Red Rider - As Far as Siam

Red Rider seemed to come out of nowhere in 1980 with their song "White Hot." It was a wicked bit of rock magic that felt like something new. A big part of the sound was found in Ken Greer who added his string wizardry to the mix much like the late David Lindley complimented Jackson Browne. Ken's use of lap steel as a rock vehicle was pretty brilliant.

When the band dropped their follow up in '81 I remember picking it up before anything had started to catch on the radio. "Lunatic Fringe" melted a lot of faces, and it's kind of hard to underscore how big a deal the song was to so many people. The song was a rock anthem that didn't sound like anything else out there. In short, this one song was worth the price of admission. Did I mention Ken Greer's solo? Excuse me while put my face back on.

The rest of the album felt somewhat anti-climactic, but by no means was it a waste of time. It was still very firmly rooted in the '70s and while the '80s were ramping up those first couple of transition years were a murky music DMZ.

I've run this through a few times, and each time I'm a little more perplexed. Oh, not in a bad way ... it's all good. It's just a weirdly diverse album - kind of like a sausage. There are a lot of bits and pieces thrown in, and you wouldn't think they'd go together but dang it, once it's all ground up and wrapped in a casing it all works.

I need to regroup. This isn't going where I thought it was going.

Originally I was just going to remember the album as I remembered it. "Lunatic Fringe" and a few tunes that were pleasing, but the rest had just faded with time. I would take a few pithy shots, and then make a crack about Tom Cochrane eating the band, much like Paul McCartney ate Wings.

The album has so much more going on. I may be over forty years late, but I'm going to sit and properly digest this in a sitting. I'm going to eat the elephant.

You may as well get comfortably, I'm going to start at the beginning. Let's take care of the elephant in the room right off. "Lunatic Fringe" opens the album, and frankly sets the bar so high the rest of the album cannot measure up. Honestly it doesn't have to. There, no let's settle in and see what else is going on.

"Cowboys in Hong Kong" is a song that I like a lot more now, than I did back in the day. I'm hoping this will be a recurring theme. Thematically and even a bit musically this feels like a sequel to "White Hot" and that's not a bad thing.

Now here's a song that at the time sailed right over my head, but now with the benefit of time and an expanded musical vocabulary the genius of "Only Game in Town" highlights Tom's love of '70s pop. Sitting here with the lyric sheet and the credits the subtle harmony touches provided by Kenny Edwards, Andrew Gold and Brock Walsh. Yeah, those were the guys who were an integral part of the mid to late '70s California sound. From albums by Linda Ronstadt to Karla Bonoff and even Andrew's solo work, it must have been a wonderful moment to get those guys in the studio.

"Through the Curtain" is one of the rare full band compositions, and it's rockabilly infused foot stompin' rocker with more that a little crunch. I used to think this was a throwaway track, but that's hardly fair. This is a lot of fun.

Side one closes out with "What Have You Got to Do (to Get Off Tonight)." Now, I always liked this song, but it's a hard song to peg. At first blush it's a pretty straight forward rock song, but it's actually musically pretty clever, it's got a couple time changes, a gang vocal chorus, with hints of new wave, and Ken's slide work is outstanding. The tension in the song keeps building and when the solo finally provides a bit of sonic release ... it's too short. Yeah, I know that's icky and dumb, but I was trying to think about what I had to do to get off tonight, and that's where I ended up. Sorry ...

Flipping the platter over, the second side opens with a piano driven ballad, complete with strings. My first thought was to dismiss this as an echo of pure '70s schlock, but this was different. This was the start of what would eventually become the power ballad, that really came into it's own in the '80s. There were echoes to Toto here and I'm not sure that's me pigeonholing the band after the fact, or it was Red Rider just writing a ballad and making an effort to be commercial.

Well speaking of Toto, "Caught in the Middle" features a lot of "Hold the Line" styled piano. The song itself is often one I overlooked, and even as it played through the first couple of times I sort of dismissed it. Jeff Jones' bass run is a core element of the song - it's actually pretty decent but never really amounts to much.

Another ballad? I'd forgotten how many mid temp songs and ballads were on side two. "Don't Let Go of Me" is another generic song wrapped in a solid performance, but there's nothing here that hasn't been done before, and I hate to say it, done better. Heck, even the dual tracked guitar solo felt phoned in. To add insult to insult, the song then pulls out that most frustrating of musical tropes: the long fade. The song doesn't even do the listener the courtesy of having a proper end. Somewhere in an alternate universe this song is still playing, and the band is tired and worn out, but they never get to finish.

The album closes out with "Laughing Man" a song with hints of "Lunatic Fringe" in the arrangement, and is okay for all that, and has a some solid guitar work, but by this point I'm suffering a little bit of ear fatigue. When the song ends it's actually a relief.

I honestly though going through and picking apart how the sausage was made would reveal more depth to the album than I remembered. It did to a a degree, and it also reinforced some of my long held assertions about the album as well. Discovering Andrew Gold and Kenny Edwards was probably the coolest thing I didn't pick up on as a kid.

Don't get me wrong this was a really solid album, and some pissy comments aside this is definitely worth the time to play. Red Rider was always a band that could elevate an album with one or two songs. As Far as Siam was no exception.