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The unusual and strange from news and popular culture.
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This is my first instalment in a series of lost and forgotten records from the past. Most of these hits are Canadian hits, and they are the ones that bring back memories for me from my youth.
Below is a recording from a Canadian bubblegum rock group singed on to Columbia in the early seventies called “Next”, entitled “Only a Friend of Mine”. The personnel on this 1975 recording consisted of Mark Laforme on guitar and vocals; Mel Coburn on drums and vocals; the high voice comes from Garnett Zimmerman, who played keyboards; and on Bass and vocals, Roly Greenway. This being August 2010, marks its 35th anniversary, for what it’s worth. Roly Greenway is apparently of no relation to Brian Greenway, who plays with April Wine.
Greenway and Laforme appear on the credits as the writers/composers of this single. Greenway would be better known to the world as the bassist and leader of the Canadian band Crowbar, and earlier as the backup performer for Ronnie Hawkins. Crowbar would re-form intermittently after 1977. Next was never heard from again.
But no worries, I at least have audio in the link below of probably their biggest hit.
The song “Only a Friend of Mine” barely made it into the top-40 in many regions of Canada, but was pretty catchy.
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Fans of this blog may recall that venerable, but enigmatic group of CAC makers from who-knows-where called Furr. As you can see clearly, they are pretty derivative, and the cover shown here dates back to 1977 (so I was close), according to this CAC blog.
Also, according to the same blog, some visitors categorized their music as bubblegum. Hmm… sounds believeable.
But their song titles (these guys have a track listing!) still sound like titles pulled out of the Kiss reject bin: “Sister Honky Tonk”, “Wow, yeah”, and “Goin’ Down the Road” are examples.
But if we are to believe their other links to Amazon (which I don’t), they are now called “The Furr”, hail from Winnipeg, and have a current 2007 demo released on places like Amazon and CD Baby, entitled “Furr is Murder”. CD Baby has a short bio of The Furr (if they are from Winnipeg, then why does the Canadian Amazon site list them as an Import?). It would appear from their bio that “The Furr” did not exist before 2005. Since this is a 1977 album, either the bio is wrong and they’re all old geezers (I wouldn’t want to be a geezer in all that getup), or we are talking about two different bands.
The Furr are also on Facebook. They have reportedly broken up. But, looking at a recent picture of Matt and Darcy (two of The Furr’s former members), they don’t look a day over 25. They would have been born 5 years after this album came out. I rest my case.
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