Bongo Fury

Two of my favourite bands in the late 70's early 80's (and today for that matter) were two local Southern Ontario bands, Goddo and Moxy. I saw both several times live, had all their albums, and knew most of what there was two know about them. That is why I was so surprised when I came across this LP a few months ago on Ebay. I was doing a search for one or other of the two, when this Bongo Fury LP came up in the search results.
I read the item description and it said that it was made by members of the two bands. Billy Wade was the drummer for Moxy and Gino Scarpelli, the guitarist for Goddo. The vocals were attributed to Bongo Fury who it turns out is Billy Wade with the other members doing backing vocals.
The record was still factory sealed so I bought it. What a great decision! The album rocks with a bunch of fun songs and it sounds like they were having a great time recording them.
I asked Gino Scarpelli about the LP via Facebook ...

Hi John,
Bongo Fury was me and Billy Wade recording for fun. We wrote those songs impromptu. I'm glad you like the album. Enjoy Peace,
Gino.

The rest of the band members were Buddy Caine (guitarist also from Moxy), Terry McKeown (guitar and bass) and Paul Lachapelle (bass)
The album was recorded at Paul La Chapelle's Quest Studios in Oshawa, Ontario and released on Pure Noise Records. The band also toured under the name Pure Noise before recording as Bongo Fury in 1979. The record contained the song "Young Legs" which was a cover of the Moxy song released two years earlier on their "Ridin' High" album.
Bill Wade had also played with Gino Scarpelli in the Canadian band "Brutus" (Ooh Mama Mama)under the alias Hally Hunter. Sadly, Billy died of Cancer in July of 2001

One copy for sale

Vehicle

Hailing from Stoney Creek Ontario Canada, (the singer lived across the street from my grandmother's house) Vehicle sadly only released this one LP. I was under age the times I saw them play at the Collins Hotel in Dundas. The album is nothing unique but with it's hard edged Styx-ish sound it is certainly a lot of fun to listen to. My personal favourite track is the hard rockin' "Da-Nite Shuffle" written about the Da-Nite Tavern a couple blocks from my house (where I also drank regularly, under age and over, growing up in Stoney Creek). They also made the best HOT wings in town. Too bad it burned down a few years ago but it is immortalized in this great song.

Da-Nite Tavern burns (YouTube)

This LP is a real gem if you can find it!

Rose - A Taste of Neptune

I recently picked up this LP again (whatever happened to the one I bought in the 70's is beyond me). I always thought this was a great album with a good mix of pop, pomp and prog rock. Rose had three albums in Canada and were largely unknown to even Canadians except to a small fan base in Southern Ontario and also strangely enough in South Korea. In fact, no Rose LP has ever been released on CD except for this album was released a few years ago in South Korea on Si-Wan Records and can be found on Ebay for around $15 bucks.

The title track is well known among prog rock aficionados and is a great song by any standard. Other stand outs are "Bangin' My Head Against the Wall" and "Ride Away". If you want to learn about this band there is very little on the net and most of the web pages that you will find are in Korean.

Rose had three albums but enjoyed only limited success until they reincarnated as "Toronto" in the early 80's with a female singer named Holly Woods. They had a few well received albums in Canada before splitting up in 1984.

I saw Rose a few times live but the most memorable was in the mid seventies where they opened for Triumph. Triumph had only one LP out at the time and were still a small southern Ontario Canadian act. The show was at the dilapidated Delta Theatre in Hamilton which showed dirty movies during the week and had a $2.99 Concert Series on Saturdays all summer long that year. After Triumph became famous, they were well known for their amazing light show and pyrotechnics. For this show they has a string of light bulbs across the front of the stage that flashed in different sequences and something that looked liked a glorified bunsen burner from science class belching out puffs of orange flame to the music. During the last song Triumph bassist Mike Levine burned his arm on the flame and they could not come back out for an encore.

