Jane Siberry - No Borders Here

When MuchMusic launched in 1984 it was a weird and wonderful time. More often than not you just got to see what you were hearing on the radio, and the videos would run the gamut from rock to pop and then that first odd bunch of video jockeys would share some banter and introduce the next song with more witty banter. Rinse and repeat. Every so often though there'd be something weird and wonderful you didn't get to hear on the radio. "Fish Heads" was one of those. Dang, I didn't mean to open that can of worms ... now I'm singing it in my head, "Fish heads, fish heads roly-poly fish heads, eat them up, yum." If you know what I'm talking about, good luck getting that out of your head.

You're welcome.

Fudge, this has messed with my continuity ...

Where was I before I went off into the weeds? Right, videos that weren't on the radio. Aside from the unnamed song about the aquatic swimmy thing's eyeball holder, there was a strange and quirky song called "Mimi on the Beach" by Jane Siberry. It was long, and it was mesmerizing, and it was on ... All.The.Time. This was kind of heavy rotation you don't get anymore.

It broke Jane Siberry into the Canadian market, and even my friends were talking about her. I liked the song for all that, although there were times I thought it was stupid, but then it would be on again and all was forgiven. She was laying the groundwork for what would be a series of albums that would each have some awe-inspiring moments. I'd follow her pretty closely from this album through to 1995's Maria, and then I sort of lost the thread. I still think of her contribution to The Crow soundtrack, "It Can't Rain All the Time," as one of the most poignant pop songs ever.

I saw her in concert once at a small theatre on Granville Island. She and her band presented her songs as acoustic arrangements that were absolutely riveting.

Still, going back to where it all started for me has been a lot of fun. I'd not listened to this for a long time, and it still holds up as a wonderful marrying of pop with an artistic flair that had a sound and feel that was unique to Jane Siberry. When she goes off on a tangent where it gets a little too much for me to the point where it borders on being pretentious (which is not the right word, but her artistic integrity would likely be a little intense and perhaps come across that way), I can only listen for a little while. But it's all part of the package. I am still drawn to her voice. When she's good she's amazing.

"Mimi on the Beach" is still a jaw-dropping display of new wave and art, and "You Don't Need" is heartbreaking. The rest of the songs are a quirky combination of '80s pop with a penchant for the off-kilter - in a good way.

The album was produced by Jane Siberry / John Switzer and Jon Goldsmith / Kerry Crawford.

Jane in additional to vocals played guitar, and provided some misc. keyboards

The core band on the album

John Switzer - bass, percussion
Ken Myhr - guitar, percussion
Al Cross - drums, percussion, Linndrum
Doug Wilde - keyboards
Jon Goldsmith - keyboards
Rob Yale - Fairlight programming

Strange, when I first found the album I didn't recognize the cover as the CD I have, as well as the original album I remember, had the plain pink cover that looked like a map. This one with the beach painting is so much better.

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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