Ron Tabak: vocal
Lindsay Mitchell: guitar
David Sinclair: guitar
Richard Christie: bass?
Dave Calder: drums?
Keyboards: Peter Bjerring?, Dave Pickell?
Trumpet: Bruce Fairbairn
Saxophone: Tom Keenlyside
Trombone: Ralph Eppel

Produced by Bruce Fairbairn
Recorded and mixed by Rolf Henneman at Can-Base Studios, Vancouver (1976-77)

Vladivostok is a seaport city on the east coast of the former Soviet Union. 

The lyric for the song was inspired by "The Gulag Archipelago", a book about the Soviet Union's system of prison camps. Published in 1973 and written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, it recounts the years he spent incarcerated in a Soviet prison.

In addition, in November 1974 President Gerald Ford (USA) and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev (USSR) held nuclear disarmament talks in Vladivostok. The name must have sounded interesting to me, and I decided to use it in the song.

I worked the arrangement on and off during 1974 and 1975, recording several different demo's (see additional audio below).

I remember being at Can-Base Studios (later named Mushroom) recording Ron's vocal for this song.  Ron was a sweet, sweet guy, but there were some things he just couldn't grasp.  No matter how much Bruce Fairbairn and I coached him, Ron could not pronounce Vladivostok ... he just kept singing "Vladio-vostok".  We finally had to let it go, hence the mispronunciation on the final recording. Love you, Ron ... RIP.

In retrospect, this is a lame recording of a lame song. It's one of those tracks that makes me cringe, in the way that your high school poetry makes you cringe.  The difference being, most people's high school poetry isn't printed hundreds-of-thousands of times and distributed to the public!

Vladivostok, demo version #1 / 1974?



Jim Vallance: acoustic and electric guitar, bass, drums, vocal

This "first draft" demo was recorded in my apartment, located in an alley behind a dentist's office on West Broadway in Vancouver.  I'm performing all the instruments and vocals, doing my best "Mick and Keith" imitation.

David Sinclair: acoustic and electric guitars
Peter Bjerring: piano
Richard Christie: bass?
Trumpet: Bruce Fairbairn
Saxophone: Tom Keenlyside
Jim Vallance: drums, vocals

This "second draft" was also recorded in the alley apartment. There are elements to this track that I much prefer to the final "master" version.

The horn arrangement, with the "falling stabs", was inspired by Jimmy Pankow ("Chicago").  I met Jimmy years later (1994) ... in fact one of the most memorable evenings I've ever spent was dinner with Jimmy Pankow and Ozzy Osbourne.  They're both natural-born comedians, each trying to out-do the other, and they had my wife and I in stitches for hours.