Old Enough to Forget

This was an album I have loved for years and years. I had a buddy who I played guitar with once in a while, and we figured were were a band. Just two guitar players who didn't write, or sing, or have a bass player, or drummer. Didn't matter. We were a band. We could play "Don't Look Back" by Boston ... sort of. Which was to us, a pretty big deal. It was Andrew who introduced me to some pretty cool music. He got me into Harlequin and he played me 20/20's song "Yellow Pills" which blew my mind. This was probably early in 1980, because well ... it was. I had been down at the second hand store, probably looking for Robert A. Heinlein books, because I loved his books, and boy were there a lot of them. I would read Clarke and Asimov too, but Heinlein was my jam. When I was there I stumbled upon a cassette copy of 20/20, and I hemmed and hawed and then put it back. I wanted the record ... but there was no record, only a cassette.  Ick. I rode my bike home ....

It's been a long time since I've sat and listened to this one all the way through. When I wrote about World of Wonders almost a year ago I spent half of the meanderamble talking about this particular album before finally getting to the point ... or as close to point as I ever get. When I think of this album I think of two songs, which happen to be the one two punch that kick of side one. The title track and the awesome stick work by Dennis Pendrith, and "Candy Man's Gone" a song so good that it still stops me in my tracks. When Mister Cockburn had a mind to he could craft one hell of a pop song that had some real bite to the lyrics. There were no baby baby songs here. This was heavy stuff that you needed to sit and read as you listened. I'll be the first to admit that I like the shiny objects and the pretty music with a hook. For Bruce it seemed like he relished setting the hook early and then seeing how much he could getaway with before he lost the fish. In ...

If there was an artist I actively despised as a kid it was Leo Sayer. "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" was just plain stupid, and that horrific Frankie Valli falsetto was too much. I always thought he looked liked a diminutive version of Robin William's as Mork flying through the air. Which just shows how time blurs things, as Mork and Mindy wouldn't debut for another two years or so after this album came out ... but I remember the cover, and the blurring of time certainly hasn't helped.  I always thought of Leo Sayer as being huge in the disco era, and that songs like the aforementioned dancing song and the ballad "When I Need You" were later than this ... apparently I was wrong. Funny that. I have memories of Leo Sayer on those late night music shows, and I guess it just all sort of ran together. Anyway, back to my active dislike of all things Leo Sayer. It really wasn't based on anything other than he wasn't rock, and I didn't like how he s...

I'm not sure how I ended up so many releases that feature Chris Hillman. I knew of him of course, from that one time he appeared on a 77s album way back in 1987. Everyone always made such a fuss over Roger McGuinn, and David Crosby that was all I really knew about The Byrds ... of course there were other members of the band but they seemed to be a footnote. Right or wrong, perception can be a cruel and unfair thing. A while ago I found Chris' 1976 release Slippin' Away. It was on Asylum records (which I always associated with prestige back in the day) and the cast of characters on the album was really impressive. The album though? I can't remember it ... at all. It was instantly forgettable, but pleasant as well. It was enough that when I found anything with Chris on it, I bought it. From his collaboration with J.D. Souther and Richie Furay, to an album with former Byrds McGuinn and Gene Clark. I would snap them up. When I found a pristine, and I mean pristine copy of D...

I've been listening to a lot of rock lately, and every so often I'll dip deeper into collection and clean out my ears a little with some good old fashioned pop. 1962 and I wasn't even a tadpole ... but this album has so many songs that I remember as a kid. Considering the heyday of variety television when I was growing up I probably saw him perform many of these songs. It's hard to imagine what things were like in the early '60s. I'm scanning through Andy William's discography, and from what I can tell, Moon River And Other Great Movie Themes was his ninth studio album, and in 1962 he would release four albums, admittedly some were likely compilations. Still, that's a lot of wax baby. This album would go gold, and stayed on the billboard charts for an astonishing 176 weeks. Take that Dark Side of the Moon ! I really like this album. The big song here is "Moon River" that was a new song at the time, and over the years the song would be synonymo...

I found these a while back, and they got filed and eventually ended up at the bottom of the pile and the pile just kept getting bigger. I decided maybe I should shuffle things a little and see what's in there. Well, boy howdy I here are the first two albums by Angel. Their debut and their follow-up Helluva Band in 1976. I remember finding these and being kind of stoked to hear them. I recognized Greg Giuffria's name from "Call to the Heart" back in'84. A song that was out of the Journey playbook, but I always liked it. So there. The Angel albums were on Casablanca, the label KISS was on ... for me this was the label of the gods. Except that the label would become profitable when they moved into disco and unleashed The Village People like a virus on the people of the world. The Angel albums came out back in '75 and '76 and as you may have guessed, these records while really really cool - didn't exactly make the band a household name. Shit, even the wiki...

Well, things have been bustling in the house over the last little while. Mainly the boys took over the basement between semesters and that meant I more or less lost the use of the turntable while they played games to all hours of the night. I still manage to get some time in and relax but I've been tasked with a number of spring things too ... the driveway and back patio won't pressure wash themselves ... This time out is another collection of odds and sods. A couple of these were new to me and a few of these I'd not heard in years and years. Without further adieu I present to you the tenth iteration of Stylus over Substance ... no jumping, I don't want to skip the record. Rick Springfield - Tao (1985) The Kinks - Word of Mouth (1984)  Streetheart - Quicksand Shoes (1980) Kate & Anna McGarrigle - Dancer with Bruised Knees (1977) Kansas - Vinyl Confessions (1982) Rick Springfield - Tao (1985) This was one of the more overlooked albums by Rick Springfield. I bough...

