Gordon Lightfoot --- have you heard of him?

He was certainly one of the best in his day, but of all the music of the "Classic Rock" era, that laid-back James Taylor/Seals & Crofts style of ultra-soft rock seems not to have held up well.

He was very popular in the USA, all over the radio. Like most Canadian entertainers, most Americans thought he was one of us. I saw him at the Hollywood Bowl around 1971.

My vote for best Canadian songwriter of that era would go to Neil Young. I was particularly fond of Three's A Crowd out of Vancouver, but I'm sure nobody else remembers them so it would be silly to nominate them.

Robbie Robertson is Canadian, and I think hardly anybody knows that since he spent many years with The Band, for all practical purposes an American group. He has witten some wonderful songs, especially the ones on his eponymous solo album like "Sweet Fire of Love" and "Somewhere Down That Crazy River."

If you're talking about best Canadian songwriter of all time, I would award that to one of the contemporary DCC's ("Depressed Canadian Chanteuses"), Sarah McLachlan, Jann Arden, Alanis Morissette or Chantal Kreviazuk.

Or maybe Rush. They're not up to the standard they set in the 1970s, but nobody else is either. People aren't as avid about music any more and won't listen to a pop composition that's as long and complex as a symphony. Nonetheless they're hanging in there. One of the few stars of progressive rock who are still doing progressive rock instead of getting rich off of easy ditties.

 

I thought she was a breath of fresh air in the 90s. Managed to create some really personal songs that rocked. Harder than Sarah, Jann or Chantal.

His father was Jewish and his mother was Mohawk. He spent his summers with his mother's family on the rez. Growing up in a cross-cultural family can whet your thirst for history.

The song is the story of one of the epic events in the U.S. Civil War, and according to Wikipedia Robertson was so moved when he learned about it that he did indeed do some historical research.

He too was fascinated by the American South, writing two songs about it: "Alabam" and "Southern Man." Lynyrd Skynyrd lambasted him for them in the iconic American anthem "Sweet Home Alabama," but apparently it was meant to be good-natured and Young and Ronnie Van Zant were said to be on quite friendly terms.

Gichigami, "Big Water," is the Ojibwa name for Lake Superior. Respelled Gitche Gumee, it was immortalized in Longfellow's classic poem, "The Song of Hiawatha."

The opening stanzas are widely quoted with attribution:

By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.

 

The first arena concert I saw was Creedence in 1970. The Guess Who were the opening act.

The Guess Who were just a little bit too embedded in "the 60s" (that misnamed twelve-year period that started with the first Beatles hit and ended with the Vietnam War). Like Seals and Crofts, Herman's Hermits, the Turtles, and scores of other really really good hippie era bands, they just never managed to transcend the era's sound and feel, so today their appeal is strictly nostalgia. Lenny Kravitz managed to recycle "American Woman," but he changed the beat ever so slightly and made a few other subtle alterations that make it more palatable to a modern audience. The lyrics were allegedly trash talk to the Statue of Liberty, the symbol of the USA, and would not go over well with many of my countrymen in the post-9/11 era, if their generation hadn't lost the sophistication to figure it out.

A good portion of American children think Canada is a state. Now that you play baseball I suspect many grownups do too.

That's what makes good art. The question that dogs popular art is: Is it universal temporally or just spatially? Will people fifty, a hundred, five hundred years later relate to it? The compositions that become folk songs, nursery rhymes and drinking ballads make the grade. I would suspect that in the electronic era that will be expanded to songs that people can't necessary sing to themselves, but still sound good after the topicality wears off, like so many purely instrumental symphonic pieces do. In other words, they become "classics." Based upon forty years of tracking, we all assume that the Beatles and "Dark Side of the Moon" will still be popular in the year 2525. The Beatles already show up on CDs of music for toddlers and tribute bands play "Dark Side" to SRO audiences of people who grew up with hip-hop.

That's her schtick! At least one of those songs seems to be designed specifically to annoy one guy in her past. "You scan the credits for your name and wonder why it's not there."

Rock and roll has always been about annoyance. My generation's parents were driven out of the room by the very structure of the music: Syncopation exaggerated to the point of caricature, a rhythm section that shook the roof, a blues scale dumbed down to black keys only, vocals that were shouted instead of sung, and lyrics about sex and adolescent rebellion.

Once we War Babies grew up with Elvis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Johnny and the Hurricanes (generally but affectionately regarded as the most awful band ever to have a permanent spot in the Top 40) adults were no longer so easily annoyed by the sheer existence of rock and roll. But it wasn't too hard to craft individual songs with a high outrage quotient. The anti-war songs pissed off a lot of young people who were not in the counterculture, although many of the GI's who were in Vietnam appreciated them. The drug references had the same effect (also on the GI's

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). Then they came up with stuff that challenged even our tolerant definitions of "music," like rap and punk.

