This is a great thread
I for one never tire of hearing how others discovered Gord especially those who are fortunate to be younger than myself
Nr do I tire of repeating my own experiences
So I will tell my story one more time at the risk of eliciting groans and other rudery from the Sydney Hooligan who has obviously woken up and dared to reply to one of my small talk threads
My story begins in 1964 when I had just finished an apprenticeship with Rolls-Royce Limited in England and managed to get myself transferred at the company's cost to Montreal
I was at the time just getting used the quite different sounds of The Beatles and knew just about all of their earlier output.I found that North America that year was latching on to them in a big way, my friend Allen with whom I had emigrated had a fine Sony radio that could pull in AM stations from all over the States and it soon became clear that if you wanted to hear literally any Beatles track you could do so if you tuned around long enough.
At the time I was heavily into orchestral music and hits such as these three were my favourites
Also at the time my habit was that if I heard a recording that I really liked I would try to find the album it came from and bought it on spec. This practice was far easier for me in Canada because not only was I being paid a lot more than I had been in England but vinyl LP prices were significantly less and even more so if we managed to venture South.Of couse quite often this meant that I had yet another album that had just the one good track on it!
In due course I heard a Canadian top ten hit
called "Spin Spin" on the new Montreal FM station CJFM
and soon thereafter a stirring version of another great song "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"
and when I then found that these two recordings were by a Canadian chappie called Lightfoot I naturally in early 1967 sought out the Lightfoot! album and was pleasantly surprised to find that all 11 tracks were excellent.When the same thing was true on the next album "The Way I Feel" a few months later I was set on collecting everything going an obsession that continues to this day with no less than three unreleased songs coming my way so far in 2010/2011.
these being "Magic Minstrel Show" from the 1983 San Francisco bootleg,
"Heavenbound" from the 1979 Carnegie Hall concert
and a solo "Take It Or Leave It"
from the 1968 Skip Weshner party as found in a rar format archived file downloaded thanks to the link on:-
http://sinkfullofdishes.wordpress.co...weshners-home/