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Skinheads, Fur Traders, and DJs

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Kim Clarke Champniss is best known as his 1980s/90s incarnation: the globe-trotting television music journalist for MuchMusic. However, KCC’s adventures in Canada began earlier, when he was a hot D...
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  • 03 October 2017
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The true story of a legend of Canadian pop culture broadcasting and the way he got his start in the 1970s: working as a fur trader for the Hudson’s Bay Company in the Northwest Territories and then moving on to DJing in disco-era Vancouver.

A true story of an adventurous pop-loving teenager who, in the early 1970s, went from London’s discotheques to the Canadian sub-arctic to work for the Hudson’s Bay Company. His job? Buying furs and helping run the trading post in the settlement of Arviat (then known as Eskimo Point), Northwest Territories (population: 750).

That young man is Kim Clarke Champniss, who would later become a VJ on MuchMusic. His extraordinary adventures unfolded in a chain of On the Road experiences across Canada. His mind-boggling journey, from London to the far Canadian North and then to the spotlight, is the stuff of music and TV legends. Kim brings his incredible knowledge of music, pop culture, and the history of disco music, weaving them into this wild story of his exciting and uniquely crazy 1970s.
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Price: $23.99
Pages: 200
Publisher: Dundurn Press
Imprint: Dundurn Press
Publication Date: 03 October 2017
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9781459739239
Format: Paperback
BISACs: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Entertainment & Performing Arts, Memoirs, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Adventurers & Explorers, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs, Popular music
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Sparkles with particular brightness when Champniss is recounting his teenage dalliances with bikers and skinheads, punks and new wavers … His razor sharp observations make the characters brim-full of energy.

Champniss writes well and makes life sound exciting even in difficult times.

I liked the writing style and found his story interesting.

Anyone interested in the Arctic, pop music, youth culture, and that mystical period known as the ’70s will find Clarke Champniss’s story immensely entertaining.
Kim Clarke Champniss (a.k.a. KCC) is an award-winning broadcaster who was a popular VJ on MuchMusic and special assignment reporter for The NewMusic. KCC is also the author of The Republic of Rock ’n’ Roll. He lives in Toronto.
1. London
2. Damned Young
3. The Discotheque
4. Trouble
5. The Interview
6. Canada
7. Eskimo Point
8. Winter
9. Spring
10. Summer Melt
11. Winnipeg
12. Calgary
13. England 1975
14. The Incident in Vancouver
15. DJ Skills
16. The Wedding
17. Pharaoh’s
18. Australia
19. The Beats
20. Vancouver Summers
21. Saturday Night Fever
22. I Will Survive
23. New World Order

Acknowledgements