Several years later I met Brian Allen (lead singer / song writer for Rose) and he recalled the show, laughing "Oh yeah, that was the night Levine burnt his arm".

The Carpet Frogs - Pretending To Fly

Anyone who doesn't know who The Carpet Frogs are, should read this. You will thank me later! Having been a Goddo fan for 30 years or so, I would check in the Goddo section of the CD racks regularly looking for Goddo releases. I was in Sam's one day in 1994 and written on the plastic divider in the rack in red marker was "*see Carpet Frogs". So I went over to the C's and thumbed through and there they were. A Carpet Frogs album called Frog Curry with Greg Godovitz as a member. Sold! I took it home and popped it in the CD player not knowing what to expect. It was great! Some very well done covers of songs like Shakin' All Over and Lovin' You Ain't Easy and some original Beatle-ish tunes. By the 3rd or 4th time I played it I was hooked. In the many years since, I bet that this CD has been in my CD player more times than any other single CD.

I had been to the CD racks many times since, hoping for more, but was always disappointed. Until one day in 2007. I did a web search and came up with their website and saw an announcement of a new CD, 13 years after the first. I look at the list of members and ... oh oh .... no Greg! Hmmm...I ordered it anyway but was expecting to be disappointed. Wrong! A great album probably better than the first one. I figured without Greg Godovitz, that certain "edge" would be missing but this album really rocks! Every song is great. The first song is so good I figured it would be all down hill after that but each song is good right to the last.I like that there is more original material this time. All but one song which is a near perfect knock-off of The Beatles "Rain". The first couple of times through it was like listening to the latest Rembrants album. Not a bad thing as I thought the Rembrants were great! But the more you listen the more you forget about the Rembrants or The Beatles or Badfinger and just hear The Carpet Frogs.

Great going Froggies! I never would have believed you could live up to the first (especially sans Godovitz) let alone top it.

Do yourselves a favour and go get this one!

Frank Ludwig - It's About Time

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Frank Ludwig answers the question why he has returned from a self imposed exile from the music business in the first song on his new CD. "Cuz I Feel Like It!" Best known for his role as keyboardist on Trooper's four most successfull studio albums, Frank has also been in other bands like Brutus and Body Electric, as well as two different bands with Randy Bachman, Union and Ironhorse.

The new CD from Frank is a two disc set but can be divided into three distinct parts. First is ten new songs. The second part is four songs from a solo demo recorded in the early 80's. These songs are mixed in with the new songs on the first disc but are easily identified in the CD's liner notes. The third part is a bonus CD of four songs previously recorded in other bands but re-done here as "unplugged" versions.

I have always been a fan, and always saw Frank's songs as an important dimension of the bands he played in, but this album lets him show his stuff without the the confines and pressures of a band situation. There is a wide variety of styles here from beautiful ballads like "Forever Ended Yesterday" to rockers like "Cuz I Feel Like it!" and "Don't Come Cryin'".

Overall this is a great package for fans like me, but Frank's great songwriting skills and unique vocals will be a breath of fresh air for anyone looking for something different in a time where everything on the radio seems to sound like Nickelback.

Yes, It's About Time!

The CD is available through Franks website http://www.frankludwig.ca/

Canadian Classic Rock

I have always been a big fan of Canadian music and in my memory bands like Max Webster and Moxy rank right up there with Led Zeppelin and ACDC. In fact, the first lead singer for Moxy was asked to join ACDC when Bon Scott died and the second singer for Moxy went on to front Loverboy. There are a lot of great stories and lots of great music in the history of Canadian rock. Much of which the world has never heard. Much of which many Canadians haven't heard for that matter. So that is the main reason for this blog. Not so much to write about widely known bands like the Guess Who or BTO (although I might) but to let people know about the great music they might have missed because they weren't living in Canada or even the region of Canada where the bands were popular. I invite everyone who loves this music to join in and comment or add info of their own. You can also join my newly formed Canadian music discussion group at canrock.proboards.com
Canada Rocks!!