Diamonds, Diamonds: Max Webster gave us some high class Canadian tunes

“Countless Canadians between the ages of 50 and 70 will tell you they saw Max (Webster) play at their high school, a bar in the early days, a theatre like Massey Hall, or headlining a place like Maple Leaf Gardens at their peak.” Bob Wegner writes in his tribute book. Photo by Handout

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Lace up some borrowed shoes, rewind to Y2K and imagine finding a cassette in a dusty, mildly neglected bin at a record swap.

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It’s your favourite band playing all their hits, plus a bona fide musical unicorn.

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“It was a concert recording from 1977 containing a song that wasn’t on a Max Webster album,” author Bob Wegner testifies on maxwebsterlive.ca. “It made me realize that there was a plethora of Max music yet to hear. It was the best $5 I’ve ever spent in 20 years of collecting music.”

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The days of getting any amount of ear joy for $5 in this country are well and clearly behind us, but the music of Max Webster, led by the immutable Kim Mitchell, endures.

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The Toronto band had made a name for itself after played just about every high school and bar in Ontario before booking larger venues in the mid 1970s. 

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As Wegner writes: “Countless Canadians between the ages of 50 and 70 will tell you they saw Max play at their high school, a bar in the early days, a theatre like Massey Hall, or headlining a place like Maple Leaf Gardens at their peak.”

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Propelled by memorable hits from High Class in Borrowed Shoes to Paradise Skies, the band released seven albums between 1976 and 1981, six of them certified gold and one platinum — A Million Vacations may yet occupy a milk crate somewhere in your coolest uncle’s woodshed.

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“From the mid-1970s to the early ’80s, the band toured heavily, playing up to 250 dates a year and opening for rock music heavyweights such as” BTO, Rush, Blondie, Ted Nugent and Styx, their Canada’s Walk of Fame bio reads.

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The lineup inducted in 2023 included Mitchell, bassists Mike Tilka and Dave Myles, drummers Gary McCracken and Paul Kersey and tickler of the ivories Terry Watkinson, Diamonds, Diamonds all.

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