Tag: Dr. Hook

Classic [Band] of My Youth Revisited: April Wine

As much as I love music, I haven’t been to a whole lot of concerts in my life. There are a lot of reasons for this, which have varied depending on my current circumstances: financial limitations, parental responsibilities, time constraints, divided interests (a night out is six hours not spent reading, writing, watching a movie or television show, or listening to other music). I also am not a fan of crowds, and have had instances where I suffered panic attacks, or practically shut down from social anxiety. Those occurred without any warning (and on one occasion with the latter was not even in a large group) so they haven’t exactly led me into avoidant behaviours, but they are another reason why I lean towards a peaceful night at home with my favourite person over a jaunt to hear some live music.

Growing up in Cape Breton, missing out on live music was not a real concern since very few major acts came our way. I know I saw Dr. Hook in 1980 – I can date this more or less exactly because the opening act was Graham Shaw and the Sincere Serenaders, riding high on their #15 Canadian hit “Can I Come Near” – and since Dr. Hook were still churning out top 10 American hits (“Sexy Eyes” reached #5 that year), I cannot even imagine how they ended up playing the Sydney Forum. What we got in their place were a lot of Canadian bands, and probably none played our local arenas more frequently than April Wine.

With the recent passing of the band’s frontman Myles Goodwyn, lots of friends and acquaintances are posting stories on social media about meeting him and how he came across as a solid, friendly guy. I never had that pleasure, but his band’s music was still a big part of my growing up. April Wine were not just Canadian, they were Maritimers, though I don’t think I knew that back then. They were also prolific, releasing 10 albums between 1971 and 1982, with at least one song in the Canadian top 40 each of those years. Although their biggest success was at home, the band also made an impression south of the border, with 1981’s “The Nature of the Beast” selling over a million copies and reaching #26 on the Billboard albums chart. They also landed three top 40 singles there over the years, with the biggest of those being that record’s “Just Between You and Me”. 

Though April Wine released their share of rockers, it was on the ballads that they really excelled. I think you would be hard pressed to find another band of that era with a better collection of power ballads, and junior high school dance floors were filled with boys and girls experiencing their first serious hormonal stirrings to Goodwyn’s words and voice. 1974’s “I Wouldn’t Want to Lose Your Love” was a favourite of the disc jockey at my earliest Friday night dances at the Catholic Church hall in Florence circa 1975/76, and I am confident I felt my chest crack open and watched my heart tumble onto the dirty floor at least once while Myles sang “I couldn’t stand the pain / You know it’d drive me insane”, and it absolutely did just that.

I don’t have a particular favourite of their tunes, but there are a good dozen or more that pull me back to that time. Listening to “The April Wine Collection”, I see titles that make me think, “I should know this”, and then I play something like “The Whole World’s Goin’ Crazy” and I’m 12 or 14 or 17 years old again and listening to CJCB in my bedroom. April Wine never won a competitive Juno Award (Graham Shaw, on the other hand, does have one), they don’t seem to show up on critical appraisals of the top acts of their era, and even lists by Canadians of the best songs that have come out of our country mostly neglect them. This, strangely, seems right, because what made them good can’t really be summed up in one song. What they had instead was a body of work that was consistently catchy and musically diverse. From the ‘50s-esque singalong “You Won’t Dance With Me” (it stuns me that no retro crooner has ever covered this) to the electrifying train-crossing bells of “Oowatanite” (written and sung by Goodwyn’s band mate Jim Clench), the sly percolating funk of “Say Hello” and the jittery ass kicking fuzz of “I Like to Rock”, they were not a band that could be easily boxed in.

There are covers from Canadian artists that probably grew up loving them: fellow east coasters Sloan and Melanie Doane lovingly served up live versions of “I Wouldn’t Want to Lose Your Love” (complete with hand claps) and “Oowatanite”, respectively, Sebastian Bach gives us a fired up “Rock n Roll Is a Vicious Game”, and Treble Charger did a grimy version of “Roller” for the “FUBAR” soundtrack. More fun is to check out the originals of some of the artists they covered, from Elton John to Muddy Waters to King Crimson. They serve all well, but nothing tops their reinvention of Hot Chocolate’s funk jam “Could’ve Been A Lady” (which is maybe better than 1971’s original, but can’t quite match the British band’s much funkier 1976 reimagining of their tune).

