her singles fetch big bucks across the pond in U.K. northern soul circles.
Saxton was just a tweenie when h... |
| Gillian Russell:
Man in the Street / Going Home - 7" - 1966
They have all pretty much dropped off the musical spectrum, but at one time siblings Gillian, Brian and John Russell were sort of BC's musical first family. The three can trace their history back to... |
| The Allan Sisters:
I'm in with the Downtown Crowd / Give It Up Girl - 7" - 1966
The Allan Sisters would probably be a mere footnote in the annals of CanCon were it not for the northern soul obsessives across the Atlantic who trade copies of the... |
| Don Norman and the Other Four:
Low Man / Mustang Sally - 7" - 1966
When Don Norman left the Esquires in the summer of 1965 after a successful run that included an album, a #9 hit nationally ('So Many Other Boys') and the first rock video ever shot in Canada ... |
| The Young Canadians:
Makin’ My Mind Up / Satisfied Mind - 7" - 1966
The Dalton brothers - Dan, Jack and Wally - honed their musical skills in tiny Erieau ON, where they formed a group called the Dalton Boys. The 'boys', who were still in their teens, were brimming w... |
| The Counts:
He Will Break Your Heart / Searchin' - 7" - 1966
Alexander Mair, the mild-mannered record promotions man who was awarded the Order of Canada while he lay dying of cancer, had a resume a mile long. His work experience spanned all the way from his f... |
| The Canadian Squires:
Uh Uh Uh / Leave Me Alone - 7" - 1965
In 1963 Ronnie Hawkins was the unofficial mayor of Toronto's Yonge Street strip. He and his backing band the Hawks belted out their brand of southern r'n'b, like the thunderous 'Who Do You Love', nig... |
| The Charmaines:
(You Are) Hypnotized / The One for Me - 7" - 1965
'(You Are) Hypnotized' was not the Charmaines' greatest record. Nor was it their best selling. But it was only ever issued in Canada and is thus the one for which collectors fork over the big... |
| Race Marbles:
Like a Dribbling Fram / Someday (the World Will Be as Lovely as Before) - 7" - 1965
The mid-1950s to the early seventies were not only the heyday of the forty-five but also the time of hit novelty records, from Buchanan and Goodman's 'Flying Saucer' all the way through to Ri... |
| David Clayton Thomas and the Shays:
Take Me Back / Send Her Home - 7" - 1965
David Clayton-Thomas spent the better part of his childhood either on the receiving end of a physically abusive father or mired in Ontario's rough-and-tumble penal system. So when the 20-year-old T... |
| The Guess Who:
Till We Kissed / Shakin' All Over - 7" - 1965
Though it was a number one smash for Johnny Kidd and the Pirates in England in 1960, 'Shakin' All Over' was really not well known outside Europe until a bunch of lads from the Canadian prairies deci... |
| Roy Kenner and the Associates:
Without My Sweet Baby / Baby You're What I Need - 7" - 1965
This was the first release on Merv Buchanon's Trend label. Roy Kenner was a charismatic soul singer who wowed crowds - the ladies especially - with his good looks, boundless energy and James Brown ... |
| The Tom Northcott Trio:
Just Don't / Let Me Know - 7" - 1965
Tom Northcott had already been a fixture for several years in the Kitsilano clubs when he decided to join the Vancouver Playboys in 1965. Around the same time he was also busy establishing his own ... |
| King-Beezz:
Gloria / She Belongs to Me - 7" - 1965
Northern Alberta in the mid-sixties is not the first place that comes to mind as a hotbed of garage rock. But it was there in Edmonton, a city that registered just shy of 360,000 souls in its 1964 ... |
| The Berries:
Night Winds / Valley of Three Tears - 7" - 1965
This Toronto band may not have exactly been 'the berries', but they did manage to bequeath one curious garage seven-inch. The quirky, flute-flecked 'Night Winds' seems to have died without a... |
| The Marrs Five:
Ouie Di Douie / Remember Those Days - 7" - 1965
The Marrs Five's oddly named 'Ouie Di Douie' is about as bottom-of-the-barrel as it gets these days. Likely released in early 1965 (though some internet pages list it as early as 1962), the g... |
| The Nick Ayoub Quintet:
The Montreal Scene - 1965
Nick Ayoub was a fixture on the Montreal jazz scene for nearly forty years. Born in Trois-Rivieres but raised in Montreal, the talented musician studied clarinet and saxophone at the prestigious Hi... |
| The Brian Browne Trio:
The Toronto Scene - 1965
In May 1965 RCA announced the first in a trilogy of records showcasing a jazz artist in each of the country's three metropolises, to be issued on the label's boutique RCA Canada International imprin... |
| Johnny Bower and Little John with the Rinky Dinks:
Honky the Christmas Goose / Banjo Mule - 7" - 1965
He won four Stanley Cups, was twice awarded the Vezina Trophy and in 1976 was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. But Johnny Bower's most unlikely achievement had to have been the 40,000 copies h... |
| Dianne James:
Don't Go / The Time Has Come - 7" - 1965
If we are to believe the hype in RPM back in the day, Dianne James was headed for the big time. A March '65 issue gushed that the teenage singer from Saskatoon was "ambitious and on [her] way to sta... |
| Andy Kim:
I Hear You Say (I Love You Baby) / Falling in Love - 7" - 1965
"I was 15 years old, going on 25."
