Amir El Saffar at the Music Gallery tonight.
Hi and welcome to the new, WordPress-based Zoilus, courtesy of new web czar Ryan Catbird. I’m still learning my way through the back lanes to get to the tree fort, which is slowing the pace, but I’m sure I’ll get my legs soon.
First, I feel obliged to alert you that, although I can’t be there, I have a sneaking suspicion that tonight’s show at the Music Gallery by Iraqi-American trumpeter Amir El Saffar and his Two Rivers Ensemble - including among others the excellent Rudresh Mahanthappa on sax and Nasheet Waits on drums - may go down as one of the gigs of the year. (So might the Willie Nelson and Ray Price show at Massey Hall, where I also cannot be. Willow, weep for me.) Read more about El Saffar in the fine piece by David Dacks in this week’s Eye. Or take the word (as I often do) of Peter Magarsak of the Chicago Reader: “While plenty of horn players have tapped into Middle Eastern modalities since John Coltrane became fascinated with Eastern sounds in the late ’60s, it’s rare to hear it done with such conviction and authority.”
Meanwhile, when I am not psychotically obsessing about Auto-Tune, I am busy trying to compile a list of the Top 10 Canadian singles of all time for Bob Mersereau, who is following up his book on Canadian albums with one on singles.
There are built-in generic biases to these exercises, quite aside from the usual ones about generational or racial bias among those polled and, in Canada, region, language, etc. So I’m glad that Bob’s doing a singles book, which may help give credit to, for instance, rap and techno artists who don’t so much do the albums thing, and even some worthy one-hitters. On the other hand, a singles list will tend to discriminate against, above all, jazz artists and “classical”-tradition composers and performers, who seldom do the singles thing at all.
Right now I have just short of 60. Look at my draft long-list (in alphabetical order) after the jump - feedback is welcome. What am I forgetting? I know, for example, that I don’t have any techno/electronic stuff, as I don’t really know the Canadian landmarks there; another omission that seems notable is reggae/dub. Unlike when I did “The Other 50 Tracks”, Bob’s criteria do require that it be a single, broadly speaking, not just a song - as Bob puts it, “a 78, 45, video or download, in other words a song designed to get airplay or attention for an act.” So in the case of the Weakerthans’ “Aside” I counted its use as theme music in Wedding Crashers as its “single” debut; in the cases of Paul Bley and Oscar Peterson I am arguably cheating (see “jazz” above). I am resisting the small wheedly voice that wants to insert Kim Mitchell’s “Patio Lanterns.”
Arcade Fire - Wake Up (2004)
Jann Arden - Good Mother (1995)
Bachman Turner Overdrive - Takin’ Care of Business (1973)
Barcelona Pavilion - How Are You People Going to Have Fun? (2003)
Paul Bley - Ida Lupino (1965)
Blue Peter - Don’t Walk On Past (1983)
Bruce Cockburn - Tokyo (1980)
Leonard Cohen - First We Take Manhattan (1988)
Demics - New York City (1978)
Richard Desjardins - Tu m’aimes-tu? (1990)
Destroyer - The Temple (2000), It’s Gonna Take An Airplane (2004), Painter in Your Pocket (2006)
The Diamonds - Little Darlin’ (1957)
Diodes - Tired of Waking Up Tired (1978)
Celine Dion - It’s All Coming Back to Me (1996)
Dream Warriors - My Definition (of a Boombastic Jazz Style) (1990)
Feist - Mushaboom (2005)
Final Fantasy - This is the Dream of Win & Regine (2005)
Five-Man Electrical Band - Signs (1971)
The Government - Hemingway (Hated Disco Music) (1979)
The Hidden Cameras - I Believe in the Good of Life (2004)
Veda Hille - Ace of the Nazarene (2008)
Ian & Sylvia - Four Strong Winds (1963)
Junior Boys - Birthday (2003)
Kardinal Offishal feat Akon - Dangerous (2008)
Gordon Lightfoot - Sundown (1974)
Maestro - Let Your Backbone Slide (1989)
Martha & the Muffins - Echo Beach (1980)
Kate & Anna McGarrigle - Heart Like a Wheel (1975)
Joni Mitchell - Free Man in Paris (1974)
Anne Murray - Snowbird (1970)
New Pornographers - Letter from an Occupant (2002), Myriad Harbour (2007)
Mary Margaret O’Hara - Body’s in Trouble (1988)
John Oswald - Power (1975)
Oscar Peterson - Hymn to Freedom (1962)
Joel Plaskett Emergency - True Patriot Love (2001)
Rough Trade - High School Confidential (1980)
Royal City - Bad Luck (2001)
Rush - Closer to the Heart (1977)
Rhythm Activism - Louis Riel (1987)
Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet - Having an Average Weekend (1990)
Jane Siberry - You Don’t Need (1984), Love is Everything (1993)
Simply Saucer - She’s a Dog (1978)
Hank Snow - I’ve Been Everywhere (1962)
Stompin’ Tom - Sudbury Saturday Night (1967)
Buffy Sainte-Marie - Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1992)
Teenage Head - Let’s Shake (1980)
Gilles Vigneault - Mon Pays (1965)
Martha Wainwright - Bloody Motherfucking Asshole (2004)
Rufus Wainwright - April Fools (1998)
The Weakerthans - Aside (2000)
Bob Wiseman - What the Astronaut Noticed & Then Suggested (1991), Uranium (2006)
Neil Young - Hey Hey My My (Into the Black) (1979), Mr. Soul (Trans version 12″ dance remix) (1982)
“My Way” — Sinatra. Eng. lyrics by Paul Anka.
