Electric Light Orchestra

Electric Light Orchestra - Discovery

I already have this one ... but when the dollar bin spit out a classic you take a chance. Turns out this was in the dollar section for a reason. It looked pretty clean, but hidden in the grooves the Rice Krispie gremlins had set up shop and didn't wait for someone to pour the milk to bring out the snap, crackle and pop and an honest-to-goodness skip. It was mainly the first cut, but it was annoying. I've gotten so used to having a decent experience with my bin diving that I'm caught off guard when there are actually issues.

Like I said, I already have this, so the main draw was having the gatefold. True, there were no liner notes, but the cover itself was okay to display if nothing else.

The big draw here, of course, was the band's ubiquitous hit, "Don't Bring Me Down," which somehow managed to be incredibly awesome with Bev Bevan's driving drums, and then just as quickly become irritating. The only other song I've ever truly worn out was "Shooz" by Styx. I mean I was head over heels for that song. I was a beginning guitar player and I had no idea how such a song could be played ... I can listen to the song now - but sparingly. Whereas with "Don't Bring Me Down" it's gone all the way round to being awesome again. Dang, even the kitschy "Brrrrruce" is fun again.

Discovery is an interesting album in that it is still very much a rock record, but it was steeped in an odd mixture of disco-infused rhythms and layers of backing vocals that were as much a part of the band's sound as were the strings. The first side alone is full of great songs, from the opener "Shine a Little Love" to the oddly progressive and quirky "The Diary of Horace Wimp" that feels like an odd outtake that would have been at home on The Beatles' White Album right before "Revolution 9" - turn me on, dead man indeed.

The second side opens with the infectious "Last Train to London," which I really shouldn't like as much as I do. It's really just a disco song with a great keyboard part. The rest of the songs are okay, but boy oh boy they did save the best for last. "Don't Bring Me Down" was an absolute perfect blending of the weird excess the band could bring to a pop song and killer riff and sing-along chorus. I know people love to point to Phil Collins and Hugh Padgham as defining the drum sound of the '80s, but I suspect the roots of that sound started with people loving what they heard on ELO records - especially on "Don't Bring Me Down," where everything was right up front and propelled the song forward. Who knows how much is Bev Bevan and how much came from the producer's chair. I'll lean to Bev on this one.

Jeff Lynne wrote the songs and produced the album although the backing band was still pretty consistent with Bev Bevan on drums, and Kelly Groucutt on bass. Richard Tandy played the majority of the keyboards on the album and also assisted with the string and choir arrangements.

Discovery would end up going double platinum in the United States, and when they released their greatest hits album it would move four million copies. It was like the band could do no wrong. Like so many bands, the turning of the clock into the new decade was like a finish line for so many great acts. Sure, Xanadu would go double platinum, but when the band released Time in 1981, people had moved on, and the band's heady commercial success was a thing of the past. The album would go gold, and their follow-up Secret Messages was certified gold in Canada, but that was pretty much all she wrote.

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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