Old Enough to Forget

I'd often confuse Doctor & the Medics with Dead or Alive. Honestly they weren't really all that similar, but then again I'm easily confused and easily distracted ... oh, look at squirrel. Where was I? Bananarama ...  Nah, just kidding, mostly. I was out of town recently and I figured I'd look for a record shop, and I managed to find a really fun and quirky little shop. They didn't have a lot of discount records, but they had a few boxes and the guy who ran the store was a treat to shoot the shit with. Heck while we were there my buddy Olav figured he'd buy me a record too. So he did. I'll get to that one in time: BB Gabor. You may know him, he did "Nyet Nyet Soviet (Soviet Jewellery)" back in 1980. Don't worry I didn't know him either, but that is a pretty good song. I'm sure you're wondering when I'll get to the point, and I'll admit I've wandered off a little further than normal. I found a few treasures and among t...

Joan Armatrading is a name I've known for a long time, but I've never really heard anything by her. I've caught snippets here and there but that's about it. Then a while back I was reading up on the original Joe Jackson band, and Gary Sanford whose guitar work was so interwoven into those early albums would spend some time in the '80s playing guitar on a couple of her albums. Well, that was intriguing. Maybe I should keep an eye out for some of her stuff. As fate would have it I managed to score a really nice copy of her 1977 release Show Me Some Emotion. For me, the draw here was the production credit: Glyn Johns. It was recorded at the legendary Olympic Studios and if nothing else this would be a really good sounding record. Joan released her debut album in 1972 and Show Me Some Emotion was her forth album, and the second album to be produced by Glyn Johns. Apparently her 1976 album simply titled Armatrading is considered essential listening - this one, not as m...

Emerson, Lake & Palmer were never a band I knew a lot about. Like most people I could name at least one song, maybe two depending on the season. It would be either, "Lucky Man" or "I Believe in Father Christmas" but other than that I was more aware of a couple of their album covers. Tarkus was cool and Brain Salad Surgery was mind melting. The first couple of times through ELP all I could think was "Man, this is different." Not bad, just different. Challenging in a good way, and when I sit and play this I start on one side and go through to the payoff that concludes the record, "Lucky Man." While I am not an aficionado of all things progressive rock, I have more than a passing appreciation for complex well thought out musical passages. The early '70s was a strange and wonderful incubator for a lot of really odd ball bands who managed to find an audience that was moving past the psychedelic meandering jam bands and was looking for musical...

Up to today, my knowledge of The Vapors pretty much started and ended with their seminal hit "Turning Japanese" a song that has more than stood the time. In 1980 a lot of bands were riding the first wave of new wave, and the raw energy of those heady days was pretty awesome. I always liked the song, but back then my purchasing power was pretty limited and there was an awful lot of music I would have liked to have ... but it was the age old balancing of needs and wants. I wanted a lot of stuff that I honestly didn't need. Well, that and I had no money. This was always a band I was curious about, and figured one day I'd pick up the album. As fate would have it, I found a copy that had seen better days - the cover was worse for wear, but the vinyl inside was immaculate. I could live with that. I'm managing to scratch a lot of things off my old "want" list ... and it seems with every item I cross off, I find something else to add in it's place. I don...

Lucky number seven. A bit of an odd assortment this time out. Mostly familiar faces, and some odd ducks I had no idea what to do with because I've written about the bands before, but the albums were still part of my landscape so I figured why not put them in anyway? So here they are for your reading enjoyment. Don't forget to like and subscribe, and ring the bell to get updates. ... yeah, that just reads as desperate. I'm just glad you're here. Fun drinking game for you - take a shot every time you find a typo or grammatical error. You'll need to do this when you have time to recover. Five For Fighting No. 7 SAGA - Wildest Dreams (1987) Ian Thomas Band - Still Here (1978)  Styx - Kilroy Was Here (1983) Juice Newton - Quiet Lies (1982) ABBA - ABBA (1975) SAGA - Wildest Dreams (1987) After Behaviour in 1985 the band's trajectory would take a turn. For some fans, particularly those who'd been on the bandwagon the longest, the next couple of albums would rep...

Let's play musical jeopardy.  "I'll take bands that made me want to poke a pencil into my ear drum for 100 Alex." "That's today's daily double. What band sold over 120 million records and turned the world tartan?" "What is Nazareth?" "No, I'm sorry that is incorrect. The answer was Bay City Rollers." Bay City Rollers were a big deal here in Canada for what seemed an eternity but was probably all of two years. Despite watching them on TV when The Krofft Superstar Hour first aired, and later changed to The Bay City Rollers Show, it wasn't cool to listen to their music. Oh, you had to give it up for "Saturday Night" because that was just pure fun ... but generally they were a bunch of guys who wore tartan shirts and were '70s teen idols, who along with David Cassidy and Donny Osmond were hanging on posters in little girl's rooms all over the country. I was rummaging around in the dollar bins, and I stumbled ...

