Topless at the Mynah Bird

On December 19 1967, Marilyn Beker wrote an article in the Toronto Star ('Wearing her guitar, she sang bravely') about the debut of the singer Wyche at the Mynah Bird tavern in Yorkville; she was billed as the world's first topless folk singer.

The two men accompanying on guitar (they called themselves 'The Remnants') were university students who would not give their names as "the whole thing is just an experiment". Asked about why a topless singer: "We wrote the song first and then decided we needed a topless girl to make it really work". Wyche (she wouldn't provide her name either) was spotted by The Remnants and asked to join the act - she had never sang professionally before. She says: "I wouldn't do the act without the guitar because it would detract from the song."

My father (John Parkinson, lawyer, arguably retired) was a lawyer who had done some work for the Colonial Tavern "on how raunchy the entertainment could be without risking the wrath of the Liquor Licensing Board" - he was subsequently referred to Colin Kerr, the owner of the Mynah Bird for legal advice. "My opinion was that a guitar strategically placed complied with the City’s bylaw definition concerning female 'clothing' in such circumstances. It was a wild success and for a while there were lineups to get in to the club."

Colin Kerr was also the promoter of a band called the Mynah Birds with several incarnations - at one time both Neil Young and Rick James were members. Here's a youtube link to the Motown single It's My Time co-written by Young & James.

The pictures below are from 1971 at the Mynah Bird during a protest for wage parity. The coffee house was on the corner of Yorkville and Hazelton Ave and in subsequent photos you can see the Penny Farthing next door, and the El Patio across the street. The final picture is of Colin Kerr in 1980, showing off Rajah the mynah bird at Davenport public school.

The August 12, 1966 article on the first topless dance in Toronto:

From the Toronto Star (December 18, 1971):

Songs For The New Industrial State

"What is this album about? It's about the revolt of the 40 year olds."

Doug Randle was an in-house composer, lyricist and arranger for the CBC when he recorded his album of “bitter and twisted Simon & Garfunkel songs” with the absolute tops of Toronto session musicians (Laurie Bower and singers, Peter Appleyard, Rob McConnell, Moe Koffman, Guido Basso, Ed Bickert, Jack Zaza and others). The album was recorded in 1970 so it's now coming up on 50 years ago and the lyrics are timeless. Please click play below and enjoy 'Coloured Plastics', which was inspired by a piece of plastic breaking off a vacuum cleaner and taking 2 weeks to replace.

"What is this album about?..." from the original liner notes, Gene Lees

IBM 2770 Suite

The IBM 2770 Data Communication System was introduced in 1969 as an integrated suite of products. Click next and previous buttons on the image to peruse the manual.

  • 2772 Network maximum speed: 2400 bits/second.
  • 2213 Printer: 7x5 dot matrix, 132 cols at 2 seconds per line
  • 2502 Card Reader: 150 or 300 cards per minute
  • 2265 Monitor: 14" CRT - 15 row / 64 col or 12 row / 80 col
  • 545 Output Card Punch: up to 20 columns per second
  • 1017 Paper Tape Reader: paper and laminated polyester tape

United Empire Loyalists

Vancouver's Trips Festival in 1966 was a long weekend late July - on the bill was the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and Big Brother & the Holding Company, poet Michael McClure and the Acid Test. The Dead were invited to play a show the following Friday night by promoter Jerry Kruz - he had a club called The Afterthought which was putting on shows at the Pender Auditorium in downtown Vancouver. Kruz needed an opening band, so he chose local band United Empire Loyalists (recently changed from 'The Molesters') who were all about 16 at the time. The UEL were Anton 'Tom' Kolstee on lead guitar, Jeff Ridley on rhythm guitar, Bruce Dowd on bass, Richard Cruickshank on drums, and Mike Trew singing and playing organ.

The Grateful Dead needed a place to practice between the Sunday and upcoming Pender show on Friday - turned out Richard Cruickshank's parents were away on vacation so practice was at his house - upper middle class West Vancouver. Jeff Ridley recalls: "So we all paraded into Dick's parents' place with The Grateful Dead and their hippie entourage and all the neighbours peering out from behind their curtains!".

