Come on Over for a Rendezvous: The ILM Canadian Pop Music Poll (Voting Thread - Deadline: April 21)

I wasn't going to start a new voting thread, but my email address got buried in the first thread:

say(no space)hey(no space)at(no space)rocketmail(dot)com

(I have my email address posted on my homepage--no idea why I'm trying to keep it secret here.)

Here are the nominated songs (write-ins are fine, so if you forgot to nominate something, go ahead and vote for it anyway):

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11QxHlqiNKXsLFaZBRkHcD37OCcujR04cx0ItcCdXm9w/edit#gid=0

My suggestion is lists of 10, 20, or 30. Forty is okay if you need that many (I might). You get 10 points x number of songs listed to distribute, with a maximum for any one song (depends on how long your list is) and a minimum of 5 points for any one song. So:

10-song ballot = 100 points total, maximum of 30, minimum of 5
20-song ballot = 200 points total, maximum of 40, minimum of 5
30-song ballot = 300 points total, maximum of 50, minimum of 5
40-song ballot = 400 points total, maximum of 50 (will keep this the same), minimum of 5

I'll post some sample point-distributions below. If your ballot is unranked, 10 points per song.

Please have ballots in by Friday, April 21 (before the end of the day). I'll get everything ready over the weekend and post the results the following week.

https://phildellio.tripod.com/orr.jpg

Sample 10-song ballot:

1 - 30 points
2 - 20 points
3 - 15 points
4 - 5 points
5 - 5 points
6 - 5 points
7 - 5 points
8 - 5 points
9 - 5 points
10 - 5 points

For 10-song ballots, you can also look at any of Robert Christgau's Top 10s from 1971-2006; they all add up to 100 points in a bunch of different ways.

https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/index.php

Sample 20-song ballot:

1 - 25 points
2 - 20 points
3 - 16 points
4 - 14 points
5-7 - 12 points each
8-11 - 10 points each
12 - 8 points
13-15 - 7 points each
16-20 - 4 points each

Sample 30-song ballot:

1 - 25 points
2 - 20 points
3 - 15 points
4-5 - 13 points each
6-12 - 12 points each
13-20 - 10 points each
21-30 - 5 points each

So take any of those and adjust as necessary. If you add points in one place, deduct them somewhere else.

I had this on my year-end ballot and it still sounds good!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmqITojVoaQ

Some talk of Crowbar on the previous (soon to be locked) thread...I had some of these, long gone, an early-'70s 7 Up promo found on the bottom of pop cans:

https://phildellio.tripod.com/crowbar.jpg

I've got a 40-song ballot made up. I find grouping songs or films easier than ranking everything, so with 400 points to distribute, this works for a list of 40:

Top 10: 15 points each
#11-20: 12 points each
#21-30: 8 points each
#31-40: 5 points each

Presumably flat 'unweighted' 10-points-all-round ballots are not unwelcome?

As a comparatively clueless foreigner I don't see myself struggling to come up with heartfelt 30 or 40 tracks. It helps that I'm still having "wait, did I even know they were Canadian?" experiences while looking at the last minute noms.

I mentioned that briefly in the first post above: "If your ballot is unranked, 10 points per song."

If you're not sure about a song's Canadian-ness, and don't have time to check, put an asterisk beside it and I'll check when scoring your ballot. Again, with bands, half or more of the band had to have been born in Canada. (I'll mention here that even though "Sugar, Sugar" was co-written by Canadian Andy Kim, none of the Archies were born in Canada; they were up here for a time during the war, but by the mid-'70s they were back home in the States.)

Sorry. I re-read the whole thread and somehow still skipped over the bit I was actively looking for!

http://cockburnproject.net/news/images/2009/bc_rocket_launcher.jpg

Cockburn drew wild applause when he sang "If I Had a Rocket Launcher", which prompted the commander of Task Force Kandahar, Gen. Jonathan Vance, to temporarily present him with a rocket launcher.

Is there a Spotify playlist? The noms thread is huge.

Tried to remember everything in the original post, but of course I forgot that:

Started a Spotify playlist as a curious non-Canadian. Obviously no (solo) Young or Mitchell though. I'm yet to add some stuff from the spreadsheet, plus a few things from the thread that I can't seem to access from my corner of the world.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5ObhwLz4s4HRDH6KwSDpeB
(Append ?si=27bcf4b6f1c44963&pt=897599bc2ede7de6300ff20602e44e47 should you wish to edit.)

