Old Enough to Forget

In 1983 David Bowie ruled the world. After years of flirting with mainstream success, he was suddenly the flavour of the day. It was the latest strange turn from one of rock's most durable and creative voices. I'll also freely admit I was not a fan. At all. Not at first. To me he was the guy who did "Space Oddity" and that song weirded me out as a kid. I didn't like it, and thought it sounded terrible. It didn't help that when I was in my teens there was a young Bowie singing a duet with Bing Crosby on a Christmas Special where he mashed up some ridiculous counterpoint "The Little Drummer Boy." I hated it. Ick, phooey. Somehow I'd gotten it into my head that Bowie was unlistenable. He was a dinosaur who kept desperately throwing whatever he could against the wall, trying to make anything stick so that his 15 minutes would last a little longer. It didn't matter that there were quite a few of his classic songs that were pretty amazing. I had pa...

This was actually the album that turned me into a Roger Daltrey fan. In '85 when this came out Roger was 41 and out to prove that he could still rock with the kids. While the album may not have been a huge commercial success, it certainly seemed like a big deal in my house. My buddy Otto had the cassette copy of the album that contained the bonus track "Love Me Like You Do," which was an incredible song, and it was too bad it didn't make the cut for the album. There was a time, thankfully a short time, that record labels were trying to push cassette sales and a number of artists from Phil Collins to Flock of Seagulls included bonus tracks on their tape releases, and later this translated to CDs where extended versions and bonus tracks weren't restricted to 22 and a 1/2 minutes a side. Roger's voice was his instrument, and boy howdy he let it loose. Speaking of voices, I remember being really excited to see Mark Williamson's name listed as the backing singe...

I'm still trying to dig out from under my pile of treasures. I'm finding there are a little more to go through than I expected, but I'm trying to nest my thoughts and at least get to the core of what I'm trying to express. Likely as not I'm sort of all over the place. That's fine. This is as much for me as anyone, so the typos and grammatical landmines come with the territory. Sometimes I'll come back and fix things; more often than not they'll just remain as a testament to my inability to proofread. As always, have fun and remember to keep your arms and head inside the vehicle at all times. Billy Joel - The Nylon Curtain (1982) The Inmates - Shot in the Dark (1980) Steven Schlaks - Dream With Steven Schlaks (1976) Baron Longfellow - Baron Longfellow (1980) Doucette - The Douce is Loose (1979) Billy Joel - The Nylon Curtain (1982)  Billy Joel is a bit of an odd duck. Often pigeonholed as the "Piano Man," he would go on a tear through the ...

Time for another edition of A Streaming Pile of Hit - where you put the "s" in hit is up to you. This time we go deep into the vat of cheese and dip into The Osmonds. Yeah you read this right. The Osmonds baby, and this is worth your time - really. Months ago I found a double album of material by the Osmonds. From the brothers to Donnie and Marie. It was a terrible cover, but on the inside were some surprises. Especially the stuff from the early '70s. I figured why not revisit Crazy Horses . This looked like it had the potential to be awesome or awful. Far from being the joke you think you know the punchline to, there was a time these guys were the real deal. The album opens with "Hold Her Tight," a hard rocking song with a heavy driving riff that bears more than a passing resemblance to "The Immigrant Song" released in 1970 by Led Zeppelin. The difference being the smoking horn section and the talk box licks. Heavy metal wasn't a thing yet and wh...

As a kid who didn't love Steve Miller? His Greatest Hits 1974–78 is essential listening. Although full disclosure, I never owned a copy ... but my friends did. By the time I was able to buy my own records I was busy trying to keep up and didn't have a lot of budget to go back in time. Italian X Rays was the follow up to his platinum 1982 release Abracadabra . "Abracadabra" was a goofy song too, and while it was an earworm of the highest order and contained one of the worst (but still oddly cool) guitar solos of all time it was a song I still have a love hate relationship with. When Steve Miller returned in '84 with Italian X Rays I'm guessing everyone expecting this to be the next crown in his jewel. Turns out this is the album no one wanted. I do recall seeing, or hearing "Shagri-La" and thought it was ... strange. Of all the Steve Miller albums I've found recently to write about it was a toss up between this one and Abracadabra . I figured t...

