Burton Cummings, the half-deaf lead bellower of The Guess Who, now owns Salisbury House, a chain restaurant in Winnipeg that serves shitty shitty food. My first and last experience with Salisbury House was a while ago (1990) but it was enough. Suffice it to say that it was tucked away in a corner of the Winnipeg Bus Depot. I poured yourself out of a Greyhound and followed the incline into Salisbury House, where the deep fryer was always on and the waitresses booted out vagrants every twenty minutes. For some reason their burgers are called "nips". Nips? This lacks even the marginal dignity of Kenny Roger's barbecue joints. Wasn't Cummings embarrassed enough when K-Tel put out a Guess Who Greatest Hits package in 1985?
To dip into the history of The Guess Who is to plunge into a sour netherworld of atrocious band names and mulleted men amusing themselves with guitars in the finished basements of Winnipeg. I remember a documentary history of Canadjan rawk from the 1980s entitled "Heart of Gold," when Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, BTO, Guess Who and Lighthouse were the shining lights of our pop heritage. I'm going to make a documentary and call it "Finished Basement: Winnipeg's Shag Carpeted Musical History". Featuring bands like Crowcuss, Coney Hatch, Mood Jga Jga, Musical Odyssey (oh for Christ's sake), Wild Rice, Brave Belt, Ironhorse, Les-Q, Kilowatt, Union, and the biggest and dumbest of them all, Bachman-Turner Overdrive. What a daft, big-truck, pass-the-bong name. Can you imagine musical history being altered by Lennon-McCartney Hood Scoop? How about dancing to the synthpop strains of The LeBon-Taylor Axle? Mooning to the music of Morrissey-Marr Cruise Control? What if The Smiths really were Morrissey-Marr Cruise Control? What would their big hits be?
Sheila Gettin' Down Tonite
When's It Gonna Happen (Right Now) (Psycho-delic Remix)
Meat's Killin'
Baby Can't Wake Up (From Her Coma)
Handsome Devil. I Mean, Rockin' Babe! Dodged a bullet there, dude.
It's Nuthin' for Billy
Big Man Ain't Gonna Turn Out The Light
Gimme Gimme Gimme What I Want Right Now
10 WORST SONGS OF ALL TIME, FEATURING THE GUESS WHO
Let me clarify first what I mean when I designate a song as one of the worst of all time. I don't mean a song with a lousy melody or an unremarkable chorus. These songs are horrible precisely because they're catchy ditties that stick in your memory. They're the songs you hum while you wait for the turning arrow. They're the awful songs that you think about twenty years later and realize that that's the only thing you can remember about that time in your life. You think: 1980. Hmmm. S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y. NIGHT! Everything else is a blur. Your entire experience of 1983 has been shrunken to the now-meaningless phrase "Seven and the Ragged Tiger," like a shrivelled vine twined around a post.
The complete lyrics to these tunes can be found here.
Undun - Once I sat and listened unbelievingly as Burton Cummings explained the chord structure and jazz influences of this tune. All that and he can't spell the title properly? Or explain why it was that She Came Undun in the first place (I know, she lost the sun and found a difficult mountain etc.)? Or mention who She is? Was it Burton Cumming's English teacher who came Undun? And why is he singing to his Mama?
Dancin' Fool - I just keep thinking of Cumming's moustache and belly when I hear this song. Here's an excercise for you. Picture waking up with Burton Cummings in your bed, wearing Speedos and singing at the top of his voice: I got a wink and a smile from a flashy filly/Ooh my ooh my she looked grand/She said "I like your style, now don�t go acting silly..."/Ooh my ooh, she grabbed my hand/Never thought that I could shake and groove it/Now I�m a dancin� fool/Dug my feet cause they could really move it/ Now I'm a dancing fool. Then he gives you a stinging slap on the back and screams: "Breakfast is on the house, baby!"
Clap for the Wolfman - "Clap for the Wolfman/He gon' rate your record high". I suppose nowadays the song would be called "Clap for Clear Channel," so that's a plus. The lyrics actually have nothing to do with Wolfman Jack and his cool Hilarious House of Frightenstein antics. It's actually about a guy trying to pressure a girl into having sex in a car. Clap for The Guess Who.
These Eyes - Not since Neil Diamond's metonymic schmaltzfest "Sweet Caroline" has metaphor been put to such wicked purposes. Cummings sings the phrase "these eyes" seventeen times throughout the song, which takes up 12.06% of the lyrical burden. That's economy. At no point does he specify that the eyes, arms and heart that he mentions actually belong to him, so it may just be a tune about a killer who's dismembered his victim and is now crooning over the bits. But I doubt that we're so lucky.
Follow Your Daughter Home - Calypso. Oh no, thank you. Maybe The Guess Who is going for a randy folksiness with their tale of a nubile daughter and a paranoid dad, but they have none of the jokey subtlety of the genre they're imitating, abandoning coyness altogether with lines like "You're asking lotsa questions 'bout the boys she's sleeping with". By the second verse Cummings, unable to restrain himself, sings "Is she still a virgin?"
No Sugar Tonite/New Mother Nature - a 2-for-1 whammie of a song that sneaks two unlistenable tunes in under the radar. What in the world made them think that spelling their song titles like an advertising executive would make them more interesting? I have a sneaking suspicion, by the way, that the sugar in the title actually refers to something else, but I'm stumped as to what it could be.
Laughing - Yes, Burton. She was laughing. We are laughing. Especially when you cry "She put the hurt on me".
Bus Rider - Pure '70s Hard Rockin' Shit written by a man with a mullet and a drug abuse problem, mocking some schmo on a bus. Can only be sung in a high-pitched scream.
Running Back to Saskatoon - I lived a year in Saskatoon and it's really quite a nice-looking city. Hey, I met The Lotus there, so it can't be all that bad. But The Guess Who tune doesn't mention crowds of Saskatonians barring their entry with pitchforks and burning torches, so I repudiate the city forever and shake the dust from my feet at its gates.
Hoe Down Time - According to Burton Cummings, Hoe Down Time lasts all day long: "I'm gonna wake you in the morning for hoe down time". God, what they do in Guess Who Land, start hoeing down in the village square at the break of dawn? Is this some Rite of Spring affair, in which the woman is forced to dance herself to death to propitiate the gods of the Gold Record? Methinks the Wolfman will be pleased with our offering. He gon' rate our records high.
