Charlie Rich - Behind Closed Doors

Behind Closed Doors was one of those records that managed to have enough crossover appeal to spill over onto the AM radio I listened to as a kid. Between singing along to "Cover of the Rolling Stone" (yeah, tell 'em who we are) and wondering who Stealers Wheel was stuck in the middle with, there was a big silky voice asking if I'd seen "The Most Beautiful Girl?"

I don't remember if I liked it or not back then, but it was played a lot. That Charlie Rich guy was no Brownsville Station, that's for sure. However, here we are practically fifty years after the fact, and I'm listening to Behind Closed Doors, and this is a well-crafted effort that falls more into the country camp than the pop arena - but a good album is a good album (most of the time).

This was an album my wife grew up with, and when I started playing records again, she "borrowed" the beat-up and scratched copy (she claims to have no knowledge of how it came to be in such bad shape) from her parents' house. We listened to it a few times, and I tried to be forgiving of the pops and clicks and just let it be part of the experience - but goodness, there's a limit. If it wasn't for the distortion and pops on the big hit, I'd have let it slide, but dang, it was so distracting.

I've kept an eye out for a decent copy ever since, and lo and behold I found a copy that still had the shrink-wrap and original price sticker. There were no liner notes, but then again, the copy my wife brought home just had a plain insert, so I wasn't missing anything we didn't already have. The icing on the cake was this only cost me a buck, and it was in much better shape than the copy I had.

Win, win, and I put her copy in a frame, so wins all around.

Having played this through a few times, I really enjoy it. It does have a pop or two, but nothing too distracting. While the production, especially on the strings, is very dated (very shrill, like a Frank Chacksfield arrangement - what my mum calls "lush"), there's something about a really great singer that just elevates the songs.

The big song here is the classic "The Most Beautiful Girl," which is a fantastic track, but also has one of the strangest fades I've heard on a song, let alone a monster hit. The song is still building to a crescendo, and it's like the engineer started fading it out as a joke during mixing, and it slipped through the cracks and made it to the master tapes.

The other truly outstanding song on the album is the title track, "Behind Closed Doors."

Country may not be something I listen to a lot, but you have to give credit where credit is due - and The Silver Fox here delivered a solid one-two combination with "Behind Closed Doors" and "The Most Beautiful Girl." It certainly didn't hurt that the rest of the album was good too.

The nice thing about having the stereo in the basement is I can play things pretty loud, and I can get away with playing a country record because the neighbours can't really hear it - after all, I'm playing it (don't you roll your eyes at me, I haven't even finished the sentence yet)... Behind Closed Doors.

Thank you, I'm here all week. Try the veal and don't forget to tip your server.

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 , ...

David Baerwald - Bedtime Stories

The little sticker on the shrinkwrap says, "You may remember David Baerwald from David & David's Boomtown ..." You bet, I remembered David Baerwald. Back in 1986 Boomtown was an album with moments of sheer brilliance. The whole album may not have been as top shelf as the first few tracks, but that didn't matter - it is an excellent album. I waited for a follow-up ... and waited, and then in 1990 it was a solo David, David Baerwald, who dropped Bedtime Stories . I snapped it up. "All For You," the opening cut, is still my favourite song on the album. It was mesmerizing. I'm not sure if the song got any airplay, it may have, but that may have been wishful thinking on my part as it was on a lot of mix tapes at the time and I heard it a lot in the car. The CD had a great booklet with all of the musician credits and lyrics. Oddly, when I found a sealed copy of the record (a great score), it just had a plain paper insert - the picture of David walking wit...

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 continued 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 b...

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