Window Jumpers

On Monday, October 19, 1987, stock markets around the world collapsed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 22.6 percent in a single session, the largest one-day percentage drop in its history. In Vancouver the damage ran deeper. The Vancouver Stock Exchange, with more than 2,400 listings, most of them speculative mining and venture stocks, had set an all-time high that May, and it gave up 23 percent over the Monday and Tuesday. Within a week of the crash, a group of Vancouver musicians was in a studio on Dunbar Street recording a song about it.

The money behind the record was already in place. Stephen C. Jackson, a former reporter and editor with The Vancouver Market Report and The Canadian Market Report, had a business relationship with Proview Capital Management Associates Inc. Through a mutual contact he had helped raise investment for Notorious Records Limited, a small startup label with offices at 789 West Pender Street, a short walk from his own downtown office. Proview invested in the label, and part of those funds was still unspent when the market fell. Days after Black Monday, the label’s project coordinator came to Jackson with a request: put some of the remaining balance toward a lighthearted song about the crash.

The song was Joel Parkes’ ‘The Crash of ’87’, words and music. Jackson met Parkes to hear the pitch and satisfy himself there was something real to back, then gave the go-ahead. Notorious handled the rest, booking Bullfrog Studios and assembling the players.

The sessions ran October 24 and 25, five and six days after the crash, with Gerry Gagnon engineering and mixing and Gord Booth assisting. ‘The Crash of ’87’ follows the collapse through the Toronto and New York exchanges in just over three minutes. The flip side, ‘Paranoia’, came from Thoma, Scott and Nielson and packs the headlines of the day into two minutes twenty: tensions with Iran, drugs, violence and the sensational coverage that fed on all of it.

Jackson recalls the song going out about a week after the crash. As he remembers it, CFUN 1410 played it in Vancouver, probably along with CKLG 730 and CKWX 1130, and the story of a band that had turned Black Monday into a rock song ran on CBC, BCTV and CTV newscasts and across the border on KVOS in Bellingham and KIRO in Seattle. Friends told him they had seen it on newscasts farther afield. None of those broadcasts has resurfaced yet.

Notorious issued the two recordings as a 12-inch, 45 RPM single, catalogue NR-1001. Jessica Gihon coordinated the release and Sandy Flett designed the graphics, silkscreened onto a white sleeve. The release was accompanied by a lyric sheet and a mock share certificate from Notorious Records, certificate number 007, dated October 19, 1987, and good for 1,000,000 Class A shares in ‘The Crash of ’87’. The thank-you list on the insert runs from The Stock Exchange and Proview Capital to Imperial Records and everyone at Bullfrog.

-Robert Williston

Lineup:
Joel Parkes: guitar, vocals
Andy Thoma: vocals
Jason Scott: vocals
Bernie Dobler: guitar
Ron Nielson: guitar, vocals
Tim Loughlin: bass
Norm Casler: drums, harmonica