Country Blend - Gospel Favorites
Hey! The original lineup is back and they're ready to convert you into a Christian with their collection of Gospel Favorites. The secret they won't tell you is that Joan MacKay sold her soul to the devil to become the world's greatest piano player. She got the haircut as a free gift.
I'm not sampling anything from here because we have enough entries from the Christian Wheat Belt to cover our religious song quota.
Bill & Sue-On Hillman Vol.12 - The Canada Sessions: 33 Songs from the Early Years
I recently covered Bill & Sue-On Hillman's first four albums which vary from mediocre to excellent, and I rated Vol.3 as my favourite. One of the things I was looking forward to on this trip was eating at their restaurant which they inherited from Sue-On's family. My craving for Chinese food was brutally slaughtered because the restaurant is gone, so I had to eat some fast food shit because nothing else was open.
However, it was a joy to find this CD. I covered a portion of the 33 songs on this album which came from volumes 4, 5 and 6. I was quite happy to see more of Bill's original songs on here, and yes, they're very good indeed!
I've pulled three songs from this CD for you to hear. "Highway 354" is a perfectly fine twonky driving song that will forever remind you of all the wheat that makes your drive through Manitoba boring as fuck. The main riff in "Mississippi Tripper" is stolen directly from "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress" by The Hollies and has Sue-On taking the lead vocal while Bill does the back-up. "Satisfied" starts off as Manitoba's version of "Play That Funky Music" and then breaks down into a feel-good praise-the-lord religious hoe-down.
I didn't think I'd ever find one of their CDs so I'm quite happy with this one.. It's a perfectly fine representation of local Manitoba music in the early 1970s. It just goes to prove that the music here didn't always suck.
Hoja - Rock Paper Scissors
I'm fairly certain that this album has previously come through my hands and may be sitting in my blog queue box. Why it hasn't come been posted until now is anybody's guess, but I'm going to blame Hoja for never sending me a copy of the album for reviewing. It's all their fault.
Hoja is an acapella group, much like the Streetnix band I covered a few years back. They're not completely bad, but the singer's near inability to do falsetto is pretty laughable. The song selection is for the most part decent. "Kiss Him Goodbye" which is a mandatory cover for any acapella group (because The Nylons had a big hit with it in Canada) is included. Their cover of Billy Joel's "River of Dreams" is almost good with exception of the terrible falsetto. My only question is, who the living fuck chose to cover Jewel's "Foolish Games"? What a stupid decision that was, and the arrangement just doesn't work for this song. The happy acapella sound brings an extremely cheerful, shiny vibe to an extremely miserable, depressing song. Jewel's debut album is one of my guilty pleasures, and I hope she hunts these guys down and beats the piss out of them with their own CD for even thinking of covering this song.
Listen to Foolish Games
Listen to River of Dreams
We still have to visit the Value Village before exiting Brandon. What kind of crap will we find there? Stay tuned!
Listen to Foolish Games
Listen to River of Dreams
We still have to visit the Value Village before exiting Brandon. What kind of crap will we find there? Stay tuned!
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