Electric Light Orchestra - Face the Music

When I was ten years old I remember hearing "Roll Over Beethoven" and it melted my little brain. This wasn't like anything I'd heard. 1973 was an awesome year for formative rock and roll, and I'd file away names like BTO, Rick Derringer, Ian Thomas, and Alice Cooper and when I got older I would buy their albums. So where was ELO on this future list of must have bands? Not near the top, and as time passed my interest waned. Heck it was a close thing when "Don't Bring Me Down" and "My Sharona" were vying for the world's most overplayed song, but I managed to NOT get either album. Then in 1980 the band tried to do their own version of The Wiz by releasing the soundtrack to Xanadu and I wrote them off - this was not rock and roll.

Then the year I graduated the band dropped Time, and for whatever reason this weird, electronic, cheesy release resonated with me and I played the album until I was pretty sure I could hear bleed over from the other side of the record. You'd have thought being so enamoured I'd have stayed on the wagon, but really after Secret Messages I sort of lost track for a long time.

Over the years I'd pick up a lot of stuff on CD, and even find a collection of their early stuff with the ever inimitable Roy Wood (Roy @#$! Wood!). So it was a weird surprise to hear a piece of music on the classic rock station I'd never heard before that blew my mind. Most of the time this particular station is really bad at giving details about what they're playing. To my surprise I caught the title "Fire on High" but not the band. As fate would have it about a week later around the same time it comes on again (who says rock radio isn't formulaic?) and this time I catch the name. ELO, ah, I thought it was ELP and Greg Lake was rocking the guitar. Nope. Jeff Lynne.

I searched my library for the song, and I didn't have it. Which I kind of figured as I don't think I'd have forgotten a song that great. I did look up the album and it was one right between two I did have, Eldorado and New World Record. Go figure.

Then a couple of days later when I was bin diving at the record store, there is was, just waiting for me. I have no idea why it was in the bin - maybe a misfile? The jacket was in decent shape, the insert was there and the vinyl was pretty clean even before getting a bath and vacuum.

The first thing I noticed right away was "Fire on High" was longer and more weirder (yes, more weirder) at the start than the radio edit I'd heard. Not bad weird, good weird. At this stage in their career ELO was still heavy on strings and orchestration, with the violin and cello players listed as members of the band, but the sound was clearly moving into their pop phase as evidenced by their hits "Evil Woman" and "Strange Magic" which still sounds crisp and sharp. Heck the whole album is great. I have a hard time processing this as an album that came out in 1975, I'm not sure where 12 year old me would put this in the pecking order, but grown ass old me loves it.

6 Cylinder

As a kid we had one radio station, not counting CBC, and generally there was very little that was worth listening to, although there were times something would come on that would make you pay attention. It was 1979 and on a couple of occasions I heard "There Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens" and it cracked me up, and I always wanted to get a copy for myself. A few years ago when my niece was dancing, they did a performance to this song, and now I can't separate my niece from a bunch of dancing chicks in chicken suits. Such is life. When I found this in the dollar bin I actually let out a little chirp, my goodness could it be? It was, and it was in great shape - including the inner sleeve. Score. I had no idea what to expect, for all I knew there was only one song worth listening to, and if that was the case it was still a dollar well spent. If I could buy an album by Showdown and enjoy it, odds are I'll find something to enjoy here to. Before I put this on I...

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...

Old Enough to Forget

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