Between work and network difficulties this week I really wasn't able to devote as much attention to the Canadian topic as I would have liked, but c'est la blog. One thing I do feel the need to address before we leave the week of Canada is Canadian music. There will be three sections, first my favorite Canadian artists, then Canadian bands I'm not familiar enough with but think might become favorites if I heard more, and then some other Canadian music that I just feel like listing. First my favorites:
9) Death From Above 1979
It's getting harder and harder to keep up with the hip new music the kids are listening to these days, and most of the time I do hear something I find it sucks: The Liars, TV on the Radio, The Arcade Fire, Interpol, Fran Ferdinand, Bloc Party, The Bravery, etc. etc. etc. suck suck suck. This Canadian duo, however, are pretty great - they were getting compared to Lightning Bolt a lot for awhile, and as LB are a serious favorite of mine I downloaded some DFA79 tracks to check them out. Turns out they don't really sound like Lightning Bolt at all, the comparision is mostly just due to the fact that both duos are only drums and an overdistorted bass which functions in more of a guitar role - if this were early seventies metal we were talking about LB would be Black Sabbath with DFA79 as Bachman-Turner Overdrive.
8) Bachman-Turner Overdrive
In the first grade my parents bought a new stereo console for our living room and when we went down to Gamble's Hardware to pick it up I was allowed to choose an 8-track of my own to play on it (yes, the only place in Ackley, IA which sold music was the hardware store). I'd just become hip to rock and roll radio and liked You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet, so over some mild objection from my folks, who had assumed I was going to get a children's album by the Peter Pan Players or someone, I bought Not Fragile by BTO. Other than a single by Josie and the Pussycats (also still listened to with much enjoyment today) this was the first music purchase I ever made. The first four songs, Not Fragile, Rock Is My Life And This Is My Song, Roll On Down The Highway, and You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet are still one of the most solid Side Ones (or, since it was an 8-track, Programs 1 and 2) in hard rock history, and Rock Is My Life is the greatest "life on the road ain't easy but the fans make it all worthwhile" song ever.
7) Buffy Sainte-Marie
I became interested in Buffy Sainte-Marie after a number of indie pop artists kept praising her in various zines in the mid-90s; it took a little while to get into her powerful, vibrato-crazy vocals, but once I did I was hooked. She worked in a lot of different styles on her albums up through 1974 or so, but it all sounds like Buffy, and every album has at least a few songs that are simply amazing: Universal Soldier, Now That The Buffalo's Gone, He's An Indian Cowboy In The Rodeo, The Piney Wood Hills, Little Wheel Spin And Spin, Groundhog, Cod'ine, He's A Keeper Of The Fire... she wrote Up Where We Belong from An Officer And A Gentleman, too, but don't hold that against her.
6) Andy Kim
Co-wrote Sugar, Sugar, Jingle Jangle, and a lot of other Archies songs, and has some great solo hits, bubblegum and otherwise, too.
5) Neil Young
Just last weekend I was browsing through a record store here in Greenpoint and was very excited to come across Neil's weird early eighties Devo-influenced vocoder-vocaled Trans album, which often gets dismissed by fans (if they've heard of it at all) but from what I've heard in the past is actually pretty great, although it doesn't sound much like a Neil Young record. Unfortunately, it turned out that I had bought re-ac-tor instead, because I'd forgotten the name of Trans and the title and cover of re-ac-tor look like they would be Neil's weird electro new wave album... but there were still 2 or 3 really good songs on it. There are always at least a couple really good songs on every Neil Young album I've ever heard, which is pretty amazing considering how many albums he's put out over the years.
4) Joni Mitchell
I'd always been familiar with a few Joni Mitchell songs like Big Yellow Taxi and Help Me, but it wasn't until I was in college and really into Sign 'O The Times by Prince that I investigated any further than that (because she gets mentioned in The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker and he was also saying how much he liked her in interviews around that time). I got Blue, which is always proclaimed by critics as her masterpeice and one of the best albums of the rock era, and you know what, it's true. I'm not so into her work starting around Miles of Aisles, but the four or five albums before that are all great.