By Friday, the UEL found themselves in the Dead's van driving around Vancouver - the Dead played an impromptu concert at the English Bay bandstand which was quickly shut down by police and then they parked a flatbed truck at Kitsilano beach where the UEL got through their opening set but before the Dead could play the cops shut it down. Promoter Jerry Kruz in 2016, recalling the concert that evening at Pender: "I could tell how much Garcia had already influenced UEL lead guitarist Tom Kolstee in his week of mentoring. Garcia’s playing style would influence Tom for the rest of his career."

The UEL fired Mike Trew and replaced Bruce Dowd with Rick Enns on bass (fresh from playing with Tom Northcott). UEL put out one single ("No No No" - a cover of "You Don't Love Me" which they learned from the Dead) backed with "Afraid of the Dark". They were a hugely popular band in the underground Vancouver scene, finally disbanding in 1970 (briefly reforming in 1990). The track below is taken from a live recording at Zorba's in Edmonton in 1968 - the 'Otis Redding' jam:

Here is a CBC clip of UEL with Hangin’ Around:

The 50th anniversary release of the first Grateful Dead album contains recordings from the Trips Festival shows.
Jeff Ridley quote from here
Jerry Kruz quote from here

IBM System/370 Model 168

The IBM System/370 Model 168 was announced on Aug. 2 1972. The memory was "four-way doubleword interleaved" and could be 1 up to 8 megabytes and offered "tightly coupled multiprocessing". The related IBM 3330 family of disk drives featuring removable disk packs with up to 200 megabyte capacity, the console printer could output 85 characters per second, and the system console included a light pen and a microfiche document viewer. The System/370 Model 168 was finally withdrawn on Sept. 15 1980.

Toronto Scene

In and around Toronto: the Penny Farthing in Yorkville was the first coffeehouse to host Joni Mitchell's original songs and featured a pool in the back. The band picture is of the Pleasure Seekers in 1968 at the Friars - from left: organist Arlene Quatro, lead singer Suzi Quatro (aka Leather Tuscadero), drummer Darline Arnone, bassist Pami Benford and lead guitarist Patti Quatro. The two men on stage are Bruce Cockburn and Eric Nagler at Mariposa Folk festival on Center Island in 1972; they collaborated on Bruce's second album High Winds White Sky. The Colonial Tavern on Yonge opened in 1947 (the second Toronto establishment to get a liquor license after the Silver Rail) and was finally demolished in 1987. The big crowd picture is from a free concert in High Park with lineup including Good Brothers and John Mills-Cockell. The Brown Derby tavern was open from 1949 to 1974, corner Yonge and Dundas.

Evangelical Coffee

The man pouring the (free) coffee at the Stepping Stone coffee house is George Leroy who owned and ran the shop on Avenue Road, just north of Yorkville Ave - it opened in 1969. Leroy was a Pentecostal minister who described himself and his volunteers as “pushers of Christ.” The Stepping Stone was an independent ministry, not affiliated with a church, and the primary purpose was evangelism. The coffee and baked goods were free.

The Stepping Stone was apparently the second evangelical coffee shop in Yorkville after The Fishnet which opened in 1966 below a fashion shop on Yorkville Ave. The Fishnet was a ministry of the nearby Avenue Road Church where Kenn Opperman was the senior pastor - he ran the Fishnet with volunteers from the College and Careers group at the church. The coffee and cookies were free.

 

Images courtesy of Toronto Public Library.

Christ and Counterculture: Churches, Clergy, and Hippies in Toronto’s Yorkville, 1965-1970

Brunswick House

A day in 1970 when they let the Salvation Army band play at the Brunswick Tavern. This was an establishment intended for drinking and smoking; upstairs was Albert's Hall if you wanted to see some excellent live blues.

Univac 1107

The UNIVAC 1107 was the first solid-state member of Sperry Univac's UNIVAC 1100 series of computers, introduced in October 1962. It was also known as the Thin-Film Computer because of its use of thin-film memory for its register storage. It was a single-address machine with up to 65,536 words of 36-bit core memory.

Only 36 were sold, one to the Metropolitan Toronto Traffic Signals department.

Folk Church

This picture was taken in Willowdale 1969 during the brief time folk music was hip with the congregation. Left to right: John Hermant, Bob Holden, Rev. Ed Buchheit, Cathy Lee and Neal Kearney.

 

Singers

Leonard, Joni, Mick, Joan, Tim, Bobbie, James, Bonnie, Bruce, Petula, James, Alice.

