Brrrrr.
We’re all freezing in a winter wonderland. So why not put the kettle on, put your feet up and get ready for another weekly music competition?
This week I want to know: What’s your favourite song by a Canadian artist?
Here’s mine.
Reply below to be in with a chance of winning a maple syrup-licking €25 Golden Discs voucher.
The winner will be chosen by my perfect Canuck cousin.
Please include video links if possible, thank you.
Lines MUST close at SATURDAY 11am.
Nick says: Good luck!
Last week’s winner here.
Sponsored Link
My favourite song by a Canadian Artist is Down by the river by Neil Young. When Neil does it live with Crazy Horse its extra special. His 2 guitar solos on the live version at Farm Aid 1994 are mesmerising.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiX8Rz5C3LY
A great song… until you listen to the lyrics
I’m not playing I thought I was cool in my 20’s .. it’s like looking at a daisy chain that’s gone wrong… this fecker is Canadian.. (I think) chill out.. and get with 2020..
My favourite song by a Canadian is Orca by Wintersleep. It’s deceptively accessible to start but then builds to pure, raw energy and emotion. Play it loud.
https://youtu.be/3RRsi5BZxQU
Best version of this classic featuring the Staples Singers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-w9OclUnns
The Band – The Weight
An absolute banger
“Well, now everything dies, baby, that’s a fact, but maybe everything that dies someday comes back…”
Here’s The Band’s brilliant cover of Springsteen’s Atlantic City.
https://youtu.be/Z6ZAujtEgVM
So sooo many great songs. But I’ll hit up this.
Bird on the Wire – Leonard Cohen
https://youtu.be/BmPUu-rMpWA
Terry Jacks. Seasons in the Sun
https://youtu.be/bWdQbxNEFEs
The utterly brilliant Cowboy Junkies with this superb cover of Sweet Jane!!
Could have picked loads of their songs but this is just a stand out,
https://youtu.be/Fa9nN3G2CSg
Enjoy!
I’ll be back later, just out for sneaky pints!
RUSH – XANADU enough said
I used to be a big Rush fan back in 1977.
I bought all of their albums.
Later on I found out that they were big fans of Ayn Rand.
I haven’t listened to them since.
They once expressed an interest in one of her books. Once in 1977. I think it could be time to get over that now 43 years later. You are missing out on awesome music.
@ Tarfton Clax:
I like your name.
Wanna swap?
I’ll give you 7 albums by Rush for one 7″ by the Pistols.
Gordon Lightfoot – Sundown:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv8zyBi4ZXk
I love that lyric..
“Sometimes I think it’s a sin
When I feel like I’m winnin’ when I’m losin’ again”
Robbie Robertson Somewhere Down the Crazy River. Sexy AF
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KP9PNSUME4
awesome track
Class
“2020” by Suuns
Love the wobbly deep bass throughout.
Loads of other bands came to mind, but this is on my usual Friday playlist.
Great track and band.
Fun fact, myself and the Suuns guitarist are the spit of each other. So when they were over in 2018 at the grand social I nabbed a snap of the two of us together.
Like lookin in a mirror. :)
Here we have Men Without Hats, or as they’re know nowadays Men Without Jobs!!!
Safety Dance,
https://youtu.be/0QDKLglEP5Y
My favourite Neil Young track is ‘Needle and the Damage Done’, a poignant song about the desolation caused by heroin addiction in the 70s. Undoubtably a great song, but the reason I particularly love it is because it reminds me of driving in the car as a kid with my dad. A deadpan RTE Radio 1 presenter ended an otherwise boring segment about oul ones knitting, with this track and my dad nearly crashed the car he was laughing so hard. The next day he went out and bought me Harvest on CD, and to this day its one of my all time favourite albums.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd3oqvnDKQk
Heheheheh
Ha ha! Good story
Caribou are so Canadian they (or he more accurately) were formerly called Manitoba.
“Melody Day” is 60’s euphoric psychedelia filtered through 21st century electronica, and is just great:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7Oe1DN5VDA
Check out a band called The Wilderness of Manitoba so. More indie-folk but very good.
Here’s my favourite: Vicious battle raps by Abdominal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbjyG6fvv3c
this guy has unreal flow, and works his breathing into the rap so well that it forms part of the tune nearly.
