Beyond The Guess Who: Boys Brigade- "Melody"

Each week on Beyond The Guess Who I cover a lesser known Canadian artist. This week: Boys Brigade.

As a 14-year-old, I was obsessed with Barnes and Barnes’ 1980 oddity “Fish Heads”. My brother had a recording of the video on a VHS tape and I used to watch it constantly. I was pretty thrilled upon coming across a cheap cassette tape called Alternative 80’s that included the song. The tape had some pretty good stuff on it that helped shape my musical tastes (Bronski Beat, The Psychedelic Furs). It was “Melody” by a band called Boys Brigade though, that (to quote the song) stole my heart and walked away.

This week’s article starts with a 1970’s British rock band called Bandit. At one time, they boasted Jim Diamond who was later frontman of the band PhD as lead vocalist. PhD later scored a UK hit with the catchy “I Won’t Let You Down”. Diamond also had a solo UK hit with the wonderfully cheesy “Hi Ho Silver” which served as a theme to the British TV series Boon. After Diamond left following an unsuccessful 1976 debut on Arista, Tony Lester joined the band in time for their second album, 1978’s Partners In Crime. Lester also became their primary songwriter and wrote their minor hit “One Way Love” which reached #76 on the Hot 100.

A third Bandit album went unreleased and after touring with John Miles in 1979, the band broke up. Lester moved to Toronto to join a band called Arson which had broken up by the time Lester arrived. He met Malcolm Burn, a new band, Boys Brigade was formed out of the ashes, and after securing a manager, some live gigs materialized.

The following year, Boys Brigade entered local radio station Q107’s Homegrown contest. An annual compilation was released every year with the best entries and that year their song “Mannequin” made the compilation.

Their appearance on this compilation led to the band meeting Howard Ungerleider who worked as a show lighting designer and director for the band Rush. He briefly managed Boys Brigade before signing them over to SRO management who landed them a record deal with Canadian label Anthem (also famous for being the home of Rush). Rush frontman Geddy Lee was introduced to the band and he agreed to produce their self-titled debut album.

I always assumed that “Melody” was the band’s debut and that “Passion Of Love” followed it up, but in writing this post, it seems to have been the opposite. So we’ll start with “Passion”. The song itself is catchy new wave rock. There was a video released for the single. It’s a strange, cringeworthy clip mostly featuring Burn serenading an old woman over a candlelight dinner and the band taking a ballroom dance class.

Regardless of the dubious video, “The Passion Of Love” did well in some markets and even had a 12” Mix for clubplay.

Melody was smartly chosen as the follow-up. It’s a story song, revolving around the title character, the narrator and her boyfriend, the abusive Sam. In a nutshell, the narrator is in love with Melody who to quote the song, “danced her way right into my heart”. The problem is Melody is already in a relationship with Sam (“the ultimate anti-hero”). Sam treats Melody like garbage (“And he used to drink and he used to fight/ And he used to beat her almost every night”) but she doesn’t leave him causing the narrator to wonder why she stuck around. It’s a brilliantly written song with a more solid video than their debut to accompany it.

The single peaked at #40 on the RPM charts and even managed to scrape into the Billboard Bubbling Under chart where it peaked at #104.

“Melody” is one of those lightning-in-a-bottle singles that is a tough act to follow and unfortunately, Boys Brigade didn’t.

A third song from the album, “Into The Flow” was heavily featured in the 1984 Canadian Flashdance ripoff Heavenly Bodies though 45cat doesn’t list any single releases beyond a Canadian promo.

About ten years ago, I’d get excited whenever Turner Classic Movies was showing Heavenly Bodies as part of their Underground programming block. Heavenly Bodies stars Cynthia Dale as the owner of an aerobics studio called, you guessed it, Heavenly Bodies, who gets on the bad side of the sleazy owner of a gym and his girlfriend. The latter character is sour grapes over failing to land a TV aerobics show gig Dale’s character got. It’s up to Dale and her friends to defeat the one-dimensional baddies in an all-day aerobics battle. I’ll admit it’s a terrible movie, but one that falls under the category of so bad it’s good. The film did boast a pretty decent soundtrack which featured the likes of Sparks and Bonnie Pointer. It’s “Into The Flow” that plays over the final dance battle scene, which must be seen to be believed.

A tour followed to promote the album, leading Boys Brigade across Canada and parts of the United States. This led to a session for the popular American syndicated radio show the King Biscuit Flower Hour. The band recorded a ten-minute medley that combined Del Shannon’s “Runaway” and Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ In The Wind”. The band seemed to be getting some pretty good breaks but (in what seems to be a pattern in this series) they broke up instead. Burn went solo, releasing at least one single called “Walk Don’t Run” from his 1988 album Redemption. Later, he won a Grammy for his production work on Emmylou Harris’ 2000 album Red Dirt Girl. Lester played with Strange Advance on two albums (including their 1985 hit “We Run”). He then went on to further session work and a career as an independent record producer.

”Melody” wouldn’t be the last time I’d discover new music from cheap compilation albums. But that’s a story for another time.

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