Andy Kim arrived in New York City with $40 in his pocket and his eyes set on fame. He may have been young, but he had grown up in the hardscrabble s... |
| The Royal Family:
Sometimes / Solitude - 7" - 1965
Troyka are by now well known in collector's circles for having been Canada's premier power trio, especially since the reissues of their self-titled 1970 LP on CD an... |
| Shirley Matthews:
(He Makes Me) Feel So Pretty / Is He Really Mine? - 7" - 1964
After the success of her floor-stomping 'Big Town Boy' - a top-ten single in Canada around Christmas 1963 - Shirley Matthews certainly must have felt like a... |
| Patty Surbey:
(I Want) a Beatle for Christmas / Christmas All Year 'Round - 7" - 1964
Patty Surbey was sort of a perky amalgam of Connie Francis and Brenda Lee, with maybe a bit of Annette Funicello or Cathy Carroll thrown in for good measure. The Burnaby (BC) singer only released a... |
| Ian and Sylvia:
Northern Journey - 1964
Ian and Sylvia were a couple who were part of the folk music boom of the early 1960s. Ian Tyson was originally from British Columbia and Sylvia Fricker from Chatham, Ontario. They met in Toronto thr... |
| Shirley Matthews:
Private Property / Wise Guys - 7" - 1964
It may be mere conjecture given the dearth of information out there on Shirley Matthews, but I'm willing to bet that the young singer from Harrow (ON) absorbed a heck of a lot of soul influence grow... |
| The Esquires:
Man from Adano / Gee Whiz It's You - 7" - 1964
The Esquires have managed to work their way down to the bottom of history's trash heap, but they were at one time responsible for a number of important milestones. The Ottawa group were one of the f... |
| Hughie Scott and the Meteors:
I Will / Be Bop A Lula - 7" - 1964
For years Hughie Scott was the king of the Ottawa Valley country music scene. In fact Scott, who grew up in the nearby hamlet of Riceville, rarely ventured outside the capital region. He started pl... |
| The Squires:
The Sultan / Aurora - 7" - 1963
Boasting a 17-year-old tyke by the name of Neil Young on guitar, this seven-inch of plucky guitar instrumentals by Winnipeg's Squires is perhaps the rarest and most sought-after of all Canadian record... |
| Shirley Matthews:
Big Town Boy / (You Can) Count On That - 7" - 1963
Shirley Matthews was born in the shadow of Motown, in Harrow, Ontario, a small community just to the south of Windsor. She eventually made her way up to r'n'b-obsessed Toronto, where she found hers... |
| Neil Sheppard:
In My Imagination / Beyond the Shadow of a Doubt - 7" - 1963
Neil Ship knew from an early age that he wanted to be in the music business. The Montreal lad attended his first audition at the early age of thirteen. But as he recounts on his LinkedIn page, livi... |
| Jackie Shane:
Any Other Way / Sticks and Stones - 7" - 1963
"Is he or isn't she?"
That is precisely how one writer summed up what must have been the question on everyone's mind. You see, in the staid old Toronto of the 1960s, Jackie Shane w... |
| The Echo Tones:
Low Down Guitar / Inland Surfer - 7" - 1963
The Echo Tones are about as bottom-of-the-barrel as it gets these days. Their lone forty-five, 'Low Down Guitar', registers just a single sale on the massive Popsike database. The casual lis... |
| Jack Scott:
There's Trouble Brewin' / Jingle Bell Slide - 7" - 1963
When Jack Scott died of congestive heart failure on Dec. 12, 2019, there was an almost immediate outpouring of tributes on the internet, including from singer Robert Gordon, who released his own ver... |
| Richie Knight and the Mid-Knights:
Charlena / You've Got the Power - 7" - 1963
'Charlena' was the first truly Canadian record to reach #1 on the CHUM-AM charts. That was impressive enough. But the fact that it came from a totally unknown local band makes the story all ... |
| Ronnie Hawkins:
Bo Diddley / Who Do You Love - 7" - 1963
If you were young and living in Ontario's largest city in the 1960s, you would have been comatose not to have heard the words 'Toronto Sound'.
