The Guess Who - The Greatest of The Guess Who

Growing up the second biggest thing in my life was comics. My dad had some very early MAD paperbacks among his collection of books. I would end up with a lot of the magazines and dozens of paperbacks of my own as time went on. I loved Don Martin, but when it came to the parodies for movies or TV, there were two names that were above all others: Mort Drucker and Jack Davis.

A couple of years after Burton Cummings had left the band to pursue his solo career, RCA put together yet another greatest hits collection to milk what they could out of The Guess Who. Considering the first best of collection had gone platinum in Canada, and gold in the US back in 1971, and the second collection in 1973 went gold in Canada, wasn't it about time for another one? After all Burton was riding high in 1977 with his double platinum My Own Way to Rock, but that success didn't seem to help this one too much. It did crack the Billboard 200, but I guess people already had enough recycled Guess Who albums.

To me though, this is the album I remember as the band's best of. I mean, the cover was simply amazing! How could you not love this one? Besides, I had no idea there were already a bunch of best of albums out, this is the one my friends had.

Now, I know that as far as being a definitive greatest of The Guess Who, there are a lot of missing pieces, and it's one of the reasons best of albums can be tricky. You're going to leave something off and offend someone somewhere. However as a kid I knew very little about them. To me, they were the band that Randy Bachman was in before launching BTO. Burton Cummings during my formative years was a pretty big deal with his solo hits, even if some of them were kind of sucky schmaltz.

I knew "American Woman." I mean, who didn't? But it was their waning hits that I remembered. Particularly songs like "Clap for the Wolfman" and "Star Baby." So listening to this one for what it is, it certainly packs a punch, and frankly hits a lot of the band's high points. With a lot of so called best of albums, there tends to be a fair bit of filler just to flesh out an album - here with The Guess Who the opposite was the problem. A double album wasn't feasible (although in 1980 when Burton dropped The Best of Burton Cummings that was a double album, go figure) so they just packed in a dozen tunes and spanned the band's catalogue (although the classic lineup did perform the first five tunes). Which I really appreciated. It would have been easy to focus solely on the early years, but Bruce Somersfield who compiled the album did a great job picking songs and fleshing out a pretty cohesive album. Of course a nod to Jack Richardson who produced the songs is in order too.

I also really liked how the album provided band credits for the songs. Considering how many guitar slingers the band employed over its run, getting a chance to see who did what was a really nice touch.

So let's give the guys a shout out:

Burton Cummings – lead vocals, rhythm guitar, keyboards, flute, harmonica
Randy Bachman – lead and rhythm guitar, backing vocals
Jim Kale – bass, backing vocals
Garry Peterson – drums, backing vocals

Kurt Winter – lead guitar, backing vocals
Greg Leskiw – rhythm guitar, backing vocals
Don McDougall – rhythm guitar, backing vocals
Bill Wallace – bass, backing vocals
Domenic Troiano – guitar, mandolin, backing vocals

While the band was never at the top of my list of favourites, they've had enough stellar moments to make this a really worthwhile addition to my collection.

Having Jack Davis do the cover was just gravy. I got pretty lucky with this one - not bad for a loonie, eh?

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 , ...

David Baerwald - Bedtime Stories

The little sticker on the shrinkwrap says, "You may remember David Baerwald from David & David's Boomtown ..." You bet, I remembered David Baerwald. Back in 1986 Boomtown was an album with moments of sheer brilliance. The whole album may not have been as top shelf as the first few tracks, but that didn't matter - it is an excellent album. I waited for a follow-up ... and waited, and then in 1990 it was a solo David, David Baerwald, who dropped Bedtime Stories . I snapped it up. "All For You," the opening cut, is still my favourite song on the album. It was mesmerizing. I'm not sure if the song got any airplay, it may have, but that may have been wishful thinking on my part as it was on a lot of mix tapes at the time and I heard it a lot in the car. The CD had a great booklet with all of the musician credits and lyrics. Oddly, when I found a sealed copy of the record (a great score), it just had a plain paper insert - the picture of David walking wit...

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 continued 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 b...

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