Canned Wheat was released by The Guess Who in 1969. It's a rock classic, containing three songs that went on to be major hits: Laughing, (She's Come) Undun, and No Time. By way of context, The Guess Who released the album Wheatfield Soul in 1968, with what I think was their first big hit, These Eyes, and they released American Woman in 1970. They were doing very well for themselves. Randy Bachman was their principal songwriter.

Part of the inspiration for the Canned Wheat name may have been a popular blues-hippie rock band Canned Heat, yes, indirectly named after the Sterno product. They were also at the top of their game then, and had a big hit - Going Up the Country. If you don't recognize the name of that song, if you are anywhere within shouting distance of 70 years old, you will likely recognize the music.

There are several reasons I am convinced the Canned Wheat album was also a Mormon food storage pun. Composer Bachman had married Mormon Lorayne Stevenson in 1966, and they had their first child in 1968, named Talmadge in honor of LDS Apostle James E Talmadge, who had authored two LDS books that were very popular in the 1960s, "Jesus the Christ", and "Articles of Faith". [sidebar: funny how you rarely hear about those books anymore. They used to be "almost scripture"] Naming your kid after the last name of a dead apostle seems pretty hardcore.

On top of that, the cover art for the album featured pictures of the individual band members wrapped around large #10 cans. Have you ever seen #10 cans of wheat anywhere other than in Mormon food storage? I haven't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canned_Wheat

Finally, Canned Wheat came out in Sept, 1969. American Woman came out in Jan 1970. Randy Bachman left the band in May, 1970, at the peak of its success, citing lifestyle differences with the other band members. Randy was apparently pretty hardcore Mormon.


I was going to tack this onto the recent thread by Nightingale about the return of Bachman's stolen guitar, but the story is unique enough, and sort of Mormon related, I thought it deserved its own thread. We have three threads active now about late 60s rock music/musicians. Who'd have thunk, eh?

>> Canned Wheat

And on Ed Sullivan a few months after the album release..."Ladies and Gentlemen, The Weevils!"

Not a fan of guess who? You guessed it.

I wonder if this seminal wonder was really about Joseph Smith?

"Old Joe" (Cummings) – 3:07

I've often wondered, BoJ, how you feel about having missed Canned Heat, Santana, Jimi, Janice, Joe, and the others at Woodstock.

I realize you had places to go, important people to meet and had better not get up or you might lose your seat. But still, the evening paper and your toupee weren't really that important, were they?

Regrets.

I actually could have attended Woodstock. I had just gotten off my mission, and I was living about two hours away. Not that I would have dared go, but having an alternate life was certainly within the realm of possibility.

I never cared for Jimi, Janice and Joe. CSN, the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Simon and Garfunkel and Tom Jobim were more my style. Carli and Carole and Gordon Lightfoot and James Taylor followed in their footsteps. My music taste was generally Mormon-acceptable. That wasn’t where I had a problem with Normonism.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/18/2021 10:27PM by Brother Of Jerry.

I hope you picked up on my musical allusion as well as the substance of the post.

Don't disappoint Lot's Wife or she may burn your city down and watch, like the pyro she is, from the salt flats.

Perhaps he was listening to this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Plan_(The_Osmonds_album)

I can indeed imagine a youthful BoJ listening to the Osmonds, perhaps with a poster of Donny on his bedroom wall.

Meanwhile, when feeling incendiary a vengeful LW would have played something like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBUe_v6Mi70

And yes, that is EOD on the drums to Tina's left.

The closest I ever got to anything Osmond was I once saw Jimmy when he was about 14, picking up trash at the Riviera Apartments parking lot, which his family owned,

I know, I know. You preferred the Jackson Five because of the rich Nietzschean content.

I used to own that album.

Wheat storage is cool, naah not in any of the LDS religious agendas used in unhealthy fear mongering and severe mind and behavior control. It's just neat in the sense of a mini metal silo, just like the bigger storage bins farmers might use to sometimes temporarily store low moisture grain.

The one thing that truly get's me is the ability for Mormo-ism to try and steal my ability to remain comforted by my own mind.

Comforted by the small creative ideas that they really never truly can maybe (whore) horde.

The Guess Who were a Canadian band. From Alberta. Definitely wheat country, along with canola beans and other similar crops. Randy Bachman was one of the members of that band before he branched off and did BTO. He and his family were most definitely Mormons. Wasn't he from Lethbridge? Or somewhere in that general area? So I would not be surprised if the Canned Wheat reference is an accurate reference to Mormons.

Nah. If he really wanted to relate a song or lyric to mormonism, he would have called it "Canned Bullshit".

+1

The Guess Who was from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Randy grew up on the north side of town, which was heavily Ukrainian and Germans from Russia.

Thank you, and I stand corrected then. I was not sure if they were from Manitoba or from Alberta. I thought it was Alberta, given the mormon connection.

And for Dave the Athiest..... I still have that album in my collection.

Corb Lund is an exMo from Calgary who has had a pretty successful music career. His band played Park City during the Sundance Film Festival a few years ago. I think Horse Soldier was his biggest album, Truck Got Stuck a fun country western video. Family Reunion mentions his Mormon relatives. All on YouTube. Lund is a very Mormon name.

Perhaps you were conflating him with Bachman.

Randy Bachman's son, Talmage "Tal" Bachman was very active on this board during the early to mid 2000s. He even was a featured speaker at one of the annual exmormon conferences in the mid-2000s. He's a bright articulate guy. I also enjoy some of his music, in particular his hit single, She's So High.