Old Enough to Forget

I still have a fairly big pile of Marco Polo Platters waiting for their turn on the record player. I have to say the little store, which I may as well plug, since who knows how long they’ll keep doing it, has not been great at repopulating its small section of clearance items. Sunrise Records is probably the last of the mall record stores still standing in Canada. Oh well, I’ll keep checking, as I still manage to find myself lost and abandoned with frightening regularity. I almost didn't pick this up as it was Vol. 2 , and the obsessive completest in me could not handle getting an album out of sequence. In the end, as you can tell, it didn't stop me. I persevered, I overcame, I willed myself to push forward ... in the end, I am here victorious, and am listening to, and writing about Vol 2. before I've even heard Vol. 1 . Way to go me. Now, to be fair, this isn't the first time I'm hearing the band, I just don't really remember what I've heard. They've ...

Disclaimer : This post is mostly centred on the vinyl release of the latest 77s record. The record contains seven songs but the download, streaming and CD have more. Which bugged me then and bugs me now. I have tried though to stay focused on what matters, and what matters is the band have a new record, and that it is worth celebrating. However, it didn't stop me from taking the odd potshot. 7 has been waiting patiently on my shelf for months. When the band announced their intentions to record a new album, I was excited - and a bit anxious too. Could the guys actually deliver an album worth listening to after all this time? I jumped in relatively early as Kickstarter backer 266, glad to have a hand in bringing the project to life. These kinds of endeavours demand patience, but that’s part of their charm, and it ends up making the final product all the more rewarding. I wasn’t alone in my anticipation; with 1,373 backers and over $100,000 raised, the band received an impressive sho...

Always Tomorrow is another of my beloved Marco Polo Platters. The first thing that caught my eye was the cover. Okay, that was the second thing. The first thing was the clearance sticker, but dang the cover gave me a good chuckle. The cover for Always Tomorrow  is a weirdly wonderful juxtaposition of perspective on a familiar image. It's a picture taken from inside the Hotel California looking out into the world. Some will get it, some won't ... most won't care. It's the font in the bottom right that pulls it all together. Dagnabbit that album was twenty years when Bethany Cosentino was born, so I'm guessing her parents had a decent record collection. Of course I could just be seeing things, and this is all a giant load of horseshit. I don't think so. Best Coast is a dreamy pop band who likes to incorporate jingle jangle guitars into their music. The music is weirdly nostalgic for me. It may be new but structurally this is what I grew up with. Ah, the more thi...

Prism was a band I loved - right up until I didn’t. But it was complicated, because I still loved the band, but it was conditional. Those first two albums on GRT were foundational for me. Heck, Armageddon was as cool as it got, but if push came to shove, I’d throw the band under the bus without a second thought. Then came Young and Restless , an album with some (one for sure) killer songs, though honestly, I didn’t consider it essential. When Small Change dropped in 1981, I remember really liking the cover - Norman Rockwell, how can you not? My old friend Robert Baldwin (rest in peace, Robert, you were one of a kind) was the only person I knew who had it (apparently there were 49,999 others who had it too). I remember seeing the record in his room and teasing him for owning it. We sat and listened to the record; the first track sounded like classic Prism, but the rest didn’t. That’s how I remember it. Looking at the back cover there were major changes in the band: Ron Tabak, the vocal...

Eddie Money. Not one of the names that immediately pops into my mind when I think of rocks great vocalists, but when the guy sings man, he's right up there. He's got the swagger and delivery and he doesn't sound like anyone else. He sounds like, money.  I've always liked a lot of his music, but I didn't have a lot of his music. I had a few albums, his '78 sophomore album Life for the Taking, and his '82 release No Control t hat had "Think I'm in Love" a song that still make me grin like an idiot. I The last one I bought was Can't Hold Back  from 1986, because it had "Take Me Home Tonight" on it. Dang that song was so good. It also had a cover of Stan Meissner's "One Chance" but to me it wasn't nearly as good as the original. No Control  is a really decent record, and one I probably appreciate more now than I did when I was nineteen. The big songs back then are still the big songs now. "Shakin'" is...

All Dressed Up is one of the best albums you've never heard. Released in 1982 David Roberts was poised to be a big deal. At least here at home in Canada ... before the conquering the rest of the world. The album was slick with enough rough edges to appeal to the rock guy in me. It didn't hurt that the album contained a who's who of the best session players on the friggin' planet. This came out the same year TOTO IV and musically All Dressed Up borrows more from the late '70s light funk and jazz grooves than the harder West coast AOR that was starting to percolate to the top of the charts. It was really good. So what happened? I remember watching David perform "Boys of Autumn" on the Juno Awards, and he was up for Most Promising Male Vocalist in '83 but lost out to Kim Mitchell, who was so far removed from being considered a "new" talent that it is mind boggling to me the guy was even nominated. Oh well.  I don't know how well the album...