Queen City Kids - Queen City Kids

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 blindfolded, spun in circles, given a traffic cone, and shoved in the direction of the dog.

The record cost me four bucks and was in decent shape, but it was missing the inner sleeve. I was looking forward to hearing this one. After all, there's a treasure trove of gold hidden out there just waiting to be re-discovered. Besides, the back cover picture was really cool.

I start reading up on the band and discover that Queen City Kids originally hailed from Regina, Saskatchewan, where they cut their teeth before moving to neighbouring Manitoba to record their debut. It's amazing how many bands actually came out of Winnipeg. It's a long list, but Harlequin is one, and another was less well known: The Pumps, who released Gotta Move, which had the song "Success" on it. They would swap some members out and try again as Orphan. I'll have to dig those out at some point.

Here it was, 1981. It was the '80s, baby. We'd have rocket packs by the end of the decade. Chicks in plastic wrap was sure to be a thing. The future was now. I'm guessing the kids in the band were trying to get ahead of everyone by showing off their plastic-wrapped model, who bore more than a passing resemblance to Helena Bonham Carter, with suitably mussed hair. To be fair, they were a step ahead of Robert Palmer; then again, his ladies at least combed their hair.

The band was signed to Columbia Records (I'm guessing for Canadian distribution), and here I am just over forty years later hearing this for the first time. Holy shit, this is great stuff.

It cleaned up okay, but there were a few more pops and clicks than I wanted. Thankfully, they were mostly on the dead space between songs.

This wasn't metal or new wave. It was just a great rock record. The guys even do their own Romeo and Juliet / Don't Fear the Reaper-themed song (okay, it's really more like "Last Kiss" without the lament) with "Excitement of Love," which is a really cool song.

The whole album is solid, and I really got a kick out of the intertwined vocal harmonies on "Down Again," a song that really jumped out at me. There are a lot of good songs; each time through something else jumps out. The last time through it was "Secret Smoke." Man, the guitar tone is smokin' (ha ha ha).

The guys would release a follow-up in 1982 (that I'll be on the lookout for), and then after that they packed up their toys and called it a day. The band still does the occasional reunion show, and there are a few videos on YouTube that show the guys still have their chops.

They may no longer be kids, more like old goats now - but there are perks for getting older. You can order from the seniors' menu at Denny's.

There's also a great time capsule they self-released called 1981: Live that is worth looking for, as it captures the band in their element.

Billy Rankin - Growin' Up Too Fast

Growin' Up Too Fast was never widely released on CD (if at all), and it 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, which included a bonus track of "Get It On (Bang A Gong)." When I eventually bought the album, I 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. At the time, though, all I knew was this guy laid it out cold with the opening cut, "Baby Come Back," then proceeded to lay down one killer tune after another bef...

Styx - Paradise Theater

Styx was hands down one of my favourite bands as a kid. They were a strange band, even back then. They were a hard rock, almost progressive at times who had a penchant for sucky ballads. I know there's a tendency for people to zero in on "Babe" as the song that killed the band's credibility. The roots go way back to almost the beginning when Styx released "Lady" on their second album. It showed a side to the band that needed to be kept in check, and for the most part the band kept things on a pretty tight leash. The band had been setting a gruelling pace, releasing an album a year (two in 1972) and by the time they released Paradise Theater (if I end up writing theatre later it's because that's how we spell it here) in 1981 they'd dropped ten albums in less than a decade. I snapped this up as soon as I saw it, and it became a fixture on my turntable. Like the band had announced on "Borrowed Time" from 1979's Cornerstone , "Don...

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...

Old Enough to Forget

Search This Blog