Sunday, July 3, 2011

Artist: The Dudes (1975), Album: We're No Angels, Song: Saturday Night

This is the second of two blogs that feature a Canadian band named, The Dudes (see blog 1/2/11).  They were Kootch Trochim, Ritchie and Dave Henman, Bob Segarini, Wayne Cullen and Brian Greenway.  The Dudes formed in 1974 and were from Montreal.  Their members were from previous bands like The Wackers, April Wine and Mashmakan.  Their manager, Fred Heller, also represented Mott The Hoople, who had a very recent hit entitled, All The Young Dudes, at the time.  After meeting Ian Hunter, they decided to call themselves, The Dudes.  The band featured three guitarists and two drummers.  They were signed to CBS records and released their one and only album, We're No Angels, in 1975.  The band wasn't happy with their debut despite the fact that it sold well in Canada.  CBS had the final mixes done in New York without the band's input.  Nonetheless, they toured constantly for the next two years and even opened for the Bee Gees.  In 1977, they returned to the studio to start work on their follow up release.  The band had a number of songs lined up but CBS rejected them all.  As a result, the members went off to work on other projects and never recorded together again.  Many of the demos from the last recording sessions were released by Segarini (see blog 1/8/11) as a solo artist.  Pacemaker Entertainment would acquire the rights to those demo recordings and release an album entitled, All The Young Dudes - All The Old Demos, in 1997.  The album, We're No Angels, is likely only available on vinyl and very hard to find.  At the time of this blog, there were a few copies trading on Amazon between $10 and $25.  You can hear the very hip lead off track, Saturday Night, on You Tube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VwWWpL0ydM).  Thanks for reading and enjoy!