Canadian greats mark milestones
Great Big Sea, Blue Rodeo release boxed sets
Blue Rodeo and Great Big Sea, two of Canada’s most popular homegrown bands, are both celebrating significant milestones in their careers. Blue Rodeo, the sturdy Ontario rootsrock outfit, is toasting the 25th anniversary of their 1987 debut, Outskirts, and the timeless ballad, Try. Led by the sweet voice of Jim Cuddy, it was the breakthrough that propelled the band into the national consciousness.
For Great Big Sea, the pride of Newfoundland, 2013 marks the 20th anniversary of their first gig. On March 11, 1993, Alan Doyle, Bob Hallett, Sean McCann and Darrell Power knew they were on to something by the boisterous love that people of all ages showed for their mix of traditional tunes and rock ’n’ roll.
It’s been quite the ride for both bands. Both were scooped up early by Warner Music Canada, and went on to sell hundreds of thousands of albums and embark on many tours across the country.
To mark their respective anniversaries, each band has assembled a multi-disc box set that retails for about $100. They’re also planning tours in the New Year.
So what’s in each box? Great Big Sea’s deluxe set is comprised of three discs of music, plus a documentary on DVD and a CD that contains a CBC Radio interview.
Dig deeper and there’s a treasure trove of memorabilia, including all-access passes, handwritten lyrics, posters, stickers and even a calendar. The whole thing is fun and colourful, and nicely packaged in what looks like a fancy pizza box.
Vying for your gift-giving dollar this holiday season is an austere black box typeset with lowercase lettering and a string of numbers.
That would be Blue Rodeo’s 1987-1993, an eight-disc package based on remastered versions of their first five albums, plus three more discs’ worth of bonus tracks.
Also included is a booklet that features an extensive essay on the Canadian music Hall of Famers, who have won a truckload of Juno Awards.
For superfans, the choice will be easy.
Follow your heart one way or the other. But if, like me, you have an appreciation for both bands and a limited budget, a comparison is in order. Here’s a closer look at each set:
Great Big Sea
Music: First in the trilogy of discs is The Pop Songs, which includes hits like Ordinary Day, Feel It Turn and Consequence Free. The Folk Songs disc features the traditional tunes, including crowd faves like Donkey Riding, Paddy Murphy, Mary Mac and Lukey. Rogue Waves is an album of outtakes, demos and a couple of cover songs, as well as bits of hilarious stage banter. “We’re proud to announce our record went ‘tinfoil’ in Petty Harbour,” deadpans Doyle at one point.
Book: Designed to resemble a tour program, the glossy softcover works as a band scrapbook, too. It’s stuffed with dozens of great photos of the band members, on stage and off, as well as images of tickets, magazine covers, editorial cartoons from the St. John’s Telegram, and much more. There’s also a detailed timeline, and each band member is subjected to a fun and occasionally revealing interview.
Visuals: A documentary of the band’s early years on the road is included. Meet Great Big Sea was edited from footage shot by Sean McCann, who started filming on their first tour in 1993, and continued for another few years. It’s a funny and candid portrait of the young band members as they began to make their way in the world. For all the goofing off, what struck me was how serious and thoughtful they were about their music.
Bonus material: A calendar of album artwork, plus stickers, posters, lyric sheets, backstage passes and a Christmas card depicting the band members in KISS makeup, a souvenir of a particularly memorable Halloween show.
Bottom line: It’s an accessible, easy-to-digest package that invites you to jump in and find out about the beloved band that, remarkably, has never won a Juno Award (despite 11 nominations). There isn’t a ton of music to listen to, but you get to know each member and see what life was like when they first embarked on their adventures to the mainland. The souvenirs and book help to illustrate the journey, but it’s the documentary, Meet Great Big Sea, that makes it well worth the price of admission.
1987-1993 Blue Rodeo
Music: A whopping eight CDs, including remastered versions of their first five albums: Outskirts, Diamond Mine, Casino, Lost Together and Five Days in July. There’s also a remixed version of Outskirts, stripped of the ’80s drum samples by co-founder Greg Keelor, who never liked them in the first place. His instinct was correct: now it sounds like a Blue Rodeo album.
Another album contains crisp demo versions of the songs from Casino. The final disc is titled, and filled with, Odds and Ends, each with an interesting little commentary in the liner notes. My favourite is the frog-and-peacock accompaniment on Tell Me Your Dream, recorded pond-side at Keelor’s farm as a storm rolled in.
Book: Stuffed into a tiny booklet, a 6,000-word essay by Canadian author and music journalist Jason Schneider tells the story behind each of the albums.
The narrative unfolds through interviews with Keelor and Cuddy, and includes an analysis of the band’s surprising early success. As Schneider notes, Blue Rodeo was an anomaly in the late-1980s pop world, a scene populated by the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Madonna and Michael Jackson.
Visuals: Unfortunately, this one does not come with a documentary on DVD depicting the band members when they were young and handsome. However, there is a series of promotional YouTube videos produced by their label showing new interviews with Cuddy and Keelor. Online you can also find live performance videos of Blue Rodeo’s recent silver-anniversary concert in Toronto. And of course, there are 25 years of music videos to peruse.
Bonus material: Each album has insightful liner notes, as well as most lyrics. A series of 10 postcards is also enclosed, including promo shots of the band and album art. Two more and they could have made a calendar, had they wanted to beef up the non-musical padding.
Bottom line: The package is less of a silver-anniversary retrospective than a round of routine maintenance on the catalogue. These albums, especially the first three, probably should have been remastered long ago. They sound fantastic, making the box set a must-have for the longtime fan.
For more casual listeners, the discs are also available individually.