― Nag! Nag! Nag!, Wednesday, March 29, 2023 10:06 PM

I'd forgotten I had a Kensington Market LP until I went to file one by Doug Kershaw. There's a CKLN sticker on the front, meaning I got it at their sale when they went under in 2011. I'm quoted in this piece on that very LP:

https://torontoist.com/2011/08/ckln-holds-a-moving-sale-2/

Love the collector bro complaining about station ID on the sleeves lol.

His complaint is even crasser than if he were a collector: it says he runs a used record-and-book store, so he's just upset that he can't make more money reselling the stuff.

And then there's me, complaining about having to pay seven or ten dollars (!) for the same albums in a store.

We can't complain, but sometimes we still do.

A couple of hours in the car today, so I wanted to give the Perth County Conspiracy a listen (first album, Does Not Exist). Hate saying this about a Stratford band--I wonder if any of them are still alive, living 20 minutes away from me--but it's pretty bad. Tempted to say the worst kind of hippie-era drivel, but the album came out in 1970--they're a year or two out of date, even worse.

The 60s didn’t really happen in Canada til the 70s, and the 70s hung on through at least 1984 here.

Shout out to whoever nominated this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ7WR44yZHQ

That was me. Great track. :)

Very glad a wise person nominated THIS. Legitimately feels like the best song I've ever heard whenever it's playing, but still needed the reminder.

Got a couple of ballots today, off to a good start.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91ZWvjTlCGk

Very glad a wise person nominated THIS🕸. Legitimately feels like the best song I've ever heard whenever it's playing, but still needed the reminder.

As someone who thinks "Lynchian" is way overused, that clip of The Stroll feels Lynchian to me.

Absolutely agree...I'm not a fan of the genre, but I always say that "The Stroll" (along with "I Put a Spell on You") is like the beginning of goth--the background vocals (the "ahhhhhs") sound like dead people.

Very glad a wise person nominated THIS. Legitimately feels like the best song I've ever heard whenever it's playing, but still needed the reminder.

― Nag! Nag! Nag!, Monday, April 10, 2023 11:29 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

hey that was me, i have a lot of nostalgia of being home sick on the couch watching Littlest Hobo re-runs, still love this song. I really think Wildflowers era Tom Petty could've done a great cover of it.

Are there any parameters for songs other than being cancon approvable? Like do they need to have charted somewhere or been released as singles?

Not at all--as long as it's performed by Canadians, it's good.

Five ballots thus far, including my own; I'll start to input points tomorrow. One thing I'm sensing right away is that Neil and Joni will not do especially well, because--as I suggested on the earlier thread--their votes will be very diffuse across a relatively small number of voters. I think so far the five Neil votes have been for five different songs.

i think a shared this vid on the noms thread, but the song was shortened with the best bit cut out (no idea why); but here's the full version. his voice is very Young-ish

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2jlage1X7A

well i've got 35 songs i have to vote for and about 45 songs left to fit into the final 5 spaces. this is brutally hard!

I was on vacation and missed the nomination period unfortunately. There are so many francophone classics missing, it’s kind of heartbreaking. Then again, I don’t know how many people on the board know them so they probably wouldn’t have gotten many votes.

Vote for whatever you want--write-ins not a problem.

Ok thanks !

A reminder that the deadline for ballots is this Friday night. Seven so far--hoping for the usual 20 or more.

I’ll have one sent before the end of Friday !

This Mitsou hit should be considered for your ballots. The video was banned on Much Music at the time, except in Québec, and the song is a banger:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbDpR5jTmqs

will vote! been meaning to chat.. it just seems so big

like Canada is big

We have over 100 songs per province on the spreadsheet!

40 is an impossibly small number. Difficult decisions have to be made.

I voted some time ago, but here's where I suggest that y'all consider Jean-Pierre Ferland - Le chat du café des artistes for last-minute ballots. (I'd not even heard it before it was nominated but that stately arrangement alone makes it an instant no-brainer in this house lol.)

Up to 10 ballots; the Canadian Charter of Rights mandates another 10.

