Georgia Satellites - Georgia Satellites

I'm often asked, "Hey, what's your favourite cover song to play live?" More often than not, "Keep Your Hands to Yourself" is my reply. There are better songs out there for sure, many that are a lot more challenging, but for sheer goofy shits and giggles this is about as good as it gets.

I can remember vividly where I was when I first heard it too. It was the fall of '86 and Expo was winding down and I was in A&B Sound (man I miss that place) and it was being blasted in the store. It was a breath of fresh air. I mean, sure there was good old George Thorogood and the Destroyers and I really liked "I Drink Alone," but this was next level shit. I went and asked who it was, and was told it was a band called Georgia Satellites. I'd come to pick up Billy Squier's Enough is Enough, and I'd be leaving with more than one album.

I'd recently picked up Timbuk 3's debut that also came out in October of 1986, and it was kind of weird how much Pat MacDonald and Dan Baird sounded alike on some songs. Stylistically they were miles apart, but I was reminded of this when I put the record on. I'd not listened to this in several decades as I never did get this one on CD.

The album was produced and engineered by Jeff Glixman, who was behind the first four classic Kansas albums, and at first blush it may have seemed an odd fit, but this is a really great-sounding record and Jeff captures the band's energy - it's palpable. I would hesitate to simply dismiss this as a nice live from the floor recording as there's more going on here than you first suspect. The songs are straight ahead barn burning rockers, but there's some spit and polish on the songs. It's like detailing a classic car. You want to make sure the chrome and hubcaps are polished.

Now with all this gushing you'd think I wore out the album.

Nope.

Oh, I played it quite a few times, but there was just so much out there that I cherry-picked the best songs and would play the album occasionally, but most of the time I pulled it down when I was making a mix tape. As much as I go on about "Keep Your Hands to Yourself," and it is still the song I think about when I look at the album, I was reminded about the deeper cuts that I also really liked. The best of them is "Golden Light," a song that was decidedly less boogie woogie and more rock lament. It reminded me of something from those first few R.E.M. albums. The album closes out with a cover of the old Rod Stewart classic "Every Picture Tells a Story," which is probably the weakest song on the album. I was never a fan of the original, so that probably doesn't help.

It's been cool hearing this again. When they were good they were awesome, it's good fun. Funny how I often thought of this as one killer and filler. There was more going on here than I remembered. Especially "Golden Light," a song I'd forgotten about. It's not really like anything else on the album.

For all that I never did get any of their other albums, other than the obligatory best of CD. I have this one. It's all I need. I got the free milk, I don't need the cow.

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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