by Richard Skelly » Tue May 22, 2018 11:53 pm
No shortage of Tom-Northcott-where-are-you? shoutouts on Facebook pages for The Collectors, Rob Frith and the Canadian Records And Artist’s Appreciation Society. By some accounts, he lives here on the South Island near Victoria. Post recording career, he ran a studio, turned to commercial fishing, earned a law degree and then opened a mediator practice.
A few years back, I visited family in Kamloops. Thumbing through a directory, I found a Tom Northcott listed but without any address. I dialed the number which, unfortunately, had been disconnected.
As for Going Down, it seems to benefit from a subtle droning, possibly open-tuned guitar. In other words, modal folk rock. By coincidence, one commenter on this YouTube named ‘modaljig’ recalls owning Going Down until losing his record collection in 1970s Oakville Ontario. Another commenter ‘denimfit’ notes the tune peaked at #12 on April 1966 CFUNtastic Fifty.
Serendipitously, ‘‘twas just yesterday that I found a Belgian release of Going Down on the Canadian-owned Stone Records. I was researching Stone which released early Island Records product up here including Spencer Davis Group, Traffic and Spooky Tooth along with Canadian signings. Presumably Tom and his fledgling New Syndrome label cut a distribution deal with Stone. Label boss Robert Stone then put it out in Belgium under his own label, probably hoping to break it on Radio Luxembourg.
A mystery to me where the Tom Northcott Trio actually recorded the song. My guess is Robin Spurgin’s Vancouver Studio. That’s apparently where Tom’s labelmates The Collectors cut early sides plus the demos which earned them a deal with Valiant (later Warner Bros) Records. Tom, too, soon cut a deal with Warners to work with some of LA’s top producers, arrangers, songwriters and session musicians.
But it all started simply, with the Trio and songs like Going Down and Just Don’t.