Mr. Mister managed to catch lightning in a bottle on Welcome to the Real World . Although they had released a moderately successful album in 1984 that managed to crack the Billboard 200, most people, myself included, had no idea their '85 release wasn't their debut. The album is best remembered for two great singles, "Broken Wings" and "Kyrie" that were pretty much saturating radio at the time. I'd always assumed the album was a monster in terms of sales, and it was. In Canada it sold over 300,000 copies. However, in the US market while it did go platinum I'd always assumed it was in the millions ... millions! Not that sales is any indication of anything other than popularity. Still, when I really liked something, I assumed everybody liked it too. Now, let me qualify that assessment. I know I've said it before, but I loved making mix tapes for the car and I mined the big songs right away, and honestly didn't play the album as often as you...

Ironhorse was Randy's first band project since leaving Bachman-Turner Overdrive in 1977. It was released in '79, coming a year after Randy Bachman had dropped his solo album Survivor . An album I bought, and tried super hard to like. It had a great cover though. Coincidentally in '79, BTO (their second album without Randy) put out their last album, Rock n' Roll Nights , an album I saw many times over the years and never bothered to pick up. I'm looking for it now, sigh. I opted to pick up Ironhorse because I had heard "Sweet Lui-Luise" a grand total of one time on the radio, and I was hooked. This was classic Randy, and I was excited to hear what else was buried in the grooves. Yes, I knew the song was a deliberate attempt to recreate "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" complete with the stutter ... but so what?  I loved that one song, but mostly I was disappointed. That's how I remember it. Let's spin this and see what shakes out. The b...

Here we have an album I always looked back on fondly. Digging up the Outlaws on this instalment of A Streaming Pile of Hit - where you put the "s" in hit is up to you. Los Hombres Malo from 1982 would be pretty much the end of the line for The Outlaws. I was pretty late to the party having jumped on with their previous release and really didn't know a whole lot about southern rock, and even less about their countrified hybrid. I knew what I liked, and I liked guitars, and these boys were all about guitars. I know that Hughie Thomasson gets a lot of love for his playing, but Freddie Salem was no slouch. Sadly Billy Jones had left the band, and was dealing with personal issues, and eventually he'd succumb to his demons. However, here the band was delivering some pretty heavy riffs, while still managing to incorporate the band's blend of rock and country. The opening track, Freddie Salem's "Don't Stop" is still one of my favourite Outlaws songs. I...

This was the kind of music that more or less defined the '80s, at least the first half of the decade before the big guitars and hairspray took over. It was techno world infused new wave that was a mashup of styles all wrapped up in video friendly faces. The videos were infectious, and seemed to be everywhere. Smack in the middle of the frame was a photogenic Tom Bailey with his feet firmly planted while he twisted his body and waved his arms. Whenever I drive by a used car lot and see those inflatable dancing tube men, I think of Thompson Twins. While I was never a big fan, there were some earworms that I really liked, although I never picked up anything by the band until '88 when I picked up The Best of Thompson Twins: Greatest Mixes , and discovered they weren't the radio singles ... the phrase greatest mixes should have been a giveaway. There are times I'm not the sharpest knife in the fork drawer. Into the Gap pretty much scratches my itch with respect to the ban...

