Old Enough to Forget

Hot on the heels of We're an American Band, Grand Fund teamed up again with producer Todd Rundgren and released Shinin' On in March of 1974.  The album is probably best remembered for the band's cover of "The Loco-motion" that took the Eva King classic written by Gerald Goffin and Carole King and turned it to eleven and delivered one of the greatest distorted guitar solos of all time. The album is short, just a little over half an hour and contained eight songs. Depending on how you look at it the album is pretty uneven and somewhat generic. However, then they were good, they were next level. The album opens with the title track, and that one is pretty great. The previously mentioned "Loco-motion" was the reason I picked up the album - well, that's not entirely true, it was in the dollar bin and in pretty decent shape - I would have picked it up regardless, but I was stoked to get the choo choo song. What I wasn't expecting was how unbelievably...

The little sticker on the shrinkwrap says, "You may remember David Baerwald from David & David's Boomtown ..." Yeah, 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 as an excellent album. I waited for a follow-up ... and waited, and then in 1990 it was a solo 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 and the picture of David walking with his dogs...

Looks like I almost got stuck in the '70s this month. Not a bad thing. Considering how much I go on about the '80s and all that, blah blah blah - I have collected a lot of stuff from the decade of my childhood. Which shouldn't really be a surprise considering most of what's available on vinyl is heavily concentrated in the '60s and '70s. When CDs came out I quickly jumped ship ... hence the lack of records from my favoured decade. Still, man there was some great stuff coming out of my childhood, and a lot of new to me stuff that has truly stood the test of time. Let's take a look at this months ... Five For Fighting No. 10 Nick Gilder - Frequency (1979) Joan Armatrading - Armatrading (1976) Ian Thomas - Calabash (1976) Linda Ronstadt - Prisoner in Disguise (1975) The Vapors - Magnetic (1981) Nick Gilder - Frequency (1979) Nick followed up City Nights and "Hot Child in the City" with Frequency and the single that should have been huge "(Yo...

You should never say never. Just ask Don Henley. So here I am feeling like I'm betraying my youth by testing to see how thick the ice is now. Pretty friggin' thick. This was a day I sort of dreaded, but was expecting. I mean it's not like this wasn't coming. Over the last couple of years I'd put myself through a lot of stuff I never thought I'd actually sit and listen to - let alone actually (begrudgingly) admit to enjoying. It was musical hell when a song from Culture Club came on the radio. I never expected that to change ... ever. Still, a lot of things have frozen over, or at least chilled enough to numb the pain these albums once brought to my ears. Adrian, who runs my favourite record store and feeds my habit, had been trying to cleanup and refresh some inventory and he went a little nuts on the bargain bins - especially the dollar section. I'd popped in just to say hi and see what was up - and in short order I had over a dozen records, and among them ...

The Hometown Band released albums in 1976 and 1977, and served as Valdy's backing band for a little while, and then as quickly as they were, they weren't. As a kid there weren't a lot of choices in terms of television channels - CBC was a universal constant, which explains why so many kids of my generation revered Mister Dressup and Ernie Coombs. We knew there was a Mister Rogers, but that wasn't in our neighbourhood. Casey and Finnegan were awesome, and in a pinch there was always The Friendly Giant and Rusty and Jereome. However CBC was also home to the Juno Awards, which for a long time was the home of iffy Canadian Content that aspired to greatness, and often settled for mediocrity. We did have our own rock royalty - Bachman Turner Overdrive as our resident kings of rock, and Anne Murray was our queen. If she put out an album she won an award. I remember watching those mid to late '70s shows eagerly hoping to catch a glimpse or even better yet a performance by a...

If push ever came to shove and I had to honestly list my favourite songs "Jane" would be near the top. I can't really describe what it is about the song that just crushes all my buttons, but it did - and still does. When this came out in '79 the sheer number of killer songs that were out that year was astounding (look it up, make your own list). The album though was a different thing all together. Freedom At Point Zero was an album a buddy of mine had, and I remember listening to it once . Expecting more than it could possibly deliver I was profoundly disappointed. I don't know if I even made it to the second side. I borrowed the record and put the song on a mix tape, and then gave it back - he didn't want it back, but I didn't want it either. When the band had another hit with "Find Your Way Back" a couple years later I never even bothered trying to find the record ... I had written the band off. Fickle I know, but my roots didn't go back to...

