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Expedition to Earth


Expedition to Earth - Expedition to Earth / Time Time Time - 7

Expedition to Earth / Time Time Time - 7"
Franklin - 1968


Michael Panontin
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). "...We played to an over-sold-out crowd. The hall would hold 300 people and I think there was 600+ paid admissions. We finished our set and you could have heard a pin drop. I actually heard my pick hit the stage. It was the longest 15 seconds of my life...seemed more like 15 years. Then one person started clapping, then two, then the roof came down."

One listen to Expedition to Earth's hyper-rare seven-inch and the shock becomes easier to fathom. The Winnipeg five-piece trace their roots to 1966 when Norton, who would become the group's lead guitarist and songwriter, made the trek up from the tiny southern Manitoba village of Crystal City.

"The music scene in Winnipeg at that time was so alive you could taste it. There were so many talented musicians it was incredible," Norton fondly recalled. "Bernie [Barsky] started the Expedition with Brian Levin and then added Dave [Mitchell]. Their manager at that time was Ted Carroll and he suggested that they should add another guitar player. I was invited to join the group."

Expedition to Earth spent the better part of two years rehearsing and playing live. Their setlist read like an AM top-forty chart at the time, with songs by the Jefferson Airplane, Cream and Steppenwolf, as well as the occasional Rolling Stones and Beatles tune for good measure. By 1968 Norton had a pair of original songs penned, the totally fuzzed-out 'Expedition to Earth' and its equally searing flipside, 'Time Time Time'. They hired Frank Wiener, who headed the Hungry I Agency, as their agent, a fortuitous hook-up as it turned out since Wiener had also started a new label called Franklin Records.

The guys then decided to head over to local radio station CKRC to get the songs onto celluloid, adding the fifth member, background singer Gail Bowen, in the process. "Frank suggested that he knew of a female singer that had just left her band, the Feminine Touch. [Gail] joined the group at the tail end of the recording session and added the whispering voice at the end of 'Expedition to Earth'." Both tracks were initially recorded as silky psych-pop workouts until the masters were shipped off to Montreal, where those gimmicky fuzz guitars and the phasing in the trail-off were tacked on, almost as an afterthought it seems.

Expedition to Earth toured heavily throughout the Canadian Midwest, playing to hordes of locals in obscure northern towns from the aforementioned Canora, Saskatchewan to Sioux Lookout, Ontario and all points in between. But even with the Winnipeg area on the cusp of international notoriety with the Guess Who and their run of hits, 'Expedition to Earth' and its jaw-dropping guitars was mostly ignored save for an unlikely top-ten berth in the faraway Maritimes ("#9...in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, one spot ahead of 'Hey Jude' by the Beatles!").

Eventually Norton left, the others continued as Coloured Rain, and the single disappeared into the dusty crannies of basements, thrift shops and used record stores. That is until a copy sold in 2015 for a whopping $898 (USDs) followed by another the next year for an unfathomable $1137, prompting the CBC to take notice of Norton and his unlikely claim to fame.

"How did he get that guitar sound?" asked John Tucker, who was producing Norton's planned comeback as Expedition Back to Earth, "It sounds like a buzz saw through a bad speaker. Love it."
         
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