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Canadian Mix Tape Challenge

Which Bachman-Turnersong do you want to go BTOverboard with?

1) "Let It Ride"	4 votes
2) "Roll On Down The Highway"	1 votes
3) "Takin' Care Of Business"	2 votes
4) "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet"	3 votes

Edgy DC Sep 27 2007 10:55 PM

I'm giving this another kick because tonight is the first night since... ever!... that I simply wanted the hear "Takin' Care of Business" before I went to bed. BTO is just living proof that some of the most prototypical southern rock came from nowhere near the south. Formed out of the wreckage of the Guess Who, with a little help from Chilliwak, these guys are the nexus of Canadian rock. Last I checked, the UN still does surprise inspections to make sure Canada isn't still stockpiling a little BTO. You're supposed to see a band like this in footage from 1992 and be surprised at how old and fat they got, but, to their credit I guess, they were surprisingly old and fat in their heyday mid-seventies. There wasn't one, but three Bachmans in Bachman-Turner Overdrive. The lineup fluctuated enough that, by the eighties, one Bachman was touring at the head of Bachman-Turner Overdrive, and another at the head of BTO. Lawsuits flew, but, thanks to Yes, I think there's a special rock court that hears such conflicts. Randy Bachman has insisted throughout his career that his name is pronounced the same way as Wally Backman's, but, not wanting to mess with a recognizeable brand, he's accepted that the band can be called Bachman (as in Johan Sebastian) -Turner Overdrive. 1) "Let It Ride" (Psychedeleic!) 2) "Roll On Down The Highway" (Trucks!) 3) "Takin' Care Of Business" "Takin' Care of Business" --- or TCB --- was a catchphrase that Elvis Presley was fond of using to describe the work ethic he and his band took to performing. Bachman however wasn't directly referencing the King, claiming to have gotten the title line from a radio show that used it as a catch phrase. 4) "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" There were three Bachman brothers in this band. The fourth supposedly had a stammer, inspiring this song's hook.

sharpie Sep 28 2007 07:49 AM

Randy Bachman and Neil Young were both part of the Canadian rock scene in the mid-'60's. Randy was the guitar-hero-god while Neil was the weird guy with the high voice.

Johnny Dickshot Sep 28 2007 08:23 AM

It's so obvious.

MFS62 Sep 28 2007 08:27 AM

This brought back a memory I'd like to share. There used to be a poster on another baseball page. His screen name was TCoB (Takin' Care of Business). He is a Yankee fan. Before the Subway Series, I told him that if the Yanks won, I would write a song parody in his honor. Naturally, I used Takin' Care of Business as the song. It was in that song that I first described Clemens as "fat coward, bat-tossing mother-fucker" because it fit the rhyme and the rhythm perfectly. A vote you see above for that song is mine. Later

Edgy DC Sep 28 2007 08:28 AM

Slide guitar on "Ain't Seen Notihing." That's the ticket. You just know that Michael J. Fox became an actor because he wanted to be a Canadian rock god but couldn't pull off that slide guitar lick.

Frayed Knot Sep 28 2007 08:51 AM

I always despised 'You Ain't Seen Nuthin Yet' and, even if you want to argue that 'TCoB' had it's time and place I'd argue that that time and place are long gone and I could go a decade or more without hearing that again. But 'Let it Ride' has always been one of my guilty pleasures; it's one of the great "Bad" songs of all time (especially if you're a sucker for songs with false endings) and it's heard just seldom enough on mainstream radio that it's a treat to hear when it is played. So THAT is what I'm taking to that desert island in in middle of Manitoba ... or wherever.

cooby Sep 30 2007 05:37 PM

Frayed Knot I couldn't agree more! With every point you made. I voted for Let It Ride too.

Frayed Knot Sep 30 2007 08:24 PM

And such intricate lyrics too: Good Bye, Hard Life, Don't Cry Would you let it ride? You can't see the mornin', but I can see the light Ride ride ride let it ride While you've been out runnin' I've been waitin' half the night Ride ride ride let it ride (Chorus) And would you cry if I told you that I lied and would you say goodbye or would you let it ride? (x2) Babe my life is not complete I never see you smile Ride ride ride let it ride Baby you want the forgivin' kind and that's just not my style Ride ride ride let it ride Chorus I've been doin' things worthwhile, you've been bookin' time Ride ride ride let it ride Chorus Would you let it ride? (x4) (Drum) Ride ride ride let it ride (x5) Would you let it ride? (x4)

Edgy DC Sep 30 2007 08:27 PM

And cooby gives us a wicked Canadian tie.

Edgy DC Oct 01 2007 11:06 AM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Oct 02 2007 07:23 AM

BTObservation of the day: Randy Bachman had been a lifelong Mormon and raised his rock star son Tal in the Church of the Latter Day Saints. Tal, who did a mission in Argentina as a young man, came to the conclusion in the early 2000s that the church's founders fabricated their experiences. Maybe Tal flipped Dad, but both now describe themselves as still-spriritual former Mormons, with Tal counsleing other ex-LDS folks on life after Mormon.

