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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）
