Old Enough to Forget

I'd been trying to find Rock N' Roll Nights for a few years, and I finally gave up and ordered this from overseas. Go figure, sometimes what you want is indeed more pressing than what you need. After years on the treadmill cranking out albums, this was the end of the line. Well - the end of the line as far as being a relevant commercial enterprise. Which isn't actually true either. The band was already running on fumes, and was on life support after Randy's departure following the disappointing Freeways in 1977 (who says you can't mix metaphors?). When Randy left, that was officially the end of Bachman–Turner Overdrive. Still, the band had been a veritable machine, running on fumes or not, and you gotta feed the machine so for a couple of years the remaining members tried to keep B.T.O. rolling down the highway. I'll freely admit that as a kid I was completely bullish on Bachman–Turner Overdrive - but I also stopped paying attention after Head On . Oh I still...

I bought this back in the day because of Randy Thomas, the guitar player from Sweet Comfort Band, and because I was told this album was awesome. Awesome is a bit of a stretch. I liked one song, but I'll get to that eventually. The early to mid '80s was the era of Christian music warfare. As members of the body of Christ, we had a fiduciary responsibility to subdue the ways of the world. It was "Onward Christian Soldiers," and we were going to take the D out of Evil or whatever it was we were supposed to do. Allies, dressed in camouflage and wielding their instruments, were going out there to kick butt and rack up souls on the giant scoreboard in the sky. I ate this stuff up. Make no mistake, there is still a war going on, but most of the time when we're (I am part of the great we) out there pointing fingers, we have more pointing back at us - and some pretty big splinters in our own eyes. Even back then I thought it was a corny cover, but dang it, this was Randy...

There was a short but glorious period in the early '80s where I bought a lot of Christian music. My buddy Gord, who I love to tease, had an older brother, and between them they knew about everything. Gord was also a lot more forgiving than I ever was for sucky music. I remember the two of us being in the little Christian bookstore by my place when Gord was over visiting, and there on the wall were a couple of records by Sweet Comfort: Breakin' the Ice and Hold On Tight. For whatever reason I can still picture this wall. Phil Keaggy's Ph'lip Side was facing out with the sunburst Les Paul, and the first two Servant albums, Shallow Water and Rockin' Revival , were there too. I'd eventually get all of them...except for those Sweet Comfort albums. My memory is fuzzy at this point, but I'm pretty sure Gord played Breakin' the Ice and I was less than enthusiastic. That was also the time Gord put an air pistol into my cereal one morning and splattered me, the ...

The Pukka Orchestra is one of those little footnotes in Canadian music that generally references "Listen to the Radio" and not a lot after. The band was part of the Solid Gold roster that got flushed down the toilet when the label went under. To make matters worse, whoever took Solid Gold's assets during receivership also managed to lose the master tapes to their debut record. It had been decades since the band last released anything, and then with little fanfare there was a Facebook post a couple of years ago simply stating a "new" album was coming soon from the Pukka Orchestra. I was intrigued, and patiently waited for more information ... and I kept waiting. Then on March 22, 2024, it dropped, and I immediately streamed it. The songs on Chaos Is Come Again were originally released on their '86 release The Palace of Memory , and 1992's Dear Harry . I never did manage to find a copy of Dear Harry , and it remains on my list of wanted treasures. Now, fro...

I'm not sure if musical PTSD is a real thing or not, but I think I have it. I lived through disco and lived to tell the tale - over time I think I developed a pretty serious case of Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to a lot of stuff that made me want to puke or change the station when I was a teenager. Over the last couple of years I not only bought Saturday Night Fever , I kind of liked, in some cases really liked, a couple of the songs. I also have more than one album by The Village People. Back in the early '80s, after Michael Jackson single-handedly took over the world, it was pretty much impossible to not be exposed to his stuff on the radio, and goodness gravy that guy had a lot of songs on the radio. They were the worst of times. Now to be fair, "Beat It" with Eddie's solo was awesome, and it certainly didn't hurt that Steve Lukather was the sonic glue that held the whole thing together. However, the world in those turbulent years was divided into the w...

When I first heard their version of "The Runner" ("Runner") I was enthralled. I can't tell you, (but I am going to) how many times I picked this album up and put it back. I loved the song, but I wasn't sold on getting an entire album by Manfred Mann. So I passed. Then time passed. A lot of time ... decades. A while ago I was wandering around a flea market and there were several vendors selling assorted records and charging a small ransom for really questionable stuff. I try not to be that guy but I think I may have blurted out "You have got to be kidding" more than once when asking "How much?" Then I stumbled upon a rather chill looking dude who had an old milk crate full of records. I flipped through and there were a couple of things that caught my eye, but it was Somewhere in Afrika that I pulled out. It was still in the shrinkwrap and looked pristine. He looked up and caught my eye. I asked, "How much?" He told me. I pulled o...