The making of Tom Cochrane’s hit song ‘Big League’ and how it became a ‘Canadian anthem’.Article content Recommended from Editorial This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. He revealed it the way Infra-red glasses reveal the structure of a palatial home or ancient bones through a gold sarcophagus. I don’t think I’d ever appreciated Prince’s “Purple Rain” until I heard it played by a friend, Howard Druckman, in the small hours of his apartment. This is to say nothing of hearing music laid bare on the acoustic guitar and revealed naked through simple strumming and chord changes. Their role is important, too.Īfter musicians have spent themselves during an evening’s set, it’s a relief to pass over the guitar and listen to someone else play someone else’s song. Everyone has an uncle or aunt who can harlequin easily into Elvis or Aretha, or a friend who can remember every word to “Livin’ On a Prayer.” If theatres and stadiums and Rivolis and House of Blues’ are the domain of professionals, parties and singalongs and campfires and kitchen sessions are the kingdom of the world’s human jukeboxes: men and women who sponge the work of others while struggling to manifest any original work of their own. It’s never easy for me to figure out chord sequences or remember lyrics, and, besides, there are other people who are built for such tasks. Each show ended with “Takin’ Care of Business,” every day and every way. People barked out songs and we happily indulged them. It was almost as if the crowd feared that if they stopped trying to remember every CCR or Tragically Hip song ever recorded, Canada would become the ice planet Hoth and we’d soon be fighting wars on wooly mammoths. All sense of gig comportment disappeared and a glorious wintertime mess consumed the evening. CBCĪt both gigs, every time I turned to my right or left, someone else was chicken-necking the mic stand, singing whatever hit song came into their heads. It was -15C on the island, and -18C in Nova Scotia, and if we’d set about to light up these stages with strong art to feed the hungry northern soul, what happened was something way more appropriate: strangers singing cover versions with the band until they grew hoarse. Last week, I played two back-to-back winter weekend shows, one on Wolfe Island, near Kingston, and one in Halifax for “Hockey Day in Canada.” Both times the crowds and musicians huddled together out of the almost impossibly frigid weather. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.
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