Stylus over Substance (Volume 2) - Billy Joel, The Inmates, Steven Schlaks, Baron Longfellow, Doucette

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 late '70s and then make a hard turn with his 1980 release Glass Houses. A couple of years later in '82 his follow-up The Nylon Curtain dropped, again produced by Phil Ramone. I was never what you'd call a big Billy Joel fan, but I often liked what I heard on the radio. This was well before "Uptown Girl" showed that the golden boy didn't just have feet of clay, they were covered in shit ... but that was off in the future, which is still my past, so it's hard to try and separate what I'm listening to from what I know was coming.

The Nylon Curtain was an album I really only heard in its entirety a couple of times back in the day as my girlfriend had a copy. The song I was drawn to back then was "Goodnight Saigon," which is still cool, but no longer carries the same weight. The song that I was indifferent to in '82 was "Allentown," but over the years the song has just gotten better.

Much of the album feels like a transition piece where Mr. Joel is trying to reconcile his past work of the late '70s with what was coming down the pipe as the '80s started to pick up speed. This isn't to say this isn't a good album. It's aged really well, and I find that tension between his rock side on "Allentown" and "Pressure" fitted nicely with his more ambitious pieces like "Goodnight Saigon" and the lush "Scandinavian Skies," and at the centre isn't the piano - it's the voice.

While the album would still go double platinum, it was about five million light compared to his last album. The next album wouldn't be a trip to the future, rather Billy would go farther back in time, and despite my personal opinion of his 1983 effort An Innocent Man, it caught on, and he'd be back to selling millions and millions of albums. Go figure.

The Inmates - Shot in the Dark (1980) Okay, this was a nice surprise. This was the band's follow-up to their 1979 debut, and here the iNMaTES are killing it. Their brand of roots rock and roll with an edge and twang should have caught on. They were either too early, or too late depending on how you look at it. I suppose for me back in '80 I would have been looking for more rock and less Thorogood. Of course, a few years later when I was all over bands like The Godfathers, the iNMaTES would have been my jam. My loss then, but now it's my gain as this album is awesome. "Stop it Baby" was a very clever reworking of "Dirty Water" right down to the mixed-up riff, which may have been a deliberate in-joke with the band, or I'm just hearing what I want to hear. Regardless, it was a great tune. There's a timeless element to this kind of pop that just feels fresh and live even after all this time. The album closes out with their rocking cover of Grand Funk's "(She's) Some Kinda Wonderful," which was a nice surprise.

Like First Offence, this one was produced by Vic Maile, who caught the energy of the band. Speaking of energy, the band still consisted of Bill Hurley on vocals, Peter Gunn on guitar, Ben Donnelly on bass, and Tony Oliver on rhythm guitar, but they now had a drummer, Jim Russell. It's hard to put my finger on it, but there's a cohesiveness to the band that just infused all of the tracks with a sense of urgency and purpose. What a wonderful surprise.

Steven Schlaks - Dream With Steven Schlaks (1976) It was sealed and had been since 1976. It was just sitting there and for a few bucks I'd be the one to cut the cellophane and pull out the record for the first time. I mean, how could I refuse? All I had to go on was the cover, and I tried to guess what lay hidden in the grooves. Anticipation. This was my box of chocolates, and I was really hoping to not get a bunch of Nougat-filled candies that thought coconut was a flavour enhancer. There wasn't even an insert, just an album inside the jacket. A first for me. Interesting.

The album for the most part is a piano-driven easy listening affair. It was 1976 and sure enough there are a couple of disco songs. Not good disco (an oxymoron, but you know what I mean), sort of a pastiche of easy listening-infused disco. The first side closes out with a ballad and honestly Steven seems to be channelling Andy Williams with some odd synthesizer noises, but it is a pretty song, and about a decade late. The songs feature tin can strings of the shrilly variety and more piano, some of it pretty pleasing to be honest. It's the synth parts that are particularly dated, but at the time I'm sure it generated a few raised eyebrows for being on the bleeding edge. It's not really fair for me to be too hard on this one, after all I'm the one who took a chance, and like a box of Cracker Jack, or if you preferred Lucky Elephant pink popcorn, you don't get to pick your prize. So to that end, I got what I got. I know this was 1976, but listening to this I was transported back to 1973, where I'm sitting in the back seat of my parents 1973 Mercy Marquis Brougham listening to an 8-track copy of the Love Unlimited Orchestra and grooving to "Love's Theme" and all was right with the world. One of those things was really good.

