Search - Guess Who :: Let's Go (The CBC Years / Wild Pair Sessions)

From "Black Bird" to "White Room"

Kevin Killian | San Francisco, CA United States | 08/16/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Burton Cummings must have been a teenager when he recorded the tracks on this LP, and the other band members were, what, 20 or 21? But they were cooking! His voice, with its amazing range and tonal surety, had the youthful appeal of a Stevie Winwood, crossed with something more mature and darker, which comes across on these early tapes like hard rain. Randy Bachman on guitar shows some of the flair that he later put to such good use, and you can see why out of all the bands in Canada, this one, the Guess Who, had such unconditional success. In America we wondered at the versatility of the Guess Who's first big hits, for each one had a different sound--"These Eyes," "Laughing," the jazzy samba of "Undun," the blistering rockout "American Woman," but that's because we didn't know that the band originally played on a Canadian pop show and had to learn dozens of new songs every month to keep up, and you can hear the sweaty energy and the explosion of new sounds on these tapes. And the division between different kinds of rock collapses. No wonder they called themselves the Guess Who, for they could fade in and out of an already existing sound almost at will.



The show was called "Let's Go," and from what I understand was constructed a little bit like the British Top of the Pops, with some American Bandstand thrown in. The Guess Who played a wide range of soul, rock, blues and pop standards, including "Blackbird," :You Keep Me Hanging On," Jim Morrison's "Touch Me," and "Along Came Mary" by the underrated Association. You know you have to have balls to even *think* of attempting to cover the gonzo "Touch Me." On this LP there's a different version of "White Room" than you got in the previous covers LP THIS TIME LONG AGO. Sometimes the band apparently got to pioneer some originals, so between these two LPs you get quite a bit of the music that wound up on their first LPs, and here for example is "No Time." It's a great bargain for fans of one of the more imitated bands in Canadian pop history."

Let Go!

Kenneth Parsons | Kenora Ontario | 05/13/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"CD contains some great covers and early versions of their own compositions, most destined to become latter hits. The sound is in mono as recorded for TV broadcast. The Wild Pair sessions (the last five selections on the CD) are mono as well, I own the stereo LP and would have liked the stereo versions included on the CD instead. Unfortunately I understand that those master tapes are unavailable or no longer exist; too bad those songs are all great and are produced by Jack Richardson as well! Thanks to Marv Polanski for preserving the tapes, he had much more forethought than the CBC!"

Will Randy's vaults ever be empty?

M. Brickey | Ventura, CA USA | 08/04/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I'm a diehard Guess Who fan, so this was a good find. I didn't know that they were such a good cover band. The originals are pretty good too."