If you send something and you don't hear back from me by the end of the day, let me know here. Two ballots were routed to my junk folder, the rest made it through--no idea why.

just gonna share a few tracks that i think i will got lost with the bigger name acts, but will be super high for me...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k472YAVzoGU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJV2qvVmy-o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU7lMr14F6c

ugh. just realized "In Undertow" by Alvvays (which I'm pretty sure I nom'd) isn't on the official list.

goddammit. i totally missed nominating it.
Also forgot to nominate AC Newman's "Town Halo"! fuck!

Holy Fuck's "Milkshake", which i did remember to nominate got missed tho

submitting a ballot, haphazardly assembled from a glance at the nominations list

i'm def voting for a couple that didn't make the noms list ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Please do--as I've mentioned a few times, write-ins are just fine.

Couple more today, so that's good--up to 12, looking for at least eight more. I'm going to try to count down next week, but I have to do my taxes this weekend, so that may delay by a week; will try my best. If anyone's waiting to start a new poll, please go ahead.

"Mass Romantic" is my list. The last half, after they switch gears, is incredible--can't think of anything else that sounds quite like it.

Sorry, don't mean to rehash or argue anything and ofc your poll your rules; appreciate that you're doing it. Since you asked what we think, the 50% rule seems to me like too much of a technicality in this particular case, when the Canadian band member wrote both music and lyrics for a song about Canada and sang the lead vocal, with the American members essentially accompanying, especially since Young has also performed the song without CSN. (I honestly forgot it wasn't originally a Neil Young solo song.) Since they're your rules, though, you'd be 100% justified in applying them strictly and consistently.

As I say, as along as no one objects, I'm fine with it.

"as long as"

I guess one could argue that it appears on Decade as a Neil Young song? I personally wouldn't have voted for a Buffalo Springfield song written and sung by Stephen Stills, of which there were a few nominated.

Ah, I guess I missed the deadline. Sad about that, but I had a family emergency. Looking forward to seeing the results!

Something in the next couple of days would be fine, Kim (hope everything's okay). I'll be inputting points at least till Monday.

(xpost) My Springfield vote was for a Stills song (not the most famous one). I guess that does stretch the definition of Canadian, but I still think of 3/5 of the band being Canadian, and for me that's enough.

Ok! Thanks, I’ll see if I can it together tomorrow morning

I nommed helpless but then didn’t vote for it in the end, not because of it’s non Canadianness I just ran out of space. I ended up voting for the night they drove old Dixie down though, which frankly helpless feels like the considerably more Canadian tune of the two despite the band makeup, but your call clemenza, not sure if anyone will vote for it since I didn’t though. Listening to it randomly on the radio while driving around Midland real early in the morning a few years back was one of the more Canadiana feeling moments of my life.

I voted for “Helpless”. FWIW I didn’t know it was originally a CSNY song as only really knew it from The Last Waltz and MTV Unplugged.

I've loved "Helpless" for 40-plus year; didn't vote for it myself, but happy to include it (especially as at least three people decided it was Canadian).

I had the same feelings wrt the Band vs Neil’s CSNY songs — despite 4/5 of the Band being Canadian, they seem like almost the quintessential Americana band.

Still might have voted for them, can’t remember.

Forgot about this poll. I tuned out during the nomination phase, I never enjoy stuffing the nominations with my personal obscurities. Many of my favourites weren't picked, but plenty of them were, I'll cobble something together quickly and send it to you clem?

Ballot sent. Hopefully it's not too late to count it!

I've inputted 19/33 ballots, and I think I have a good sense of what's going to sit at the top. If I'm right--and it's a bit of a surprise, but probably shouldn't be--couldn't be a better #1.

I knew Helix could do it.

Seriously, I'm guessing "Log Driver's Waltz" is top 5 at least.

Just trying to bring interest to a fever pitch--no clues...Jesus, I think I saw Helix once.

Totally here for Log Drivers Waltz near the top.

Speaking of Helix, man, there’s a band nobody wants the records of these days. I don’t get it — literally every other shifty hair-metal band, I can flog their records all day long. But Helix? I sell more John Denver records. At full pop. Than I do of Helix at a discount.

Is everyone who voted in this Canadian? Or did some Americans and Brits decide to take part?

A handful of votes were from non-Canadians.

