Old Enough to Forget

Author's note: Written from a Canadian perspective where the band never really caught on after their one big hit. Unbeknownst to be I'd been aware of Madness for a long time ... one of the nerdy kids in high school who was very much into those bands who were part of the first round of  English new wave acts. He had a very large ghetto blaster and he'd always be by his locker blaring out music. Whereas most of us were into Prism, or Trooper or The Cars this guy loved The Buzzcocks, The Clash and Madness. I remember hearing "One Step Beyond" (and liking it) but had no idea who it was. When "Our House" broke over here, it was infectious. Most people in North America, of which I was one, had no idea the band had been around for years. They may have looked like a bunch of fresh faced kids but they'd been around for years by 1983. I find it strange that "Our House" managed to crack the top 10 in the US without an album behind. The Rise & Fall...

My friend Wes has a deceivingly sinister sense of humour. A couple of Christmases ago he'd come over for a rehearsal and instead of bringing beer he brought me a record saying it was an early Christmas present. It was wonderfully shiny, and there was a sticker on the cover saying this a factory sealed direct import from Germany. I thanked him and put the album in a place of prominence ... until he left, and then it went into the processing pile. It stayed there for a couple of years. I'd see it now and again and then shuffle it back into the pile. It's not like I had anything against James Last. As a kid there always seemed to be an advertisement on the T.V. pushing his latest Non Stop Dancing album. He always seemed to me to be the used car salesman equivalent of Lawrence Welk without the bubbles. This was party music for old people who wanted to be in with the kids. He was older than my parents, and my parents were out of step with music and it never occurred to me they ...

This is one of the albums I saved from a box of rather suspect records my mother in law found in the crawl space. It seems that no one was entirely sure of the origins of the box, but it was an eclectic mess of audible bric-a-brac. Mixed in with a very beat up Supremes double album (that couldn't be salvaged) were a few things that looked like fun. None more so than this Freddy Fender record. "Wasted Days & Wasted Nights" was a song I remembered, but the version on this collection likely dates back to the original 1959 recording. It's hard to tell as the credits are sketchy - well, non-existent. There's a certain charm to this one and it's rough and spotty in places but the bones of the song that he re-recorded to greater fanfare in 1975, the same year this collection was released by Pickwick, the king of budget opportunistic hits packages. I should have known it would sound like dogshit, especially with the little blurb on the top left on the back cover: ...

Equinox is by far the best album Styx released - by the original line up that is. It was the final record to feature John Curulewski before his departure ushered in the band's next phase with Tommy Shaw. When I started working my way backward through Styx’s catalogue, I always wondered what happened to John. On those early albums, I really enjoyed the guitar interplay between James Young and John (note, I know the drummer was John too, but when I say John I mean John the guitar guy). In fact, I found myself liking a few songs—especially the ones John sang—on the band’s second 1973 release, The Serpent Is Rising . If I’m being honest, my favourite was actually the hidden track, “Don’t Sit Down on the Plexiglas Toilet,” which Curulewski wrote. Apparently, the band hated The Serpent Is Rising , calling it one of the worst albums ever made. Ouch. I guess they forgot to listen to Man of Miracles . Anyway, back to Equinox and why it was such a great album. After four records on the sma...

Mashmakhan was one of those mysterious bands who was often referenced in articles related to April Wine. Drummer Jerry Mercer came from the band, and later incarnations would spit out guitarist Steve Lang and Brian Greenway (not at the same time) all of whom would land in April Wine and be part of the classic line up. This just added to the mystery. What was Mashmakhan?  I found a slightly beat up copy a while ago and I'd finally get my answer. The first clue should have been the hippy dippy trippy cover. The kaleidoscope image of the floating heads was a give away, but then again it was the '70s. I have friends who had family portraits that had superimposed images that looked similar so it was actually more normal than it seemed. The second clue, and one I was not aware of until I started reading up on the band was that a drug dealer in Montreal sold a variety of hash called mashmakhan. Yeah I'm sure the kids thought that was far out man. From the first track, this was ver...

Running on Empty is an album I associate with the early '80s, even though it came out in December of 1977. "Running on Empty" was the big song, and boy oh boy it had legs. Reading up on this one it was up for a couple of Grammy Awards in 1979. One for album of the year , and another for male vocal performance for "Running on Empty" which was pretty cool. As a record, Running on Empty was a bit of odd duck when it comes to live albums. Rather than the usual best of approach with crowd noise, Jackson Browne took a hard left at Albuquerque and road tested and recorded new songs. There were live songs, rehearsal songs, songs on a bus (which is really good, you can hear the bus), songs in a hotel room, and songs recorded backstage. He recorded it all over, everything recorded was part of the touring experience. Jackson Browne assembled a band featuring the best of the best. Russ Kunkel on drums, Leland Sklar on bass, Danny Kortchmar on guitar, and the incredible D...