Hooters - One Way Home

Hooters released their follow up to Nervous Night in the summer of 1987. It hadn't seemed like two years between albums. When the album dropped I picked it up right away. I really don't recall my reaction at the time. I do know I immediately pulled "Satellite" off the album as my favourite track and it ended up on a lot of mix tapes. There were a couple other songs that I liked too, but I'll admit to having shelved the album pretty quickly after hearing the highlights, and giving it a few spins. It was a damning judgment, but this was 1987 and I was getting so much music that my attention span was pretty short. However, there was always something about the band I liked, and I would pick up their next album Zig Zag in '89 and then I would more or less lose track of the band.

Getting back to One Way Home, I will say that it's been a hoot (sorry) getting to hear this again. Now, I do have this on CD, but finding a pretty mint copy of the record was too much to pass up. I have always found it really, really irritating when the jacket doesn't list the songs in order, and the band does one better by including a lyric sheet that has the songs in a different order as well. Nothing like making you work to follow along.

Musically the band was top shelf, and they were a rock band who incorporated a lot of different influences that has helped keep this sounding pretty fresh after all these years. "Satellite" is still to me the centre of the album, but really there are no duds here and the folk elements blend so well with the harder elements that were sometimes infused with a reggae swagger.

In many ways this to me the best of their trilogy of major label releases in the '80s. It's their most cohesive and the one that should have been huge. True, as I sit here all I can remember of Zig Zag was their cover of "500 Miles" and "Brother, Don't You Walk Away" so I'm just making a blanket judgment based on an admittedly faulty memory. After all, before I sat down and revisited One Way Home I didn't remember much aside from the big songs - although I'd always thought of this as a stronger album than Nervous Night despite not having the killer hits. I know right, that makes no sense. Feelings, sigh.

There was something special about these guys and sadly One Way Home didn't perform nearly as well as it's double platinum predecessor. It would go gold which was something, but from there it was a steady spiral downward, at least from a commercial perspective.

Too bad. This was a smokin' album. I don't know if it was Eric Bazilian or John Lilly who handled the lead guitar duties on the album, but I've always loved the guitar work on those first few albums - so tasty. It wouldn't surprise me if it was Eric, the guy played pretty much everything but drums on the album. This isn't to sleep on the other creative in the band, Rob Hyman - Rob and Eric shared lead vocals, splitting the duties more or less down the middle. Their voices were remarkably similar (at least to me), and they often sang counter harmony to each other creating a blended vocal that gave them a lot of their sound.

One Way Home is a really solid album.

I think I'm going to have to pull out Zig Zag now and see what else I've missed.

Garfield - Strange Streets

I'd seen this before in the bin, but kept flipping through the stacks. I'd see it a few more times, each time stopping to look at it a little more. There was something kind of cool about the cover where the stylized Celtic knot had the dotted yellow line - it was a strange street for sure. I pulled the record out of the jacket and I was struck by the centre image. There was the familiar Mercury label, the same one I'd seen a thousand times on BTOs Head On album. Well, I'd bought things based on odd associations before - like when I had to buy anything that Solid Rock Records released (this was generally a good thing) who knows maybe this was a hidden gem. There weren't any real scratches or rash, just a lot of dirt and dust - it seemed to clean up okay, but we'll see how it goes. The album opens with the title track, and this wasn't straight ahead pop, or rock. It was leaning to the progressive, but with a pop bent. Oddly enough the vocals reminded me of Mi

Hoodoo Gurus - Mars Needs Guitars!

The first time I got this album it was a gift from my old roommate Otto. For a goofy little nebbish he would occasionally surprise me with some left of field musical treasures. Although, I still think he was reaching a little when he brought home the new "Led Zeppelin" album by Kingdom Come and forced me to listen to "Get it On" over and over again. I'd not listened to Mars Needs Guitars in a long, long, long time. The first thing that I jumped out at me was how David Faulkner's vocals reminded me of his fellow countryman Peter Garrett from Midnight Oil. I think the reason this never occurred to me was at the time I didn't have any Midnight Oil until Diesel and Dust in 1987. I'm not saying it was all the time, but there were a couple of songs where it stood out. Not a bad thing, just a thing. Even at the time this felt slightly out of step with what was going on in 1985. It seemed like everyone was using drum machines and synthesizers and having t

Saturday Night Fever - The Original Movie Soundtrack

It was going to happen sooner or later. Nostalgia is a cruel Mistress...she can dull the sharpest edges and over time can even soften the hardest of opinions. I found this in the dollar bin, and frankly at a dollar I was worried about what this would cost me. Not only from a monetary perspective, but my time, and more important my credibility. Fourteen year old me was screaming "Don't you dare. DON'T DO IT! Put it down. Walk away!" Then there was grey bearded me holding it and looking at it, thinking, "How bad could it be? I actually kind of like "Staying Alive" and me buying this record won't bring disco back, and no one will have to know I bought this." I pulled the album out of the bin, and carefully took out the records. They'd seen better days, and there were a couple of decent scratches that would no doubt make their presence known later. The jacket was in decent condition, and both of the albums had the original sleeves. I dusted the

Old Enough to Forget

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