Winter's Green

Childhood pals Ra McGuire (vocals) and Brian Smith (guitar) formed the nucleus of this late-'60s quintet hailing from Vancouver, BC. Augmented by Bruce Rutherford (bass), Wayne Gibson (keyboards) and Stu Wilson (drums), the band released a single from the Rumble label in November 1968 titled "Are You a Monkey?" b/w "Jump in the River." Beneath the A-side's Darwininian rhetoric lay a spare keyboard arrangement which you'd swear sprang from the fingertips of the Doors' Ray Manzarek. As the decade waned, the group's creative butterfly underwent two metamorphoses. In the early '70s, they emerged as Applejack, then -- advised by Randy Bachman, who'd been impressed enough to become their producer -- they reinvented themselves as Trooper. Under this moniker, they cut an album for Bachman's Legend label then defected to MCA, where they waxed "General Hand Grenade" and "We're Here for a Good Time (Not a Long Time)," both of which charted across Canada. The Winter's Green cut was rereleased in 1983 on the Vancouver Record Collector's Association's anthology History of Vancouver Rock and Roll, Volume 3.