Baron Longfellow - Baron Longfellow (1980) I may as well get this part over with right away. For whatever reason I thought Baron Longfellow was a goofy Harlequin romance style euphemism for penis. Somehow I also knew this was a pseudonym employed by Andy Kim. Yeah, the guy who sang "Rock Me Gently," a truly awesome earworm from the early '70s. He also co-wrote "Sugar Sugar" by the Archies. First the good. The record was co-produced by Michael Omartian, who was riding pretty high after his work with Christopher Cross. The core band featured Mr. Omartian on keyboard, and Steve Lukather on guitar, and Michael Porcaro on bass. Guests would include David Foster, Jay Graydon and Dean Parks. These guys are among the best of the best. So from a performance perspective, any weakness is in the source material.

There really isn't any bad here. The worst thing I can say is this is truly middle-of-the-road effort that feels like a collection of songs Neil Diamond passed on. Although to give credit where credit is due, "Go It Slow" is pretty cool, and actually feels like a musical kissing cousin to "Rock Me Gently," but then again I'm looking for positive things to write. Just typing meh meh meh over and over would just make me sound like a doofus. Heck, even the weird mashup of the "Jumpin' Jack Flash" riff married to "Last Train To Clarksville" couldn't really save "The Couch," but I'll admit it did catch my attention, it just didn't hold it.

I mentioned "Sugar, Sugar" earlier, and Baron Longfellow closes the record out with a slightly reworked version of the old bubble gum classic, that somehow managed to have none of the energy and charm of the original.

Lyrically though there are some fun bits here and there and I have to give Mr. Kim credit for being able to turn a phrase. The lyric sheet often made better reading than listening. Too bad, I really was hoping to hear a lost classic.

Doucette - The Douce is Loose (1979) Jerry Doucette pretty much released the perfect rock song in 1977 when he dropped "Mama Let Him Play." It had it all. I only heard the album once when I borrowed it from a friend who asked for it back the next day. I remember being pretty underwhelmed by the rest of the songs, but man the title track was perfect. When he released his follow-up in 1979 I remember seeing the album, and I thought the cover was pretty cool, but I couldn't remember hearing any of the songs on the radio.

Over the last year or so I've picked up his early trio of albums, and I'll give his debut a proper digesting at some point. It was the sophomore effort I wanted to revisit today. I know the album wasn't well received and some of the press I read was pretty unkind. 1979 was a hotbed of new music, but it was also the last stand of a lot of '70s-era bands. I was mostly expecting meh, with some great fret work, and right from the opening track "Run Buddy Run" the songs are punchy, and steeped in '70s rock. Heck, Jerry even sounds a little like Randy Bachman at times. Now imagine if Mr. Turner, Robbie and Blair had tapped Jerry instead of Jim Clench to fill in the missing position when Randy left ... ooooh, what might have been.

Anyway, the whole first side was really good. This was a wonderful surprise. Side two opens with "Nobody" that is pure pop magic, it has a disco tinge, but not in a bad way - this is a pop song with edge, and although it managed to crack the top 20 here, it should have had legs. Odd that I don't remember hearing it ... maybe I did but don't remember. Well, I remember it now. Musically Jerry was pretty adept at crossing genres, and his melding of hard rock riffs with '70s soaring harmonies was pretty cool, and "Before I Die" is a great example of this blurring of styles.

The album closes with a live rendition of "Further On Up the Road" that clocks in at close to seven minutes of guitar goodness. Jerry could play. I mean the guy had serious chops, and despite his overuse of chorus in his effects chain, it added flavour. It was like MSG: it may give you a headache, but it was good at the time.