OCTAVIAN: Eight was
enough
The Association, The Hollies and other outstanding vocal bands of the time. “Basically, anything that
wasn’t typical Top 40 and had a lot of vocal sophistication, we went for,” says Warren. “That’s how we learned our chops, taking on the tough stuff.” Octavian became renowned
By JIM HURCOMB The girls wouldn’t stop. As they shook
the small trailer, the windows started to crack and then break. Inside, the young, long-haired musicians were trapped, shifting their balance to keep the trailer from tipping over. The mayhem wouldn’t stop til the
police arrived to escort the group to safety while hundreds of screaming girls reached out to touch their idols. For the Beatles in 1964, this kind
of chaos was part of everyday life. But this wasn’t Liverpool or New York City. This was Ottawa in the summer of 1977. And the band wasn’t the Beatles. It was Octavian, eight young men who brought a new sound to the Ottawa’s 70s rock scene. Screaming fans and hit singles are
just memories now for Warren Barbour, drummer, guitarist, singer and founding member of Octavian. Unofficially, Warren is the band’s historian and archivist, and he’s also the driving force behind the one- time Octavian Oct., 2012 reunion. Warren told me about having his
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“head turned around” when the Beatles played on Ed Sullivan in 1964. He remembers seeing local heroes, The Esquires and the Staccatos − “looking up, starry-eyed, thinking gosh, we gotta do that.” And he remembers Octavian coming “this close” to following in the footsteps of Ottawa’s Five Man Electrical Band in gaining national and international fame. Octavian started as “The Reasons
Why”, just another Bell High School band who were turned on by the Beatles and wanted to impress the girls. After the band broke up in 1969, it was time to regroup and rename. There were eight guys playing music, so Octo (for eight) and octave (for music) seemed cool. Out of that came Octavian. Actually, they were christened Octavius, till a mis- spelling on a club marquee inspired them to change the name to something a bit less pretentious. Eight members might have made
the tour van a bit crowded, but having three lead vocalists opened up amazing opportunities to cover material by bands like Three Dog Night, The Beach Boys,
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for their medleys of The Beatles, The Who, The Eagles, and Crosby, Stills and Nash. By 1974 they were the hottest band on the Ottawa scene and were quickly becoming popular throughout Eastern Ontario. On the strength of the live
shows and demos of original material, MCA Records caught wind of the group and signed them to a deal in April 1974. Three months later Octavian was a full time band, and found they thrived in the pristine setting of a recording studio. The variables of the live stage were out of the picture, and, like their contemporaries, the Cooper Brothers, they could now concentrate on the vocal arrangements without the clink of beer bottles in the background. The results became
immediately obvious when the first single “Good Feeling to Know” cracked the Top 10 in major markets across the country. In those early days of Canadian content regulations, radio stations were forced to play Canadian music, and with a quality song like “Good Feeling To Know”, it was a no-brainer. Although the debut
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