Toto - Toto (Yeah, they probably don't like you either)

Toto, the band people love to shit on. For me, I've been a fan since first hearing "Hold the Line" and I make no apologies for loving these guys. Heck I remember when Hydra was released and I eagerly went to the record store to get it. The store used to copy reviews and place them with albums as a sales tool. I guess clipping out a scathing review and taping it to the record seemed like a good idea to someone. Anyways, I getting ahead of myself.

I can't remember if this is the same "review" but it's pretty close in tone:

Max Bell, New Musical Express, 17 March 1979

WILL THESE people never learn? In the time-honoured Hollywood tradition of foisting ambitious super-sessioners upon that large portion of the American public bereft of a brain, taste or the ability to decide for itself comes Toto, a six piece composed of former Boz Scaggs and Steely Dan (you know the rest) side men.

Admittedly I'm not a big Boz fan, but those Steely Dan dudes had some awesome stuff. I was hooked.

Their debut album dropped in the fall of 1978. I've probably purchased it at least four times, but the last time it was only a buck. The time before it was a part of their 2019 box set where all of the Columbia releases were remastered and the CDs packaged to look like mini records. Yeah, it was expensive, but so, so good. I mean, I really don't know why I wanted to get another pops and clicks LP when I have a sonically unbelievable copy in the other room that can melt faces. Oh right ... I found it for a dollar. How can you say no to that?

I actually didn't get this one right away when it was released. I liked the songs on the radio, and I really liked songs I'd heard from Hydra but I was still a kid with limited resources. It was the summer of 1981 and I was playing baseball and from a nearby house someone had cranked up their stereo and was blaring out "Georgy Porgy" (a song I never really liked) and then suddenly "Manuela Run" is echoing across the field. I don't know what it was about the song, but it got me in the feels.

Shortly after I went out and bought the album. Now at the time Toto was viewed as these studio musicians who wanted to be in a band, and the grief they got was unbelievable. You forget when you look at these guys that they were just kids. Steve Lukather was in his early 20s and some of the other guys weren't that much older. Good lord, the level of maturity in their arrangements and playing was and remains mind boggling.

There was a brief moment where they got their due, and then almost right after their being moment, here in North America they were sort of swept to the back burner. However, a good chunk of the world never fell off the band wagon.

I suppose I'll have to dig out Turn Back next ... now THAT album really was something special.

Look at that, I went all the way to the end and didn't make any we're not in Kansas or toilet jokes, and didn't mention "Africa" - even in passing, unless you count this one, but really it shouldn't count. I'm kind of proud of myself.

Billy Rankin - Growin' Up Too Fast

Growin' Up Too Fast was never widely released on CD (if at all), and was one of the albums I really wanted to get back after a basement flood wiped out my vinyl collection in the 90s (when no one really gave a shit about records, and my insurance gave me a couple hundred bucks for an appraised $10,000 collection). Way back in 1984 my (dearly departed, and greatly missed) buddy Dave let me borrow his cassette copy that had a bonus track of " Get It On (Bang A Gong)" that when I bought the album didn't know it was a bonus track, or even what a bonus track was. If that sentence was hard to read just go back and skim it, I'm sure you'll get the gist. I'd find out later Billy was an off and on again member of Nazareth and wrote some absolutely killer songs for them. However, at the time all I knew was this guy laid it out cold with the first cut "Baby Come Back" and proceeded to lay down one killer tune after another and closed out the album (sans any...

Gary Numan - The Pleasure Principle

"Cars" was really the only song I knew by Gary Numan. I knew the name of the album the song came from. Over the years bits and pieces of trivia are accumulated, but in terms of his music it was still distilled down to one song ... It would be too easy to write Mr. Numan off as a one hit wonder, and I suppose in terms of actual chart hits this was his defining moment as a solo artist. Of course this really means nothing, as Gary Numan would drop an album a year pretty much through to the end of the '80s. He'd then slow down a little but continues to make music. While The Pleasure Principle was Gary Numan's debut solo release in '79, he actually cut his teeth on a couple of albums in a band called Tubeway Army, first with the band's self titled release in 1978, and then on Replicas that came out in April of '79. By the end of Tubeway Army's run most of the band would follow Gary into his solo career. Paul Gardiner who had been with Gary from the beg...

Gary Wright - The Light of Smiles

Gary Wright followed up his double platinum release The Dreamweaver in 1977 with The Light of Smiles . It must have been a surprise and a bit of a disappointment when the album didn't perform as well as hoped. It did chart as high as 23 on the Billboard top LP and Tape chart according to what I read on the wiki, but it must have been more of a spike than anything. As the album didn't seem to attain any certifications that I could see. Not that it matters, I've said it before, and I'll likely say it again (more than once) most of my favourite albums never really attained any significant commercial success. I'd seen this album over the years, but that was about it. Gary Wright was Mr. Dreamweaver and I'm sure somehow it was worked into his epitaph when he passed away a couple of years ago. For me I was really curious about this one, lately I've been a sucker for finding albums that follow a big release. For Gary Wright he was flying high after The Dreamweave...

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