I saluted the U.S.'s neighbor to the South a couple of Fridays ago for Cinco de Mayo, and now it's time for the neighbor to the North.
This weekend is Victoria Day (aka "May long weekend" or "May 2-4") in Canada, so they get a one week headstart on Summer over the USA. They celebrate by having barbecues (elk or caribou or whatever the heck people eat up there!) , and drinking lots of beer. The nickname "May 2-4" comes from Canadian slang for a case of brewski.
A few years back, someone me a mix CD of Canadian Content all the standard stuff: Bob & Doug McKenzie's "Take Off", Stompin' Tom's "Hockey Song", "Blame Canada" from the South Park movie, etc., etc.. I was going to include a bunch of stuff from that, but I'll be jiggered if I can find it now. I'll need to dig through the internets to find my own Canadian content mix.
The patron saints of Canadian content are the pair pictured above: brothers Bob and Doug McKenzie. They were introduced to SCTV when the CBC network asked for a few minutes of “Canadian content”, which inspired Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas to invent Bob and Doug, a pair of toque-wearing, beer-swilling, Canadian brothers straight out of the Canuck jokebook. This became one of the most popular parts of the show, and spawned a hit album (The Great White North) and feature film (Strange Brew) for Bob and Doug, and a bunch of cool slang ("take off hoser" was Canada's answer to "G'day mate").
The two most famous bits on the Great White North album are "12 Days of Christmas" ("three pounds of back-bacon, two turtlenecks, and a beer.. in a tree" -- still gets lots of airplay during the holidays) and "Take Off", the hit single featuring Geddy Lee of Rush singing in-between Bob & Doug. This should be exhibit A in the "Geddy Lee does so have a sense of humour" (Canadian spelling intentional). My favourite part (ibid) is when Doug (or is it Bob?) says "that's me on the drums, eh." during the Peartbot 82 drum machine solo.
Bob & Doug McKenzie (with Geddy Lee) - Take Off
(from The Great White North, 1982)
While Bob and Doug were making it cool to be Canadian in the early 80s, lots of bands crossed the border to international arena fame (Rush, April Wine, Loverboy), but one band that didn't was the band Toronto. They were sold as Canada's answer to Heart, and that combined with being named after a city conspired to keep their fame solely in Canada. In a strange twist, Heart turned Toronto's "What About Love" into a worldwide hit a few years later, and they gained fame twenty years later when the New Pornographers covered their best-known song "Your Daddy Don't Know" on the soundtrack to the movie FUBAR.
I downloaded NPs cover from their site when it was available, and it sounds almost like an original. In fact it sounds like the best Rick Springfield song that Rick never wrote. Even borrows its riff from Rick's best known song (you know the one!). A well-known Canadian superband covering a song by a lesser-known Canadian non-super band. Here is the cover and original.
Toronto - Your Daddy Don't Know
(1982, from Get It On Credit)
The New Pornographers - Your Daddy Don't Know
(2002, from FUBAR: The Movie)
The New Pornographers don't have the mp3 on their site anymore, but there is a Quicktime video of the song with Neko and Carl putting on all their arena-rock moves. The video is also on youtube. As well as the Pornographers covering Toronto, the FUBAR:The Movie soundtrack has other Canadian indie bands covering rock classics, like Chixdiggit covering Loverboy's "The Kid is Hot Tonight" and Sloan covering Rush's "In The Mood" (from their first album). I've wanted to get my hands on this album for awhile, but it's only available on import, and isn't on iTunes or any of those by-the-song places.
Is there anything more Canadian than Sloan covering Rush? Maybe Sloan covering April Wine.. Here's the last song on Recorded Live at a Sloan Party (the US bonus disc on One Chord to Another), a cover of April Wine's "I Wouldn't Want to Lose Your Love". There's about a minute and a half of party sounds after the song is done, but I left it on because I'm too lazy to clip it off. It's like those audience bootlegs where the bootlegger forgets to switch off their recorder after the show, so you get a couple of minutes of extra crowd noise!
Sloan - I Wouldn't Want to Lose Your Love (April Wine cover)
And to wrap things up, here's a video of Stompin' Tom Connors performing "The Hockey Song". This song is hockey's version of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame", and even gets played at hockey games south of the 49th parallel.
That refrain: "the good old hockey game is the best game you can name, and the best game you can name is the good old hockey game" should be called "the Stompin' Tom Connors Rule of good old hockey game commutativity"
The Ottawa Senators are Canada's hope for the 2007 Stanley Cup playoffs, and since my one of my two least favourite hockey clubs (Detroit and Anaheim) will face off a-gainst Ottawa in the finals, they're my hope too. It's been 14 years since the Stanley Cup has been filled with Molson or Labatt's Blue (or whatever the heck kind of beer folks drink up in Canada), so the cup has been overrun with weak American beer for too long!
