Big Q’s Cassette Classics: When I’m With You

Big Q's Cassette Classics heads north of the border today.

One of the bonuses of growing up next to the Canadian border is the music. You see, in Canada, commercial radio stations are required to have their playlists include at least 35% of Canadian artists. While Radio Canada stations have to have 50% of the playlist be Canadian.

That opened the door to a lot of music that would never make it in America. I was forced to camp on occasion in the Turtle “mountains”, which is a hill line on the North Dakota/Canadian boarder. On these weekends of hell, I’d break out the Ghetto Blaster and tune into some Canadian radio stations. I heard the next Big Q Cassette Classic back in the summer of 1983. It went Top 10 in Canada, but nowhere in America.

That is until 1989. Then it went to number one. That was 4 years after the band broke up. A station in Minneapolis started playing it in 1988, and other radio stations around the country started doing the same, and because of that, a band (that wasn’t a band anymore) had a number one hit, but they’d already been a Big Q Cassette Classic for 6 years.

You might be wondering if they got back together because of the hit. You can find that out tomorrow. Right now, it’s the Canadian Big Q Cassette Classic, Sheriff, “When I’m With You”.