Bryan Adams 1994 Promo Pic by Clara Roy Minguillon
By David Ball
It seems President Võ Chí Công liked to rock after all. But I wonder if the former Vietnam leader was a fan of matching white outfits?
On Jan. 16, 1994, rock superstar Bryan Adams (17-time JUNO Award winner, Canadian Music Hall of Fame inductee and recipient of 2010’s Allan Waters Humanitarian Award) was the first act from the West to play Ho Chi Mihn City since James Brown did a series of wartime shows in the 1960s. It was Adams’ ninth stop on his 15-city Waking Up The World Asian tour in support of his 1991 album, Waking Up the Neighbours. The Kingston-born, Vancouver-raised singer and his longtime band performed in front of 2,500 fans in the city formerly known as Saigon. The historic event was given the green light only after Adams’ Hong Kong-based tour promoter, Bruce Aitkin, obtained 12 separate government approvals. Note: American acts were not permitted into the country without an official go-ahead from the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Annoying red tape aside, Adams was the perfect choice to melt the icy East-West barrier. During the late ’80s and the 1990s, Adams was one of the world’s biggest pop acts. Waking Up the Neighbours was an enormous international bestseller on the strength of the hit “Can’t Stop This Thing We Started” and power ballad “(Everything I Do) I Do it For You,” which went on to win a Grammy Award after becoming a sensation via the soundtrack for the Kevin Costner blockbuster Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Not to polish any grit off his brand of rock and roll, but Adams’ boy-next-door likeability is a quality that may have helped woo Công and his fellow members of the Communist Party of Vietnam into staging the concert. (Adams’ support of a variety of international charities probably didn’t hurt his image either.) I couldn’t find photos of the concert, so I don’t know if Adams and his band donned matching white outfits like they’ve been want to do on occasion…but I hope they did. Five guys decked out in white and rocking it out on stage would make a fitting symbol of peace.
Same song and catchier name = big hit…
On Jan. 16, 1965, Chad Allan and the Expressions rereleased “Shakin’ All Over” along with the question: Guess who? The Winnipeg band’s original promo copy radio single read: “Shakin’ All Over” – Guess Who? Airing the 45 became a radio contest prompted by the band’s Quality label. As Allan put it: “Listeners would phone in and win prizes if they guessed our name. That was during the time of the heavy British Invasion with The Beatles, The Dave Clark Five, Gerry and the Pacemakers…and people would guess The Beatles, Paul McCartney and John Lennon, and what have you. There was an association there that seemed to stick and we were associated with heavy-duty American bands or British bands in particular, and it seemed to me that we kinda passed that local plateau before people had a chance to realize that we were a local band and boom it was a hit. So that’s how we got the Guess Who name…it wasn’t our name but it simply stuck.”
It sure did. “Shakin’ All Over” by the mysterious band went to No. 1 in Canada while it cracked the Top 25 in the U.S. In 1966, Burton Cummings replaced Bob Ashley as the band’s piano player and co-lead singer (with Allan) – at this point the band were officially called The Guess Who? Allan left after their 1966 debut and the “?” was dropped in 1968. The rest is history. The Guess Who (two-time JUNO Award winners and members of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame) went on to become one of the great bands of the late ’60s and ’70s and Canadian rock-and-roll ambassadors.
This pipsqueak purveyor of porcelain pop merits a four-sentence blurb…
“Mandy,” by elevator music king Barry Manilow, was Billboard’s No. 1 single on Jan. 18, 1978. Manilow’s cover of Barry English’s 1971 U.K. hit, “Brandy,” was his first Billboard No. 1. But more importantly, when and if the time ever comes, Mandy and Brandy rank No. 4 and No. 5, respectively, in names I’ll never call my future daughter. FYI, Snooki tops the list followed closely by Ke$ha and Seven.
If there’s a TV in heaven, I bet this Canadian music legend put his foot through many a screen.
Calixa Lavallée, the composer of “O Canada” – the greatest national anthem of them all (I’m biased) – died at age 48 on Jan. 21, 1891, in Boston. The ex-pat French-Canadian and U.S. Civil War veteran was commissioned by Quebec’s lieutenant governor, Theodore Robitaille, to compose music to accompany a patriotic poem penned by Adolphe-Basile Routhier for 1880’s Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day celebrations. Robert Stanley Weir inscribed the first English language version in 1908 – version because his isn’t a literal translation. Lavallée was born in a suburb of Montreal on Dec. 28, 1842. He began his music education at a young age as a classical pianist, studying under his father and later revered Montreal instructor, Charles Wugk Sabatier. His family moved to New England in 1857 and Lavallée enlisted in the 4th Rhode Island Volunteers of the Union Army during the American Civil War. Lavallée travelled across the U.S. and Canada during and after the war and honed his skills as a composer and teacher. He was the conductor of orchestral productions and operas at the Montreal Academy of Music and was the director at New York’s prestigious Grand Opera House. Lavallée eventually settled in Boston with his family and became the choirmaster at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. His remains were returned to Quebec in 1933 and you can visit his gravesite at Montreal’s Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, a national historical site of Canada.
…But back to the headline.
If there is cable in heaven, I have no doubt one or both of Lt. Lavallée’s war boots have been embedded in the TV screen during every terrible rendition of “O Canada.” (I even thought about going postal when our flag was flown upside down at one memorable Major League Baseball All-Star Game.) If I were a betting man of the spiritual kind, I’d predict the No. 1 version on Lavallée’s Worst-Ever list would be Vegas lounge singer Mr. Dennis K.C. Parks’ “avant-garde interpretation” at the start of the Las Vegas Posse-Saskatchewan Roughriders Canadian Football League game in 1994. It’s so bad, we’re lucky it didn’t start another war.
Next week: Sarah McLachlan and Shania Twain
“O Canada” by Dennis K.C. Parks