Can Con, You Guys!

100% of the 35% daily Canadian Music Content required by the CRTC. Looking back at popular Canadian music from 1980 - 2005, because if we don't... who will?

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It’s the Canada Day long weekend.  Thus, I’ve made you a mixtape composed entirely of Canadian bands (i.e. CanCon) from the past few decades. The whole spectrum from good to cheesy is covered.  Play this while you drink a domestic beer on your porch over the long weekend. Download away:

Various Artists - #CanCon [zip]

Here’s the tracklisting:

Wintersleep - Weighty Ghost Bruce Cockburn - Lovers In A Dangerous Time Odds - Someone Who’s Cool Stars - Elevator Love Letter Crash Test Dummies - The Ballad Of Peter Pumpkinhead The New Pornographers - Mass Romantic The Northern Pikes - Teenland Hot Hot Heat - Talk to Me, Dance With Me Kim Mitchell - Patio Lanterns Shuffle Demons - Spadina Bus Moxy Fruvous - King Of Spain The Pursuit Of Happiness - I’m An Adult Now Moist - Push Wide Mouth Mason - My Old Self The Tragically Hip - Bobcaygeon Remy Shand - Take A Message The Parachute Club - Rise Up Loverboy - Working For The Weekend Sam Roberts - Brother Down Joni Mitchell - A Case Of You

(A bunch of other compilations I’ve made can be found here)

[vanmega]

Here’s thing I made last year to make your Canada day long weekend a little bit more Canadian. Download away!

[vanmega]

Lazy guy reposts his own content, when appropriate. Happy Canada day, pals.

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Moxy Fruvous - King Of Spain (1993) [mp3]

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[canadian-content]

Big Wreck - The Oaf (1997) [mp3]

Big Wreck's status as an actual Canadian band is debatable.  While they're remembered as a Can-Con staple, the reality is that 3/4ths of the band were American (lead singer, Ian Thornley being the only Canuck).  However, once the band sign (to a US label, no less) they relocated to Toronto and realized the bulk of their success and sales in Canada (where they were implicitly marketed as Canadian).

Either way, this band was heavy in the Big Shiny Tunes cannon and Ian Thornley could play the hell out of his guitar.

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Love Inc - Broken Bones (1998) [mp3]

I was going to write a snarky post about how ridiculous Chris Sheppard's (a guy from Ontario) accent was.  Not quite an English accent, not quite a southern drawl, but clearly fake.

But then I watched this mid-to-late 90's The New Music interview (done by Kim Clarke Champness no less... double Canadiana points!) and Sheppard comes off as a very reasonable, down to earth guy... with a totally preposterous bunch of catch phrases, spoken in a made up accent.

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Rush - Tom Sawyer (1981) [mp3]

I chose to post this track because last night I ended up going down a weird internet wormhole reading about how Geddy Lee made the "growling sound" (or as I like to call it, the "peeeyoooowwwwwwwww" sound) on his synthesizer.  I love that no matter what the subject, someone somewhere on the internet has written a master's thesis on it.  Bravo.

Bonus factoid: The intro of Tom Sawyer has been sampled on all kinds of hip hop tracks.  Some with good results some with really mediocre results.

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Joel Plaskett - Love This Town (2005) [mp3]

So, in summary:

Your town = Joel loves it

Kelowna = Joel does not love it*

* which is weird, because Kelowna is pretty fantastic otherwise.

[pinder]

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[canadian-content]

Matthew Good - Weapon (2003) [mp3]

This song was featured this week in a CBC Hockey Night In Canada promo video and has been stuck in my head ever since.  The video wasn't overly Canucks friendly and, in turn, I started to get pissed off when I heard the song (I'm a simple dude).  However, in the last 24 hours I've mentally repositioned this song in my head as a redemption song... or a least a song that gets me fired up to see Vancouver do the right thing tonight.

Can. Not. Wait.

Go Canucks Go! / Go Canada Go!

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Gowan - A Criminal Mind (1985) [mp3]

2 things:

Earlier on twitter I expressed frustration that this song was stuck in my head. A surprizing number of people furiously replied, telling me I was insane for not liking this song.  To be clear, it's a great song... just not as the very first thought in your head at 6am continuing until you go to sleep that night.

