She Be She Strike

April 28, 2005

She Be She Strike

Eskimo Radio MP3s: Ayatollah Khomeini, You Are My Sunshine, Labatt's Beer Ad, Heart of Stone, Marijuana Humor.

The story and the tapes began circulating around the cassette underground in the early-eighties: an Inuit Radio station operated in Northern Canada by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was vacated by its regular staff due to a CBC strike, and the station was temporarily programmed by its Eskimo janitor and his buddies. The phrase "She Be She Strike" (CBC Strike) can be heard repeatedly on portions of the tape which are not excerpted here, but the truth may never be known until the language can be identified and a native speaker translates the entire recording, hint hint.

The story isn't too far-fetched though; the CBC operates dozens of Inuit radio stations through it's Northern Service, and the record shows that they've had their fair share of strikes over the years. You can listen to some of the Inuit stations over the net these days, like this daytime-only station (Windows Media feed).

Track One: OK, I'm Singing To You, Ayatollah Khomeini - And that's just what our janitor friend does, after some mixed Inuit-English shout-outs to "Barney, and uh, Rosey, And hello to you Bruce and Matt (more Inuit) I'm happy to you. OK, I'm singing to you Ayatollah Khomeini." This track dates the strike to 1979-1980, when Khomeini was all over the news because of the Iranian hostage crisis.

Track Two: You Are My Sunshine - The definitive Inuit version of the state song of Louisiana, performed on harmonica, jews harp and vocal, sans guitar.

Track Three: Labatts Beer Commercial - That's what it sounds like anyway. Maybe the regular engineers took the commercials home with them, or the temporary staff set up a temporary sales office to hawk some ad time.

Track Four: Heart of Stone - Performed live on the radio and soon to be released as a bonus track on the Canadian reissue of Hot Rocks.

Track Five: Eskimo Marijuana Humor - Testiment to the ubiquity of Cheech and Chong and marijuana jokes in general throughout the Seventies, or public service announcement? You decide. If you listen closely, you may hear the term "Lebanese Ragweed" and "Marijuana." One things for sure - there's at least one copy of Frank Zappa's Dynamo Hum north of the 60th parallel.