Edgy DC Oct 01 2007 09:03 PM

Johnny Dickshot Oct 01 2007 09:37 PM

I kinda like that song the same way I like BTO -- usually with no one else in the room. I had no idea who did it -- I figured one of those 3 bands -- 3 doors down or 3rd eye blind or something, and at any rate wouldnta guessed it had anything to do with BTO. It also sounds like a theme from a teen romantic comedy I'd never watch.

Edgy DC Oct 02 2007 07:22 AM

Dumb plot to the video, but I love the song for helping to free us from the fake (or self-inflicted) torment of the nineties successors to Nirvana. Long live power pop. Tal is a fascinating guy and a vet of a one-man war with the music industry.

Edgy DC Oct 03 2007 12:28 PM

BTObservation of the day comes from an interview with Randy Bachman himself: Q - Are you the one who sang "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet?" A - Yes, and "Takin' Care of Business". Q - How long did it take you to write that song? A - Well, it's a funny story. It was written in an instant but it look 10 years for that instant to happen. What happened was, way back in the late 60's, when The Beatles had "Paperback Writer" out, I wrote a song just like it. Mine was called ""White Collar Worker", but the lyrics went "They get up in morning from the alarm clock's warning, take the eight fifteen into the city." And just like they said "Sir or madam will you read my book." I thought it was so cool that these guys wrote about somebody who writes novels. I had been to New York. See, in Winnipeg, there's no commuting trains. I'd been to New York and Chicago with the early Guess Who and seen people on commuting trains and how they had to catch this eight fifteen into the city 'cause they started working at nine thirty or ten. So I wrote about that. But when I got to my hook, my hook was "White Collar Worker" just like "Paperback Writer". I played it for the band and they said this is a joke. We can't record this. It's a copy of "Paperback Writer". So this song got put back into the filing cabinet of my mind as having really good words and verses, but I needed a hook. This is something that I would then take to Burton Cummings and we would sit down and try and find the hook and make a complete song. Every time I would play the song, it was laughable and it never got completed. Fast forward about 5 or 6 years and I'm out of The Guess Who. I've now started B.T.O. and we have our first album out. We're getting ready to do our second album. We come back from our first big tour of the States and we're playing a club in Canada for a week, doing our old material like "Brown Sugar" and "Jumpin' Jack Flash", just so people can dance. We're trying out our new material with the club to see how people are dancing and reacting to it, 'cause we're gonna go down and record it about a week later. In the middle of this Saturday night set, the last set, Fred Turner lost his voice and came to me and said "you have to sing the last set." Well, I was only a relief singer up to that point. I would sing a Bob Dylan song, a Neil Young song, a David Crosby song. Of course you didn't need a great voice. It was a good song and a lot of great music tracks behind it and this would give Greg Turner a chance to rest his voice. He would come out and scream all night long, a la Joe Cocker. So I went to sing this last set on a Saturday night and we were a 3 piece band at the time which was myself, Fred Turner, and my brother Rob on drums. Fred Turner basically couldn't sing. His voice was gone. So I did "She Belongs To Me", the way Rick Nelson did the Bob Dylan song. I did "Ohio", "Down By The River" and I did a couple of Bob Dylan songs. I'm doing basically all non-singing songs that you could kind of talk your way through. The crowd is yelling "Rock "n Roll." All these songs are mid-tempo and they really want to rock. Going to the club that night, there was a d.j. that said, "Hi, this is Johnny Jane. We're takin' care of business on C-Fox Radio." And he played a song by The Rolling Stones. I thought "Takin Care of Business" is a great song title, put it in the back of my mind, and then onstage that night, out of desperation - I had run out of songs to sing - I turned around onstage, and this is the instant I talked about, and said to the other guys in the band, "Play these 3 chords over and over, C, B flat, and F endlessly and when I get to the hook, help me out. It's "Takin' Care of Business". Just sing it with me. They said, What?! The crowd is wanting to dance and sing. So I start to play the song and I sing my lyrics from "White Collar Worker" exactly as they appear in "Takin" Care of Business". When I get to the hook, instead of doing this breakdown where we all do "White Collar Worker" in high voices, I say "Takin' Care of Business" and the music keeps going. And it gets to it the next time, the band sang it with me, "Takin' Care of Business." Out of the blue, I answered, "Every day. Takin' care of business, every way. Takin' care of business and workin" overtime." This just happened out of my head, out of my heart, onstage. It was just put together like that. The crowd sensed that we were jamming and making it up. They were all clapping and screaming. When the song was over they kept clapping and stomping and singing "Takin' Care of Business!" So we then picked the song up and sang it for another minute or so. A week later we went to record and I wrote up the lyrics and handed them to Fred Turner. He said, "what are these for?" I said, "Just so you can sing it properly." He said, "I'm not gonna sing it, you are." I said. "What?. I don't sing on record, I just sing harmony." He said. "No, you sing it pretty well and it's a legitimate song for you to do, to give me a rest onstage." So I go into the studio and sing "Takin' Care of Business" with a sore throat and a head cold, which you can certainly hear in there, and we don't take a whole lot of care with the track. It kind of speeds up and slows down because after all, it's only an album track.