Artist: Lost Dakotas, Album: Last Train To Kipling, Song: Back In Black

The Lost Dakotas were a rockabilly, country rock group from Toronto in the early nineties.  The principle members were guitarist, Paul Dakota and bassist, Greg McConnell.  The band literally emerged from the underground as buskers within Toronto's subway system.  They released their first cassette only album independently in 1990 and followed it with the album, Last Train To Kipling in 1991.  This album is another rare gem from a fruitful period of independent music within Toronto.  This scene would spawn many acts like the Barenaked Ladies, Blue Rodeo, Andrew Cash (see blog 2/12/11), The Skydiggers, The Leslie Spit Treeo (see blog 8/26/10) and The Razorbacks.  Those were just some of the bands that achieved some mainstream success.  As you can imagine, for every band that made it there were 10 others playing the same gigs and sounding just as good.  The Lost Dakotas did very well regionally and this album got some great radio support on college and alternative stations in the city.  Last Train To Kipling stayed on the college charts for 100 consecutive weeks, a feat no indie band had accomplished before.  The album is solid from start to finish and they do a very nice job covering AC/DC's Back In Black.  The band toured Canada numerous times and even played SXSW in Texas.  Greg was actually in a band called the Absolute Whores (see blog 1/21/11) before joining the Lost Dakotas.  He was known as Ugly Dick Adonis.  The Lost Dakotas would release one more album in 1993 before Greg would join some former Whores', Vaughn Passmore and Johnny Trash, in a new band called Strato-chief (see blog 8/9/10).  Sadly, Greg passed away in 1999.  Paul Dakota, who was also the principle songwriter, appears to have kept a low profile in the years following the band's last release.  You can keep up with him at http://www.myspace.com/pauldakotamusic.  To date, the band's discography is only available second hand.  At the time of this blog, there were copies trading on Ebay and Amazon between $25 and $50.  You can hear the song, Back In Black, on You Tube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4OW1iB04QY).  Thanks for reading and enjoy!