Old Enough to Forget

I was at one of my favourite haunts the other day, and I was looking for Riggs lone album, but it was not to be. I don't know why I keep looking as "Radar Rider" and "Heartbeat" are on the Heavy Metal soundtrack and I have that, but it's been on my list ever since I passed up a cassette copy back in 81. Anyway I got to talking about this and that with the owner about unheralded bands that should have been bigger. He says he has a treat for me, but he had to find it. He wouldn't tell me what it was as he wasn't sure he had it. Last time he did this, it cost me twenty bucks and I ended up with a Haircut One Hundred album, that I have to admit I did enjoy.  After a few minutes he pulls out a Queen City Kids record. I thought it was a hair metal band that had a song featured on Peacemaker. Don't ask, I'm trying to understand my train of thought on that one too. I couldn't have been farther off the mark if I'd been blind folded, spun in ci...

I remember seeing a SAGA button on some cool kids jean jacket when I was in high school, I didn't know what kind of music it was but I assumed it was heavy metal or something, as I figured that's what all the jean jacket wearing cool kids were listening to back then. Apparently it wasn't metal - but it was cool. Real cool. I did eventually find that button too, it's in a box in the basement, I need to find it. Back in the early '80s, premium movie channels were starting to be a thing, and where I lived I think it was called First Choice or something, it doesn't matter, but I was trying to remember because I thought it might enhance the story - sadly it was just more meandering rambling gibberish. Anyway, on the channel guide I saw a listing for a music special by SAGA - live in Montreal - or something very close to that. I had a large ghetto blaster I could hook up the TV connection to for stereo sound, and I got some tapes ready. I was going to record this (to ...

Like many people the first time I heard "Valotte" I was blown away hearing something so beautiful and mature from someone who sounded very much like his lionized father. It was a comparison that would be mentioned whenever the song was played on the radio. It was a great song. The follow up single "Too Late for Goodbyes" and the video for it were pretty cool, but it was the title track that held all the promise of great things to come. I didn't buy the album, but I heard it once at a friends place. It was more a cursory listen than anything, and it didn't make much of an impression. Reading up on the album now many of the reviewers were treating this like it was something released by Toto. They thought the music was too much like his father's later work, and that while his album was nicely produced, it felt old man and kind of limp. Of course these are poor paraphrases, but the general sense was this was a giant pile of "meh". There's no bu...

The Elvis Brothers are a new to me experience. I'm trying to remember how this came to be on my radar. I suspect it was the result of hearing the name mentioned by my friend Jeff (who has an encyclopedic knowledge of all things pop that kind of irritates me to be honest - because I'm older than he is, and it gets up my crack that he's more than my equal when it comes to the accumulation of useless trivia regarding music) AND then looking them up on the internet and seeing Adrian Belew's name associated.  Rambling Tangent Alert: Adrian Belew first came to my attention back in 1983 when a wonderful young lady said my homemade DIY "albums" reminded her of Adrian Belew in their quirkiness.  To me this was incredibly intriguing, so I rushed out and purchased Twang Bar King , and Lone Rhino and quickly discovered that my friend was being overly generous as those two albums were life changing and expanded my musical palate beyond anything else I'd ever heard to ...

Sleepwalking is one of my favourite albums ever . Released in 1982 Sleepwalking was a marked departure from his previous album Snakes and Ladders, and the ones before that. So many people think of Gerry as a one hit wonder with "Baker Street" from 1978s City to City , and I suppose depending on where you were, this was sort of true but I remember a number of songs from his first few records on the radio when I was a much younger man. I was on a train in 1982 travelling back from a youth conference or something when my friend Gerry, who had (he may still have) great taste in music, had a cassette copy of Sleepwalking and insisted I listen to it because it was awesome. Being a fan already I listened to the first few songs, and gone were the folk elements, instead the songs were laden with synthesisers (English spelling) but it wasn't like he was trying to be Trio or Gary Numan this was still unmistakably Gerry Rafferty. It was indeed awesome. I think I said it quite loudly ...

Back in 1980 I heard a song on the radio called "Life-size American Heroes" thankfully the disc jockey named the song and the band. If it was ever played again I never heard it. I loved the song, it was very British sounding, and with a name like BBC they were aiming big if they wanted to compete with their likewise named counterpart. So off to the record store I went ... and I couldn't find the album anywhere. I did manage to find the 45, so I bought it. I was never a fan of singles, although I had a few. I used to have"Bohemian Rhapsody / I'm In Love with My Car" and a few other treasures that were lost over time to natural disasters. I put the song on a lot of mixed tapes, and over the years I tried to find it on CD but to no avail. When the internet became a thing trying to search out BBC was a pain, and proved that the BBC were the only BBC. Like Highlander, there could only be one. Although in the case of the BBC there are quite a few, but they're ...