“Put Your Head On My Shoulder” — Anka.
“Theme from the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” — written by Anka.
Any of a bunch by the Four Lads. “Who Needs You” or “No Not Much” would top my list — with, of course, “Constantinople,” later of TMBG fame.
Do Tagaq or Kiran Ahluwalia have any singles? Tagaq’s album is in the pantheon — mine, anyway.
I wouldn’t call My Way a Canadian single despite Anka’s hand in it; Put Your Head would be on a long list, but it would be a really long list; the Four Lads don’t so much crank my gears; and while I’m with you on Tagaq’s albums (there are two now), I think the only single-like release she’s done is her swirlier new-agey-techno remixes, which I’m not as fond of.
good to see the diamonds, blue peter and martha/muffins cuts here. and i am totally okay with the terry jacks omission. off the top of my head only things i would add (aside from the aforementioned paul anka tracks) would be:
ugly ducklings - nothin’
claude gauthier - genevieve
Oh, here’s one that hardly anyone will know but that I meant to put in: Scott Merritt’s “Overworked and Underprivileged.” Also, among people from my home town, perhaps Fred Eaglesmith’s “Time To Get a Gun,” though I’m not sure what the other “single” choices for Fred would qualify. Maybe “I Like Trains”? I’m tempted to say “White Rose,” based on Toby Keith’s cover of it, the greatest ode to a shut-down gas station ever written, but I don’t think Fred had a single on it.
The Pursuit of Happiness, “I’m an Adult Now”
Dream Warriors, “My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style”
Deja Voodoo, “Cheese and Crackers”
Alys Robi
La Bolduc
and as a guy that no longer lives in that county, Patio Lanterns is required and totally okay. Out of context (played to death by rock radio every hour of every day of my entire life), that song blows people away. I’ve played it at shows/bars down here and have invariably answered “who was that?”s from dancers, mellow rock dudes and the rest of them.
Dream Warriors is already in the list, Paul - but the other two are good calls. Was the Deja Voodoo song actually a single, though? Not according to their Wikipedia discography, which looks thorough. The DV songs that were put out as singles aren’t favourites of mine.
David, thanks for mentioning two I only know a bit about - La Bolduc seems like a must (La Cuisinière, right?), but despite the drama of her life, Robi seems like a secondary figure, having small hits with versions of bigger hits by Carmen Miranda and others? (If she were included, though, I guess it would be Chic Chic Boum Chic?)
hey carl.
did you know auto-tune was originally developed for the oil companies, as a way to find
stuff underground.
I know! I’m hoping to do something clever with that. Probably involving the word “drill.”
Technically, you are right — Cheese and Crackers is off their EP, “Too Cool to Live, Too Smart to Die”. I guess there is an ontological difference between a single and an EP but it feels slippery to me. Since it was something of a signature song for the band (it was always a highlight of their live show) I think of that EP as akin to a maxi-single; “Cheese and Crackers” b/w the other 7 (short) songs. I feel sort of the same about Nomeansno’s EPs of the era — Body Bag from “You Kill Me” and “The Day that Everything Became Nothing”’s title track are (classic) singles in my book.
i’m pretty sure that ‘cheese and crackers’ is not a deja voodoo original.
does that matter?
platinum blonde - it doesn’t really matter
modernettes - the rebel kind
the stampeders - sweet city woman
the rheostatics- saskatchewan
ferron - ain’t life a brook
hawaii- young canadians
high school confidential - rough trade
hammer on a drum - payolas
Carl, you forgot the greatest Canadian single ever: Eva Tanguay, “I Don’t Care.”
Also, where’s the love for Avril (”Complicated”) and Nelly Furtado (”Promiscuous”; “I’m Like A Bird”)?
Other (admittedly cheesy) suggestions: Steppenwolf (”Born to Be Wild”); Bryan Adams (”Cuts Like A Knife,” “Heaven,” “Summer of ‘69″); Mylene Farmer (”Désenchantée”); Dan Hill (”Sometimes When We Touch”).
>i’m pretty sure that ‘cheese and crackers’ is not a deja voodoo original. does that matter?
