Idle Eyes - Idle Eyes

Idle Eyes released their debut in 1985, and there were two songs that got a fair bit of airplay back in the day. "Tokyo Rose" was pure '80s awesomeness, and "All Day," a song that at the time I didn't really think was all that special. However, those songs helped earn the band a Most Promising Group Juno Award in 1985, beating out Rational Youth, The Arrows and others. The award is a bit of a curse as much as anything, as generally it was like getting a kiss from Judas.

I bought the album for "Tokyo Rose" and gave the album a couple of cursory spins, then filed it. My general recollection when thinking about this album was that it was one killer and the rest filler. Yeah, I was pretty merciless back in the day. I used to have a pretty long commute and I often taped entire albums for the car ride, but most of the time it was mix tapes. I don't think I ever taped the album. Once I passed judgment, I moved on pretty quickly to the next shiny thing. "Tokyo Rose," though, never got old. Several years ago I found the album on iTunes, and I just bought the one song.

I was rummaging through the discount bin recently seeing what there was to see, and lo and behold there was a really nice looking copy of Idle Eyes, and I figured maybe it was time to revisit the past and see whether or not young me was full of shit, or if I had called the ball back then and listening to it now would just be a waste of time, not to mention a few bucks.

The album leads off with their classic "Tokyo Rose," and it was like meeting up with an old friend. However, the next song, "Two Rivers," caught me off guard. I sort of remembered it, but this was a really good tune, and then it was followed by the band's other hit, "All Day," a song that was much better than I remembered. Now I'm struggling to re-evaluate my long held belief that the album was basically shit. All of the songs on the first side were really good. I'm trying to think like a young me and figure out what didn't work for me at the time and why I was so dismissive.

Side two opens with "Danger," another really solid song, and now I'm really wondering what I was thinking. There really hasn't been a dud or misstep so far. It's interesting to hear the new wave elements mixed with bits of reggae. At times it brings to mind some of the stuff by The Payolas. Considering Cliff Jones was managing both bands at the time, I wonder if this was a coincidence.

The band here was comprised of

Tad Campbell: lead vocals and guitar synth
Glenn R. Smith: guitars
Miles Foxx Hill: bass
Phil Robertson: drums
John Webster: keyboards

Tad Campbell in addition to being the band's frontman, also wrote the songs on the album. At times he sounded very much like Colin Hay (Men at Work), which actually kind of surprised me, as I don't remember making the comparison before. I'm not implying Idle Eyes sounded like Men at Work. This was a very '80s record, and despite some of the dated effects I'm actually kind of surprised at how well most of the songs here have held up.

John Webster got his first blush of success with Stonebolt, and would then play with Red Rider on their underrated Breaking Curfew album in 1984. After Idle Eyes he would go on to pretty much play for every act that would record in Vancouver for many years.

This was the only album I had back in the day. The band released more albums, but their follow-up a year later didn't garner much attention, and they were dropped by WEA before going the indie route.

After playing this a few times, and totally having to rethink my opinion on this album, I looked up the band and found out that Tad Campbell was convicted of sexually assaulting a minor in the mid '90s. It really makes a song like "Danger," which was already borderline creepy, take on a very different tone when you consider what happened later.

I wouldn't say this ruined my childhood, as when this came out I had so much music to choose from that I generally cherry picked the best bits and pieces. But I will say that the first few times through again, prior to reading up on the band, were really exciting, and it made me happy to rediscover a lost gem.

After reading up on Tad, the experience is now tainted.

That makes me sad.

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 , ...

Lighthouse - Sunny Days

Bin diving at my local record store where there were more than a few choices to make. After picking out a half dozen treasures, I figured I'd stop looking and leave before I caused myself trouble at home. Lighthouse was one of those ridiculously large bands in the early 70s I didn't understand. I mean really, BTO was just four guys, The James Gang was three, until they weren't, what in the world do you do with a dozen guys in a band? Of course I had a radio — it was the first significant purchase I made with my money from cutting lawns. I think at the time it cost about 35 bucks, and had FM and other high frequency things I never got to use living out in the suburbs away from the reach of the big city FM signal. "Sunny Days" was a great song. I remember thinking it was cool and didn't switch to the other AM station when it came on. A few years later, when I got my first record player, the obligatory K-Tel anthologies would feature a myriad of cut up and edited...

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