Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Completely Conspicuous 276: Oh, Canada

Part 1 of my conversation with guest Ric Dube as we dissect a classic mid-1970s song from a Canadian music legend. Listen to the episode below or download it directly (right click and "save as").

Show notes:
- Recorded at More Lost Time world HQ
- Dissecting Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"
- Song's a total downer, no pun intended
- Based on a true life incident in 1975
- Sounds like Lightfoot put the Wikipedia entry to music
- Checking out the early '70s Canadian band Lighthouse
- Sounds like the Guess Who or Blood, Sweat and Tears
- Lightfoot's "Sundown" is a much better song
- Ric: A little like Velvet Underground's "Loaded"
- Frank Chacksfield, the king of elevator music
- Making slow '70s songs even slower
- Pat Boone and Paul Anka later made entire albums covering hard rock songs
- Anne Murray dominated Canadian radio in the '70s
- Canadian content rule meant a third of music on the radio had to be Canadian
- A random song from The Randoms to wash the MOR crap away
- Teenage Head was an Ontario punk band from the late '70s
- CanCon meant a lot of bands got on the radio that normally wouldn't have
- Bonehead of the Week


Music:
Sloan - Everything You've Done Wrong

Stars - Hold On When You Get Love and Let Go When You Give It

Completely Conspicuous is available through the iTunes podcast directory. Subscribe and write a review!

The Sloan song is on the album One Chord to Another on Murderecords. Download the song for free at Noisetrade.
The Stars song is on the album The North on ATO Records. Download it for free at Epitonic.

The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Find out more about Senor Breitling at his fine music blog Clicky Clicky. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.

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