Break It To Them Gently
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
There’s so much music out there that sometimes songs can just pass you by. Maybe radio doesn’t play them anymore for whatever reasons; the songs are too soft or too hard, they sound dated, or maybe they were just popular back in the day but haven’t held the test of time. Then sometimes songs are just forgotten for reasons unexplained.
I’d never heard Burton Cumming’s “Break It To Them Gently” until a few years ago, when Burton and Randy Bachman joined forces to record and tour together. I watched their CBC special and listened as Burton told the story of what inspired him to write one of his solo tunes that wound up doing very well for him. Listening to the band deliver it I remember thinking “This is a great song! I can’t believe I haven’t heard it before!”
I saw Bachman-Cummings play ”Break It To Them Gently” last year at Casino Rama and once again enjoyed hearing it, but I hadn’t thought about it since. Than Jeff, Carly and I got to talking about the song yesterday, probably after hearing an ad for the Bachman-Cummings gig this summer at the Amphitheatre. The conversation inspired me to dig up the CBC performance where I discovered “Break It To Them Gently” for the first time. It still sounds good to me. How about you? Take a listen, and then use the name of the tv show that inspired Burton Cummings to write the song as your bonus code.