Can-Con 45 Of The Day - September 20

Can-Con 45 Of The Day - September 20

Postby radiofan » Wed Sep 19, 2018 9:22 pm

Today's Can-Con 45 is from 1982 .. From Vancouver, it's Chilliwack and "Whatcha Gonna Do (When I'm Gone)" ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRE1zcGNlBI

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Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who couldn't hear the music.
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Re: Can-Con 45 Of The Day - September 20

Postby Richard Skelly » Thu Sep 20, 2018 5:33 am

Back in the mid-70s, a quartet version of Chilliwack made hay with Fly At Night, a song describing the music biz demands on "four men in a rock and roll band". A few years later, with only guitarist-vocalist Bill Henderson left from that previous ensemble, it was a three-piece Chilliwack that finally broke through stateside in 1981-82.

Biggest hit My Girl {Gone Gone Gone} (#22 Billboard) was followed by I Believe (#33). Both came from the Wanna Be A Star album, released on Solid Gold in Canada and RCA-distributed Millenium in America. Next album Opus X yielded Whatcha Gonna Do which peaked just shy of the Billboard Top 40 (#41, to be precise). Just like My Girl, it had a subtitle {When I'm Gone} in brackets. An infectiously churning-yet-melodic rocker it straddled the headbanging power chords of affiliated Vancouver band Headpins and classic, strongly-harmonic Chilliwack.

Fronted by female banshee Darby Mills, Headpins featured Chilliwack multi-instrumentalist Brian MacLeod and bassist Ab Bryant. It was formed as a club band of necessity by MacLeod and Bryant to earn money while Chilliwack was sidelined by litigation with creditors of previous label Mushroom Records. Ill fated Mushroom went belly up in 1980 before lawsuits started flying.

Solid Gold wanted to sign both Headpins and Chilliwack, but had to initially settle for the former. Sessions began on the debut Headphones album with Bill Henderson and Brian MacLeod co-producing. Once Chilliwack emerged from legal limbo, work started on Wanna Be A Star.

And so began a dance between both groups existing simultaneously as recording and touring concerns. Chilliwack got priority in that MacLeod and Bryant would replace themselves with touring Headpins proxies if schedules conflicted. Ultimately, both musicians left Chilliwack in 1983 to focus full time on Headpins.

Using session players, Bill Henderson carried on for one more Chilliwack studio album. But the band never again charted on Billboard. For its part, Headpins managed to get one single, Just One More Time, onto the magazine's august Hot 100 survey. But it only peaked at #70.

I interviewed Brian MacLeod shortly before his 1992 death from cancer. In retrospect, he regretted not sustaining the awkward but artistically rewarding balance between the two bands. Indeed, in between hospitalizations, he had begun roughing out potential new songs with Bill Henderson who had put Chilliwack on hiatus a few years earlier. Sadly, the aggressive cancer prevented a renewed Henderson-MacLeod version of the band. Brian Oliver MacLeod died on April 25, 1992.
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