Didn’t realise Robbie Robertson was Canadian, but that gets my vote. I really enjoy that tune whenever it hits my eardrums.I don’t think I will be posting tunes today, I don’t know I know many Canadian Artists.
Looking forward to learning another thing or two all the same.
Happy Friday
Using this as an excuse to post this marvelous pairing of a song with a video.
Arcade Fire – My Body is a Cage with the climax of Once Upon a Time in the West.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJI0pTJIha0
Neil Young.. too many awesome tracks to count, Just like Leonard Cohen and Rush. So I figured I’d throw this one (Breaching the Asylum) in by Kataklysm, a Canadian death Metal band I saw in the Voodoo a few years ago supporting FleshGod Apocalypse.
Great Riffage, Good Melody and semi clean vocals. Metal Video and anti Religious lyrics.. Metallic Perfection
https://youtu.be/MD0DNdCFSzA?list=PL-M4ubGnOUX-nUupsBbpyUtZCEF3aYBZp
The legendary Kate & Anna McGarrigle; so very many songs in their wonderful folk repertoire, but from their self titled album I cannot resist Complainte Pour Ste Catherine. Whistling, endorphin-inducing harmonies, infinite instruments and singalong French lyrics. * sighs *
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXL7hUHaJaY
More Neil Young, but he’s got so much genius! Song is called On the beach.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBVde75e4sU&ab_channel=FineFolkMusic
Oh, I almost forgot about Leonard Cohen. Still amazing and unique
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svitEEpI07E&feature=emb_title&ab_channel=LeonardCohenVEVO
The Ultimate Canadian Song from the Ultimate Canadians – Terrance and Phillip.
Uncle Fukka
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsMcdEswK8k
This is so good! I forgot how funny it sounds. Ha ha
Music needs more fart solos…..
Qu’Appelle Valley,Saskatchewan – Buffy Sainte-Marie
https://youtu.be/fjgaF3KqqiM
I absolutely adore this evocative and v moving song by the remarkable Buffy Sainte-Marie. The wonderful Katell Keineg did a cover version of it on NIghthawks with Shay Healy in the early nineties and it still haunts me. Love it.
Dance Me To The End Of Love by Mistress Barbara- yes she is Canadian.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6no1vpzj33A
This thread is going to be overloaded with Neil Young songs.. so lets have another!
Ambulance Blues is the devastating closer on (IMO) his best album On the Beach. He was singing about Nixon here, but it could easily apply to a much more recent president:
I never knew a man could tell so many lies
He had a different story for every set of eyes
How can he remember who he’s talking to?
‘Cause I know it ain’t me, and hope it isn’t you
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LTiKJlB62g
+1
i’m sure most canadians would want an entry from The Tragically Hip: here’s ‘wheat kings’, one of the better 3 chord tunes out there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB965aUPsmM
If you were ever thinking of joining a band, or know someone who wants to be a famous musician you should make sure they watch The Anvil Story. It’s truly the stuff of dreams, and of nightmares.
Anvil – ‘metal on metal’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qSEwYaSlWk
Hard to get anymore Canadian than this. The Band, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young singing a song written about major events in Canadian history.
The Band – Acadian Driftwood
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSZv3cOI4kI
Bryan Adams – Run to You
“She’s got a heart of gold,
She’d never let me down.
But you’re the one always turns me on,
You keep me coming round.”
World’s greatest anthem to doing the dirt.
https://youtu.be/nCBASt507WA
And of course the mighty Triumph. Hard Rock Par Excellence!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZUrr5wThb0&ab_channel=DannyRichard
live at the 1983 US Festival. I remember reading about that festival in Kerrang back in 1983 wishing I could experience it or something like it, when realistically I barely had the bus fare into town then. You tube is amazing in that I can watch it now whenever I want. But If I believed in Reincarnation or time machines were invented…..
