I fucking Hate The Guess Who

I know, I claim to be into music of all genres. And I really am, honestly. I’m not one of those jagoffs who ‘loves everything except rap’ or ‘Can’t stand that country music’ Ask me to DJ your birthday party (Please do. DJ Dawson From Dawson’s Creek is for hire, and I’m cheap) You’ll get Minor Threat, then an obscure GZA track, then definitely Maneater by Hall & Oates, followed by a Taylor Swift single. I also fully support CANCON, in principle (Clearly CANCON rules are to blame for Nickelback and The Arcade Fire) but man, I really fucking hate The Guess Who.

Wait…maybe I’ll take that back. Let me take a step back.

When I was almost 9 years old, about to enter grade 4, I was just starting to discover music on my own, and was quickly learning that The Beach Boys weren’t the only band that ever existed. I spent the summer watching these hour long History of Rock & Roll documentaries with my dad that PBS was airing on Sunday nights. I’d stay up late with him to watch. Partially because I found the history of Rock & Roll fascinating, and also cause I felt that my dad and I were developing this bonding ritual over music. But mostly because I didn’t want to go to bed. I was really into the episode about the late 1960’s that was pretty much all about The Who. The Who (and everyone who saw them) claimed they were the loudest band ever at the time. This, and the clips of them performing is what totally sold me on Rock & Roll. Every bands live show i’ve seen since that has been in some way compared to the standards set for me by watching The Who on television. I loved everything about them. Pete Townshend going deaf and smashing his guitar into his amp. Roger Daltrey doing that microphone swinging thing (a move some frontmen should try to bring back BTW) John Entwistle standing there, doing absolutely nothing except for slapping da bass, and Keith Moon… just being Keith Moon. The chorus melodies of their hits were stuck in my head for months..because PBS only had time for hits and choruses.

Months later, on a misty October afternoon, and for lack of anything better to do, I was riding bikes around town with Chris Simms. Chris was a notorious shit head at Broadway Public school. Literally. On the second last day of school that year in grade 4, he took a shit underneath the climbers at recess and ran around the school yard trying to rub it in others’ faces. I don’t know the specific details of what happened with his punishment, but he never came back to Broadway ever again. The next time I saw him, I was a teenager and he came into the skate shop I worked at. He was convinced we were secretly a head shop, and then he tried to sell me a broken tennis racket. He’s probably likely in jail or on meth right now. Anyway, Chris got hungry from our bike ride, and informed me that he was going to go ‘scoop’ a chocolate bar from a store.

We rode to the Big V Drug store (side note: anyone remember Big V? Anyone? Anyone?) and went in. While I was waiting, or possibly supposed to be acting as a look out, I saw a cassette in the bargain bin that said ‘The Best of The Guess Who’ Being the total n00b I was back then, I thought, A) That I could pull this ‘scooping’ thing off, and I shoved it my pocket, and B) The BEST of The Guess Who? I’m finally going to hear full versions of those songs I heard on that Sunday night months before.

I think you can see where this story is going...

Nope. Wrong. Within 30 seconds the store manager (who, FYI, looked and spoke almost exactly like Begbie from the movie adaptation of Trainspotting) had his hand on my shoulder and was asking what was in my pants. Even at 9 years old, I wanted to say “The biggest cock you’ve ever seen asshole”, but I figured this was neither the time, nor the place for that brand of childish humour. I bolted from the Big V immediately and took off on my bike, It was pouring rain at this point, and I was weaving in and out on the sidewalk between pedestrians and their umbrellas, eventually ditching the cassette in a phone booth down the block.

Now, you would think with Chris being the accomplice and shit head that he was, that he would bolt from the store too, or at the very least, not rat me out. But no. Chris, actually being a full blown shit head, helpfully stayed in the store to rat me out. He was quite helpful at that might I add. He easily gave up my phone number and apparently a description of the location of my house, which he had never been too. Not bad for someone that took shits under playground equipment.

Within an hour, there was a phone call from the Big V, and I was being driven back to the store by my Grandfather who was looking after me that night. He was a decorated World War 2 veteran, and one of the few people of whose opinion I actually cared about (I’m sure there will be more on him later on) The Begbie-like store manager interrogated me, and honest to allah, his first words were, I swear, “Do you like like Rock n Roll son ?” Clearly, the only response that that question was, “Yes sir, I…I love Rock & Roll” Then there was a lot of “Blah, blah, blah” from him, and a lot of “Yes sir”, “I know” and “I’m sorry” from me, but to be honest, I wasn’t really listening to Begbie and I didn’t care. I fucked up and I knew that. I was only focusing on how my grandfather was clearly disappointed in me. He had been shot at by Nazi’s on the beach at Normandy, and was left hanging by the Americans who showed up up late (try to find that nugget of info in a history book) And I was a disappointment to this man right now.

There were two things that still bother me about this series of events. It wasn’t that I got grounded for a month, or that I was caught stealing. It wasn’t even that my dad yelled at me for the next week straight, or that he now just assumed was a petty criminal, and was going to end up dying on skid row. It wasn’t that I was now banned from all Big V stores. It was that I had disappointed my WWII vet grandfather.

That, and the fact that I confused The Who, with The Guess Who. I felt like such an idiot. How in the hell could I confuse The Who, with The Guess Who?

I didn’t even know who the hell The Guess Who was!

This all came back to me this past weekend when I chose was forced to listen to an oral history of The Guess Who on CBC Radio.

The host kept introducing their songs like, “and here is one of The Guess Who’s early hits, blah blah blah” and then would proceed to play some of the worst music I’ve ever heard. Seriously, what was going on in Winnipeg back then? If they only knew that Propaghandi was a few a decades away, I feel they might have held off on embracing this gratuitous horseshit so early. Now, obviously, in the years between 1993 and 2014, I had obviously heard more songs by The Guess Who, and laughed off how I once confused them with The Who. There is some tolerable tunes in their discography…I suppose. I mean, No Sugar Tonight is alright…probably their best, and American Woman has that cool guitar riff. But the posi comments end there. These Eyes, and every other song for that matter, just makes me want to kick puppies. And If I have to listen to that pretentious asshat Randy Bachman talk about how his songs changed a generation, or how Burton Cummings owes him money, or any element of his life for that matter ever again, I’m probably gonna go postal.

Ahhhh nevermind. I fucking hate The Guess Who