Love Potion Number 9 Butchered?

shamustwin · Post by **shamustwin** » Wed May 31, 2006 9:22 am

Wait...Burton Cummings is saying he can do this song justice? He's never been a heavyweight in my opinion.

wayang · Post by **wayang** » Wed May 31, 2006 9:25 am

Actually, Jerry, if you've ever seen pictures of The Guess Who, they're pretty much all heavyweights...

shamustwin · Post by **shamustwin** » Wed May 31, 2006 9:36 am

LOL! Ahem...now, let's not get off topic or offensive!

admin · Post by **admin** » Wed May 31, 2006 9:50 am

Burton Cummings has recorded some brilliant material with Guess Who. It is easy to separate his recordings from his interview style. It makes his comments no more becoming though.

Having heard some of his vocals on relatively recent tours, however, he may need to consider whether his voice of today is any match for the recordings he did yesterday.

I am really hoping that he does record "Love Potion Number Nine." But, in the end, to compare an older Cummings to a younger Jackson might not be fair.

dbailey62 · Post by **dbailey62** » Tue Jun 06, 2006 5:55 pm

A friend of mine has a close link to the Guess Who and he told me that for the SarsStock show in Toronto when they were one of the headliners, they had to rearrange their songs down by 3 semitones as BC's voice wasn't hitting the high notes anymore so ya, I agree. His voice is still a wonderful instrument but no, it's not what it was but neither is Paul McCartney's.

Ray Ennis on the other hand ....................

Another fellow, a sound man, who I was working with last week engineered his gig at a Southern Ontario casino. I asked him "is Cummings as big a jerk as everybody says" and he answered "worse". The rumour is that he asked the casino to pay him in chips.

Interesting ..... but I make no judgements.

To be positive now, firstly, Randy Bachman has lost lots of weight and looks tremendous and is apparently one helluva nice man. He has a radio program on CBC every Saturday night. It's on the WWW folks so look it up!!!

Re. BC, ya a jerk as a person but he has written some incredible songs both with and without Randy Bachman. The Guess Who are one of my favourite groups and do have an incredible body of work from 1965 through 1975. The Dom Trojano albums are sadly overlooked and the Kurt Winter era had some real highlights.

It's too bad they didn't do better in other parts of the world as their best material was far better than that of others that somehow managed to hit outside of North America.

db

admin · Post by **admin** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 12:47 am

David: Nice to hear from you. Thanks for these comments. You are certainly right. The music of The Guess Who deserves more attention. It is a pity that Burton Cummings seems to have others paying more attention to his attitude than his recordings. What is it they say about Karma again?

jjr · Post by **jjr** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 1:15 pm

The Searchers released "Shakin' All Over" on 1/2 of a live LP on Mercury that was a companion to "Live at the Star Club". It was called "The Searchers Meet the Rattles" [a German band]. There had been a slew of U.S Doo Wop LPs on ther same lines , e.g "The Paragons Meet the Jesters".

Tony sang the lead, and they tore the roof off of it. Ditto with "Sweet Nothings", a Brenda Lee tune.

As for the Guess Who [Guess Whom?], I'd say they could do real well with "No Sugar Tonight".

dbailey62 · Post by **dbailey62** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 10:53 am

Hi Peter,

Ya, I've not been too active here. I save my comments for when I've got something to say.

Yup, BC has not done himself many favours but it seems that the general public are enjoying the Bachman Cummings tour and Songbook seems to be selling well.

I have friends in the UK who never really got the Guess Who, I suppose in great part because of their poor sales over there. I can't say I understand that at all. So many outstanding records.

It mystifies me.

db

budrocket · Post by **budrocket** » Sat Jun 17, 2006 2:56 pm

To say nothing of a great many excellent UK artists that never did anything over here on the North American contintent, at least as far as the general public was concerned.

bw

dbailey62 · Post by **dbailey62** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 5:38 pm

It's a funny old world. It's too bad that quality isn't necessarily a precursor to sales.

Why don't Kim Richey and Gurf Morlix have hits? Why wasn't the Yardbirds "Shapes of Things" a hit in the UK?

The list is endless. I don't know when I last bought a current hit record.

db

sowhat · Post by **sowhat** » Wed Jun 21, 2006 7:37 am

"Butchered, you say? Looks like the girls disagree.

(an interesting perspective, BTW - i mean LP#9, the 2nd part of the clip - Frank Allen "playing" Tony Jackson...)