It’s theme week on Song Of The Day. The theme, songs about Canadian cities. Winnipeg. Check. Montreal. Check. Now it is time for Saskatoon. The Guess Who did this one way back in 1972. As an added city bonus, the song also has references to Moosomin, Moose Jaw, Broadview in Saskatchewan, Red Deer, Hanna and Medicine Hat in Alberta, Terrace in BC and for some reason Hong Kong. No idea why Hong Kong. The other towns would all be familiar to Winnipeg bands playing the Western Canadian pub and club circuit. Enjoy the classic “Running Back To Saskatoon”.
March 6th was a tough day. The world also lost Alvin Lee, guitarist, leader and singer of Ten Years After. This band is one of those bands that etched a big place in the soundtrack of my life, this song in particular. “I’d Love To Change The World“. It has a short interview at the beginning and gets cut off at the end, Oh well.
The band hit its stride at Woodstock, and contributed to the idealism of the 60’s and early 70’s. Terrific player, great band, he will be missed, Alvin Lee, dead at 69.
Southern rockers Marshall Tucker Band in concert (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
August 4, 2012 saw the passing of guitar player Stuart Swanlund. He was 54. Stuart played guitar with the Marshall Tucker Band from 1983 until his passing. The band’s heyday was the 1970’s, but he was a great addition to the later version of the band. Here is the band playing Walk Outside The Line.
With this post, we have now covered the first 150 songs on this list I discovered. Only 350 to go, blogger gold. This set has some drinking songs and lots of rock and roll, some classic, some newer and some that raises hackles on some people. Enjoy.
This one is for Hotspur. It isn’t pissing rainbows, but it is purple. One of the great drinking songs, done by the Irish Rovers in 1967, it reached #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968. Glen Campbell played guitar on the original. I think most people can sing at least a little of this one.
Rush, one of the greatest bands ever. 2112 is not a song, but one side of an album, broken into 7 pieces. The total length is 20:33. One of the best albums of all time. The video here is a live 6 minute piece of the song, taped in 1976.
A little more recent is Treble Charger’s song, American Psycho. Recorded in 2000 on their album “Wide Awake Bored“, it reached number 4 on Billboard’s Canadian Alt chart.
English: Canadian hard rock band Helix in concert at the Friendship Festival in Fort Erie. From left to right, Rick VanDyk, Brian Vollmer, Brent Niemi, Jim Lawson, Paul Fonseca (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Helix was popular in the late 70’s to the mid 80’s. Their sound was definitely heavy rock, a classic 80’s style.
July 16, saw the passing of rock keyboard innovator, Jon Lord. He was 71. Best known as one of the founding members of 70’s icons, Deep Purple, he also played with Whitesnake. He played on the classic song by The Kinks, “You Really Got Me“. He was on albums by David Gilmour and George Harrison. He virtually created the riffs used to this day by keyboardists in all types of popular music.
In my life, Deep Purple was one of the bands that formed my musical tastes. Machine Head is still an album that makes me perk up and listen. I will never forget Smoke On The Water or Highway Star, which are very much a part of the soundtrack of my life. The band in heaven just got a bit better.
The Barenaked Ladies are a major Canadian success story. Their cheeky style and interesting lyrics set them apart from most contemporaries. This is their first entry on the best music list, the first of many.
June 7, 2012 saw the passing of former Fleetwood Mac guitarist, Bob Welch. Another great one lost. He committed suicide at the age of 66. In addition to his time with the band, he had a successful solo career. Here are a couple of those solo hits in his honor.
Heavy on the classic stuff again. Canada did have a thriving cottage industry in music during the 70’s and 80’s. There is also another trivia answer in here somewhere.
[there’s a big] a big hard sun (Photo credit: [noone])The trivia question. Eddie Vedder covered this tune from Canadian singer-songwriter Indio. Indio (Gordon Peterson) released 1 album in his career titled “Big Harvest” in 1989. This was a hit in Canada and became worldwide after Eddie covered it.
Ron Hynes at the Rose (Photo credit: Kent Barrett)
Canadian folk singer Ron Hynes hit gold in 1976 with the Sonny’s Dream. The song has become a standard and has been recorded by a multitude of artists around the world, The version here is a live duet with Alan Doyle of the group Great Big Sea.
Chris de Burgh in concert in Cork city. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Back home and figured this was an appropriate segue to getting back into things. A classic song from a great story-teller. Chris De Burgh released this song a long, long time ago and now that I have experienced the Spanish train system firsthand……it is fitting.
![[there’s a big] a big hard sun](https://i0.wp.com/farm4.static.flickr.com/3128/2809990274_177c9415a8_m.jpg?resize=240%2C240 "[there’s a big] a big hard sun")