29/33 ballots inputted. I'll be able to finish the tabulation today, but I'm supplying the next three days so I'll start Monday afternoon. That'll give me a chance to get images ready. I thought I'd search for iconic Canadian photos (e.g., Trudeau and the Queen). I've spent most of my life living in Toronto, so, with apologies if you live elsewhere in Canada, there will be a Toronto bias in the images I use.

ok, who nominated Pluton And Humanoids and how high were you exactly?

But Helix? I sell more John Denver records. At full pop. Than I do of Helix at a discount.

Wait, why this comparison? Are John Denver records hard to sell? I thought everyone loves him these days.

Done! I was right about the #1--fantastic. There's a five-way tie at #40, so I'll start there. Because I set the bar high for maximum points, there are a handful of songs that snuck into the Top 40 via a single vote. That's my mistake--but just a few, and I think they're all low. The Top 3 got 10/13/13 votes.

I've spent most of my life living in Toronto, so, with apologies if you live elsewhere in Canada, there will be a Toronto bias in the images I use.

Fingers crossed for Honest Ed glamour shots.

100% for sure--lived one street down from there in '84-85 (yet rarely actually shopped there).

Or did some Americans and Brits decide to take part?

I'm an American and I voted! I wasn't sure I was going to but when I saw how many songs there were on the list that I really truly care about I decided to cross the border.

I, too, am a voting American. Some of my choices were quite big and obvious, but I think I threw an acceptable amount of deep cuts in there as well.

I mean what made me definitely decide to vote was when somebody nominated "Highschool" by The Flashing Lights

"with apologies if you live elsewhere in Canada, there will be a Toronto bias in the images I use."

We're used to it lol

Otm

Hopefully there's not a Toronto (the band) bias.

Nothing but images of 80's Jays and Expos players on O-Pee-Chee baseball cards FTW.

I've already got four or five Montreal-related images, and one from the Maritimes; I'll have to work on west and north.

Just use pictures of a hay bale and some snow, done.

I'm pretty much on the opposite side of the world to Canada but *someone* in this thread has been schooling me on Canadian matters for several decades. I doubt the likes of Spoons, Chilliwack and Bamff would have been on my ballot without these remedial teachings. :)

I'll do the first 15-20 Monday afternoon, then I booked off Wednesday, so I'll finish up then.

The images will alternate between hay bales and snow.

Not even one Mountie?

I was once travelling westward through Montana, and we stopped in a town called Forsyth for lunch. The man behind the counter was chatting with a local, who was himself travelling westward. The local man said he was going to Billings (pop. ~100k). The man behind the counter said, "ah, going to the Big Smoke?"

I smiled inwardly to hear a small city like Billings referred to as "the Big Smoke", within the Montanan context. I've heard Toronto referred to as "the Big Smoke" with some regularity; I guess hearing that anti-big-city bias in another context made me feel like it was a more universal phenomenon than a Canada-specific one. Me, I call the place Moronto, because we're all stupid for living here

I came up with the acronym Ton-o-rot.

Working this morning, but should be able to start around 1:00. I’ll post the first half today and finish on Wednesday.

You Could Get Lost Out Here: the ILM Canadian Pop Music Results Thread

I don’t want to clog up the results thread, but was watching the movie “Nope” the other night and did a unexpected can con spit take when Gowan’s Strange Animal was slipped in as the supposed theme song to a primate focused sitcom. And then Corey Hart’s Sunglasses at Night featured more prominently a few minutes later. Speaking of which, I heard this cover in a McDonalds last weekend and almost want to give it an honorary post mortem nomination. Pretty sure that’s the Montreal Biodome penguin enclosure they’re posing in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2a2dN2ASJA

I hope Gowan is setting a dollar from that TD Bank ad all over the hockey games using the tune from "Strange Animal".

thanks for this, clem. I shouldve been clearer than my list was ranked maybe? I had Barrett's Privateers #1 but no #1s noted.

I voted "Never Surrender" (and maybe "It Ain't Enough"?) but not "Sunglasses at Night."

I honestly think the old Gowan albums are underrated pop records, esp with Tony Levin and the rest of Peter Gabriel's band playing on them. He still has a great voice and consistently wrote solid melodies.

Right! Like, how was a song like City of the Angels not even given a proper release? I think it could have been massive.

Oh wow haha, it wasn’t directly in the movie, but Jordan Peele actually tweeted a video of the full fake credits last year.

pic.twitter.com/gGH6OrtwFW

— Jordan Peele (@JordanPeele) July 24, 2022