Foghat - Fool for the City

How could I pass this up? This was one of the original pressings, BR 6959, but it's not like it made this any more valuable. It was still a dollar, but dang boy howdy, a dollar well spent. I sure would have liked to have had the insert, but never having seen the original, who knows if it actually had anything on the inside. The album cover was in decent shape, and the vinyl, especially on the first killer side, cleaned up so well I was surprised. Mint, baby. The second side had a little rash, a pretty good nick on "Terraplane Blues" that lasts a few spins around, but nothing to spoil things.

I wasn't even in my teens when this came out, and I can't remember when I first heard songs by the band. Over the years, of course, "Slow Ride" would take on a life of its own when my kids started playing it on Guitar Hero - a game that frankly brought classic rock into the mainstream, even if only for a moment. The title track was also a great song. It's too bad the album is so short. I mean, with only seven songs, the whole thing is just over half an hour long. I suppose cranking out an album a year will take a toll, so you go with what you got. I know it sounds like I'm whinging, it's just that I would have liked more. I feel like I'm holding up an empty bowl and pleading, "Please sir, I want some more."

Fool for the City, was the band's fifth release, and the one where it all came together. I cannot lay claim to being a super fan, but over the years I have managed to accumulate a lot of their releases, and this is one I return to most often.

The band is great, and I love Rod "The Bottle" Price's guitar playing. In particular, his slide work is an integral part of the band's sound. Lonesome Dave Peverett wrote or co-wrote five of the seven tracks and sang the songs and played rhythm guitar. Drummer Roger Earl is the guy on the cover fishing. You gotta love drummers. Nick Jameson, in addition to playing bass guitar, keyboards, and some guitar, was also the producer and engineer.

The one thing about getting back into vinyl versus my digital library or CDs is that I can get stuck with a favourite side. The first side is stellar, and is the one I will repeat over and over. I mean, seriously, "Fool for the City," "My Babe," and the eight minutes of pure riff heaven on "Slow Ride" make for a spectacular first half. It's no wonder the second side doesn't have the same oomph, but it was still solid boogie-woogie rock and roll. Except for the album's closer, "Take It or Leave It," which seemed like a song from a different band. It's not bad - in fact, it's a pretty decent song - it's just a more polished pop song that plays like a harder soft rock song you'd hear from ACE or The Doobie Brothers.

Regardless, this was a great find, and a lot of fun to listen to. Yeah, I did spend more time repeating side one, but that's only because it's awesome. Don't worry, I've not abandoned the second side. I play it too, and it's growing on me.

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 , ...

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...

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 BTO's 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) - so 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 toward the progressive, but with a pop bent. Oddly enough, the vocals rem...

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