Sweeney Todd - If Wishes Were Horses

When Nick Gilder and James McCulloch left Sweeney Todd, the remaining members were left in the lurch. They did have an ace up their sleeve: their deal with London Records. But they'd need to find a worthy replacement for not only their vocalist, but also their guitar player. To complicate things, they'd have to come up with material on their own, as Gilder and McCulloch were the primary writers on the band's debut. The band would try out a new vocalist, Clark Perry, who would re-record the vocals to "Roxy Roller," and it would be released as a single and even managed to crack the top 100 in the US before Chrysalis Records, Nick Gilder's label, managed to issue a cease and desist. Not long after, Mr. Perry would exit the band. The search was on once again for a replacement.

If Wishes Were Horses is an album that is more infamous for being the starting point for a very young Bryan Adams, who took over lead vocals and managed to pull off a very credible Nick Gilder impersonation. Frankly, if you were listening to this cold and didn't know, you'd be hard-pressed to tell this was the same guy who would later torture the world with "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You" when Kevin Costner decided he'd make a good Robin Hood and needed a love song.

Rather than shit on this, you have to listen to it for what it was. This was the tail end of glam, and by 1977 the genre was running out of steam. The band here is game, and Skip Prest, who took over the guitar spot, seemed to step into the role seamlessly. I'm guessing the band, prior to the departure of Gilder and McCulloch, must have been working on material, as the band included "Tantalize," which was written by the duo, and it's a great song, but not the best song on the album.

Like the band's debut, this album was produced, directed and conceived by Martin Shaer. The album was recorded at Little Mountain Sound, and a young Bob Rock was one of the assistant engineers. The album really did sound pretty good. Martin also wrote the title track to the album, and it is a really good song and was the obvious single, but it was no "Roxy Roller." Frankly, none of the songs on the debut measured up either. A two-year layoff was a long time in the '70s, and with the high-profile departure of the band's lead singer and guitar player, who were also the main songwriters, any buzz for the band seemed to go with them. For many years there was a lot of local backlash directed against Nick Gilder for his role in torpedoing the band.

Which was a shame, as the other guys stepped up, and even young Mister Adams co-wrote three of the songs on the album. One of the highlights was the instrumental "All of Sudden," written by keyboardist Dan Gaudin, that features a killer solo by Skip Prest.

The album is more than a footnote or a weird guilty pleasure. This is a really solid album, and part of the problem was timing and a changing landscape more than anything. Glam's brief heyday was pretty much over, and more than anything, If Wishes Were Horses was a victim of the times more than a deficiency in the source material on the album.

It's too bad that both of the band's albums have been exiled to the Island of Misfit Toys, where only those who can find an old vinyl record can listen to the band. Maybe one day someone at London Records, or whoever holds the licensing, will decide to make the band's albums available for a new generation.

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 , ...

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...

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 BTO's 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) - so 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 toward the progressive, but with a pop bent. Oddly enough, the vocals rem...

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