I've been waiting to be able to slide this on in since I started the series!
Good Day! We are traveling back up north to the Great White North for this weeks installment of Friday Night Videos. Everyone is aware of the British music invasion of the 1960s, yet little has been said about the Canadian music invasion of the early 1980s lead by bands like Rush, Triumph, Toronto, Loverboy, Saga (Today's band) and Men Without Hats.
Yes, everybody was Safety dancing all over the place thanks to our musically talented northern neighbors.
This northern wave was spawned by the development of the music video which brought Canadian synth driven into the American living room ... and American radio stations soon fell in line.
I have to tell you that I wore out my cassette tap of Saga's 'Worlds Apart' album. If I wanted to rock out all I had to do is pop in the tape, press play, and on came the high energy rock that Saga was cranking out.
So let's pull out our pretend Walkman, pop in a cassette, put on a pair of those orange foam covered headphones and travel back to 1981:
The second track off the album 'Worlds Apart' is equally strong. Here Is 'Wind Him Up."
Saga are a Canadian rock band from Oakville, Ontario, Canada. Jim Crichton and Welsh-born vocalist Michael Sadler were the principal songwriters.
Saga had numerous line-up changes over the years. Ian and Jim Crichton were the only two original members who appeared on every album. Sadler appeared on every release, apart from the 2009 album The Human Condition. Keyboardist Jim Gilmour was with the band from 1979, making his debut on the album Silent Knight. Drummer Steve Negus performed with Saga until 1986. The lineup was supplemented by many session musicians and live performers from the late 1980s to the late 2000s.
Saga have been awarded gold and platinum albums worldwide and have sold more than eight million albums.
In 1981, the band's fourth album Worlds Apart was released. The lead single " On The Loose", finally broke them into the Top 40, peaking at No. 22 on the Canadian Charts in January 1982. A second single, "Wind Him Up", also fared well with the help of its music video receiving heavy rotation on MTV, and in December 1982, proved to be their breakthrough in America where it peaked at No. 26 on the Billboard chart in March 1983. "Wind Him Up" became the second single in America, peaking at No. 64 on Billboard the following month. Eventually, Worlds Apart was certified Gold in the US in 1983. The band opened for Jethro Tull on their North American tour in 1982.
About ten minutes east of the city of Lake Charles are the remains of an abandoned water park . The decaying structures are clearly visible from the busy I-10 freeway and for years drivers have wondered about it's history and why it was left for dead. The Pirate's Cove Water Park actually has a rather interesting story behind it. A story that has been repeated over and over again, unfortunately, here in Louisiana. It's just another example of how government bureaucracy in this state killed an enterprise before it could ever get off the ground. Construction on the park began in 2008 and it was scheduled to open sometime in 2010. The sprawling complex was envisioned as an oasis from the hot summer heat that would feature luxurious amenities like a 900 foot long lazy river, a giant splash pad for the kids and eventually a five star hotel. The Pirate's Cove would have been an obvious tourist destination that could have brought much needed tax dollars and employment oppo...
I have to admit that I have been hanging on to these photos for a couple of months now just looking for the right minute to post them. Back in November I was traveling up to El Dorado, Arkansas and I passed through the small town of Dodson. While driving through town my eyes spotted a very attractive old house up on a hill and I just had to stop and take a few photos of it. I honestly don't know the history of this house, but I'm sure some local will send me message telling me all about it (and someone did see the UPDATE ), and it's not as cool as an abandoned railroad locomotive or old movie house but it really spoke to me. I have to wonder about the people who used to live in it and how it ended up in the state it is now. Anyone can see that it was a beautiful house long ago. What happened? How did such a grand residence end up like this? Those are questions that I can't answer unfortunately. Unfortunately a site like this isn't all that uncommon here in Louisian...
The abandoned, yet fully intact Rock Island Railroad trestle over Bayou Boeuf south of Lecompte, Louisiana. For many years I have had a fascination with the now defuncted Rock Island Railroad. As a youngster my family used to take a yearly pilgrimage to Texas to visit family for the holidays. Traveling across eastern New Mexico into the panhandle of Texas my eyes would survey a set of lonely single railroad tracks. For years I searched those tracks for a train to no avail. That was until the fall of 1978 when I spotted a small mixed train lead by a couple of high nosed Geeps. The train consisted of a couple of cabooses, a flat car, tank car and two boxcars. We had just crossed over the Texas line and I was excited to see just what railroad had owned this rarely used set of tracks. As we got closer the name on the locomotives came into view, "Rock Island". Rock Island? I thought, at the time that it was some eastern railroad. Later on I would learn that The Rock was a ra...
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