Pictures courtesy of Toronto Public Library.

Another Perfect Day

Luke Gibson was lead singer of Luke and the Apostles (single:  'Been Burnt'), then joined Kensington Market (for 2 albums), then briefly revived Luke and the Apostles ('You Make Me High'), and then put out a country album in 1971, which was quite a departure from stuff he'd done up to then. It's an early True North records release - here is the track 'Full Moon Rider' from Another Perfect Day:

Take 5 147

Fastest recorded 147 break by Ronnie O'Sullivan - it's about as long as Take 5 by the Dave Brubeck quartet.

The Ernie Game

The band Kensington Market provided music for the 1967 movie The Ernie Game, produced by National Film Board. The clip below has Judith Gault and Alexis Kanner (who was later in the tv show The Prisoner):

Boris Spremo

Boris Spremo was the first Canadian photojournalist to win the Order of Canada. He worked for the Globe and Mail and his career finished at the Toronto Star.

Courtesy of Toronto Public Library.

Supremes

A couple of pictures because.

Thornhill Fire

The fire at Thornhill Country club in 1971 - this is the curling rink.

Toronto Bands

Below are some photos of Toronto based bands from the late 1960s and early 1970s and some related tracks from the era. First up, 3 characters from the Toronto music scene: Bill Graham, Bernie Fiedler, Bernie Finkelstein.

The original lineup of Three's A Crowd was Brent Titcombe, Donna Warner and Trevor Veitch - originally from Vancouver they moved to Toronto in 1966. Their first single was the above Bound To Fly. This is taken at the Riverboat in 1965:

Brent Titcombe, Donna Warner and Trevor Veitch.

These shots are from 1966:

The Stitch in Time was the resulting of merging an Amherst band The Continentals  (Donnie Morris and Pinky Dauvin) with a Nova Scotia band The Untouchables (Bob Murphy, Grant Fullerton and John Yorke). They moved to Toronto and became The Stitch In Tyme and the first single in 1966 was Dry Your Eyes / Point Of View.

Bob Murphy, Donnie Morris, Grant Fullerton, Pinky Dauvin and John Yorke.

The Paupers in 1967 around the time of the release of their first LP (Magic People), when they were back from touring the US. At New York’s Cafe Au Go Go from February 21-March 5 they supported Jefferson Airplane and by accounts stole the show. They played Monterey Pop June 16 1967 and the combination of mechanical failures and a bad acid trip spelled their demise (no footage appears to have survived). Skip Prokop went on to co-found Lighthouse.

Denny Gerrard, Skip Prokop, Adam Mitchell and Chuck Beal.

Kensington Market in 1968 consisted of (left to right) Jimmy Watson, Gene Martynec, Luke Gibson, Keith McKie, Alex Darou, They put out two albums (Avenue Road and Aardvark) and by 1970 had disintegrated. The single "I Would Be The One" went to #59 in the 1968 top 100.

Kensington Market in Kensington Market.

This is Sugar Shoppe at the Friar's in 1967. The group was made up of Laurie Hood, Lee Harris, Peter Mann and Victor Garber.

Carole Pope: "I'd fantasized about dragging Sugar Shoppe into a back alley and slapping them around because they were so insipid. But Garber had an amazing voice."

Luke Gibson, when he was a solo act in 1969. He was a member of Luke and the Apostles (who opened for Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead at Nathan Philips Square on July 23, 1967) as well as Kensington Market, after which he went solo.

Robbie Lane and the Disciples at the Friars in 1970. They started as Ronnie Hawkin's back up band, had a couple singles, and ended up as the band for Canadian CTV-TV's It's Happening.

Robbie Lane at the Friars.

Robbie Lane at the Friars.

Syrinx - John Mills-Cockell, Alan Wells, Doug Pingle and Malcolm Tomlinson in 1972. John Mills-Cockell was a member of Kensington Market (for their second album Aardvark) and a pioneer of the Moog synthesizer. Syrinx put out 2 albums (Syrinx and Long Lost Relatives). They were on of the first bands to use a synthesizer in live concerts; they opened for Miles Davis, played with Ravi Shankar and had a hit with Tillicum.

tspa_0102572f.jpg

Images courtesy of the Toronto Digital Archives.