I think her songwriting is outstanding, and as a musician with an engineering background I appreciate her intricate arrangements that never sound alike. Alanis seems to have been a one-hit-album wonder; perhaps she exorcised all of her demons on "Jagged Little Pill" and is now too well adjusted to write powerful songs. Her best album since "Pill" is the acoustic remake of "Pill"!

Sarah just keeps on doing it.

Yes. They seem very personal, like pages from her diary. Jann Arden affects me the same way. But while Jann is rather angry--although not in a league with Alanis--Chantal is more melancholy with a hint of hope. I don't even want to find out if some of her songs are truly autobiographical. The one about the stillborn child--who else could pull off a song on that subject? It always makes me cry, yet as this forum's most outspoken atheist the medium of music reaches inside me so I understand how that's a situation in which religion can be a resource to keep a person from falling apart.

You obviously are too young to have lived through the 60s. Bob Dylan was our role model and he literally can't sing at all. I made it as a folksinger for more than ten years because of that.

Remember, he started out in the Buffalo Springfield, one of the most respected bands of that era. That carried him into his solo career and then he got back with Stills from the Springfield and turned CSN into CSNY. They were one of the most popular bands in the 70s. So he had a lot of other people's momentum working for him.

Nonetheless, the difference between him and Lightfoot that mattered after the Flower Power era ended is that Neil Young simply rocks harder. Lightfoot's lightweight music just doesn't hold up. Sure, there is still lightweight music today, but it's contemporary lightweight music tuned to this era's tastes. Light music from the past doesn't charm an audience the way heavy music from the past does. Bar bands still play Creedence and the Stones every night, but you hear Simon & Garfunkel about once a year and you never hear John Denver.

One of the advantages of being old is that I did see them. Not all but many. Aerosmith, Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, David Bowie, Camel, Judy Collins, Fairport Convention, Fleetwood Mac, Genesis, Gentle Giant, Steve Goodman, the Grateful Dead, Janis Ian, Jim & Jean, Billy Joel, Elton John, the Kingston Trio, Kris Kristofferson, Nektar, Mike Oldfield, Peter, Paul and Mary, Pink Floyd, Pretty Things, John Prine, Renaissance, Roxy Music, Southwind, Tangerine Dream, Three's a Crowd, the Who, Yes, Frank Zappa, ZZ Top... the names are popping into my head faster than I can type.

Well, if you're just wedded to the music of that era, at least you picked a pretty good era. But I find plenty to like in contemporary music. I've seen Sara Bareilles, Jonatha Brooke, Kelly Clarkson, Sheryl Crow, the Cure, Daughtry, Dream Theater, Filter, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Shakira (in Spanish) and Ozomatli. I suppose I'm more of a girl singer fan but there are plenty of guys out there writing fabulous songs, like Scott Stapp and Chris Cornell. One local band, Jah Works, and a local singer, Glenn Fink, are good enough to show up on the radio sometime soon, and I get to see them in a club, sitting comfortably at a table.

And the old stars are still out there. I saw Stephen Stills do a solo gig a couple of years ago and he is just as good as ever. Also saw CSN without Young and the same comment applies to them. Dweezil Zappa plays Frank's music the way Frank would want it played: updated. The Cult is still out there and Ian Astbury blew us away singing lead for the reconstituted Doors.

I like Loreena. I assumed she was Irish-Irish.

 

Leornard Cohen has written lots of great songs, but as a singer he rates somewhere between Bob Dylan and Kermit the Frog.

As for Joni Mitchell, she's one of those Canadians whose nationality is hard to remember, like Neil Young and Robbie Robertson. She lived in Hollywood back in the day, and even wrote songs about it. "Ladies of the Canyon" is about Laurel Canyon, a place where I rode my bicycle. And she was quite American in her opposition to the war.

 

What makes you say that? Many Canadians come here determined to assimilate. I don't think most Americans know that Lorne Greene and Dan Aykroyd are Canadians, and I don't think either of them cares.

It's not like you folks have an "accent" that makes you sound foreign. To the extent that there is a slight difference between Standard Canadian and Standard American, it is far more subtle than the differences among our own regional dialects. Compared to an American from Alabama or Maine, you guys sound like you're regular fellows from Kansas or Minnesota. Shania Twain even tries to put a hint of a Southern drawl into her singing.

Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Robbie Robertson have all written songs that make them sound like they are Americans with a personal stake in our history, culture and politics.

We're considerably more aware of the nationality of Canadians who live in Canada, like Sarah McLachlan, Alanis Morissete, Rush and all those emo bands.

As for Leonard Cohen, oh come on now! He's a journeyman singer who writes great songs. At least he sings better than Bob Dylan.

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