Old Enough to Forget

Jo Jo Gunne were one of the first acts signed to David Geffen's newly minted Asylum Records in 1972. The band sounded a bit like Grand Funk at times, and while the band was heavy they were more of a boogie woogie rock band than the blues based bands like Led Zeppelin or early Sabbath. I'd never heard of the band before finding their '73 album Bite Down Hard and it was good enough to put the band on my radar. Although it turns out I had heard them before, I just didn't remember. I actually have "Run Run Run" on a few classic rock compilations in the basement. It's funny that while the song registered as kind of cool I never remembered the band. Not like it matters at all. So here we have the debut released in '72 and the band kicked off side one with "Run Run Run" that sets the tone for the rest of the record, and boy howdy do the fellows deliver. It's still a bit of a conundrum as to why this didn't catch on and break the band to a w

I bought this one sight unseen and unheard when it popped up on the auction site I like to frequent. I submitted the minimum bid and forgot about it until I got an e.mail telling me I'd won. This was a few months ago now and it's been sitting in a pile waiting for me to give it a spin. One of the reasons I waited for a while was I honestly wasn't all that interested in hearing a couple of remix tracks. Then why buy it? Like I said, I bought it mainly because I thought it was a Manic Street Preachers album, and it wasn't until later that I discovered it was a record store day deal that only contained a couple of remix tracks. Apparently there are only 2,000 pressings and the packaging wasn't much more than an afterthought ... a plain white jacket with a sticker saying M.S.P. done & dusted. It was in a really thick PVC outer sleeve that also had a couple of hype stickers. Still, it was a band I liked and I was curious. Their 1996 masterpiece Everything Must Go is

Ah, Split Enz - the new wave band who introduced the world to Tim's little brother Neil.  Thank you, good night. Don't forget to tip your server on the way out. But seriously folks, Split Enz.  Back in 1980 Split Enz was riding the crest of the first wave of new wave (it was clunky in my head too, but it is what it is). The band was creating something new and fresh and somehow still hearkened back to the roots of rock and roll. This was the album that had "Shark Attack" and the amazing "I Got You." There are others you may be partial to, but those are the songs I remember and frankly I never had any of their albums so pretty much everything is a deep cut when it comes to the band outside of the "radio" hits. Still, those two songs were indelibly marked into my musical DNA. All I knew about the band was they were from New Zealand, and that they'd been around a while before becoming an overnight success. "Wait a second, then how come you'

I was never really what you'd call a big fan of Talking Heads. I was a casual and I knew more than a few songs. They were kind of cool, but also irritating. I think part of my active ambivalence stemmed from when I was a kid watching them back in '79 when they were on Saturday Night Live. It was their performance of "Artists Only" with the child like lullaby that I found befuddling. This was '79 and art rock was pretentious and stupid - at least to me. I wanted to hear the big guitars and rock out. Why I still remember a performance I saw on TV a grand total of one time is a mystery. This was the cornerstone of my reaction to Talking Heads for a long time, and while I'd freely admit to enjoying a lot of what I heard, on balance my opinion was primarily dismissive. Then came the summer of '83 and I'm driving down the freeway in my little blue Nissan Pulsar and I've taken the sunroof out and the top of my head is poking out of the hole in the roof. I

Foreigner was one of those bands people loved to dump on. They were a commercial behemoth, and the band had been on a killer run releasing one multiple platinum album after another since their debut in '77. After Head Games in '79 an album that had reportedly "under performed" compared to Double Vision. Which doesn't make any sense, for goodness sake the album has gone on to sell over 5,000,000 copies in the States alone ... sure Double Vision sold a couple million more than that south of the border and twice as many in Canada ... sill Head Games was hardly a failure. Whatever the reason the band would take some time and literally regroup and emerge as a foursome a couple years later. Depending on where you got on the wagon reactions to 4 were a little split. For me, I'd always liked the songs I heard on the radio, but my first album was Head Games , and that was a transitional album in many ways. The last vestiges of the '70s progressive roots had bee

Leave Your Bones in the Hall was the second album by The Cry. Kimball Fox (Kim Berly of Stampeders fame) and the band were back for another round. Although this time drums were provided by Chas Mitchell. This was a truly collaborative effort with most of the songs on the album being attributed to all of the members in the band. I'll admit that when I see that in the credits it makes me happy. One for all, and all for one stuff. Musically the guys were capturing lightning in a bottle and with their brand of harder rocking skinny tie new wave, even getting the flat robotic backing vocals down. Who knows why the band didn't catch on. Then again the debut suffered the same fate being relegated to obscurity. The band is more or less a footnote, or the answer to a trivia question. Which is a shame. The music was really good, although to be honest by '81 the new wave propelled by the organ and catchy hooks had already crashed to the shore but the tide hadn't gone out. It's