In the 1970s, Canadian lawmakers chose to codify into law how much music made up of Canadian content radio stations played. During that early period of Can-Con (Canadian Content), the number was 25 percent. In the ’80s, the percentage was raised to 35 percent.

Slightly controversial at first (why should Canadians be forced to listen to Canadian music?), the law eventually found some admirerers. Without it we Canadian artists would have had a harder time becoming popular, and the greater world would have probably not been introduced to talents such as Bryan Adams, Corey Hart, Nick Gilder, Aldo Nova, Barenaked Ladies, Men Without Hats, Alannah Myles, Glass Tiger, the Crash Test Dummies, Triumph, Chilliwack, Anne Murray, Alanis Morissette, Loverboy, Shania Twain, Bachman Turner Overdrive, Tragically Hip, Nelly Furtado, and Celine Dion! (Okay, that whole paragraph was practically a joke.)

Can-Con had a large impact on disco, allowing Canadian disco artists the oppurtunity to have their tunes heard on radio stations that, because of FM, were being beamed over the border to American cities that had large populations who were getting down.

Today’s post offers you two glorious 12-inch singles in their whole, to show you the wonder of the Hi-NRG disco that was coming out of the Montreal area and being beamed to cities like New York, Chicago, and Detroit. You can go to my blog to download the songs from these two out-of-print singles.

MTL Express - “Dance All Night” is Hi-NRG disco with a heavy bass beat.

Night Road - “Get Down” is very early Italo house/electro with fantastic synth breaks and vocoder lyrics.

By the way, this logo was on both records.

It stands for Music (the Music must be Canadian), Aritist (the artist must be Canadian), Production (recorded wholly in Canada), Lyrics (written by a Canadian). A song must fulfill two of these four conditions to qualify as Canadian Content.

More about Canadian Content can be found here, at Wikipedia.