The Great Canadian Road Trip: Song #44/250: Superman’s Song by The Crash Test Dummies

I have a friend who talks a lot about the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba. To listen to him speak, one might come away with the impression that Winnipeg is the centre of the whole entire universe! To that I say, …well, he might just be correct, at least when it comes to music. Winnipeg certainly has been the birthplace/hometown of a number of well known Canadian musicians and bands over the years, such as The Guess Who, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Chantal Kreviazuk, The Weakerthans with John K. Samson, Econoline Crush, The Watchmen, producer Bob Rock, Bif Naked, The Wailin’ Jennys, Tom Jackson, William Prince, even the worldly Neil Young has roots in the city. *(If a band/musician is highlighted, it means that I have written about them in a previous post that you can read by clicking on their name). So yeah, there might be something to my friend’s claims regarding Winnipeg’s greatness. But I am going to take this one step further. For any place to have produced so much talent, there has to be an Arts ecosystem in place that helps support musicians while they are still local acts. For the purposes of this post, I am going to talk about a place called the Blue Note Café. In particular, I am going to talk about someone who used to wash the dishes there. His name was Brad Roberts. You may know him as the man with the deepest, richest voice in Canadian music history and as the frontman for the band Crash Test Dummies. This is the story of how a song about the waning nature of civic engagement and responsibility went to #1 on the charts and added another shining star to Winnipeg’s musical firmament. This is “Superman’s Song”. 

Ever since I was a young boy, I have found Winnipeg to be kinda cool. My first real memory of Winnipeg occurred as a child. This memory had nothing to do with music. It had everything to do with hockey. I didn’t know a lot about Canada or the world back when the news was announced that NHL superstar Bobby Hull was leaving the Chicago Blackhawks to join some seemingly made-up league called The World Hockey Association. Not only that, he was being paid one million dollars to make the jump to this new league! If that wasn’t all shocking enough, his new hockey team, the Winnipeg Jets, were signing two Swedish players named Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilson for a princely sum as well. I grew up watching Hockey Night In Canada on Saturday nights with my Dad. It was one of those comforting rituals that grounded my life with a sense of security by letting me know that everything was dependable and could be trusted. But what was I to think now that Bobby Hull and his Winnipeg Jets were turning hockey on its collective ear?! It all seemed unreal to me in my little world on Cape Breton Island. But in the end, what made it seem real and cool was when the O’Pee-Chee hockey card company released its first set of WHA hockey cards. I had always collected hockey cards as a boy, but they had always been of players from the old NHL teams. Now, I had players from teams such as the Minnesota Fighting Saints, the Hartford Whalers, the Indianapolis Racers (who had signed some teenage phenom named Wayne Gretzky), the Quebec Nordique and Bobby Hull’s Winnipeg Jets. Bobby Hull and Dave Keon (from my favourite team, the Toronto Maple Leafs) were the biggest names that I knew who now played in the WHA so, naturally, I cheered for them in their new locations. That meant I got to learn a little about Winnipeg (and Hartford, Connecticut, where Keon played). The history of hockey in Winnipeg from that point on goes as follows:  Winnipeg got its own WHA hockey team. They would end up joining the NHL a few years later after the two leagues merged, only to lose  its NHL team to interests in Atlanta a decade or so later. Finally, to complete the sports circle, Winnipeg reacquired its own NHL team again and has held on to it ever since. While Winnipeg’s sporting fortunes ebbed and flowed over the years, a lot had happened in the city in terms of music and the Arts. 

Winnipeg has an interesting geographic location in Canada. It sits at the eastern edge of western Canada and acts as a nexus to the southern plunge into Central Canada that happens after you enter Ontario and pass through Thunder Bay. This has great meaning when it comes to musicians and bands who have embarked on national tours. For many younger bands, traveling across Canada means driving in vans and/or motor homes. Doing so is the surest way for anyone to realize how vast the geography of Canada actually is. The drive from Winnipeg to Thunder Bay, Ontario and then down into central Canada and on to Toronto takes over twenty hours! That long drive is made mostly through endless kilometers of forest and rock, with nary a large town or city in sight. Thus, Winnipeg has become an important pit stop on journeys westward from Ontario and a rest up spot for those heading east. Because so many bands and musicians stop in Winnipeg, the many players who come through town have come to be great role models for local acts to emulate. This has resulted in a robust local music scene in Winnipeg. A characteristic of any town or city with a vibrant Arts scene is that there are plenty of places available to perform at. For the purposes of this post, we are going to focus on one of the spots in Winnipeg that played host to many local, as well as national acts. It was a bar called The Blue Note Café. 