In August 2022, I played their greatest hits record. It was probably the first time I had listened to April Wine in close to 40 years, and I wrote my friend Robert Barrie to say I thought it held up better than most of their domestic contemporaries. He told me in response that Goodwyn had once said he always made sure there were hits on the albums so they would get airplay and people would know the band and come out to see them play when they came to town. Goodwyn understood that a band needed to connect with its audience, and the best way to do that is to give them songs to love, and then they’ll love you back. The power of a song that you love – which I relive in this space again and again – is that it never loses that hold over you, connecting you to another time and the person you were then and the people you shared those days with. I don’t have that pull from April Wine to the same degree as I do with many other artists and songs, but I know a lot of people who probably do. For them, and the people they once were and now are, I pour one out for Myles Goodwyn, a CanCon legend, and a man who knew how to make music that touched your soul.

Classic Songs of My Youth Revisited #39

The Rovers – Wasn’t That A Party

Growing up in Canada in the 1970s, I was not a fan of our national television networks. They were great for sports and, to the extent I was paying attention, news, but our scripted programming left much to be desired. There were such short-lived “classics” as “The Trouble with Tracy” (which I mostly remember now in connection with co-star Steve Weston’s tragic early death) and “Excuse My French”, and long-lived but mostly not-much-better shows like “The Beachcombers” and “The King of Kensington”. I did love some of the children’s shows – “The Waterville Gang” stands out in my memory (it’s crazy that almost 50 years later I can remember character names and what their voices sounded like) – and there were smart quiz shows, like “Headline Hunters”, “Front Page Challenge” and my beloved “Reach for the Top”. But all of the musical and variety shows were pretty old fashioned, with such gems as “The Pig and Whistle”, “The Bobby Vinton Show”, “The Tommy Hunter Show” and the stars of today’s missive, The Irish Rovers, and their eponymous series.

I had nothing against The Irish Rovers, or anyone else on these shows. But their music had nothing to offer me when, for example, Don Cornelius and “Soul Train” were airing on Saturdays (which I foolishly almost never watched because I didn’t know the songs – soul music didn’t have a big presence on our local radio band waves). I knew there were other great shows being denied to me – like “American Bandstand” and “Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert” – from reading “TV Guide” and other print media. Instead, I was being served up traditional Irish music, country and soft pop. My ears were not interested.

Then, in 1980, The Irish Rovers went rogue. They rebranded – punting the Irish part of their name – and made a stab at the pop charts. They’d been there before, but 1968’s Top 10 “The Unicorn” was one of those freak occurrences that could only happen in the pop folk environment of the era. It wasn’t a half-hearted effort either – they appeared on frickin’ “Solid Gold”. (I offer this fake but oh-so-accurate clip from “The Boys” as some evidence of how truly bonkers that show was.) And it worked: it got them back into the American top 40, and to #3 in Canada, which seems somehow factually wrong to me even though I remember it happening.

What I have trouble understanding now is why this song was a hit at all: it should’ve been a tune that got a few plays, was rewarded with some earnest chuckles, and then consigned to the musical dustbin other than being hauled out now and then at evening’s end by a not-as-clever-as-he-thinks-he-is dive bar deejay. (On the other hand, Joe Dolce’s “Shaddap You Face” was an even bigger hit the following year, so it’s possible we were all just idiots back then.) It’s a fun song, but it’s not a good one. How do I know it’s not good? Because good songs reward repeated plays. There are songs that compel you to play them again, and again, and maybe again, only to reveal more depths over time. That’s not “Wasn’t That A Party”. The lyrics have a few cute lines (you won’t go wrong with me by throwing in references to cats and the law), but the music is simple and repetitive, save for some honky tonk piano and horn bits. On the first replay, I was bored after two minutes, and there is really no reason for this recording to last longer than 2:30 – almost everything after that simply repeats what came before, so that a cute little ditty becomes something you have to survive. And survive is what I did. On the second play, my ears began to hurt. On the third, blood began to flow from my eyes. I stopped there, fearing one more would put me in “Scanners” territory. (I may be exaggerating a bit here.) If you can get to four, you are clearly made of tougher stuff than I, and probably also way too drunk to be on your phone right now.

As it turns out, this was a cover of a song by a fellow named Tom Paxton, whose version is vastly superior. Gentler, more melancholy, remorseful as opposed to boasting, and, though some 33 seconds shorter, not at all repetitive.

Anyway, I hadn’t thought of the band in years, save for every Christmas season when “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” turns up again. I can’t even say why I thought of them now. So I was surprised to learn they are still very much an active concern, 38 years after they last had a song on the charts. (That would be 1985’s “Everybody’s Making It Big (But Me)”, also a cover and, yes, also not even close to as interesting as Shel Silverstein’s drunken piano bar blues original, or Dr. Hook’s goofily strained version.) They toured from Sarnia to Victoria in March and April 2023, supporting the January 2022 release of their latest album, “No End in Sight”. The title song is an original in the traditional style, and I like it a lot. 10-year-old me would be shaking his head at the codger I’ve turned into.