1986 was a great year for music, and the summer soundtrack was particularly good that year. There were two albums in my collection that were joined at the hip, Peter Gabriel's So , and Steve Winwood's Back in the High Life . As the summer cooled down Bon Jovi would drop Slippery When Wet , followed closely by Paul Simon's mesmerizing Graceland . Those are just the tip of the iceberg, and are stories for another day. Still, when I think of Winwood, I think of Gabriel, I don't know why - they're really nothing alike other than they were a couple of Englishmen who reached their commercial peak at the same time. I'm not going to go back and list off Steve Winwood's other accomplishments with bands like The Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, or that lone Blind Faith album ... the guy had laurels he could have rested on. Heck, with all that he was still only 38 (which seemed ancient back then) when he dropped Back in the High Life . By comparison, Tom Petty was 36 and ...

Coming in on the heels of Journey's 1983 album Frontiers , Steve Perry struck out on his own and released his solo effort Street Talk in 1984. To say Journey was a big deal during this period is an understatement. The band had been on an upward trajectory, and while Frontiers didn't perform as well as their 1981 release Escape , it was still a big deal. I suspect there was a lot of internal pressure within the Journey camp as to what was next, so members of the band decided to strike out on their own. Neil Schon had previously released a pair of albums with Jan Hammer, and in '84 he teamed up with Sammy Hagar and released Through the Fire as HSAS (Hagar Schon Aaronson Shrieve). I had them all on vinyl, and frankly I can't remember much about them. It was Steve, though, who as the voice of Journey had the best shot at solo success, and with Street Talk, he dropped an album containing ten polished pop songs that were closer to the generic adult contemporary artists of...

A new year and the whole Five for Fighting thing was fun, but it's run its course. I still like the idea of shorter blurbs, so I'll do the same thing with a different name and see how it goes. After all, who doesn't love it when you repackage the same old shit and give it a new name? Given the volume of stuff I have on my desk I may end up doing this more often ... or not. Let's under promise and over deliver. Les Dudek - Les Dudek (1976) Bay City Rollers - Bay City Rollers (1975) Smith - A Group Called Smith (1969) The Inmates - First Offence (1979) Sniff n' the Tears - Fickle Heart (1978) Les Dudek - Les Dudek (1976) The dollar bin giveth, and the dollar bin taketh away. Today it was in a giving mood, and I stumbled upon a cover that just screamed "LOOK AT ME!" Good lord, who doesn't want to hear an album where the guy is playing a wicked looking Gibson Goldtop with P90s that had a parrot perched on the headstock? What sealed it was a scan of...

Time for another edition of A Streaming Pile of Hit - where you put the "s" in hit is up to you.  Not sure why I've been going back to the old CCM stuff that I was particularly enamoured with back in the day. Rick Cua had been playing bass in The Outlaws, most notably on a couple of their later albums: Ghost Riders (1980) and Los Hombres Malo (1982), and when he dropped his first solo album, Koo'-ah , in 1982 I found myself really looking forward to hearing it. It's weird that this is listed as being from 1985 on iTunes ... I can't make heads or tails out of where the dates come from. After all, Hughie Thomasson, Billy Jones, as well as Freddie Salem from The Outlaws were playing guitar on the album (and killing it, by the way), and former Wings drummer Joe English was featured on several tracks. If nothing else, there was some pedigree on the album. The songs, though, were mostly middle of the road, with a little extra punch here and there. I remember wan...

Back in 1993 when Denis Leary was teaching kids how to spell asshole, he also had a bit where he was lamenting how screwed up and upside down the world had become on his track "More Drugs." Judas Priest on trial "because my kid bought the record, and listened to the lyrics, and he got into Satan." Well, that's great! That sets a legal precedent. Does that mean I can sue Dan Fogelberg for making me into a pussy in the mid-70's? Is that possible, huh?  I have to admit I did laugh at the time, because let's face it, songs like "Longer" and "Leader of the Band" were pretty syrupy. They made the most maudlin songs by Jim Croce and Harry Chapin (okay, it was really only "Cats in the Cradle," but let me have it). Dan was a heck of a player, make no mistake, and despite how sucky those songs were, they were also really good. Did I have any of his records ... hell no. My girlfriend at the time did have The Innocent Age , and we'd...