Trooper - Flying Colors

I meant to pull out my copy of Hot Shots, but as I had recently found a couple of Trooper albums I'd not heard (which outside of their greatest hits album was pretty much everything in their catalogue), I figured why not put on something that was new to me.

It was either Money Talks or Flying Colors, as there were a couple of songs I remembered from Flying Colors, so Flying Colors it was. Aren't you glad you get to get a little peek into my decision-making process?

I've not heard the album, so it's the deeper tracks here I'm curious about, particularly the Frank Ludwig compositions. Frank had the unenviable position of being a decent writer and a good singer in a band where Ra was a great singer, and the songwriting team of Ra McGuire and Brian Smith were the backbone of the band.

This I'm sure was a pretty sore spot, and it's not especially helpful or sporting for me to sit here and stir up the embers of what is now pretty ancient history. When Frank was good he was amazing, but I just couldn't get into most of his stuff. It's not like I didn't try, it's not like I didn't have albums by Ironhorse, Union and Body Electric ... anyway, this isn't a shit of Frank post.

Getting back to Flying Colors, I remember listening to a radio show about the album when it came out and that was when I first heard "3 Dressed Up as a 9," which was playing on the awareness us teenagers had of Bo Derek running on the beach in a yellow one-piece. The other memorable bit that stood out was the band was no longer being produced by Randy Bachman. Howard Steele was now sitting behind the board, and they more or less dedicated "Go Ahead and Sue Me" to their former producer and mentor.

Frank had three songs on the album, and frankly (I know, I know) they're really good. "Back to You," though, really seems to be riffing on the old Mott the Hoople classic "All the Way to Memphis" - they're like kissing cousins. It's the vibe more than anything, as they're not all that similar, but it keeps coming to mind. The other thing about Frank's songs here is that they also feel very different from the rest of the album. While the credits aren't explicit, there are a number of guest musicians that seemed to flesh out a backing band within the band. Among the players were Steve Lukather and Jeff Porcaro. Some of the guitar work on Frank's songs is very much Steve Lukather. It makes me wonder if Frank was down in LA recording his songs on his own.

The band also had a huge hit here with "Janine," and Flying Colors would be one of Trooper's most successful records. It was also their fifth album in the span of five years, with all of their albums with the exception of their debut going platinum. The album was a little heavy on the mid-tempo songs, but it was the '70s and ballads sold records, but this was still a rock record. The only misstep was an odd cover of The Kinks' "All Day and All of the Night," which, to be fair, does try to put a new spin on things while keeping true to the song's bones. Why not? After all, Van Halen got a lot of mileage out of The Kinks' "You Really Got Me," and it was possible it could have been a sleeper for the band - it wasn't, but that's beside the point.

A year later in 1980, when the band dropped their follow-up, also produced by Howard Steele, no one noticed. They were a '70s band and there they'd remain. They'd release Money Talks in '82 and then self-release their final album in 1989.

It's strange to think that Trooper packed an entire career into five short years. As a kid it seemed like they had been around forever, and their songs have been woven into the fabric of the Canadian classic rock tapestry.

There's a reason Hot Shots was one of the biggest-selling albums of all time in Canada - it's all killer, no filler. Too bad MCA didn't wait a year so they could have added a couple of songs from Flying Colors, then it would have been definitive.

I suppose as far as career-capping releases go they went out on a high note. You could say they passed with Flying Colors.

It's okay, I'll see myself out.

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 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 , ...

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...

Old Enough to Forget

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