Kevin Paige - Kevin Paige

I found a sealed copy and figured why not? It could be really good ... or it could be truly horrific. Staring at me from the cover picture was a dapper looking young man sporting a few days of scruffy stubble, looking like a young Rick Springfield (I do not mock Mr. Springfield). As far as I knew, and I knew nothing about this album, it could be anything. It wasn't opened, kind of like Schrodinger's cat, except it was vinyl. I'm not really a cat person.

I had my fingers crossed and hoped for good.

What I got was actually pretty good. It was a pop record with a bit of crunch, at times a lot of crunch, which was pretty great. This is an album that wouldn't have existed without Michael Jackson's Bad, an album I actually bought. Don't ask, since I staunchly avoided getting Thriller ... even though I secretly liked some of the songs. Come on, "Beat It" was worth the ticket price.

The other artist this brought to mind first, though, and actually had more in common with was Robbie Nevil, who had a pair of really great albums in the '80s, particularly his '88 release A Place Like This. However, Michael was more popular, and sadly Robbie's career was already trending down even as his albums got better. Curse the fickle public who can't appreciate a good thing.

The album kicks off with a fun one two punch with "Anything I Want" and "Don't Shut Me Out," which were apparently released as singles and cracked the top 40, but I'd never heard them. I found it kind of interesting that this far into the '80s Kevin was still throwing keyboard Orchestra Hits into his music for emphasis - that was so over, but it did work. I guess he was going in early to be retro.

Kevin also seemed to have a penchant for throwing in the classic Michael Jackson "Whooo hooos" here and there. Don't misunderstand me, everyone was doing it in their own way, this was just more pronounced. Besides, it worked. It isn't lost on me that when this came out he was only 23 years old (yeah, I looked it up), and this was a remarkably mature work. He was also a pretty frickin' talented kid.

For a debut effort, Chrysalis must have had a fair amount of faith in Kevin's vision for the album, as in addition to arranging and producing the album, he performed all the vocals and instruments. If nothing else, that's pretty impressive.

Like I've said more than once, this was pretty good, but for an album that had clear ambitions to be a power pop album, it was a bit of an odd duck. I tip my hat to the early blending of some rap elements into a pop/rock song, and the results were decent.

Like I said (I like to repeat myself), I actually liked this ... more than I thought I would once I realized what I had on the turntable. For me there was just enough crunch and rock here to push my happy buttons. I can also hear why this didn't catch on as well. If this had come out a few years earlier, it would have likely been right in the sweet spot.

With the benefit of time served, I don't have to worry about when it came out. I can listen to it and enjoy it just as it is. What it is, is good fun.

As far as major market releases, Kevin would be a one and done, which was too bad, as I'm sure there was more to be had from this talented musician. I suspect, like so many other artists who are just a step out of the limelight, he's out there still doing his thing and likely killing it.

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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