I remember this album, or at least the two songs I most closely associated with the album: "Looking For Clues" and "Johnny and Mary." The first was quirky and the second was very new wave. I love the second, and was perplexed by the first. Over the years Robert Palmer would come to exude cool, but to me he would forever be the geeky guy holding up a magnifying glass who was looking for clues. Of course that's not entirely accurate either.  When I found a copy of Clues I was pretty stoked to go back and hear what was going on back in 1980. The album opens with "Looking for Clues" and it's hard to imagine that it's been over four decades since the song came out. It's still so good. Chris Frantz from Talking Heads played bass drum on the track. The next song "Sulky Girl" was a straight ahead rock song in the same sort of vein as "Bad Case of Loving You" which sort of made sense, and I suspect this is what people were expect...

As a kid Simon & Garfunkel were done right around the same time The Beatles broke up. I knew many of their songs of course, I loved music and my little radio was a lifeline to happiness. Still the music that would really start to get into my musical DNA arrived in a big way for me when I was around 10 years old. This was a magical time it seemed like every other day there was a song that became my new favourite. Some songs of course would get lodged deeper than others. I wasn't looking back, I was living in the moment. One of those "new" songs was "Kodachrome" that came out in 1973. It was catchy and all, but really what sealed it for me was singing along to the opening line,  "When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school ..." It was awesome, and it had the word crap in it. This was the same guy who sang about Julio who apparently was down by the schoolyard. I didn't consider myself a huge Paul Simon fan, and aside from the songs ...

Several months ago I wrote about the band's 1983 album Cargo and I mentioned that I loved the big hits on the album and was really disappointed with the album overall. I think my exact words were "I remember being profoundly disappointed in the record. Two killers, and filler. It's not an album I've heard in decades." Okay, those were my exact works, that's the nice thing about cut and pasting. I began to wonder if I had been carrying around a lot of unnecessary baggage with respect to the album. After all, this is an album that's sold in excess of 10 million copies world wide, and half a million of them right here in Canada. If it was shit people would have noticed. Wouldn't they? As fate would have it a little while ago I found a copy in the dollar bin (sadly the store has since closed as their landlord decided they wanted to jack up the rent. Bad for them, bad for me ... but I was starting to run out of space) that was in decent shape. It was the wh...

"In the year 2076 radio and rock & roll will be around and some nostalgia freak with be munching on a kelp-burger and playing these songs as golden oldies." This was taken from the back of the album jacket, and they were only out by half a century. This was an album my buddy Andy had and I didn't get much more than a cursory shrug when I asked him if it was any good. I should probably let you know that as a kid there was no band more important to me than The Monkees. Those early shows, particularly when the band performed made me want to play. I didn't want to wear a toque (or as it was known with Michael Nesmith, "Wool Hat") but I wanted to play guitar. Those big Gretsch's were beautiful. The fly in the ointment was Davey, even back then I could tell he was there for the little girls, and I found his songs to be mostly annoying. Here we are in 1976 and the combination of Dolenz and Jones with the songwriting and production chops seemed like a good i...

I'd never heard of The Rave-Ups prior to finding a sealed copy of the record. I was out of town and had popped in at a record store while the wife was clothes shopping, this happens a lot. It was a strange little shop that was squeezed into an alley entrance, and the stock was piled into the corners in a system only the owner seemed to understand. Despite it being cramped, it was fun poking around. I didn't find anything on my list, but the owner seemed determined to find something for me ... and he would rummage around while we were chatting about stuff, and he'd pop his head up occasionally and show me something he thought I might like. He managed to get a fair pile going, so I figured it was best that I just look through what he was stacking up. He had managed to get my measure pretty quickly as most of the records he'd pulled out were from artists I was aware of, and thankfully I had a lot of what he was showing me, but there were a couple that caught my attention. ...

As a kid there was something pretty special about Olivia Newton John. Ten year old me would song along to the radio, belting out the chorus to "Let Me Be There" and all was right in the world. It also wasn't the only song I would sing along to. There were others too, and it was weird that this country singer was such a big deal. Of course, when I saw her album covers she was so pretty. Yeah, that's a little embarrassing now to think about, but hey it is what it is. Of course this was all before thing changed when Grease was released. Oh make no mistake there was something wicked about "Evil" Sandy in her black pants, but the music ... it was, it was, unthinkably horrid. HORRID. Of course time has softened my opinion on the movie, and the soundtrack, but at the time. This was the forbidden period, and the disco stuff, and then the workout videos were too much. However, this era, this early chapter before things went south, was magic. Now, with all this gushin...

Good Lord, here we go. Hang on, Strap in, and put in your mouth guard. Ted Nugent - Weekend Warriors (1978) Gerry Rafferty - North & South (1988) Visage - Visage (EP) (1981) Greg Kihn Band - Kihnspiracy (1983) Johnny Winter - Captured Live! (1976) Ted Nugent - Weekend Warriors (1978) This was long one of the albums I wanted, but never bought. The cover was vintage ted, and the cover was absolutely captivating. This was Ted in a single frame. Sitting here listening this is all new to me. The first pass through I didn't have any credits other than what was on the back cover. I still tend to lean on Double Live Gonzo! as Ted's high water mark, and while over the years I've filled in some of his earlier studio albums, I really never became a true blue fan. I was a pretty solid casual, and still consider myself a fan of his music. Considering Weekend Warriors came hot on the heals of Double Live Gonzo in the fall of '78 I sort of expected more of the same. Which is w...