The Southern Ontario/WNY Radio-TV Forum » New "All Star" Canadian Group Brings Old 70s CanCon Back To Life

RadioActive · October 28, 2023 9:28 pm

I don't know if this is just a lark or a long term thing, but a group of Canadian all-star musicians have united to re-record some of the biggest CanCon hits of the 70s and beyond. They're called "The Trans-Canada Highway Men" and they began when the country was at its lowest.

"The group — consisting of Edmonton’s Moe Berg of The Pursuit of Happiness, Sloan’s Chris Murphy, Odds’ Craig Nothey and former Barenaked Ladies frontman Steven Page — first came together in 2017 to tour as a collective, playing each other’s songs on the nostalgia circuit and trade dad jokes.

"For their next step, the four musicians picked a handful of Canadian AM rock radio hits to record during COVID lockdowns. Recorded remotely but mixed in the Odds’ North Vancouver studio, the resulting album pays tribute to the K-Tel compilation records of the 1970s, right down to the chintzy album artwork."

Among the songs on their first "Best of" album: "Undun," originally by the Guess Who, "Which Way You Goin' Billy?" from the Poppy Family, and the Lighthouse classic "Pretty Lady."

I wonder if any of these will make the radio and if so, whether a new generation will discover these classic tunes?

Trans-Canada Highwaymen pay tribute to AM hits of the past on fun debut album

Shorty Wave · October 29, 2023 8:25 am

I only know most of these 70s CanCon songs because AM740 still plays them, a lot! I look forward to hearing a fresh take on these Canadian pop classics.

RadioActive · October 29, 2023 8:50 am

Turns out you won't have to wait. Some of them are already up on YouTube. See what you think of these versions.

Last edited by RadioActive (October 29, 2023 8:53 am)

RadioActive · October 29, 2023 9:26 am

Here's the "theme" song the article refers to, the only original released.

unclefester · October 29, 2023 10:34 am

Canada's version of the Traveling Wilburys and/or The Highwaymen?

Is that a reasonable comparison?

Rune · October 29, 2023 11:33 am

For the most part these cover versions are true to the originals.What's really interesting is the choice of songs here. Chester's Make My Life A Little Bit Brighter is a great example. It was a classic Cancon turntable hit. I don't know how many copies were sold, but I do know it was a song that was played an awful lot in the early days of Cancon regulation. Bim's Can't Catch Me is another example. Bim is Roy Forbes and he subsequently recorded under that name. The reason it was such a hit was its length (it's not a bad tune but...). It was 2 minutes long, the perfect Cancon filler.
This album shows us something else. In the early days, Cancon was scoffed at by radio. The songs and production were generally considered inferior, yet they obviously are fondly remembered by the band. I have long felt that musicians view music very differently than their audiences. They appreciate music and don't judge it the same way as mere mortals. These songs clearly made an impact on the band members. Kudos! It's actually a pretty good listen, and you have to love the K-Tel packaging!

paterson1 · October 29, 2023 12:05 pm

Bim, Can't Catch Me is a song that I have never heard of before and never played at any of the stations I was employed at. Must have been a hit elsewhere in the country. All of the others, very familiar with.

Some of the scoffing of songs was simply that programmers didn't know the artists, and they were used to just reading Billboard. Now they had to decide on some songs and had to stick their neck out a bit. The actual recording quality was fine, some of the songs not quite as much. However if we are going to be fair there were also songs from elsewhere that I never understood why they were hits either. Inferior music wasn't always the cancon.