3) Gordon Lightfoot
The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald was on the radio all the time when I was in the second grade or so, and I both loved and was a little scared by it. While that's the only Lightfoot song many Americans think they're familiar with, you would probably recognize Sundown if you heard it, too (if you were around in the early seventies, anyway, it's Gordon's only American #1 single from 1974) and I hope you would also hear that insanely catchy bassline and also recognize that it is awesome. His earlier work was more folky and he has written many outstanding songs - and as an incentive to look further into his ouvre, his first four albums are all on a two-CD set which Amazon is selling for $7.99, though you'll also need a greatest hits collection to get the two songs mentioned above plus Cotton Jenny. Also, she's not at all Canadian, but Nico did an amazing cover of he Lightfoot song I'm Not Saying for her first single, before moving to New York and hooking up with the Velvet Underground, available on this compilation, which is highly recommended all around.
2) The Poppy Family / Terry Jacks
If the only things you've ever heard by Terry Jacks is his cover of Jacques Brel's Seasons In The Sun - and it probably is - you need to hear some more. It's not hard to find people singing the praises of his work with his wife Susan in The Poppy Family, but most make the same mistake as that first review I've linked to here and call his solo work complete and utter crap. This is untrue! I've only got the Seasons In The Sun album, but there are many great, odd, somewhat creepy/depressing pop masterieces contianed in its grooves, most notably I'm So Lonely Here Today, but also Pumpkin Eater, Again and Again, and a super groovy cover of the Everly Brothers' Since You Broke My Heart. And personally I like Seasons In The Sun itself (and its filthy double entendre B-side, Put The Bone In: "Put the bone in, she said at the store, cause my doggie's been hit by a car, and I do want to bring him home something, put the bone in, she asked him once more. ")
1) Cub
Cub always seemed to get written off a little even within the twee indie pop scene of the mid-90s as just being cutesy simplistic cuddlecore, but 1) perfect, hook-laden pop sings about chinchillas and kitties are still perfect, hook-laden pop songs and 2) listen to the lyrics of something like Make Tomorrow Go Away, a lot of their songs are really kinda dark. Buy Come Out, Come Out and Betti-Cola, listen to them a couple times, and tell me you don't have at least 3/4 of those songs permanently stuck in your head. That is why Cub is the best band ever to come out of Canada.

Now for the promising Canadian musical artists which require further research. Nick Gilder had a big hit with Hot Child In the City, which you should be familiar with, but I got a K-TEL compilation a few years back which contained his follow-up single Here Comes The Night, which made it to #44 on the Billboard charts, and that song is pretty amazing. Someday I need to find the album containing both those songs and see if he's got more. You know Echo Beach by Martha and the Muffins (right?), but I always hear that that entire first album is very nice. I recorded Echo Beach off reader Will H. in college, but I think he only had the single, so maybe I heard the B-side but nothing else. The few songs I've heard by Vancouver punk pioneers D.O.A. are good, and their first single Kill Kill This Is Pop is outstanding - once again, I ought to listen to more one of these days. The Hyped To Death compilation I've got that song on (by the way, get yourself some H2D comps already) also contains the great tune (Let's Go To Fucking) Hawaii by The Young Canadians... early 80's Canadian punk in general is a promising topic for further research.

And finally, a few Canadian bands I just feel like listing, either because I was not aware they were Canadian or just because the thought of them amuses me for some reason: Voivod, Rush, Loverboy, Men Without Hats, Corey Hart, Leonard Cohen, Frontline Assembly, NoMeansNo, Aldo Nova, April Wine, Chilliwack, Skinny Puppy, Gino Vanelli, Klaatu, Honeymoon Suite, Glass Tiger, Helix, Exciter, and Triumph.