Bonnie Tyler - Faster Than The Speed Of Night

Oh, look what the dollar bin puked up. Bonnie Tyler's 1983 Jim Steinman produced and directed mega over the top opus Faster Than The Speed Of Night. I brought the album home which was in surprisingly good shape, and even the liner was decent. This would be fun. Everything about this release screamed cheese, especially the cover. I'm not sure if it was a deliberate nod to Steve Martin, but it sure does look like she's got an arrow through her head. Was she letting us know she was a wild and crazy guy? Of course you'd have had to live under a rock not to have heard "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and I will admit I like the song. Heck after almost forty years the song is part of the fabric of pop culture.

Still, I was expecting very little from the rest of the album and was prepared for a lot of bloated filler. The first cut is a cover song, an interesting (in a good way) interpretation of John Fogerty's "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?" If you're going to cover something, make it your own. Then up comes the first of the two Steinman penned songs on the record. "Faster Than The Speed O Night" which is pretty cool. I've heard it before, but in the context of the album it's setting the foundation for what is shaping up to be a decent listen. If that's Bonnie at the end of the song with the glass shattering high notes that's amazing.

There's one part that cracked me up from "Getting So Excited" when there's a single line of seductive female dialogue, "I'd do anything for love, but I won't do that." Jim Steinman waited a decade to flesh out a song where it would be up to Meat Loaf to tell us what he wouldn't do.

The big moment is still Steinman's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and finally being able to read the credits I can see who laid down the other vocal part. Rory Dodd nails it, and was no stranger to working with Jim Steinman ,but he's the secret sauce here.

The second side while good, isn't going to get played as often. More covers, one of which was a Blue Oyster Cult track "Going Through the Motions" and another was Bryan Adams' "Straight from the Heart" which is really the only song on the album that doesn't work for me here.

One of the first things I had to let go was my unfair comparison to Kim Carnes (who weirdly enough I am a big fan of). Although both women have a husky vocal delivery, Bonnie has power and range that are frankly rather astonishing.

This wasn't what I was expecting, I had hoped to take a lot of unfair shots at the album and generally take the piss because I spent a buck on what I was hoping would be a novelty joke.

Joke was on me.

The band here is wicked. Rick Derringer lends his guitar work throughout the album, and frankly he's an absolute monster. I've always liked him, but you tend to forget how much he did for other artists. Then there are Max Weinberg, and Roy Bittan both from the E Street Band, who in a year would be riding an incredible wave when Springsteen dropped Born in the USA. Heck even Paul Schaffer makes an appearance.

I got way more than I expected for my dollar. If I'm lucky maybe I'll find something by Culture Club and can shit on that instead. Sadly, knowing my propensity to revisit thing, chances are I'll like what I hear.

Garfield - Strange Streets

I'd seen this before in the bin, but kept flipping through the stacks. I'd see it a few more times, each time stopping to look at it a little more. There was something kind of cool about the cover where the stylized Celtic knot had the dotted yellow line - it was a strange street for sure. I pulled the record out of the jacket and I was struck by the centre image. There was the familiar Mercury label, the same one I'd seen a thousand times on BTOs Head On album. Well, I'd bought things based on odd associations before - like when I had to buy anything that Solid Rock Records released (this was generally a good thing) who knows maybe this was a hidden gem. There weren't any real scratches or rash, just a lot of dirt and dust - it seemed to clean up okay, but we'll see how it goes. The album opens with the title track, and this wasn't straight ahead pop, or rock. It was leaning to the progressive, but with a pop bent. Oddly enough the vocals reminded me of Mi

Hoodoo Gurus - Mars Needs Guitars!

The first time I got this album it was a gift from my old roommate Otto. For a goofy little nebbish he would occasionally surprise me with some left of field musical treasures. Although, I still think he was reaching a little when he brought home the new "Led Zeppelin" album by Kingdom Come and forced me to listen to "Get it On" over and over again. I'd not listened to Mars Needs Guitars in a long, long, long time. The first thing that I jumped out at me was how David Faulkner's vocals reminded me of his fellow countryman Peter Garrett from Midnight Oil. I think the reason this never occurred to me was at the time I didn't have any Midnight Oil until Diesel and Dust in 1987. I'm not saying it was all the time, but there were a couple of songs where it stood out. Not a bad thing, just a thing. Even at the time this felt slightly out of step with what was going on in 1985. It seemed like everyone was using drum machines and synthesizers and having t

Saturday Night Fever - The Original Movie Soundtrack

It was going to happen sooner or later. Nostalgia is a cruel Mistress...she can dull the sharpest edges and over time can even soften the hardest of opinions. I found this in the dollar bin, and frankly at a dollar I was worried about what this would cost me. Not only from a monetary perspective, but my time, and more important my credibility. Fourteen year old me was screaming "Don't you dare. DON'T DO IT! Put it down. Walk away!" Then there was grey bearded me holding it and looking at it, thinking, "How bad could it be? I actually kind of like "Staying Alive" and me buying this record won't bring disco back, and no one will have to know I bought this." I pulled the album out of the bin, and carefully took out the records. They'd seen better days, and there were a couple of decent scratches that would no doubt make their presence known later. The jacket was in decent condition, and both of the albums had the original sleeves. I dusted the

Old Enough to Forget

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