The Blue Note Café was owned by a man named Curtis Riddell, who always owned a second music venue called The Spectrum Cabaret. It was located right beside Winnipeg’s oldest building,The Winnipeg Hotel, which, in turn, was located directly across the street from the train station. The Blue Note Café is no longer in existence. But, in its day, it hosted live music several times a week. If there was no formal act booked to play then the stage would be transformed into an open mic night. Many musicians passing through Winnipeg would end up at The Blue Note Café’s open mic nights. One of the most notable of these times was when Neil Young showed up and performed some songs with a group of locals. This is noteworthy because the title of his very next album was Neil Young and the Blue Notes, which was a shout-out to this venerable club. However, for the most part, these open mic nights served as opportunities for local singers and musicians to practise their trade in front of a small and, hopefully, friendly audience. One of the best stories to come out of this tradition was that of dishwasher extraordinaire, Brad Roberts.

Brad Roberts worked as a dishwasher at The Blue Note Café. Every so often, on open mic nights, Roberts would ask for permission to let the dishes sit in the water for a few moments while he went on stage and sang. Initially this amounted to nothing of any consequence. But soon enough, word began to travel throughout Winnipeg of this man with the deep baritone voice who worked on staff at The Blue Note Café. People began showing up at the door asking the owner, Curtis Riddell, if that hot new singer was going to be singing that night. Riddell was a smart enough businessman that he promoted Roberts from dish duty to singing duty. Soon a group of local musicians was assembled to play behind Roberts as he sang. They jokingly called themselves The Crash Test Dummies and became the house band at The Blue Note Café. It was while working there that the band decided to write some of their own songs. Soon enough they had enough to record an album, which was called The Ghosts That Haunt Me. On that album was a song called “Superman’s Song”. 

When “Superman’s Song” was released, no one in Canada had ever heard a lead singer who sounded like Roberts. His voice was so low and deep that it seemed like it was coming from beneath the floorboards when he sang. Brad Roberts is, technically, a bass baritone. He reminded some people of Frank Sinatra, but he wasn’t a crooner like Ol’ Blue Eyes. The Crash Test Dummies transitioned through numerous performing styles over the course of their career as a band, so it is difficult to pigeonhole Roberts as being a rock singer or a folk singer or a pop singer or a jazz singer. He was all of those at one time or another, making him unique among Canadian singers, for sure. 

The Crash Test Dummies had several hit songs but are best known for two songs called “Superman’s Song” and “Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm”. Both songs went to #1. Both songs actually sold better in the US than they did in Canada, but having said that, they were both hits in their homeland, too. “Superman’s Song” is a eulogy being sung at a funeral for Superman. In the song, Roberts contrasts Superman with Tarzan. When asked about the song, Roberts said that it was a political commentary disguised with the use of superheroes as characters. Essentially, Roberts says that he is lamenting the decline of civic responsibility in society, as championed by Superman who did his good deeds with no expectation of material reward…he simply did good because it needed to be done. Tarzan, on the other hand, is symbolic of our increasingly more individualistic nature. He lived alone instead of in town like Superman did. He doesn’t care to become literate or to communicate with others and so on. The video for this song shows other superheroes attending the funeral. Everyone is sad. The video won the Much Music Award for Video of the Year in 1992, the year it was released.  The Crash Test Dummies are not exactly one-hit wonders, but they never did manage to scale the dizzying heights they did with “Superman’s Song” and “Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm”. At last report, Brad Roberts was teaching yoga and holistic healing in New York to patrons who dig his meditative chants.

Having said all of this, I guess I would have to agree that Winnipeg is a pretty special place. Thanks for being such a civic booster, rawgod. It was a pleasure shining a spotlight on one of the shining jewels of our nation’s crown. Have a great day everyone! 

The link to the official website for The Crash Test Dummies can be found here.

The link to a newspaper article about Winnipeg and The Blue Note Café can be found here.

The link to the video for the song, “Superman’s Song” by The Crash Test Dummies can be found here. ***The lyrics version is here.

The link to the official websites for my pal rawgod can be found here and here.

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The link to the official website for the city of Winnipeg can be found here.

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