Can-Con 45 Of The Day - February 20

Can-Con 45 Of The Day - February 20

Postby radiofan » Mon Feb 19, 2018 9:26 pm

Today's Can-Con 45 is from 1971 ... The Guess Who and "Rain Dance"...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQDP97r4k4A

Image
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who couldn't hear the music.
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Re: Can-Con 45 Of The Day - February 20

Postby Richard Skelly » Tue Feb 20, 2018 12:57 pm

Rain Dance no doubt resonated to more than a few Canadian and American farmers—or more likely their rock-loving offspring. A few inches of precipitation sprinkled through the growing season made all the difference between bumper harvest and catastrophic drought. From titling their first Nimbus 9/RCA album Wheatfield Soul to Rain Dance (not to mention Runnin’ Back To Saskatoon), The Guess Who never forgot their Great Plains lineage.

So Long, Bannatyne was the album from which Rain Dance emerged. Lead guitarist Kurt Winter’s imprint was all over the record. He co-wrote pretty well every song with Burton Cummings. The album cover, like the title track, referenced Kurt’s childhood apartment home in the working class Bannatyne Apartments. Indeed, he supposedly still occasionally bunked there during his hardscrabble rock years with Prairie bands such as Gainsborough Gallery and Brother.

The band poses in front of the fraying building on the front cover of So Long, Bannatyne. The rear cover shows the boys by a sign proclaiming Hello My Chevrier Home. Kurt had used his initial Guess Who windfall (after joining in 1970 with co-guitarist Greg Leskiw to replace Randy Bachman) to buy a house on Chevrier Boulevard, a middle class subdivision near the University Of Manitoba. Long after leaving The Guess Who, Kurt was a pool-playing regular at an off-campus tavern I patronized.

Despite considerably boosting his fortune through his 1974 Guess Who departure—and earning considerable royalties thereafter—Kurt contentedly stayed in his Chevrier home until passing away in 1997.
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Re: Can-Con 45 Of The Day - February 20

Postby Richard Skelly » Tue Feb 20, 2018 1:17 pm

My bad.

Just remembered Kurt Winter’s earlier band was the weirdly spelled Gettysbyrg Address and NOT Gainsborough Gallery.

For its part, Gainsborough Gallery hailed from Calgary—one of many Alberta bands that benefited from the Wes Dakus/Norman Petty/Clovis, New Mexico school of record making.
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