When I was a very, very, very young boy the video for this song blew my mind and kinda scared me.  Upon further review 26 years later, I realize it was bad community theater at best.  Calm down, youthful version of me.

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Wolf Parade - You Are a Runner and I Am My Father's Son (2005) [mp3]

As of last night's show in Vancouver at the Commodore Ballroom, these guys are done!  Forever (most likely)!  According to my Twitter feed, the show was fantastic.

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Danko Jones - My Love Is Bold (1999) [mp3]

Danko Jones really was a MuchMusic/Can-Con darling at the turn of the century. His brand of "cock rock" (*shudder*) was off centre enough to put him in the realm of programming blocks like The Wedge but accessible enough to ensure consistent airplay.  Plus, he had infinite street cred because he was far more popular in Europe than he was at home in Canada (true story, I saw him play at Sunshine Village to a crowd of 10 people after he had just headlined a festival in Germany a few weeks prior).

Sadly/strangely/not surprizingly his sound changed dramatically over the years.  What started as urgent, rapid fire, testosterone-filled punk rock became something more generic and middle of the road... often used as filler soundtrack for hockey highlight clips.

I bet he's still killing it in Germany though.

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Broken Social Scene – Stars and Sons (2002) [mp3]

You Forgot It In People was one of those rare albums which could (and should) be listened to cover to cover.  A perfect post-rock album (whatever that means).

Also, this album was released 9 (nine!) years ago. Yup, you are getting soooo old.

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Blue Rodeo - 5 Days In May (1993) [mp3]

Confession: I kinda wanted to post this simply because it's May 5th and the song title references 5 days in May.  It was late when I decided to do this, so yeah the rationale doesn't make total sense.

Regardless, this song is perfect... well, except perhaps the endless and sloppy-on-purpose-but-still-sounds-goofy guitar solo.  I realize songs from this album were supposed to sound heavily like Harvest-era Neil Young, but... c'mon!

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k.d. lang - Constant Craving (1992) [mp3]

When this song first came out it received little attention, but a year after it's release it picked up steam (and more importantly, a Grammy) and then became a wildly global hit.

Fun fact: a lot of people have made the decision to video tape themselves covering Constant Craving and have uploaded them to YouTube for your viewing pleasure.  Let's just say that the talent is, ummm, mixed.

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Neil Young - Harvest Moon (1992) [mp3]

You could argue that this song doesn't neatly fit with the "popular Canadian music from 1980 - 2005" theme of this blog.  Neil Young really was at his peak well before this window of time... but this song is total mellow gold.  And I think we could use some Canadian gold on election day, you know?

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Death From Above 1979 - Romantic Rights (2004) [mp3]

Oh man, remember when these guys came out?!  Loud, noisy, but with a little bit of structure and melody.  So good!

The best thing about DFA 1979 was that they put out only one, kick-ass full length album and then promptly broke up.  Living proof that it is better to burn out than fade away. Because of the scarcity of material and performance, their legacy is arguably flawless.

Then, mitigating all of the above, the band announced they were getting back together and playing shows in 2011.  Everyone's gotta pay bills, I suppose.

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Rascalz - Top of the World (feat. K-os & Barrington Levy) (1999) [mp3]

I'm 300% sure that in the history of Canadian hip hop that charted, this is the ONLY one which name checks the city of Kelowna. Okanagan Valley represent!

Fun fact: K-os' verse was recorded while he was "retired" from the music industry (1996 - 2002). Red1 from the Rascalz pushed him to record again. Yep, that worked out pretty good for him.

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Mitsou - Bye Bye Mon Cowboy (1988) [mp3]

Another request post! Thanks, Alana.

Poor Mitsou, always second fiddle to Madonna and Samantha Fox.  It seemed like her strategy was to mimic their strategies of shock through sexuality... and it worked... kinda?  Her videos were usually banned from MuchMusic (or at least played exclusively late at night) in a time when that was potential marketing suicide (but resulted in discussion of her work on countless, heavy-handed Too Much 4 Much specials).  All of this, unfortunately only yielded one or two singles which charted nationally.

With all of that said, Bye Bye Mon Cowboy was a hit.  An awesome, awesome hit.  So much so it gained big popularity English speaking Canada despite being sung entirely en français. I don't believe any other French Canadian song has crossed over like this since.