For a moment in the early '80s it seemed like The Tubes were finally going to get their due.  After back to back gold albums in Canada, a feat they never managed in the US - then again there were more zeroes required to go gold there, the band was on a roll. Then came Love Bomb ... I guess the band decided they needed a change and after a couple of albums helmed by David Foster that found the boys moving away from their more outrageous elements to focus on commercial success, they would once again bring Todd Rundgren back into the fold to produce their 1985 effort Love Bomb . Now I had been waiting for the follow up to Outside Inside for a couple of years and I remember seeing a video for "Piece by Piece" and liked the song, but the video was awful. I only ever saw it once ... it's on YouTube if you're inclined. I tried to find the record once or twice and then more or less forgot to keep looking. Besides, I had Fee Waybill's 1984 solo effort Read My Lips ,...

Like any kid growing up in the '70s you'd have had to be living under a rock to not be inundated with Neil Diamond songs. The cover for Hot August Nights was the epitome of what a rock star was supposed to look like. Although I never heard the album in it's entirety until fairly recently. I was dragged to the theatre by my parents to watch Jonathan Livingston Seagull . Despite his many ear worms, I never had any Neil Diamond records growing up. He was too safe and well, kind of boring. A little while back I was watching The Last Waltz, and amidst a who's who of rock royalty, up steps Mr. Diamond to sing "Dry Your Eyes" and I thought it was okay, but he was pretty commanding from the stage. He may have known he was the odd duck there, but he didn't seem to give a shit. I didn't realize that the song he played came from an album produced by Robbie Robertson, and that Garth Hudson was featured on keyboard on the track.  Man I love the internet, there...

Funny how you can know a name but not know anything about the artist. Shari Ulrich is one of those artists who just skirted on the fringes of real success here in Canada. That sort of reads as a dismissive shot, but it's not. Many years ago I was a camp counsellor for a couple of summers and one of my fellow "shapers of future minds" was Rick Scott's son who was incredibly funny and we had a hoot over those two summer camps. Anyway I can't remember how it came up that he was Rick's son, most likely because I fancied myself a songwriter who could song about food and animals ... yeah, whatever you're conjuring in your mind's eye it's even worse. Why am I telling you this? I have no idea, but it's one of those things that came to mind when I was sitting here listening to One Step Ahead . Regardless, Shari was a member of the Pied Pumpkin that was apparently a biggish deal in the early '70s, and then she, along with Valdy, was a member of  The ...

I've been squirrelling down a rabbit hole the last couple of days. When I pulled out the Randy Stonehill record I found myself going back and playing a bunch of stuff tangentially related to Larry Norman through his old Solid Records imprint. To say that Larry was like the Kevin Bacon of my rock world, especially in the "Christian" market, is understating the connection to so much of what sits on my shelves. Like many of Mark's fans I started with his 1979 release Appalachian Melody . Even then you knew there was something special about this guy. However the depths of his talents as a musician, writer, and producer were never fully plumbed as his was a life cut far too short. Mark Heard's initial golden run ran from 1981 to 1985, and I have to say I am more than a little partial to Stop the Dominoes and Victims of the Age, his first two albums on Home Sweet Home. By the time he had released Mosaics in '85 I had become a little less enamoured with where he wa...

Back in '82 Larry Norman was top lining a slew of releases into the North American market with "Larry Norman Presents." At the time I had no idea these were merely repackaged releases. The Gap had come out a couple of years earlier, but in '82 this was the first time I'd seen or heard of Bryn Haworth, and it seemed intriguing. At the time, any association with secular artists was an odd badge of honour and here was Bryn Haworth with the Eric Clapton Band: Dave Markee, Chris Stainton, Henry Pinetti and Bruce Rowland. Well, that must mean something. I wasn't sure what to expect. I wasn't expecting what I got.  It was different, but man was it ever good.  At this point Toto IV was out, and that was constantly on my turntable, along with their earlier release Turn Back . Resurrection Band had dropped D.M.Z. and "Military Man" was one of my favourite songs. My goodness Stu Hess was near the top of my favourite guitar players ... a list that was cons...

Although the album came out in 1976, it wasn't until a few years later that I picked this up. For me it served as a bookend to Larry Norman's 1975 album In Another Land . Both albums were produced by Larry Norman, and both engineered by the legendary Andy Johns, with assistance from Tom Trefethen. These were the albums that introduced me the guitar playing of Jon Linn a player who was mind mindbogglingly tasty and did stuff that still makes my head spin.  Welcome to Paradise was a rock record filtered through Randy's acoustic guitar and his distinctive voice. The album kicks off with "King of Hearts" a song that has more than stood the test of time. Randy followed up with a two punch combination "Keep Me Running" and "The Winner (High Card)" that are still among my favourite songs - ever. It's these three songs alone that have made this album such an important part of my musical journey. As good as he'd be in later albums, with flashes...

The other day I was listening to GNP's lone album, the one with Robert Bevan on vocals, and it brought to mind the old CBC television show The Raes - that featured Robbie Rae (who was really Robert Bevan if that wasn't obvious) and Cherrill Rae. Prism guested on the show, and they played a couple of songs from their latest album. It's funny the pointless stuff you remember, but I still can't figure out where I hid my spare keys in case there was an emergency. Armageddon was Prism's third album in three years, and this would be the album that would stand as the band's commercial high watermark. In the summer of 1979 the title track "Armageddon" was the best song I'd heard in a long time and over the decades has aged into one of the coolest rock songs - ever. It was pushing nearly eight minutes but it there were no wasted moments. My summer job in 1979, the year I turned sixteen, was with the forestry service, and along with a youth crew of close to ...