Absolutely not.
Jody: Eva’s song seems so New York that I find it hard to take it as Canadian, but obviously I’ve played loose on emigrant/immigrant in other cases.
I meant to put Avril on the list. Nelly doesn’t quite make it for me, a couple of years later.
Steppenwolf is a staple on these lists, but I feel they’re more of a Los Angeles band than a Canadian one, even though some of them had been in the Canadian band Sparrow before that. It’s like, Neil Young is Canadian, but that didn’t make Buffalo Springfield or CSNY Canadian.
I don’t know Mylene Farmer. I don’t like Bryan Adams. And, um, “Sometimes When We Touch”? Really???
Hemingway may have hated disco music, but Lime’s “Your Love” and at least one France Joli track (”Gonna Get Over You” or “The Heart to Break the Heart”) are deserving selections.
Was joking about “Sometimes When We Touch.” Just mentioned it because for some reason I knew that that guy was Canadian. Was kinda joking about Bryan Adams too.
I buy all your other arguments btw.
Several of the songs off Trooper’s “Hot Shots” seem to loom pretty large when I think about it — they get played ad nauseum in hockey rinks throughout the country, but still I think “We’re Here for a Good Time” is unimpeachable.
k.d. lang, “Three Days.” Or “I’m Down to My Last Cigarette.”
Glenn Gould, “Aria” from Goldberg Variations. Maybe not technically a single, but it’s been detached and spun off from its album so many times and in so many contexts that its career has been that of a single. (It’s on — I’m not joking — Columbia Records “Bach Super Hits,” so that would qualify it, wouldn’t it?)
Robert Charlebois “Lindbergh” - a psychedelic masterpiece.
Gordon Lightfoot “Summer Side of Life” - his antiwar single.
Max Webster “Let Go the Line” - floors me every time it comes on the oldies station.
And also:
The Surfin’ Tapeworms From Venus “Chariots of Foam”
R. Dean Taylor “There’s a Ghost In My House”
Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers “Does Your Mother Know About Me”
Pagliaro “Lovin You Ain’t Easy”
Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks “Who Do You Love”
The Band “Rag Mama Rag”
Chad Allan and the Expressions “Shakin’ All Over”
does it matter that hank snow did not write ‘i’ve been everywhere’?
also, i would suggest something by the poppy family and/or terry jacks, ‘evil grows’ being my favorite, but ‘which way are you going billy?’ is probably more single-like. maybe?
also maybe something by d.o.a. and/or the evaporators. ‘i’m going to france’?
are my western roots showing?
and is it not cool to include the tragically hip? or guy lombardo?
i like lists!
ps - i support the inclusion of uranium especially because i made the ‘video’ for it.
and ‘new york city’ by cub!
1. Beautiful Second-Hand Man - Ginette Reno
2. What the Hell I got - Pagliaro
3. As the Years Go By - Mashmakan
A meagre trio of suggestions:
The Jolly Tamborine Man’s “Apple Strudel Man” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEYCPUpdI5s)
Sloan’s “Coax Me”
Meryn Cadell’s “The Sweater”
Also, I must say I much prefer BP’s “New Materiology” to “How Are You People Going to Have Fun?”. I cannot tolerate the use of “you people”, whether facetious or not.
Guy Lombardo, yes! In addition to one of the iconic records of the 20th century — Auld Lang Syne — Guy’s brother Carmen wrote the standards “Sweethearts on Parade” (recorded by Armstrong, who was a Lombardo fan) and “Seems Like Old Times.”
Probably too many suggestions:
Men Without Hats - Safety Dance
The Government - Flat Tire
Spoons?
Gordon Lightfoot - not Sundown, but one of : If you Could Read my Mind, Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Summer Side of Life
Blue Rodeo - Try (shmaltzy, but should probably be there)
Harmonium - Pour un instant
Deja Voodoo - Take out the trash
Drastic Measures - “Everything’s Hotsy-Totsy” (was this a single?)
I do not know how y’all feel about The Tragically Hip but “Nautical Disaster” was the darkest thing that haunted the radio during my 10-month stay in Canada.
Sloan has to be represented with something. I say “The Good in Everyone.”
I’m arriving late to the party. but surely, Mitsou- Bye Bye Mon Cowboy.
(or do I just feel extra love for that song cause of the image of callum keith rennie & molly parker dancing to it in twitch city?)
and I could fully back Blue Rodeo’s “Lost Together” without flinching, whereas “Try” would give me a guilty pleasure kind of pause for the aforementioned schmaltz.
Awesome list. Well researched. There are some old gems here that I had long forgotten and perusing this list really stirred up some old memories. Notably, the Demics, The Diodes & The Government. TY for stirring up some fine old memories. I’m just ticked off that I have no idea where that old Government EP I had got to. I would kill for it now.
D.M.
I really don
This passage is a good revelation for me