Joan Armatrading - Show Me Some Emotion

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, spent 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 fourth album and the second to be produced by Glyn Johns. Apparently, her 1976 album, simply titled Joan Armatrading, is considered essential listening. This one, not as much.

With nothing else to compare it to, I at least get to listen without any baggage.

Right off the bat, the album starts on an intimate note with "Woncha Come on Home," which features Joan on guitar and, oddly, a thumb piano. I knew enough before putting this one on that she wasn't going to be a Motown-styled singer, and I was curious to see where she'd go musically. This is where my impediment with genres becomes a detriment to describing things properly. At its core, this is a rock record by a singer-songwriter who infuses elements of jazz, funk, and quite a few points in between. In short, it's pretty cool.

The assembled talent pool here is also staggering. Most of the bass work on the album was handled by Bryan Garofalo, who is a monster and has played with everyone from B.B. King to Joe Walsh. Dave Markee shows up a few times on bass, unusually paired with Henry Spinetti. Those guys were the rhythm section on a lot of Clapton sessions. Joan played acoustic guitar, including the wicked solo on "Opportunity," while the electric work was provided by Jerry Donahue. Heck, she even had Kenney Jones drumming on a song.

As I expected, this is a great-sounding record, and my goodness, the songs are all pretty great. However, if I'm being honest, the first couple of plays have been somewhat forgettable despite being very enjoyable. That's part of the problem with trying to jot down thoughts while listening to an album for the first time. I'm trying to take it all in at once, and unless something really stands out, there's a tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Thankfully, the copy I have has all the lyrics and credits, and it's helping make things stick.

I will call out "Opportunity," the opening cut from side two, as probably my favourite song on the album. It jumped out of the grooves on the first play and has only gotten better with subsequent spins—and that solo by Joan is so freakin' tasty. Actually, most of side two really grabbed me by the feels.

I think I'll give this one a couple more spins before I put it away. I know I was going on about this being a bit forgettable, but that's not fair or accurate. I've listened to this a few more times now, and while I am partial to side two, my overall impression of the whole experience has been really positive.

I really like this.

I'm a fan.

I'm also kind of glad to be finding this now, because I know for sure that back in '77 I'd have never given this the time of day. Not enough rock. I may be late getting here, but at least I got here. Glyn Johns' production and engineering have given this a truly timeless feel.

It's also kind of strange reading up on this album and seeing the ambivalence critics had toward Show Me Some Emotion. Most of what I've read seems to put this record firmly in the shadow of her previous release, Joan Armatrading, which makes me really curious about what I'm missing.

I now have another album on my list.

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, 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 , "Don...

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 continues 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 beg...

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