Rich Wamil & Copperpenny

Rich Wamil & Copperpenny - Fuse

This was another one of those "still sealed" records I scored for by birthday. The cover looked cool, I subconsciously filed this under rock and prog, and assumed I was in for a '70s keyboard driven album. I mean, with a title like Fuse, with a cover that featured an old glass fuse - the kind you could once find in your stove or old electric panel I figured this was going to be an electrified experience.

Before I dropped the needle I scanned the back cover, and the only name I recognized was Hayward Parrot, who engineered the album. This was cool, as I'd just seen his name on The Front an album I'd just found. While the cover showed Rich Wamil & Copperpenny, the album's spine and the record label attributed this to Copperpenny. I'm guessing at the time there was some name recognition for Mr. Wamil, and sure enough on the credits his name is in bold print.

The album opens with "Disco Queen" and sure enough, what I'm getting is a blend of rock and funk with a generous dollop of keyboards. I wasn't disappointed, this was good fun. The whole first side was solid. The second side features a really cool cover of Van Morrison's "Feedback on Highway 101" that got my attention.

Musically Copperpenny was first and foremost a rock band, that incorporated elements of Gospel, rhythm and blues, funk, and a lot of swagger. I often find this point of the '70s a lot of fun, as there are big riffs, with the echoes of the late '60s permeating the grooves. In a way this reminded me a bit of some of the early Grand Funk - particularly the Mark Farner fronted songs.

Rich has a big voice, and I can see (hear) why his name is on the marquee. However, the whole band is on fire throughout, and the album sounds huge and full. I've also got to give a lot of love to Bert Hermiston who played the sax solos on the album. The epitome of cool. I'm not generally a sax man, but you have to give it up when things stand out.

Just as I getting into it, the last song "Tossin' and Turning" ends, and I'm left wanting more. This was too short. I'll just have to get up and flip it over and repeat.

Since I'm on my repeat listen, I'll just take a peek and see what's out there on the band. Fuse was the band's third album, and their first on Capitol Records Canada. It was also their last. Which was a shame. There's very little out there on Mr. Wamil, or the band in general, although I read that they had a short lived variety show (I wonder if it was a local cable access show) and they were responsible for discovering Doug Henning. Maybe he was the one who made their career disappear.

Regardless, Copperpenny now seem to be little more than a forgotten footnote, and despite being on Capitol Fuse isn't out there on any of the streaming platforms. The album is a buried treasure. Their RCA debut is out there, and I'll likely give it a listen, but it was this album I wanted to find.

I was going to try and work in a blown fuse thing to end with, but it seemed a little too dismissive and I didn't have the energy.

Billy Rankin - Growin' Up Too Fast

Growin' Up Too Fast was never widely released on CD (if at all), and 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 that had a bonus track of " Get It On (Bang A Gong)" that when I bought the album 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. However, at the time all I knew was this guy laid it out cold with the first cut "Baby Come Back" and proceeded to lay down one killer tune after another and closed out the album (sans any...

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...

Lighthouse - Sunny Days

Bin diving at my local record store where there were more than a few choices to make. After picking out a half dozen treasures, I figured I'd stop looking and leave before I caused myself trouble at home. Lighthouse was one of those ridiculously large bands in the early 70s I didn't understand. I mean really, BTO was just four guys, The James Gang was three, until they weren't, what in the world do you do with a dozen guys in a band? Of course I had a radio — it was the first significant purchase I made with my money from cutting lawns. I think at the time it cost about 35 bucks, and had FM and other high frequency things I never got to use living out in the suburbs away from the reach of the big city FM signal. "Sunny Days" was a great song. I remember thinking it was cool and didn't switch to the other AM station when it came on. A few years later, when I got my first record player, the obligatory K-Tel anthologies would feature a myriad of cut up and edited...

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