“Take Off” by Bob & Doug McKenzie with Geddy Lee

In 1973, the famed Second City improvisational comedy enterprise set up a theater in Toronto, Canada. By 1976, Second City Television or SCTV was developed and over the next eight years helped launch the careers of John Candy, Harold Ramis, and Eugene Levy.

​Following the success of SCTV, then DJ and radio producer Rick Moranis was persuaded by his friend and SCTV writer/performer Dave Thomas to join the show. Together they came up with Bob and Doug McKenzie, fictional brothers who hosted a local talk show that played upon Canadian stereotypes. As their popularity grew, they released two albums and starred in the 1983 comedy film Strange Brew.

“Take Off” was released in 1981 and features vocals by Geddy Lee, who was also a childhood classmate of Moranis’. If you lived anywhere near the Canadian border you couldn’t escape the shortened single of this song, and ironically enough it would be Lee’s highest charting single in the US.
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Stupid Billboard hosers…