Artist: Blue Shadows, Album: On The Floor Of Heaven, Song: Raised On Robbery

"A little money riding on the Maple Leafs...."  The Blue Shadows were a country rock band from Vancouver.  They were led by Billy Cowsill of the legendary sixties pop band, The Cowsills.  The Cowsills were actually the inspiration behind the Partridge Family.  When Billy started touring on his own and took up residence in Canada, he partnered with Jeffrey Hatcher (see blog 12/8/10), J.B. Johnson, Elmar Spanier and Barry Muir to form The Blue Shadows.  They signed with Bumstead Records and got a distribution deal with Sony for their debut album, On The Floor Of Heaven, in 1993.  The album was critically acclaimed but failed to generate a lot of commercial interest at the time.  The album has had a slick makeover in recent years and a wonderful collection of covers and unreleased material has been added to the album.  One of those tracks was the Joni Mitchell song, Raised On Robbery.  I found out about it by reading John Sakamoto's excellent weekly music review entitled, The Anti-Hit List, in the Toronto Star (http://www.thestar.com/antihitlist).  The new remastered release with extra tracks is available on Itunes.  The band would release one more album in 1995 before going their own separate ways.  Sadly, Billy Cowsill passed on in 2006.  Hopefully the re-issue will ignite some new interest in the wonderfully underrated music of this long lost band.  You can hear the song, Raised On Robbery, on You Tube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WELukF_ad9Q&feature=channel_video_title).  Thanks for reading and enjoy!