By 1983 I was already a huge fan of Joe Walsh. He was the court jester who also managed to be the king of his castle. I knew he was an Eagle, and he and Don Felder were the wonder twins thanks to "Hotel California" but what sealed it for me was his 1979 contribution to The Warriors soundtrack "In the City" a song that hit me in the feels, and to this day is one of my desert island songs. The Eagles version was okay too, but didn't have the same kick in the happy sack as the original. Fast forward to the spring of 1983 and Joe Walsh released You Bought It - You Name It , which to me is one of his best releases - ever. As much as I like his other stuff when I go to a Joe Walsh album it's this one. Go figure. I guess I was primed for this one given that one of my favourite songs from the Fast Times at Ridgemont High (the same records that introduced me to Oingo Boingo) soundtrack was his throwaway track "Waffle Stomp." When I lost most of my records ...

When Bruce Springsteen dropped Born in the U.S.A. in 1984 I was turning 21. It was a victory of sorts against the forces of Michael Jackson's Thriller that was somehow still managing to pull singles a couple years after it came out. Here was Bruce, just being The Boss and somehow his newly acquired biceps and a catchy song and video for "Dancing in the Dark" (I can't explain why I hear The Cars "Moving in Stereo" in my head when I think of this song) propelled him and the album into the upper stratosphere going 17 times platinum in the U.S.A. and selling over 30 million world wide. That's a hell of a feat for an essentially average album with some good songs, but it wasn't something I lost my shit over when I heard the songs on the radio.  Truth is I was never really a big fan. Sure I kind liked "Born to Run" but his music felt old . Yeah, I know this borders on blasphemy, but like I said, it was a very good album - I'm still moved when...

Growing up a good Canadian kid, there was no band bigger or more influential than Bachman Turner Overdrive. I mean when you're a kid anything that seems to last more than a week is a long time. Heck if you can like something for more than a school year it's an eternity. I mean seriously as I got older I confuse events that happened last year, with things that happened a decade ago. But kid years? Yeah, they're like dog years - here I was listening to the radio as a kid rocking out to "Let it Ride" and a year later sitting on the floor listening to a special program on the radio playing the Not Fragile and loving "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" then in 1975 they dropped Four Wheel Drive , which would be the first record I bought with my own money. It was a dilemma too. My older cousins were playing Led Zeppelin, KISS, Nazareth, and Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies - when I told them I wanted to get Four Wheel Drive they weren't as enthu...

The year was 1982 and my nineteen year old self was still a couple years away from getting into the European tinged pop that would start expanding my musical palate. Hair Cut One Hundred is a band I appreciate a lot more than my younger self would have. The catchy "Love Plus One" appears on a lot of 80s compilations for good reason, it's a great song. I'm saying this now, but if you asked me other day I'd have drawn a blank. I'd gone in to the record store looking for a specific album (still can't find it) and got to chatting with the staff and we got on the subject of British new wave. He asks me if I had any Haircut One Hundred. I say I know the name but can't recall any of their stuff. "What about Nick Heyward?" he asks. Again I knew the name, but was drawing a blank on anything specific. I know he's on a compilation somewhere in the library in the studio but knowing and knowing aren't the same. So he pops out from behind the count...

Today the album I was looking forward to cranking up was Nazareth's Greatest Hits . I found a copy in the dollar bin yesterday, along with a few others I was pretty excited about. I had quite a few records queued up in the "clean me" pile, and I decided today was a good day to sit in the cave and get caught up. I got to the Nazareth album and pulled out the vinyl and low and behold I was looking at a rather beat up copy of Nathaniel the Grublet .from 1979. It was on Birdwing records a label that catered to the Christian bookstore market. Part of me was thinking "What the fuh?" But I have quite a collection of CCM (contemporary Christian music for those who care) so a small part of me was hoping that this 1979 release was a goofy  progressive rock concept album. I'm normally very careful when I bin dive, I always check the vinyl and while I'm more forgiving with the jacket and liner (if it's even there at all) but yesterday I was in a hurry as the st...

As a teenager Friday night often meant staying up late and watching "concerts" on TV. Before there was MTV and MuchMusic there was Burt Sugarman's The Midnight Special. Wolfman Jack would do something or other, but there would be "performances" by a lot of popular bands and musicians. Sure, they were likely lip synced, but what wasn't? You mean to tell me Dick Clark's American Bandstand was actually live? There would be a lot of stuff I don't remember, some I actively disliked. Yeah, early Prince in a loin cloth put me off his music for years. Then one night there was Christopher Cross performing "Ride Like the Wind" and after the fog machine more or less covers the stage the band launches in, and there's no Michael McDonald. Were they actually singing? I'm enthralled by this giant guitar playing Baby Huey with a receding hairline. The song gets to the end guitar solo and for the first time you can actually really hear what he's...