Randy Bachman & Burton Cummings

Sometimes all it takes is a common enemy to bring adversaries together. Case in point the famously cantankerous duo of Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings, whose ongoing financial feud with fellow Guess Who members has served to galvanise the relationship between the erstwhile songwriting partners and, presumably, their lawyers. The manifestation of all this grief and greed is a new three-pronged commercial assault — the first tine of which is this unprecedented collection of hit songs by the Guess Who, Bachman’s ’70s lunch-pail rock band BTO and Cummings’s wide-lapelled solo entity. Imagine a compilation featuring nine Beatles tunes, five Wings compositions and five songs from John Lennon’s solo catalogue. Weird, huh? Weirder still is the inclusion of BTO’s "Hey You,” which Bachman wrote as a musical told-you-so missive to Cummings once the Guess Who started coming undone. Fans won’t have to imagine Cummings on stage, eating crow and playing cowbell along to that tune, as that’s exactly what he’ll be doing this summer when these formerly fat cats tour this collection across the land. A DVD (which may or may not be titled Cha-ching!) is also in the works. Ridiculous though the premise may be, these remastered songs have never sounded better, and it’s good to see Cummings’s solo material (which has suffered greatly do to the dated indignities of ’80s production) get at least some of the attention it warrants.