Can Con ... Some Good, Some Bad

[BossRadio]

Does anyone recall Jesse Winchester's wonderful "Touch On The Rainy Side"?. I loved that melody.

As far as tunes with a built it retch-factor,Terry tops the list with Seasons in the Sun and wins a dis-honorable mention with the horrid If You Go Away. Anything by Patsy Gallant became a garbage can frisbee too.

BR

[johnsykes]

That Roller Skating one - yeah Melanie...another Mitchell-wannabe, that why I screwed up...Mitchell's other awful one, the song about Putting Up a Parking Lot or something.
C'est la vie......
one Cancon group I always liked.....my old girlfriend's brothers group the Beaumarks...Joey Frechette and friends. Good early Canadian R & R

[PMC]

That Roller Skating one - yeah Melanie...another Mitchell-wannabe, that why I screwed up...Mitchell's other awful one, the song about Putting Up a Parking Lot or something.
C'est la vie......
one Cancon group I always liked.....my old girlfriend's brothers group the Beaumarks...Joey Frechette and friends.  Good early Canadian R & R

Dating yourself again John...Clap Your Hands by the Beaumarks, I believe was in 1959-60 and came on a 78 !

Joni Mitchell does good stuff, the tune you mention is Big Yellow Taxi which was directed towards Toronto Police cars which at one time, late 60's early 70's were yellow. It was over played... a favourite of mine is Raised on Robbery... so is Dog Eat Dog, and Impossible Dreamer.

[johnsykes]

Actually who said anything about Clap Your Hands.....I think their better song was Joan....and it was 1960.....Clap Your Hands was good, but was more like a song everyone had to follow along to...Joan was much better, but not commercial enough.

[segueking2]

"From New York to LA" - Patsy Gallant.

"Que Sera Sera" - The Raes

"Make My Life Brighter" - Chester.

The one that Sykes was mentioning is "Brand New Key" - Melanie.

Try Melanie, Lay Down, Candles in the rain" - if you want to hear painful.

On the other side of the coin.
LOVED CROWBAR. Get the CD version of Bad Manors - and turn it up. House of Blue Lights - Cherokee Boogie - Oh wat a feeling - the whole things smokes.

[jon]

Personally, I find that Joni Mitchell's material ranges from much loved to "no thanks". Much of it would wear thin pretty quickly with me, were it repeated often. Admittedly, I've never really made any attempt to follow her music since "Court and Spark" came out in the mid-'70s.

Haven't checked recently, but Magic 99 here in Edmonton was regularly playing many cuts from the Blue album the first few months they were on the air. I know a lot of people who own(ed) that album when it came out, and still enjoy it today. In fact, my best all-time boss was a confirmed jazz fan (and still is), but Blue was his favourite current music when I worked for him at CFPR in Prince Rupert in the summer of 1972.

What was the first Joni Mitchell you ever heard? For me, it was "Circle Game" sung by Tom Rush. First song I heard her sing was "Dawntreader" from her self-titled 1968 album. Both were played (where I heard them) on CKLG-FM. Tom's album came out a little earlier in 1968, and Circle Game was actually the title cut. The album also included two other Joni songs: cut 1 was "Tin Angel" and cut 3 was "Urge for Going".

Amazing album, actually, as it includes songs written by two other unknowns at the time: James Taylor ("Something in the Way She Moves") and Jackson Browne ("Shadow Dream Song", one of his best). A third song ("So Long") is written by Charles Rich, but I'm not sure if that is the late Charlie Rich of "Behind Closed Doors", "Lonely Weekends" and "Mohair Sam" fame. He was hardly an unknown, but wasn't popular during this period, to the best of my knowledge.

[jon]

As for "Big Yellow Taxi", it was nice to learn about the connection to Toronto police cars that were yellow. Edmonton's fire trucks are gradually being phased out of yellow, but the police were never yellow, presumably because of Yellow Cab being the dominant (by far) taxi company here.

I learned years ago, probably when the song was current, that the lyric in the same song that goes "they paved paradise and put up a parking lot" was based on Joni's (first?) trip to Honolulu's Waikiki area. She checked into her hotel room, opened the patio door, and there was a parkade staring her in the face.

The great irony, which I only learned a few years ago, was that Waikiki Beach is manmade, in the sense that it had been a marshy swamp, but they built a canal to drain the water, and then loaded sand in to make the beach.

[jon]

OK, lets make this three in a row: How about current CanCon?

I quite like "oneSONG" by JackSoul, the only non-cover song from the new "mySOUL" album. You can hear it here http://www.jacksoul.com/music.html

Overall (i.e. - not just CanCon), "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley is probably my favourite current song. Several Edmonton stations are playing it. You can hear it here http://www.gnarlsbarkley.com/ but it does require some mouse clicks and patience. Hint: hit the "next cut" button once.

Obviously, I haven't heard either of them 100 times yet, so dunno how they will do after scores of plays.