Chester's You Make My Life A Little Bit Brighter to me was a weak song, not well produced and from a very ordinary band. I saw them live and they weren't very good. Yet this song charted in the US for some reason. I remember Rock 102 in Buffalo playlisted the song and played it a lot. Never understood why.
Guess CKLW was playing it and US stations picked it up.

paterson1 · October 29, 2023 7:07 pm

Roch Voisine and some friends did sort of the same thing. but recorded hit songs in both English and French.
Here is Roch along with Patrick Normand, Sylvain Cossette, Bruno Pelletier and Jeff Smallwood with a very well done version of Take It Easy. This got airplay in Quebec..https://www.google.com/search?q=roch+voisine+and+friends+take+it+easy&rlz=1C1GGRV_enCA751CA751&oq=roch+voisine+and+friends+take+it+easy&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigAdIBCDgzNTlqMGo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:405d4a1e,vid:bnsYjw_vCCE,st:0

Lorne · October 29, 2023 8:26 pm

Quite the interesting concept album. However, "Heartbeat, It's a Lovebeat" is a bit of an outlier here ... it didn't qualify as Cancon, since only the artist was Canadian. As for "Can't Catch Me", it didn't chart on CHUM but I heard them play it a fair amount. I thought it was quite catchy and actually wished at the time that it were longer, but I agree with Rune that its length helped account for its airplay. By the time it came out, the days were long gone when CHUM could edit Canadian songs down to two minutes or less to help meet Cancon requirements, but short songs like this one helped without needing to be edited.

paterson1 · October 29, 2023 9:24 pm

I can't play any of the songs that RA posted. All say video is unavailable. CHUM editing songs was more myth than reality. They may have very early with cancon but it didn't last long. Cancon didn't hurt CHUM or any AM station back in the 70's... even CKLW. If CHUM made a habit of editing songs down to 2 minutes or less, their competition like CFTR would have been yelling foul, along with record labels.

RadioActive · October 29, 2023 9:32 pm

paterson1 wrote:
I can't play any of the songs that RA posted. All say video is unavailable.

You may need to check your settings. Those videos should show up. I can see them and play them, so there's a possible problem with a setting on your browser. In any event, you can always click on the title and it should take you straight to YouTube where they should play immediately.

I'm curious - is anyone else having this issue with those specific videos? And conversely, can anyone suggest why paterson1 can't see these on the SOWNY site? If he's affected, others could be, too.

paterson1 · October 29, 2023 9:37 pm

The last video you posted with the theme is ok, but all of the others are black screen with video unavailable.
Normally I can watch videos posted on here with no problem. I will try and check my browser, could be the problem.

YMCA · October 29, 2023 9:48 pm

paterson1 wrote:
The last video you posted with the theme is ok, but all of the others are black screen with video unavailable

Ditto. Checked with Waterfox, ad blocker enabled. Then checked with Chrome, clean browser no add-ons. Same.

Logged in thru OpenVPN, will try again later without VPN.

EDIT: Disabling VPN made no difference.

Last edited by YMCA (October 30, 2023 2:48 am)

RadioActive · October 29, 2023 10:44 pm

Very strange that I can see them and others can't. I have no explanation, but I'm hoping someone else has one. It's the first time I've heard of this issue and I would love to solve it for those who are affected. I would write Boardhost about this, but in past help requests, they rarely answer.

RadioActive · October 29, 2023 10:56 pm

Lorne · October 30, 2023 1:08 am

I get "Video unavailable" both for the original links and the alternates. But what does work for me is to go to https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBEfO8EwV6W9ecCTJ7lqI4w and then click on the videos for each song. Hope that helps.

RadioActive · October 30, 2023 7:02 am

I think I've figured out what's going on with those videos - although not necessarily why they did what they did.

When I placed those videos on the site, I was on a VPN set to the U.S. On a whim, I just took the VPN off and put it back to Canada. And now I'm getting "Video Unavailable" on that setting. Why they would work in the U.S. and be geoblocked here is strange (you'd think they'd want Canadians to see them and not Americans.)

But that appears to be why I can see them and others can't. If you have a VPN, point it to America, refresh the page and see if the videos show up. Normally I wouldn't put up links without checking both, but in this case, for whatever reason, it never occurred to me. But that seems to be the answer.

Fitz · October 30, 2023 9:48 am

I discovered a way to embed the videos.

RadioActive · October 30, 2023 10:02 am

Interesting. In the case of what you've done, if you're on a VPN set to the U.S., you get "Video Unavailable." If you're in Canada, you can see them. It's the exact opposite of the previous problem! Not sure what you did, but hopefully those who couldn't see them before can watch them now.