Christine McVie - Christine McVie

I have a soft spot for this album. Back in '84 I got this solely based on "Love Will Show Us How" - a mini master class in pop perfection. When I lost my records, I replaced this with a CD, and then recently, for whatever reason, a near-perfect record showed up in the dollar bin - so I had to drop the buck.

I know this is probably not the popular opinion, but of the solo efforts from the Fleetwood Mac camp, this is the album I like best. Oh sure, Lindsey Buckingham released Go Insane in '84 as well, and I really liked the title track, and I appreciated how weird he got, but it wasn't something I pulled out very often - and of course I no longer have it. (You never know, that could change one day.) Then there was the witchy woman herself, Stevie Nicks, who I will admit had some great songs, but mostly I found her voice irritating.

So here we have Christine, who must have figured it was time to do a solo effort as well - and no doubt this cost a boatload of money to produce. While there were two modest hits off the album, the aforementioned "Love Will Show Us How" and the opening cut from side two, "Got a Hold on Me," I suspect expectations from the label were a lot higher, and it would be twenty years before she'd drop another solo effort.

Still, here we have an album that is really solid, and Christine's voice has a warmth and ease of delivery that makes me feel like she's singing to me through the speakers. Especially on songs like "Who's Dreaming This Dream," where she knocks it out of the park.

What I find really cool listening now is how much I missed originally. I was too focused on the two hit songs and I failed to really let the album sink in. It's not that I didn't listen to it - I played it a fair bit - but often it was spinning in the background, and so much of my music was played in the car. Mixtapes were the rule of the day, and I tended to pick the "best" songs and then shelve the records.

For the album she wisely chose to assemble a core band:

Todd Sharp, who played guitar, co-wrote many of the songs, and sang.
George Hawkins, who anchored the album on bass and vocals.
Steve Ferrone laid down the groove and probably has one of the greatest liner pictures I've ever seen. I love his picture. It makes you want to have a beer and shoot the shit, as you know this guy had stories and has seen things.

Then of course she had guests - she's freakin' Christine McVie. From her day job, both Lindsey and Mick make appearances, and former Blind Faith members Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood lend a hand, the latter providing backing vocals on a few songs.

The album was produced by Russ Titelman and mixed by Elliot Scheiner.

It's strange to sit and really listen to this now, and if I'm being honest, this album is more akin in spirit to Linda Ronstadt and Karla Bonoff and Andrew Gold from the mid-'70s. That's not meant to be a shot - those albums have a timeless quality to them as well, and Christine's album is great all the way through. It just seems like an album out of time.

Considering what was coming out in '84, her album seemed like a deliberate attempt to craft songs with real musicians and write songs the way she knew how, rather than try to incorporate drum machines and synthesizers and show how cool and relevant she was. With the benefit of hindsight, that was the right call. The album doesn't sound dated in the way so many albums from this period ended up, which is kind of refreshing - this still sounds great.

The closest this album comes to being of its time is her picture on the liner. She's got a little Cyndi Lauper pigtail and a bolo tie. Considering she was only in her early 40s, it's kind of amazing to think of how much she'd already accomplished.

Sadly, Christine McVie passed away November 30, 2022, at the age of 79. She was still out there showing the kids how it was done, pretty much right up to the end.

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...

Old Enough to Forget

Search This Blog