I know where I’d be making a beeline to.
my favourite tune from The Band; ‘up on cripple creek’, who were mostly canadian..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EisXJSsULGM
jeff healey – confidence man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQwqSrPdwjQ
may the lord have mercy on his sweet soul.
rufus wainwright – cigarettes and chocolate milk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6N0sNMKFO4
I’ll take that and raise you Rufus Wainwright – Who Knows Where The Time Goes? (Folk Awards 2016)
One of the most perfect performances ever- perfect for this time of year- especially this year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpbQWotUypo
Can someone find me a half decent audio recording of this please?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss3IsU_y-V4
Paul Anka wrote the lyrics to ‘my way’. Who knew? Not me – thanks google :0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX4EGvw5wP4
One of my favourites from the Band
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SDyLukweBGw
I have a crystal clear memory of seeing the music video for Tout Nu Sur La Plage (Naked on the Beach) by Quebec’s finest band Les Trois Accords in a rural Quebec hotel during an interval in Ronald Reagan’s Funeral in 2004. Why was I watching Reagan’s funeral, I have no idea, it was raining probably.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwbleVqQVO8
Which is weird, because I’ve just checked, and this song came out in 2006.
Anyway, translating the lyrics into English is a bit weird, but includes the immortal verse:
‘Curious residents, dreaming a bit, on seeing my tatoos: bleeding cobras, swimming dolphins, in the browness of my tan’.
Nifty bit of video editing at the end to get the lead singers head onto a bodybuilder towards the end, not bad for 2006…
Canadian legends The Tragically Hip and Grace Too.
A song that is very much open to interpretation. The Hip would regularly open gigs with this song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNc0ON41Ik0
My favourite from The Band – It Makes No Difference.
Love Danko’s vocals here. Sings it with such conviction and manages to blend the smooth with the heartache and pain. Garth Hudson’s break in with the sax later in the song is also class. It really shows off these guys talents which can be easily overlooked with Robbie Robertson around (whose playing here is also unbelievable)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfBqWNFOVo8
An excellent folk-bluegrass band, The Dead South.
In “Hell I’ll Be In Good Company”. The song is about a man who knows his wife is cheating on him and thinks that if he kills his beloved, they will both meet in Hell.
“It didn’t hurt/flirt/blood squirt/stuffed shirt hang from a tree”.
Superbly played instruments that are delivered in a Nuevo bluegrass style that will bounce around your head long after you hear it.
The Dead South “In Hell I’ll Be In Good Company”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9FzVhw8_bY
Martha and the Muffins
Echo Beach
https://youtu.be/QEQkIEkxm7k
It’s got to be A Case of You by Joni Mitchell from her album Blue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YuaZcylk_o
The Guess Who – These Eyes (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEQo3yZ5OJA
they do the definitive version of “Shakin’ All Over” too (in my book)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ERyy1RR3Tk
I forgot The Crash Test Dummies were Canadian.
God Shuffled His Feet.
https://youtu.be/0aqlS9SOkjs
Leonard Cohen, Closing Time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-0lV5qs1Qw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKcavz85yys
Nowhere to Stand
Not my favourite of KD Lang’s tunes
But it still scorches me inside
A family tradition
The strength of this land
Where what’s right and wrong
Is the back of a hand
Turns girls into women
And a boy to a man
The rights of the children
Have nowhere to stand
and leaves me haunted
and its one of her own compositions her follow up album – Absolute Torch & Twang
Her first, Shadowland was mainly covers and not released here at the time
import only, well that’s how I got it, on cassette
In a very unique experience, back in ’88 maybe
KD was an unknown here
and played support to the Hot House Flowers in the Cork Opera House
We’d no idea what to expect tbh
She sang Orbison’s Crying – totally bald and totally unexpected
and she wiped the floor with all of us
the Flowers had nothing to top it
don’t know if ye know this but the best sound in Ireland
at the time anyway
was to be got in the Opera House
so imagine this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNbnFVBVnz0
She’s had me since
Leonard Cohen, The Future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D97OxHZzBeQ&feature=youtu.be
River by Joni Mitchell. A melancholy Christmas song. Perfect for these times.
https://youtu.be/GpFudDAYqxY
Never liked Neil Young. Met him a time or two, and to be honest he was stuck up with himself. In the place I worked a fan met him, but was just brushed off as being unimportant
Everyone is important.. Nobody should be brushed off, no matter your fame
Gordon Lightfoot. The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9vST6hVRj2A
45 years ago around this time it sank I think.
