John Parr - John Parr

I got this back in 1984 when it came out. "Naughty Naughty" grabbed me the first time I heard it, and to this day is still one of my guilty pleasures. The solo composed of tire skids still cracks me up. I honestly couldn't remember any of the other songs when I pulled this down for a spin. It had been a long time since I'd given this a listen so I figured it was due.

Now, you're probably wondering why my album cover has CBC written in pen on it ... well, that's because it came from the CBC archives. I lost my cover years ago (I could tell you the story, again, about the great crawl space flood, but it's a painful memory, so I won't bore you) and I found this copy in the dollar bin and I bought it just to have the cover. I cleaned up the record inside and gave it to my friend who told me it was, and I quote, "Terrible." I pressed him as to why and he mentioned a bunch of artists he liked that were quite different than Mister Parr. So I ended our text exchange by calling him a Luddite. I always feel better after calling my friends names.

So after nearly forty years how has this held up?

It's a mixed bag. This is very much an early 80s effort and thanks to Yes and their Orchestra Hit from "Owner of a Lonely Heart" that little farty sound was everywhere, although it only shows up here on one song, and then disappeared as quickly as it appeared. I will say though I'd forgotten how strong the album starts off. The first three songs all got some airplay. The first cut "Magical" co-written by Meat Loaf cracked the top 100, "Naughty Naughty" almost cracked the top 20, but did better on the AOR charts where it went top 10, and then the oddly phrased "Love Grammar" also broke the top 100. They're among the strongest songs on the album. The second side doesn't have the same killer start, but it does end with arguably the second best song on the album in "Don't Leave Your Mark On Me" a song I'd actually forgotten about until it came on. Oddly John recorded an even better version of the song on his 1986 follow up Running the Endless Mile - I'd actually forgotten he recorded the song twice.

John Parr was (still is I guess) a fantastic singer - there was an edge and grit to his voice that made it distinctive enough to not be generic. Too bad the music wasn't as good as John's voice. The songs are enjoyable for all that but are pretty standard AOR delivered with bombast and gusto.

It's funny, I remember back in the day being much more dismissive of the album and would only pull out the album to record "Naughty Naughty" onto a mix tape - I seldom played the album. Listening to it now, despite my earlier comment about the songs being generic, they're enjoyable in the moment, even if most of them are ultimately forgettable.

That being said, given how much shitty music is out there now, I'd still take this over a lot of what passes for music today. Am I getting old and cantankerous? Maybe a little, but then again the music was better back then.

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 BTOs 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) 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 to the progressive, but with a pop bent. Oddly enough the vocals reminded me of Mi

Hoodoo Gurus - Mars Needs Guitars!

The first time I got this album it was a gift from my old roommate Otto. For a goofy little nebbish he would occasionally surprise me with some left of field musical treasures. Although, I still think he was reaching a little when he brought home the new "Led Zeppelin" album by Kingdom Come and forced me to listen to "Get it On" over and over again. I'd not listened to Mars Needs Guitars in a long, long, long time. The first thing that I jumped out at me was how David Faulkner's vocals reminded me of his fellow countryman Peter Garrett from Midnight Oil. I think the reason this never occurred to me was at the time I didn't have any Midnight Oil until Diesel and Dust in 1987. I'm not saying it was all the time, but there were a couple of songs where it stood out. Not a bad thing, just a thing. Even at the time this felt slightly out of step with what was going on in 1985. It seemed like everyone was using drum machines and synthesizers and having t

Saturday Night Fever - The Original Movie Soundtrack

It was going to happen sooner or later. Nostalgia is a cruel Mistress...she can dull the sharpest edges and over time can even soften the hardest of opinions. I found this in the dollar bin, and frankly at a dollar I was worried about what this would cost me. Not only from a monetary perspective, but my time, and more important my credibility. Fourteen year old me was screaming "Don't you dare. DON'T DO IT! Put it down. Walk away!" Then there was grey bearded me holding it and looking at it, thinking, "How bad could it be? I actually kind of like "Staying Alive" and me buying this record won't bring disco back, and no one will have to know I bought this." I pulled the album out of the bin, and carefully took out the records. They'd seen better days, and there were a couple of decent scratches that would no doubt make their presence known later. The jacket was in decent condition, and both of the albums had the original sleeves. I dusted the

Old Enough to Forget

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