Skip to main content

Great Forgotten Canadian Music of the 80s

A few of Eyewear's favourite bands from his teen years...

Chalk Circle was a band that seemed clearly influenced by Big Country and U2 - they had a big sound and perhaps 'April Fool' was their biggest-hearted tune.  Utterly forgotten by most people now.

The Payolas had an echoey guitar vibe that reminds one of 'I'm In Love With A German Film Star' but were - again - Canadian New Wave.  Thus, basically, unheard of now.  Their classic is 'Eyes of a Stranger'.

I saw Blue Rodeo at the McGill Ballroom - for a time they were a kind of local Crowded House.  'Try' is their big hit.

Red Rider's 'Lunatic Fringe' has long been a radio classic.  Few know it is by a Canadian band fronted by Tom Cochrane.

'Nova Heart' by The Spoons is probably the quintessential Canadian New Wave song.  As good as Visage?

Strange Advance were New Romantics North, and 'We Run' from 1985 is their finest moment.

Okay, I was wrong - 'Echo Beach' from 1980, by Martha and the Muffins, is likely the best-known Canadian New Wave hit.

Also from 1980, the very louche 'High School Confidential' by Rough Trade.  This brings back high school viscerally.

Montrealer Corey Hart became - briefly - an international heart-throb (with his Harrison Ford looks, and falsetto whine) - and had a few kitsch hits, most especially 'Sunglasses at Night' which was, for a time, hugely influential as a fashion statement.

Northern Pikes - with 'Teenland' - had another classic Northern Wave hit in 1987.

The Pursuit of Happiness, in 1986, produced a video that really captures what it looked and felt like to be a Canadian teen coming of age, 'I'm An Adult Now'.  The weird guy dancing looks like Robert Lowell on a jag, and the lead singer walks through Toronto that looks as bleak as some Siberian mining town.

The Box scored an unlikely Can-Con hit with their Quebec City featuring video, 'Closer Together', and Jean Chretien delivery.

However, the kitsch crown must go to Gowan, whose 1985 'Criminal Mind' featured the voice (I think) of Paul Soles (Spider-Man in the original cartoon).

Canada's greatest band of this period - the REM of the North - was The Tragically Hip.  Their top song is arguably 'Blow At High Dough'.  It showcases their trademark narrative hi-octane intensity, where small-town lives converge with big emotions and experiences.  I am not sure exactly what this is about, but I love the idea of a film crew coming to a small town and a local guy who "can get behind anything" out at the speedway.

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".