Men Without Hats

Artist: Men Without Hats

LP: 7" single

Song: "The Safety Dance"

[ listen ] 

 

I've inadvertently become a new Safety Captain at the Wallingford Post Office. Everyone got a letter in the mail a few weeks ago requesting submissions for a new safety slogan for the Seattle District of the USPS. There was an email address for submitting the slogans, so I came up with a ridiculous one and sent it in: "We are gonna' deliver for you...or we will die trying!" I instantly got this reply: "Thank you for volunteering to be one of the new Safety Captains! We will notify your station manager, and more information will be forthcoming. 

 

How was I supposed to know that anyone who actually opened the letter and read it all the way to the bottom automatically became a Safety Captain? Oh well. My first order of business will be the introduction of a simple "safety dance" that all members of the Wallingford mail carrier team can perform each morning in order to remind themselves to always proceed with caution.

 

[ Men Without Hats ]

Jane Siberry

Artist: Jane Siberry

LP: The Speckless Sky

Song: "The Empty City"

[ listen ]

Last night I had my first session of listening to Christmas music for the 2020 holiday season. It was a CD of a live recording of some sort of "special evening" called "Count Your Blessings" with five singers. Two of them I've not heard of before (Holly Cole and Rebecca Jenkins), but the other three are favorites: Mary Margaret O'Hara, Victoria Williams, and this lovely lady, Jane Siberry. It's a beautiful recording.

I remember I first came across Ms. Siberry at Tower Records here in Seattle back in 1985. I was in the city from Yakima with my friend Denny Kibbe, and we were hunting 45s. The cover of Jane Siberry's "One More Colour" looked interesting, so I picked it up without having heard it...and that was the beginning of a life-long love affair. You can read about Jane Siberry here. 

[ Jane Siberry ]

Queen City Kids

Artist: Queen City Kids

LP: Queen City Kids

Song: "Kids World"

[ listen ]

From Regina, Saskatchewan, these four guys met in high school and called their group Cambridge before changing their name and releasing this self-titled album in Canada in 1981. It's like the Queen City Kids took everything they loved about hard rock music—the relentlessly driving and screaming guitars, the growling vocals—and then multiplied them by three before putting them on this record. It's fantastic.You can read more about the Queen City Kids here.

Wilf Carter

Artist: Wilf Carter

LP: Wilf Carter "Montana Slim"
Song: "Two Little Girls In Blue"

[ listen ]

Song: "Grandad's Yodelling Song"

[ listen ]

Anyone with two ears and a brain should know that mixing yodeling, the Hammond organ, and a dash of Western twang would be a recipe for country music bliss. Still, this delectable dessert wasn't served up nearly often enough on vinyl 12" platters. But this Canadian fella, Wilf Carter, aka. "The Yodeling Cowboy," aka. "Montana Slim," aka. "The Father of Canadian Country Music," makes an entire meal of it. 

Originally from Nova Scotia, Wilf was a genuine cowboy on the plains of Alberta in the early 1930s before a couple of his records hit the jackpot and he began working the rodeo circuit with his guitar over the next 30-odd years. You can read more about Mr. Carter's life and career here, and in the LP liner notes included below. Right now there's nowhere on earth I'd rather eat breakfast than at the Wilf Carter Motor Lodge in Orlando, Florida. I bet it was like this. 

[ Two Little Girls In Blue ]

[ Wilf Carter, aka. "Montana Slim": December 18, 1904 — December 5, 1996 ]

Jade

Artist: Jade

LP: 12" single

Song: "I'm Gonna Get Your Love"
[ listen ]

I found this 1982 Canadian disco gem at Al's Music, Games and Video down in Federal Way after attending my Carrier Academy training for USPS on Friday. (We offer competitive prices on shipping! And have you seen our new George H.W. Bush 'Forever' Stamp?) Al's has moved a few blocks up the street to a new location since the last time I dropped by, but I forgot to snap a picture of their new place! I'll grab one on Thursday though, after my Promaster and 2-ton truck drivers' training that's also scheduled at the USPS headquarters down there. (I already learned how to drive the small trucks last week.)

Nancy Martinez, who recorded under the name Jade early on in her career, was born in Montreal, Quebec on August 26, 1960. She reportedly scored a number of disco hits (I'm not sure that "I'm Gonna Get Your Love" was one of them, though it certainly should have been), but Nancy has gone jazzy in more recent years. She has been described as, and I quote: "grounded" and "generous"..."radiating a good energy and strength of character." Nancy continues to perform today and also teaches music, as you can read for yourselves here. I'm hoping, likely in vain, that Nancy will one day suddenly reappear as Jade, with humongous feathery hair and a hot new single for the dance floor!

[ Jade — aka. Nancy Martinez ]

 

[ Al's Music, Games & Video — Federal Way, WA ]

Guylaine Guy

Artist: Guylaine Guy

LP: French Doll
Song: "Paris est un Accordéon"
[ listen ]

Song: "Madame Bertrand"
[ listen ]

"French Doll" Guylaine Guy is a Canadian! Born in the spring of 1929 in Montreal, Guylaine got her start singing in some of her city's cabarets. Charles Trenet discovered her there in 1955 and began writing songs for her...and the rest, as they say, isn't history. That's because after touring the world and having a hit record in 1963, Gylaine retired from music to focus on her art. I've been sifting through my French-language LPs and am getting rid of quite a few, but this 1957 delight is definitely a keeper.

[ Guylaine Guy in 1957 ]

 [ Guylaine Guy in 2015 ]

Spoons

Artist: Spoons

LP: Arias & Symphonies

Song: "South American Vacation"
[ listen ]

After attending a memorial service in Bothell for a former work colleague yesterday afternoon, I decided to drop by Vortex, by my favorite Kirkland record store, to help shake the melancholy from my head. I was at the store for over three hours and, if not quite a fine-toothed comb, I would say I at least went through the place with a hairbrush, and I drove away with a heavy stack of wonderful and unusual things. 

One of them is this 1982 LP by Canadian new wave band Spoons. They're pretty doggone good, but I like them even more as I imagine how excited I would have been to have found out about them back in 1982, when I was 13 years old. I would no doubt have had bedtime fantasies about running off to the Yukon with cutie keyboardist Rob Preuss, where we would live in domestic, yet romantic, yet pretty cold probably, bliss for the rest of our lives. We'd have to snuggle in bearskin to stay warm! But instead of honeymooning with me, Rob and his hair ran off and joined Canadian rock group Honeymoon Suite. There's a sweet interview with Preuss here where everything about him seems bashful except his coiffure. You can watch an interview with the entire group here, find an effusive "Arias & Symphonies" album review on the Same Mistakes blog here, learn more about the four Spoons than you've ever wanted to know here, and go here to find out which two Spoons recently played a benefit show to raise money for the high school where they got their start.

[ Spoons ]