The tune was taken for Back Home In Derry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCch_W2Ro38
Rush “The Spirit or Radio”. I recall Rush kicked off their epic early May 2011 three hour show at The Point with this masterpiece which bemoans the robotic fomulistic playlist driven commercial mid- Atlantic accented monster that is modern radio (particularly in Dublin; a city of Universities that can’t even sustain a single Indie / College station). I always think of the halcyon early days of late great Phantom FM when I hear it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQUDiCiNlqQ
Pristine pop from Prince Edward Island
Alvvays – Archie, Marry me
https://youtu.be/ZAn3JdtSrnY
“The government is corrupt
And we’re on so many drugs
With the radio on and the curtains drawn…”
A soundtrack for the post-pandemic apocalypse from probably the best multi-instrumentalist, anarchist collective around.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Dead Flag Blues
https://youtu.be/-aLjup934Rk
Ever wonder what would happen if you spliced Pet Sounds and Loveless?
The Besnard Lakes did
Color Yr Lights in*
https://youtu.be/BN_rm_-hwPs
*Video NSFW
And
Albatross
https://youtu.be/RXB87SRv8Yg
Stars – Your Ex-Lover is Dead
https://youtu.be/r5Or6-HOveg
Gino Soccio – Try It Out (1981)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gwi4oMBtyOw
Top notch old school disco track- if you like that sort of thing
The brilliant and Beautiful sisters Tegan & Sara with, Call It Off.
Fantastic video from an in-store in Dublin, class stuff.
https://youtu.be/tOnuvo8kBTo
Enjoy!
Anything by Daniel Lanois but if one had to chosen
– The Maker
Haunting song.
https://youtu.be/w-JtAcpKtYQ
Great tune!
I was fortunate enough too get too go sound for the great man many years ago at an in-store, it was only him, his Guitar and a small amp.
He was fascinated with the sound desk , probably because it was so old?, but he loved it.
I suggested putting a mic on the amp and putting some re-verb on the amp mic, he just looked at me! and then said, “yeah let’s give it ago”.
It worked and he just smiled at me, made my day!! Still have the signed CD ,
This Is What Is
https://youtu.be/l8tHdX9ox9c
Enjoy
My first and last internet dating journey started with a question, what’s the 5 best things to come out of Canada? Along with Leonard, Joni, Neil, Margot and Maple Syrup both Mary Margaret O’Hara and Sarah McLachlan were considered. We agreed that Sarah’s “Ice Cream” was the best love song! And since we had a COVID elopement on June 29th that’s my choice!
https://youtu.be/XAhv0XGv8Pc
This is a bit out of leftfield
But…. Colter Wall – he’s a country singer BUT don’t let that put you off, his voice is like a thunderstorm, but in a good way
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCebq5lLgos&ab_channel=Original16
The above song is a classic murder ballad & got me into more country orientated & coutnry adjacent music
Handy on the aul gee-tar as well so he is
Pure Outlaw
Great find
Ta, V
Glad to spread the word!
I’d listened to Colter several times before I’d seen a pic or read much about him. Couldn’t believe how young he is.
Same – I was expecting a “Crazy heart” looking Jeff Bridges Type, not a feller still wet behind the ears!
Right so both have been mentioned already, but here is the three of them together, Rufus, Kate and Anna.
Unreal vocals from Rufus and beautiful harmonies.
https://youtu.be/3Z85yJwexow
Enjoy!
https://youtu.be/LZmQj5rRULU
Our Newfie cousin’s on the east of North America. The VHS quality, the mysterious mo-cap tracksuited fiddle player and the unofficial national anthem of Newfoundland. First heard it 10 years ago at my own wedding.
Leonard Cohen, So Long, Marianne.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XzAjfwQtvM
One of the greatest one hit wonders of all time
Corey Hart – Sunglasses at Night
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2LTL8KgKv8
I saw Ron Sexsmith live at the Ambassador years ago. He had requested the bar to be closed for some reason. Fair enough I hear you say, he does’t want some disorderly winos ruining his perfect folk songs, until he shows up for the encore with a can in hand…utter gobshite.