This is the album that changed it all. Funny, I'd not listened to this one in a long time. Back when I was a kid I played this nearly to death. Even back then it was an album that had a few clunkers - at least to me. I know there are legions of fans who will lose their shit over "Atomic Punk" and that's just fine. It's a technically amazing bit of fretwork, but I still don't like it as a song. I'm starting off on the wrong foot. I'd take a mulligan but I've used so many I'll just keep plowing on. As a teenager in the small town where I grew up there was no such thing as rock radio. Oh sometimes you'd hear something resembling top 40, but it was an all things to all people station and didn't seem to make anyone happy. I think I heard "You Really Got Me" on the radio, but I'm almost sure I didn't. It was the other kids, the cool kids at school who had records, or older siblings who had records and I'm pretty sure tha
The Seventy Sevens, the 77's, The 77s ... depending on what era you started with you're likely more than familiar with all of the variations. The band's debut album must have been gestating a while before Exit was able to secure distribution. The back of the jacket has this as 1982 as that's when it was recorded, and the songs are mostly from 1980, with one of the newer ones 1981 and a cover of "Denomination Blues" that was attributed to Ry Cooder. This isn't an album I'd heard back in the day as the Christian bookstore I relied on was pretty good at bringing things in if I asked, but I had to know what to ask for. By '83 my initial infatuation with a lot of Christian music had run its course, and my ability to try and like stuff that was inferior had more or less been exhausted. That isn't to say there weren't bands I still followed, but they were in the minority, and they tended to be good bands. The first couple of 77s albums flew under