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| Wikimedia Commons Hector Sanchez |
For this week's edition of Reminiscings of Youth, I'm once again going into the Canadiana vault because my good friend and KKP contributor JTM and I had a talk back on Sunday, and he was further interested in what other Canadian singers and bands were up to back in the ol' 1980s.
Well, there has been one singer that's been on my mind for a while since he went by a mononym during the time that he had made a splash on the music scene in the 1980s. Singer-songwriter (Lawrence) Gowan struck us not only with his distinct name but also with his third single, "A Criminal Mind", and its accompanying music video. Coming out in January 1985, I think I was in the middle of my freshman year at University of Toronto when this sinister but alluring pop/rock number popped out with Gowan fully acting up the role as an unrepentant if somewhat tragic evildoer amid synthesizers and guitars done up in a gothic dark way. In a way, I thought "A Criminal Mind" was a musical cousin to Pet Shop Boys' "Opportunities", although the feeling is that the bad guys in the latter song were mere pretenders to Gowan's successful mastermind.
Videographer Rob Quartly was behind the making of the video which combined stylized live-action and classic comics-influenced animation. Watching it and hearing the delectably devilish delivery by Gowan definitely made it all stand out when it was given heavy rotation on MuchMusic all those years ago.
"A Criminal Mind" made it to No. 5 on RPM here in Canada and it was a track on Gowan's second studio album "Strange Animal" which was released a month after the single. To raise the ante on the Canadian-ness of it all today, I also have to give my props to the sinister narrator at the beginning of the video, the late voice actor Len Carlson from Edmonton. I only found out that he was the same fellow who used to do all those soothing Kraft recipe ads that I saw as a kid (although I don't think my mother would ever try them out).
Of course, "SCTV" couldn't help but poke fun at those commercials. Eugene Levy was the Carlson-soundalike here.
So, what else was coming out as singles in Japan when "A Criminal Mind" lurked out of the shadows?
Yoshie Kashiwabara -- Lonely Canary （ロンリー・カナリア）
Yutaka Ozaki -- Sotsugyo （卒業）
Anzen Chitai -- Nesshisen（熱視線）
Great entry! I'm a big fan of this blog and I saw that you wrote about Travis Japan over a year ago. Last week, they released two new songs and one of them, "Tokyo Crazy Night" and some of the city pop elements that you might be interested in checking out.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tip! I'll have to check it out.
DeleteThanks for the introduction to GOWAN. I do not believe I have ever heard of GOWN or the song "criminal mind" but I did hear the Pet Shop boys' "Opportunities" very often in the 1980's and 90's.
ReplyDeleteGowan never made a dent in the United States although he's gotten his fame down south now because he's been the lead singer for Styx for years. Pet Shop Boys are legendary all over the world.
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