Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Artist: Queen City Kids, Album: Queen City Kids, Song: Down Again

"Looks like I'm in trouble again.  I'm down again."  Queen City Kids were named after the city they originated from, Regina, Saskatchewan.  They were childhood friends who started out as a British Invasion cover band called, Cambridge.  By the age of 16, the guys were opening for Rush on the western leg of their tour.  In 1981, their independent album caught the ear of producer Gene Martynec (Rough Trade) which in turn attracted the attention of Capital Records.  This led to their self titled debut and the song, Down Again.  It's one of the band's more pop oriented songs.  Constant touring landed them opening spots with Ozzy Osbourne, April Wine, Streetheart, Joan Jett and Blue Oyster Cult (a band that they were covering a few years earlier!).  The album achieved gold status in Canada and led to a second release in 1982.  However, the band was broke and with very little label support from Capital/CBS to promote the album, they called it quits in 1983.  They reformed though and today you can catch them playing from time to time.  You can follow the band at http://www.queencitykids.com/.  The song, Down Again, can be found on their self titled debut as well as a Best Of album that was released in 1989.  Both are difficult to find.  At the time of this blog there was one vinyl copy of the debut album for sale on Ebay for $8 and two CD copies of the Best Of album on Amazon for $88.  You can hear the song, Down Again, on You Tube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZzMX96fONA&feature=related).  As always, you can hear this song as well as others that I blog about each day on Live 365 (http://www.live365.com/stations/raisedoncndnradio).  Thanks for reading and enjoy!