This weekend is Victoria Day (aka "May long weekend" or "May 2-4") in Canada, so they get a one week headstart on Summer over the USA. They celebrate by having barbecues (elk or caribou or whatever the heck people eat up there!) , and drinking lots of beer. The nickname "May 2-4" comes from Canadian slang for a case of brewski.
A few years back, someone me a mix CD of Canadian Content all the standard stuff: Bob & Doug McKenzie's "Take Off", Stompin' Tom's "Hockey Song", "Blame Canada" from the South Park movie, etc., etc.. I was going to include a bunch of stuff from that, but I'll be jiggered if I can find it now. I'll need to dig through the internets to find my own Canadian content mix.
The patron saints of Canadian content are the pair pictured above: brothers Bob and Doug McKenzie. They were introduced to SCTV when the CBC network asked for a few minutes of “Canadian content”, which inspired Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas to invent Bob and Doug, a pair of toque-wearing, beer-swilling, Canadian brothers straight out of the Canuck jokebook. This became one of the most popular parts of the show, and spawned a hit album (The Great White North) and feature film (Strange Brew) for Bob and Doug, and a bunch of cool slang ("take off hoser" was Canada's answer to "G'day mate").
The two most famous bits on the Great White North album are "12 Days of Christmas" ("three pounds of back-bacon, two turtlenecks, and a beer.. in a tree" -- still gets lots of airplay during the holidays) and "Take Off", the hit single featuring Geddy Lee of Rush singing in-between Bob & Doug. This should be exhibit A in the "Geddy Lee does so have a sense of humour" (Canadian spelling intentional). My favourite part (ibid) is when Doug (or is it Bob?) says "that's me on the drums, eh." during the Peartbot 82 drum machine solo.
Bob & Doug McKenzie (with Geddy Lee) - Take Off
(from The Great White North, 1982)
While Bob and Doug were making it cool to be Canadian in the early 80s, lots of bands crossed the border to international arena fame (Rush, April Wine, Loverboy), but one band that didn't was the band Toronto. They were sold as Canada's answer to Heart, and that combined with being named after a city conspired to keep their fame solely in Canada. In a strange twist, Heart turned Toronto's "What About Love" into a worldwide hit a few years later, and they gained fame twenty years later when the New Pornographers covered their best-known song "Your Daddy Don't Know" on the soundtrack to the movie FUBAR.
I downloaded NPs cover from their site when it was available, and it sounds almost like an original. In fact it sounds like the best Rick Springfield song that Rick never wrote. Even borrows its riff from Rick's best known song (you know the one!). A well-known Canadian superband covering a song by a lesser-known Canadian non-super band. Here is the cover and original.
Toronto - Your Daddy Don't Know
(1982, from Get It On Credit)
The New Pornographers - Your Daddy Don't Know
(2002, from FUBAR: The Movie)
The New Pornographers don't have the mp3 on their site anymore, but there is a Quicktime video of the song with Neko and Carl putting on all their arena-rock moves. The video is also on youtube. As well as the Pornographers covering Toronto, the FUBAR:The Movie soundtrack has other Canadian indie bands covering rock classics, like Chixdiggit covering Loverboy's "The Kid is Hot Tonight" and Sloan covering Rush's "In The Mood" (from their first album). I've wanted to get my hands on this album for awhile, but it's only available on import, and isn't on iTunes or any of those by-the-song places.
Is there anything more Canadian than Sloan covering Rush? Maybe Sloan covering April Wine.. Here's the last song on Recorded Live at a Sloan Party (the US bonus disc on One Chord to Another), a cover of April Wine's "I Wouldn't Want to Lose Your Love". There's about a minute and a half of party sounds after the song is done, but I left it on because I'm too lazy to clip it off. It's like those audience bootlegs where the bootlegger forgets to switch off their recorder after the show, so you get a couple of minutes of extra crowd noise!
Sloan - I Wouldn't Want to Lose Your Love (April Wine cover)
And to wrap things up, here's a video of Stompin' Tom Connors performing "The Hockey Song". This song is hockey's version of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame", and even gets played at hockey games south of the 49th parallel.
That refrain: "the good old hockey game is the best game you can name, and the best game you can name is the good old hockey game" should be called "the Stompin' Tom Connors Rule of good old hockey game commutativity"
The Ottawa Senators are Canada's hope for the 2007 Stanley Cup playoffs, and since my one of my two least favourite hockey clubs (Detroit and Anaheim) will face off a-gainst Ottawa in the finals, they're my hope too. It's been 14 years since the Stanley Cup has been filled with Molson or Labatt's Blue (or whatever the heck kind of beer folks drink up in Canada), so the cup has been overrun with weak American beer for too long!
3 comments:
Fun video. Did that Canadian mix CD come from us? Or do you know other crazy people who put Stompin' Tom on mix CDs?
Lorrie: yes, the Canadian content cd came from you and Stef, but I didn't want to mention you guys by name.
I can't get the eSnips to work on my Mac, either with Firefox or Safari -- there's no way to play or even download the song. Any other Mac users out there have a remedy?
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