Edin-Adahl - X-Factor

By 1984 I wasn't buying a lot of Christian music. Oh, there were exceptions but for the most part I'd grown pretty weary of shitty sounding music wrapped around the same tired, heavy-handed lyrics within the structures of an inferior pop song. I'm painting with a wide brush here and I'm practically throwing the baby out with the bath water, but for every decent "Christian" record there was a mountain of trash that was supposed to be appreciated because it was a ministry, not an art.

Now, to prove my point I'll enter into evidence those first three North American releases from Jerusalem. From 1980 through 1982 I bought three albums of rather tired hard rock that seemed to have lyrics translated into English from Swedish using a travel dictionary. I'll admit I look back rather fondly on these albums, but it's not because of the music. The cover of the first album was a homage to Boston, the second featured a Les Paul leaning against a smoking Fender amp, and the third was a lone rider on horseback against a black backdrop with bolts of lightning. Musically the band was a plodding mess for the most part, with Ulf Christiansson singing in heavily accented English. You can't make this stuff up, and we ate it up, because there was no other alternative at the time. I will also sheepishly admit that at times I thought it was awesome ... but was it?

Now, I've heard of Edin-Adahl, but I have no idea how, why, or when, as I never had any of their stuff. I don't remember hearing them. I suppose I saw an album on a rack at some point. I recognized the label Refuge because it released Daniel Amos' Vox Humana (also in '84, now that is a great album and one I need to pull out at some point). Refuge seemed to specialize in more alternative rock which was a good thing back then. Like I said, pickings were slim.

A glance at the back cover and I learned that Edin-Adahl, like Jerusalem was from Sweden. Listening to Edin-Adahl was an odd experience. I keep trying to imagine how 21-year-old me would have received this one, versus how old man me is processing it for the first time. The album starts out pretty strong with the new wave infused title track "X-Factor" but as the song went on, it became pretty obvious that English was not the band's strong suit and the Swedish accent slipped through. Lyrically many of the songs are just a step above gibberish, and I'm guessing the guys worked really hard on them too. It gave me a better appreciation for ABBA's music.

Which just goes to show I was lying through my teeth when I'd tell my parents "I don't really listen to the lyrics" when trying to defend whatever band was offending their ears on the radio. Lyrics matter, but musicality of the lyrics matters more. It doesn't have to make sense so long as it sounds good, and for better or worse if you didn't listen to the lyrics some of the songs on X-Factor sounded pretty good.

With the passage of time, it's hard to remember that this was once pretty cutting edge, especially within the limited and out of step Christian market. For me to sit and bitch about the production and songs sounding like they were made in 1984 I suspect was exactly what the band was striving for. I can actually see my younger self eating this up like ear candy. There was a uniformity to the songs, and while there really isn't a holy cow moment, there are no duds or misfires.

There are no credits on the album other than songwriting, but from what little I can find out there, this band was made up of two sets of brothers: Bertil and Lasse Edin, and Simon and Frank Adahl - hence, Edin-Adahl. As to the horns on the album they were the real deal, which is kind of cool considering in '84 most horns were a cheesy sample.

In 1990 the band won Melodifestivalen in Sweden, which earned them a spot in the Eurovision Song Contest. The following year they would place second. So the guys had some credibility at home.

It may have sounded like I didn't care for this, but that's just how I come across sometimes. This was a nice little slice of '80s AOR, and while the accents and poor lyrics are irritating, the music was pretty decent, at times really decent. It sounds generic AF now, but there was a time music like this felt like the future. I suppose this is like trying to decide whether you want Sno Balls or Twinkies after the zombie apocalypse.

X-Factor is like a collection of Sno Balls.

I happen to like them both.

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 , ...

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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