Gary O' - Strange Behavior

Strange Behavior is an album I remember fondly, and for many years I looked for it on CD. I never did find a copy. When I set up my old stereo in the basement, this was one of the first records I played. To be fair, it's not like I had a lot of vinyl left to choose from, but what I had left was special, at least to me. I could picture Gary standing there playing his Roland G-707 in a sheepskin-collared bomber jacket. He was the epitome of cool. In short, I was having a great time reminiscing.

I'm playing this now and, partway through the first side, the little things that irritated me back then weren't as pronounced. I'm a sucker for hi-hat work and a good drummer. Sure, the Simmons kits of the early '80s had a sound that defined the decade, but in terms of accentuating hardware, it was practically non-existent here. The result on Strange Behavior is a driving beat without any accoutrements, so to speak, although here and there, buried in the mix, you can hear a cymbal or two.

Even back then it was an album that felt somewhat "meh" at times, but there were a few really bright spots. The opening track, "Get It While You Can," is still as awesome as it ever was, the album's closer, "Shades of '45," is a mini masterclass in pop magic, and "Young Love" is one of those earworms that's hard to forget. Those songs were on a lot of mix tapes. "What Are Friends For" is another decent song and features some wicked keyboard work, and an Orchestra Hit that first took the world by storm a year earlier on Yes' "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and hadn't yet been overused to the point of parody. I can't remember it being singled out on any of my tapes, though.

1984 was also a great year for releases that never had a follow-up. Yeah, I'm thinking of Billy Rankin, a guy who should have been huge but got caught in the perfect storm of bad management and bad timing. I know it seems like I'm lukewarm on this one, but I'm not. The sum of the high points more than makes up for any lulls, and I'll happily play the album through from end to end. For years I'd look to see if he released a follow-up. Nothing ever appeared. I did pick up his earlier effort, 1981's Gary O', and while it was okay and had a couple of decent songs, it wasn't an album that resonated with me.

I love reading through credits, and in the early '80s, when the Fairlight was the go-to gadget, there were a handful of programmers who seemed to be in demand. In Canada, Dee Long, a former member of Klaatu, was the guy people went to. From Strange Advance to Rational Youth, he was part of the sound of the '80s.

Gary did have some success as a songwriter and had a decent hit with 38 Special the year before Strange Behavior came out, which probably helped him get this record produced. I had always assumed the album did pretty well in Canada, but there's not a lot of information out there, and I'm guessing it didn't sell as well as expected and he was likely dropped by his label. Funny, when you're a kid and something is on the radio or has a video on TV, you think of them as being famous.

Too bad.

That's Gary on the back cover. He's got the mismatched shoes, the one argyle sock, the cigarette, and is giving the camera a crotch shot. He was, all in all, pretty nerdy - but it was cool nerdy, and even Ogre would likely have a beer with him before heading out to torment Robert Carradine and Anthony Edwards.

Strange Behavior is a petri dish containing all the best parts of the '80s, and listening to it is a lot more fun than you'd expect.

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...

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 , ...

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 continues 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 beg...

Old Enough to Forget

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