Jackson Browne - Lawyers in Love

1983 was a great year for music. Of course there were other great years - lots and lots of them, especially the ones during my formative years. The early '80s, though, were something special. Jackson Browne was someone who had quite a few songs I liked, but it wasn't until he released Lawyers in Love that I decided to put some cash on the table (The Fast Times soundtrack doesn't count). There was something hilariously goofy and awesome about the title track, and it didn't matter where I was - or am, as I discovered when the song came on - if the song came on, I had to wait patiently for my cue to sing along.

Last night I watched the news from Washington, the capitol (that would be me)
The Russians escaped while we weren't watching them, like Russians will (still me, but with gusto)

The Tarzan falsetto is still out of my range, but there are times I still give it a shot. The dog doesn't like it.

Anyway, the song is still one of those guilty pleasures, but this album got a lot of play back in the day, and several songs were mainstays on my abundant collection of mixtapes. Not all the songs hit me in the feels, but when they did, boy, they hit hard. "Cut It Away" is brilliant. You'd think that after forty years I'd be able to consistently count in the drums when Russ Kunkel hits the snare twice during the intro while I'm playing air drums on the steering wheel - but you'd be wrong. It's actually a little embarrassing, but I figure one day I'll figure it out. Honestly, it's not that hard, but it's part of how I listen to the song. Kind of the same thing as me playing along with The Fixx's "Deeper and Deeper," but that's another story.

I know "Tender Is the Night" was a moderate hit, but it wasn't a song I got into the first time around. With the benefit of a little space, the song has definitely grown on me, but it's still the runt of the litter. "Knock on Any Door" sees Jackson more or less borrowing from "Somebody's Baby" - although the more I listen to it, the less it sounds like the Fast Times hit. Funny that. It's a song that has some great playing, but the echo/call-and-response as he sings the chorus was irritating then, and still doesn't feel right.

However, all is forgiven as the last two songs on the album are near-perfect '80s pop. "Say It Isn't True" is a time capsule that reflects all of the The Day After fears people were carrying around as we waited for someone to drop the big one. Even the cheesy voice-over doesn't spoil the song (although I do wish it wasn't there). I was reading up on the album, and I didn't know "For a Rocker" was released as a single. I never heard it on the radio, which still amazes me, as this was indeed single material. This straight-ahead rocker is one of my favourite Jackson Browne songs ever.

I'm gonna tell you something I found out
Whatever you think your life is about
Whatever life may hold in store
Things will happen that you won't be ready for

For me, the secret sauce that enhanced all of the songs was Rick Vito, who played guitar on the album. The guy has serious chops, and the way he serviced the songs was nothing short of spectacular. His lead phrasing is so tasteful. What a monster. Greg Ladanyi produced the album with Jackson Browne, and it is a great-sounding record. It wouldn't take long after getting this for me to go back and pick up a few more albums, and the last album I'd buy was 1993's I'm Alive, which had some fine songs.

It's too bad it was so short, with only eight songs and under forty minutes. Oh well, can't have everything. This was where I started, and Lawyers in Love will always feel special.

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...

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