This video is for entertainment purposes only...
The images used within my video are taken from photos of my personal vinyl LP jacket/cover/labels, original Canadian pressing of The Hunt - \"The Hunt\" (1977) on the 'GRT/Daffodil' record label GRT 9216 10056.
The audio transfer was done with an Oracle Delphi MKIII turntable, an SME45 tone arm, and a Vanden Hull MC-10 MC cartridge. Though I suppose after digital transfer to mp3, compression etc...all this is irrelevant.
'The Hunt' were...
Gerry Mosby (bass, keyboards, vocals; 1st album)
Paul Kersey (drums, percussion)
Paul Cockburn (guitars, vocals; 1st album)
Brian Gagnon (bass, guitars, lead vocals)
Jacques Harrison (keyboards, lead vocals; 1st album)
Paul Dickinson (guitars, lead vocals; replaced Cockburn)
Carl Calvert (bass, lead vocals; replaced Gagnon)
Bio courtesy 'Canadian Pop Encyclopedia'...
During the early '70's, Daffodil recording act Dillinger released two obscure progressive rock albums to some critical note, but poor sales. Drummer Robert Harrison was homesick for Quebec and with his departure - to join Offenbach - and bassist Terry Bramhall, Dillinger's long and sprawling progressive leanings subsided leaving room for fresh ideas and so new bassist Brian Gagnon (Bullrush), Jacques Harrison and Paul Cockburn brought in drummer Paul Kersey (Max Webster) and Gerry Mosby (Bond) who was added to the line-up to do double duty on bass and keyboards. The new, tougher, hard rock line-up was christened by manager Cliff Hunt as The Hunt during a late night session for the 3rd Dillinger record at Phase One Studio in Toronto with producer George Semkiw.
Their eponymous 1977 debut on GRT Records was well received - especially in San Antonio, Texas. The album's cover graphics featured an embossed hand with blood streaked fingers which gave the act a moment's notoriety, but after GRT caved to pressure from complaints by retailers, they issued a jacket with just the red-streaks minus the hand. Still, the album fell on deaf ears in Canada.
And despite some notable FM airplay, the band was relegated to the Northern Ontario bar circuit playing inaccessible locales such as Cochrane, Ontario. Some of the members lost confidence immediately and before long, Mosby had left to join Larry Gowan's Rhinegold as their bassist. By 1978 Harrison and Cockburn had also bailed leaving Gagnon and Kersey to regroup.
Ownership of The Hunt's recording contract had shifted back to Daffodil due to GRT's impending collapse, and president Frank Davies offered Gagnon a chance to record another album. During 1979 Gagnon and Kersey toiled over new recordings.
Kersey and Gagnon finished the album and then buried it until a new live act could be created. With the addition of guitarist Paul Dickinson (J.R. Flood, Bullrush), The Hunt hit the clubs once more and refined the new material already in the can.
1980's 'Back On The Hunt' album, produced by Steve Vaughan (Dillinger, Klaatu), was the result and it featured their Canadian charting remake of the obscure Beatle classic \"It's All Too Much\". But even this version of The Hunt failed to garner interest from the world at large and Gagnon left to join Frank Soda & The Imps.
Kersey was left with nothing but the band's name, a guitarist and a record contract. Carl Calvert was brought in as bassist and helped augment lead vocal duties. And two years later a third album, also produced by Steve Vaughan, was released called 'The Thrill Of The Kill'. Nevertheless, the world had grown tired of anthemic rock in the face of the burgeoning post-Punk era and The Hunt split up in 1984.
Gagnon formed a duo with Andy O'Connor called The Acetones, who released one single, and when the paying gigs dried up they went on to create a successful John Mellencamp tribute band called Rumbleseat.
By the 1990's he was running his own Sound Dynamix recording studio engineering and producing (Moving Targetz, The Tenants, Shania Twain) and would later re-team with Gerry Mosby at a Toronto jingle house followed by work at Prisma sound with former ESP Studio technician John Clarke. Gagnon remains a prominent album producer and engineer at his own BG Productions in Rexdale, Ontario.
A repackaging of the best of the band's three albums was issued by Pacemaker in 1995 and it contains three previously unavailable bonus tracks: \"Fantasy Mansion\" and \"She Opens Her Eyes\" from the 'Back On The Hunt' sessions and \"I Want To Be Set Free\", a rare 7\" single release from Gagnon's pre-Dillinger days with Bullrush; Kersey currently plays and records in St. Catherines, Ontario in The Wheelers.