Avoid Freud was released in the fall of 1980, but it wasn't until the spring that "High School Confidential" seemed to be playing everywhere. We'd giggle when Carole sang, "It makes me cream my jeans when she comes my way." On the radio it would be bleeped, but it didn't matter. Most of us, or at least me - had no idea that it was a lesbian love song. It didn't matter - the song was infectious. There was of course the inevitable backlash when something becomes too popular. For me, there was always something about Carole Popes voice that was nails on a blackboard. I will admit that I liked "High School Confidential" right up until I didn't ... but with time I like it again. I had never heard anything other than what I heard on the radio. I had no desire to pick up an album, and when the  Payolas released "Never Said I Loved You" in 1983 with Carole singing the duet with Paul I would have a visceral reaction to the song when it...

I have no idea why I remembered Ian Gomm. The title to the album Gomm with the Wind always stuck with me, and I knew there was a song I knew, but couldn't remember. It was "Hold On" and while it wasn't a big hit, it did get some radio play and Ian was very much part of that early bunch of power pop acts who were crossing the pond. It's a fun song, and Herbie Flowers bass is a sonic punch to the gut. The album contained a dozen pop nuggets with only one song going over three minutes and at that was by seven seconds. There were a couple of covers, one by Chuck Berry, "Come On" that was really cool, and the Lennon-McCartney "You Can't Do That." It was get in, get out. Keep it tight. None of the songs felt incomplete they were just right. The album was released on Stiff /Epic and label-mates included Nick Lowe, who's "Cruel to be Kind" had been co-written by Ian Gomm, along with Ian Dury and the Blockheads and the legendary Pointe...

The song "Black Cars" is one of those quintessential '80s songs that just seemed to have it all. I always liked the song, but I never picked up the album. When "Wild Horses" started to get some airplay a few years later, I actually tried to find the album it was on but for whatever reason it was out of stock, or I was looking in the wrong place - I left empty handed.  I don't think I looked too hard. Part of the problem was I had a preconceived notion of what to expect, and it was largely influenced by his '70s hits. They were to be fair, pretty great songs, but for some reason just rubbed me the wrong way. Trust me, there's a right way to rub, and a wrong way ... I'll just move on as this is not going to end well if I keep going - it won't be a happy ending. Recently I found a pristine copy of Black Cars in the dollar bin, and it was too good to pass up. I knew for sure I was getting one killer song, anything else would be gravy with a cher...

Boney M. was a very confusing band for me. Disco sucked. By extension Boney M. sucked too. "Rasputin" was cool and didn't count, or at least it was exempt from the obligatory suckage disco was supposed to encapsulate. Then again, looking back I had a special compartment for quite a few disco songs I sort of liked, but publicly shit on. Boney M. was the brainchild of German producer Frank Farian who wrote many of the songs, produced the records, and also sang. For years, many years, I had no idea that the folks on the cover weren't the ones on the grooves. The official line up of the band was Liz Mitchell and Marcia Barrett who shared lead vocals. Although it's Liz who is often associated as being the "lead" singer. They were both from Jamaica. Vocalist and dancer Maizie Williams was from Montserrat, and dancer and vocalist Bobby Farrell hailed from Aruba . Incidentally, neither Maizie or Bobby appeared on the records. If people knew, no one really cared...

If you weren't around in the early '80s it's hard to explain the short lived Australian invasion ... well it wasn't so much of an invasion, but people, myself included love hyperbole. BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE! Back in 1981 seemingly out of nowhere Men at Work were suddenly everywhere. A pair of honest to goodness earworms in "Who Can it Be Now?" and "Down Under" propelled the band into the stratosphere. I eagerly bought the album, and remember being profoundly disappointed in the record. Two killers, and filler. It's not an album I've heard in decades. In 1983 the band dropped Cargo and again the band scored big with a couple of tracks: "Overkill" a song that has aged incredibly well, and "It's a Mistake" that was very much part of the early '80s hysteria over nuclear annihilation. Fearing that it was going to be another killer and filler I didn't pick up the album, and sure enough I dismissed the album, and t...

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 Theatre 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't look now, but here come the '80s!" The '80s were indeed here, and ...

I have always like Al Stewart. From those early hits there was something about his style of writing and his vocals that just seemed to get me right in the feels. Chris de Burgh was the same for me, but it was really only those two Rupert Hine albums in the early '80s I liked. Whereas with Mr. Stewart I'd sort of followed at a distance for a long time - at least the songs on the radio. Then after his 1980 release 24 Carrots that had "Midnight Rocks" there was radio silence. It wasn't until 1984 he'd emerge with Russians & Americans and I don't remember anything at all being played on the radio. Which was a shame, as this was a really cool album, and it had tapped into the very real tensions that were omnipresent in the early '80s. The songs here as you'd expect aren't typical pop songs. Al was a dense writer and for those used to a chorus, hook and may be a bridge before being bashed with a hook again this was harder to follow. It wasn...