by paterson » Sun Nov 25, 2018 9:26 pm
It always interesting why some songs or groups become popular and others with solid material never seem to catch the public's attention.
There are lots of good cancon songs that did well here but never saw the light of day in the US. But on the other side of the coin there also are American or British songs that were popular in those markets that never really were that popular here. Just listen to XM Sirius, especially 80's on 8 and 90's on 9 and you will hear songs that received little or no airplay here and were much more popular in the USA. In the 70's remember Funkadelic or Parliament? Big in the US on radio but not much here.
In the early days of cancon many Canadian artists were signed to small start up Canadian record labels- Ampex, Attic, Daffodil, Much, Axe, Tuesday, Aquarius etc. These labels were distributed by one of the majors-RCA, Columbia, A&M, Warner Bros. etc. Mushroom Records and Quality were the only Canadian independent labels that I am aware of that handled their own distribution. In the case of Mushroom this only lasted for a few years and they even attempted to handle their own distribution in the US.
These small labels were mostly run on a shoestring and they didn't have the promotion budgets necessary to properly promote most of their artists. When an artist did get a deal in the US it was often on an American independent label or secondary label of one of the majors. This was part of the problem, not enough hype and actual money to properly promote new artists. And the major labels are naturally going to focus more on their artists that one from a small independent.
In the 70's English Canada had very few television programs to showcase groups and artists that were being played on the radio. And I don't mean an artist showing up on Canada AM and lip singing their song to an empty news studio at 7 in the morning. Other than a couple of American shows that were shot in Canada (Kenny Rogers Rollin on the River) there wasn't that many national programs that showcased Canadian artists. CBC's Music Machine was one of the few.
What shows we had were often more talk than music- 90 minutes live, Alan Thicke Show, Bob Maclean, the Tommy Banks Show which featured some music but wasn't seen nationally. Quebec had music shows with studio audiences, talk shows with house bands and audiences that would interview and feature artists. Both TVA and Radio Canada had popular late night shows similar to the US all through the 70's-2000's
I think it is bit of an embarrassment that we don't even have a late night talk show with a studio audience, houseband, entertaining host with produced bits or features in the show. Once saw an interview with Nelly Furtado on an Australian late night talk show with all of the above. Why not here?? Even once per week? The closest we had was Mike Bullard's show which ran for about 7 years starting in 1997. Canadian media seems to have an attitude of "we tried that, didn't work.." Well try it again and if that doesn't work try it again...and again. Guess it is easier just to simulcast Fallon or Colbert. Lazy Canadian media!
Did Canadian A&R folks and artists back in the day do the necessary legwork of visiting radio stations big and small in the US for interviews or to talk to music directors to give the song a listen? Whether we like it or not we are foreigners to them and need to have someone down there totally on our side or excited about the song to help hype the material. And you need to work that much harder. I am not sure that this happened back then, since it many cases it didn't even happen here.