Shout out to Craig Aust for allowing me to steal this request from him! Shout out also to Harri for choosing a great lyric video to sync with this great song. Thx much! I've always thought this was a near-perfect song construct with near-perfect execution by the Five Man Band. The switchover to organ music for the final "church verse" is award-winning. Go Canada!
R.I.P. Les Emerson. Class Act guy. He died of Covid related complications in December 2021. He wrote this song and was lead guitarist and singer of 5 Man Electrical Band. He was 77.
This song also corresponds with the battle over highway billboards. The line about blocking out the scenery. Enforcement of the 1966 highway beautification act was being hotly debated at the time. It continues today with multiple amendments different laws passed, funding bills, even attempts to repeal it.
This song hit the airwaves when I was a senior in high school and I considered myself to be a rebel (actually, I was pretty tame) and we all loved the message contained in this song. Thanks for requesting this JK Clark. I love these blasts from past. 🌺✌️
Thank you for showing some love to Canada, Harri! The band also had a big hit with a banger you would enjoy called "Absolutely Right" as well as a cool storytelling song you may want to do towards the end of October called "Werewolf"!!!
Canadian youth tellin' it! Singin' and playin' thier hearts out too, eh? I was 10 or 11 when this song came around on the radio, amongst so many others. "Puppet Man" by the Fifth Dimension, comes to mind, too. Catchy pop music with in-sane vocal harmonies! I'd venture to say diamonds.
ah, now you are choosing a song right from my neck of the woods, literally. They lived here in the Ottawa area and Ottawa Valley in Canada. Try out, "I'm a Stranger Here." It has a great message too and a great vibe. Les Emerson had such a big hit with that one that he could choose to work or not for the rest of his life. He was interviewed about that and said that back in the 90s he suddenly started getting big royalty cheques again, and he called the organization and said they must have made a mistake, but a rap band had sampled "Signs" and so, royalties went through the roof again. One of those rare mega-hits that sets an artist for life.
Love this band. The Five Man Electrical Band (known as The Staccatos from 1963 to 1968) is a Canadian rock band from Ottawa, Ontario. They had some hits (as The Staccatos) including "Half Past Midnight" & "Small Town Girl" & then (as The Five Man Electrical Band) "Absolutely Right", "I'm A Stranger Here", "Werewolf", "Signs".
The writer/lead guitarist of this song passed away earlier this year. This song is why I STILL have long hair and a beard and always will. My parents made me keep a crew cut in the 60's and 70's, even when everyone else let their hair go... So as my little protest.... I have had long hair since 1975...
Canadians too! The band was a boatload of fun, maybe a Purse Siener commercial fishing vessel. It was written in the middle of social change. "We can Change the world"--Graham Nash.
Another of those great "counter-revolution" songs from the "free love & flower child" days! The band Tesla (not the car!) did a REALLY nice cover of it, more rock than folk, that you may want to check out sometime, just to compare. Thanks for the "trip" back to the "pop" days, sir!
As a Canadian who grew up with this band and this song always being in his life I'm gratified to know that people are still discovering it, enjoying it, and getting a message out of it more than 50 years later. ( ummm for the record, I'm not trying to "take credit" for the song "because" I'm Canadian and the band is too, I'm just saying, in my opinion, they're one of the best bands to come out of our country so I take a lot of pride in being "associated" with them... in some very, very, VERY small way ) And as a "person", I have to say that it's very sad that this song still resonates. We may have progressed past the time when people could put offensive signs in their windows, but I think we all realize that the underlying prejudices are still there and have not gone away, and maybe, sadly, are only getting worse after the peak in the late 60's early 70's when maybe we had a chance at "achieving" something better. Maybe it's just time to stop thinking about what someone "looks like", and maybe just taking a minute or two to talk to them and see what they have to say...
This was originally released in 1970 as the side B of the 45. Hello Melinda Goodbye was the A side but had little success. They re-released this in 1971 and the rest in history. Thanks Harri. Cheers from Canada 🇨🇦
When I was a teenager, the adults used to give the guys such a hard time for having long hair. Don't judge a book by it's cover. The topic is an old one, & still hasn't changed. Sad.
Long hair was frowned in Singapore during the 60s and very early 70s. But since the early baby boomers in this prriod has Pluto in Pushya where Jupiter the priest of the Gods was the deity, a lot of people spotted long hair including Paul Simon. Even John Lennon and Paul McCartney spotted long hair. Jupiter equsres long hair with wisdom and this Pushya group modt of them shed off their long hair when they grow older.
"Absolutely Right", "I'm a Stranger Here", "Werewolf", and "Money Back Guarantee" all beg to differ. Canadians probably know all of them, but they all did chart in the US Top 100, so they qualify as "hits". Most Americans will probably recognize "Absolutely Right"
