![]() Released towards the end of 1970, it hit No. In Japanese, it was called “Kiri no Naka no Futari,” or “Two In The Fog.” For all the success the song had in Canada and the U.S., it couldn’t compare to the Japanese reception. Maybe it was the simplicity of the “I will love you” chorus, or the eternally catchy minor key melody, but somehow the song caught on even with the language barrier. He didn’t really speak English, but he loved that song so much, he was so convinced it was a hit, until someone finally went, ‘Okay, we’ll play it.'” “He believed in this song so much that the rumour was he’d slept in the stairwell of a radio station for two days until they played it. “There was a kid from CBS-Sony (Columbia’s Japanese counterpart), a marketing guy over there,” explains Blake. Only a handful of songs from foreign artists have ever managed to top the charts there, and one of them was “As The Years Go By.” Plus, the Japanese fans are not easily won over by Western celebrity. The reality is that today Japan is the second-biggest music market in the world, and any band that does well there is doing very well indeed. The phrase ‘big in Japan’ is usually meant as an insult, used to describe a band that does great there but can’t match up back in North America. What happened next is one of the greatest musical stories to come out of Japan, a country usually overlooked in rock history. Then it would be Mashmakhan opening for Tommy James and the Shondells, or the summer tours of the Maritimes with April Wine. Then the first time I was on the road, it went to Wolfville, Nova Scotia, to Acadia University, or the Arrow club in Halifax. “I was just a kid from Montreal,” says Blake. “By the time I was 21, I hadn’t been more than 150 miles from my home, maybe Vermont. Made up of Blake, keyboard player Pierre Sénécal, drummer Jerry Mercer and bassist Brian Edwards, they had primarily played clubs and colleges. It was a big step up for the veteran group, which had previously been known as The Triangle, backing up R&B singer Trevor Payne through much of the ’60s. We were heroes, we got limousines at the airport.” “They were starting to circle the drain here until we came along. “We single-handedly almost saved Columbia in Canada,” laughs Blake. And its impact at home was even more dramatic. Still, it sold a half-million copies in the States, a big success. But we were Canadian, small-fry, and on the periphery.” You’d think Columbia, which was about the biggest record company in the world could have seen that. “But it just got scattered over two, three months. “Any song that could do that, with a concentrated push, it might have been a different story,” says Blake. So overall it hovered at around number 30 for weeks on Cashbox, Billboard.” In total, the song spent 18 weeks on the charts, never peaking higher than #31 on Billboard, however, managing to be hugely popular at different times on different coasts. “That song went Top 20 on the West Coast first, then it climbed on the East Coast, somewhere in the Top 15 or so and died off,” remembers guitarist Rayburn Blake. next, but in an odd way, winning over one market at a time. The song was an immediate smash at home, breaking out in Montreal, and finishing at No. It started with the group’s iconic hit, “As The Years Go By.” Released in North America in June of 1970, the group’s first single was signed to Columbia Records of Canada (and Epic in the U.S.). But until the band set foot in Tokyo in July of 1971, they barely had an idea they were big stars abroad. They set a record that lasted for decades on the Japanese charts, and helped change rock ‘n’ roll concerts in that country forever. Years before it became a rock cliche, thanks to live albums from the likes of Cheap Trick and Deep Purple, Montreal’s Mashmakhan were indeed the biggest thing in Japan.
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