Randy Matthews - Plugged In

There were a couple of years where I was predominantly buying "Christian" albums from a little bookstore that had a small feature wall where they'd display the new music that just came out. There were some amazing records that I still look back fondly on. There were also more than a few spectacular duds that I tried hard to like, but never quite got there.

I knew who Randy Matthews was as I had been "gifted" a number of albums and in the small pile of records was a double live album called Now Do You Understand, from 1975 that was just Randy and a guitar. It was pretty cool, and he was a great storyteller. It wasn't my favourite album but it was classic early Jesus Music, and when I saw his new album on the wall, it looked like a rock record. Randy no longer looked like a wild hippie. His hair was cut, and his beard was gone, although I'm not sure how comfortable it was standing there plugged into a socket. Conveniently there was a turntable and a bunch of demo records in the store, so I put it on. I got most of the way through the opening cut, "Plugged In," and it was a decent rock song, and I left with the record under my arm ... after paying, of course.

The album actually holds up pretty well. A lot of Christian music suffered from a bad case of "soundslikeshititis," and Plugged In still sounds full and the performances are really solid. The album was recorded at Scruggs Sound Studios in Nashville and was digitally mixed and mastered, which was still pretty rare back in 1981. Randy Scruggs is credited on the record for his guitar work, as was Gene Sisk, who provided keyboards. The core band here was Louie Weaver on drums, who would later join Petra, Allen Holmes played guitar and co-wrote most of the songs, and David McCaskell was on bass. Judging by the credits and Randy's note, "Al, Dave, Lou - you guys are the best! Long may we run." There seemed to be the promise of more to come - but there wasn't. When he released his follow up, Streets of Mercy, in 1987 they were nowhere to be heard. Heck, poor Louie was replaced by a drum synthesiser.

I have no idea if the album stiffed, or what. A lot of my friends had this album and we all thought it was pretty cool. Music distribution that depended on little bookstores to move product always seemed like a pretty flawed business model. Apparently he had released an album a year earlier with the same core band, but I never saw it, as I'd have picked it up if I even knew it existed. Although now that I know it's out there, it's on my radar. Who knows, one day I'll find a copy.

I hadn't thought of the album in decades, and then I saw a copy and figured it was worth a shot. Even back in the day some of this felt a little heavy handed, particularly "Loud Shroud," which I suppose was incontrovertible proof of Jesus' existence.

For all my cheap shots about Christian music, I have to admit that this is still a really solid album, and honestly the songs aren't unwieldy musical bludgeons to drive home the message. The songs are all anchored in Randy's faith, and that's just fine with me. Randy himself vocally would venture into Joe Cocker territory on occasion, but the band was playing it tight down the middle. There was just enough crunch to give the songs a nice punch, but it wasn't hard rock either. It was straddling that sort of no man's land between decades.

It was a pleasant surprise to be honest. I remembered the album as being really good, but I wasn't sure if that was due to my narrow window of experience at the time, or if this was actually good.

It was good.

Very good.

Can I get an amen?

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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