The Toronto Sound was more of a spirit ... |
| Chad Allan and the Reflections:
Tribute to Buddy Holly / Back and Forth - 7" - 1962
As the Silvertones, and then as Allan and the Silvertones, singer-guitarist Chad Allan assembled an early rock and roll band that included fellow Winnipeggers Randy Bachman, Jim Kale, Gary Peterson an... |
| Bonnie Dobson:
At Folk City - 1962
For Bonnie Dobson, protest singing must have run deep in her veins. The Toronto-born singer-songwriter was the daughter of a trade unionist who would send her to socialist camps when she was barely... |
| Hank Snow:
I've Been Everywhere / Ancient History - 7" - 1962
Given his wretched childhood, it's a wonder Hank Snow ever sang at all, let alone became Canada's most important country music performer ever.
Born in tiny Brooklyn, Nova Scotia into... |
| Sandy Selsie:
The Poorest Girl in Town / A Date with Loneliness - 7" - 1962
No one talks about Sandy Selsie anymore. But at one point in the early sixties she was known as Canada's Brenda Lee.
Selsie got her start locally, in the (then) tiny burg of Richmond... |
| Dorothy Collins:
Experiment Songs - 1961
In the late fifties, songwriters Lou Singer and Hy Zaret conceived of a series of educational LPs to teach curious kids about the wonders of modern science. The six recordings were sheathed in fasc... |
| The Hi-Fives:
Fujikami the Warrior / Mo-Shun - 7" - 1961
Some fifteen years before John Belushi and his Samurai Futaba character terrorized the set of Saturday Night Live, the Hi-Fives were at it on the local Vancouver airwaves with their totally o... |
| Jack Bailey and the Naturals:
Oh What Love Is / Beneath the Moonlight - 7" - 1961
During his short lifetime, Jack Bailey rarely ventured from his home in Peterborough, Ontario. He was perhaps the most talented musician ever to come out of the Kawartha Lakes region, but a relucta... |
| Jack Scott:
The Way I Walk / Midgie - 7" - 1959
Dave Marsh called Jack Scott "undeniably the greatest Canadian rock and roll singer of all time".
Though considered by many to be Detroit's first white rock and roller, Scott actuall... |
| Percy Faith and His Orchestra:
Theme from A Summer Place / Go-Go-Po-Go - 7" - 1959
As a bandleader, Percy Faith managed to chart records for over a quarter of a century, from 1950 to 1976, long after the big band era had succumbed to the likes of rock and roll, pop and even disco.... |
| Hot Toddys:
Rockin' Crickets / Shakin' And Stompin' - 7" - 1959
Hot-Toddys' 'Rockin' Crickets' was released on a tiny Buffalo label called Shan-Todd in February 1959 and around the same time in Canada on the Barrel imprint. A few years later, an identical... |
| The Vanguards:
Baby Doll / My Friend Mary Ann - 7" - 1958
God bless all those people who still give doo wop records a spin or two these days. It was once the most highly collectible of genres with some singles, like the Hornets' 'I Can't Believe' on... |
| The Chantones:
Storm in My Heart / Anne Marie - 78 rpm - 1957
Few people buy doo wop reissues these days and thus few people remember that the Chantones were Jack Scott's vocal backing group. Fewer still are aware that this Windsor-based quartet had a chart-... |
| The Diamonds:
Little Darlin' / Faithful and True - 7" - 1957
For Dave Somerville, it wasn't so much being in radio as being on the radio. The Diamonds' lead vocalist was gainfully employed at the CBC in Toronto when a fortuitous hook-up there led to t... |
| Dorothy Collins:
My Boy - Flat Top / In Love - 7" - 1955
As a precocious pre-teen, Windsor-born Marjorie Chandler could be heard singing on local radio stations on both sides of the Detroit River. But her real date with destiny would come to her a few ye... |
| Priscilla Wright:
The Man in the Raincoat / Please Have Mercy - 7" - 1955
In the early 1950s Don Wright was known as Canada's Jingle King. The London (ON) bandleader had written tunes in praise of soap, gas stations, chocolate bars and even Carling's Red Cap Ale. But it w... |
