General Public - ... All the Rage

Back in 1984, I knew this band from the video for "Tenderness" that seemed to be on whenever I turned on the television to watch MuchMusic. Admittedly, it was a catchy song, but that was as far as it went. I mean, really, that year Van Halen crushed it with 1984, and Toto dropped Isolation - an album that was met with silence but was, to me, amazing and in heavy rotation most of the year. There were so many great albums that my taking a foray into English new-wave-laced with ska wasn't really on my radar.

Still, I never forgot that one song. So last week I was diving in the bins, and there between a couple of Neil Diamond albums was All the Rage. Well, for a buck I was at least going to get one good song. The album was in iffy shape, but the jacket was okay, and the liner notes were gone.

Now, having recently spent time with Haircut One Hundred, I was pretty much in the same neighbourhood as General Public. Curious, I looked the band up and there were a number of little surprises I wasn't expecting. Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger, who often sang in unison or call and response, were from The Beat (or The English Beat, as they were known here in North America). I knew the name and had some of their songs in my library.

The other thing was that various members of the band came from other bands like The Clash, Dexys Midnight Runners, and The Specials. This is some pretty impressive pedigree. Although Mick Jones did leave the band before the album dropped, he left his mark on a number of tracks, including "Tenderness," which I find very cool.

The biggest surprise was how young Ranking Roger was when this was released. He was 21 and was already a seasoned vet, having been around recording since 1980 with The Beat. I was saddened to read he passed away in 2019.

Back to the album, it was quite decent, even if it had a few more Rice Krispies than I liked on the vinyl (Snap, Crackle, and Pop, get it? Har de har har). I found myself playing it through a few times. Musically, you hear a lot of The Beat here (I don't have the deepest reference points, but I have a couple of songs I know), but it would seem the band and their diverse background brought a lot to the table.

The other song that jumped out to me was the song "General Public." It's a really good song and closes out the album.

I know I've mentioned "Tenderness" several times already, but it is the standout track here. The whole album, though, is actually full of expertly crafted pop with a lot more going on under the hood musically than you might expect.

The '80s were an amazing time for bands to blend genres and fiddle around with technology. These guys did it as well as anyone.

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 band, 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 , ...

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...

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