Brad Whitford / Derek St. Holmes - Whitford St. Holmes

My goodness. Right out of the gate "I Need Love" hits it out of the park. I honestly had no idea what to expect. I sort of figured this would be one of those easy-to-shit-on records because no one else knew about it either when it came out in 1981.

Derek St. Holmes oddly seems to really be channelling his inner Sammy Hagar. Admittedly, I don't have the deepest well of recordings with Derek to draw upon. Double Live Gonzo! from Uncle Ted about sums it up for me. Don't get me wrong, that album is the cat's pajamas and security blanket all rolled into one. I like Sammy, but he was never my favourite vocalist. So I guess I sort of expected Derek to sound like Derek ... maybe it's Sammy who sounds like Derek and I have it backwards.

That said, Derek is all swagger, and Brad Whitford was finally allowed off leash to play lead, and he's really solid. The rest of the band was rounded out with Dave Hewitt on bass and Steve Pace on drums. The album was produced by Tom Allom, who the year before helped Judas Priest unleash British Steel. So it wasn't like the guys weren't given a shot. It's just unfortunate that Columbia decided the album cover was a keeper. I mean, it looks like something the guys in Air Supply passed on.

"Every Morning" is up now, and this song is great. Listening to this now is a bit weird as I have all the years of stuff that came after, and my experience is coloured by four decades of musical baggage. So really what I am left with is a pretty simple equation. I either like it, or I don't.

I like it.

Then again, I am particularly partial to guitar-driven rock, even if it is derivative. I'll probably give this a couple of spins and file it away, but I'll think of this as a decent album that deserved a better fate.

I mean, I really do like this, and who knows where this would have fitted into my experiences had I discovered this earlier. Back in 1981 I was still listening to Aerosmith's Rocks, and even Ted's live album was still in regular rotation, so there's a really good chance this would have been ... just what the doctor ordered.

The second side kicks off with "Action," and while this isn't as good as songs of the same name by Sweet or Streetheart, it's a decent lead-in. Thankfully, the band gets back to their groove with "Shy Away," another very good rock song. So far, there hasn't been a dud. Maybe this was a little too slick, and at times too generic, but man, it was pretty darned good. I suppose people dismissed this out of hand without hearing it or giving it a chance, assuming that compared to the best of what Aerosmith or Nugent with Derek on vocals put out, this album, while enjoyable - very enjoyable at times—just couldn't possibly measure up.

Keeping with the baseball analogy, the boys managed to hit more than a few out of the park here, and overall this was a much better album than I expected it to be ... a lost gem? Maybe. It's a solid, dependable rock record. It's too bad they were playing to empty seats at a preseason exhibition game and no one got to see what they were actually capable of.

Those who were in the stands got it.

Fair or not, the album wouldn't catch on, and Brad would eventually go back to his old band, and Derek would be an off-and-on-again wingman for Ted Nugent. Still, there must have been an itch only the two of them together were able to scratch, and in 2016 they put out Reunion. As fate would have it, if you look for it on iTunes, their '81 release is there in its entirety as bonus tracks.

Nice.

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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