Wings - London Town

1978 was a pivotal year for me as a kid. The sheer number of watershed albums that were released that year is actually kind of astounding. When I found London Town in the dollar bin, complete with the original poster, I couldn't actually remember when it came out, but I figured it would be a decent listen. After all, it had at least one memorable song on it, even if I thought it was cheese when it was on the radio. Then, to be fair, an awful lot of what Paul released with Wings in the '70s was questionable, even if it was catchy.

Yeah, you probably know this was released in 1978, but I didn't. You probably also know that the biggest omission here is "Mull of Kintyre," which was recorded during the same period London Town was being put together. I know bands released non-album singles, but it was really irritating when you bought the current album and a big song was absent. The album really needed another good song. It boggles my mind that the folks in charge were sitting around and saying, "You know Paul, I think we should leave the best-selling single in UK chart history off your next album. It'll just be a distraction. Could you add a song about, oh, groupies instead?" To which Paul likely took a puff, held his breath for a few seconds before exhaling, and agreed, saying he had such a song in mind and this would be the perfect time to finish it for the record.

Wings were always an odd band, as it was always just thought of as Paul's band anyway, and in later years the band's catalogue just more or less seemed to be rebranded as Paul McCartney solo albums. Which may seem unfair, but I can see why this happened. By this time Wings was back to being Paul, Linda and Denny Laine. Now, I don't want to shit on Linda's contributions, but she always seemed a little out of place. At least Paul did his audience the great service of not alternating songs with his wife.

Denny Laine was another kettle of fish altogether, and frankly the songs he and Paul co-wrote are probably the best songs on the album, and Denny's turn behind the microphone on "Deliver Your Children" is one of the highlights on the album, if not the best song on it.

My first impression after a spin is that London Town suffers from a serious case of "meh" and is frankly a rather uninspired effort - and I am really trying hard to be positive here. It's not really good, nor is it that bad - it's just a nothing album. Not to say that there aren't the occasional glimmers of energy, like "With a Little Luck" and a couple of other songs, but mostly there's nothing that sinks in (trying to stay with the nautical theme).

Addendum (After a couple of more trips through the grooves): Yeah, this one just felt half done. I can't really change my initial reaction, but I was hanging out in the basement doing some general housekeeping and figured I'd just give this another spin or two and see if I was just being pissy or if I missed the boat (sorry, once I get going with the bad puns and references it's hard to stop).

I will say that I did enjoy the album more with repeated listens, and I especially enjoyed the McCartney/Laine collaborations, starting with the title track. Now, I know I was bitching about how the band left off one of their best songs ever in "Mull of Kintyre," but it's not like the album didn't already contain fourteen songs, and I suspect the band (Paul) figured there wasn't any room for any extra passengers.

Maybe, but it would have put this over the top.

Considering how many bands were killing it in 1978 and blazing new trails, London Town just plays it safe and sails right down the middle. If it wasn't Paul McCartney behind Wings, I wonder if this would even have seen the light of day.

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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