Old Enough to Forget

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

Okay boy howdy hang on to your hat, I'm about to drop the needle on Ted Nugent's 1977 release Cat Scratch Fever . This will be my first time sitting and actually listening to the album. At the risk of repeating myself, something I do a lot, as a kid my love of Ted started and ended with Double Live Gonzo! It was everything I wanted in an album, and with my limited budget it covered all the bases. As the years went by I never really felt the need to go back and revisit his early albums, and that was okay. Over the last couple of years I've managed to snag a couple albums and they've been good fun, but listening to albums now doesn't have the emotional gut punch I used to get in my youth. If there's anything that kind of sucks about getting old (and there are a lot of things that suck, trust me) it's that making deep connections with anything is harder than it used to be. Hearing the studio cuts of some of the songs I only really knew from their live iteration

Paper Lace, oh man. "The Night Chicago Died" and "Billy Don't Be a Hero" (although I don't think it was their version I remember. That honour went to The Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods in North America) were ear worms of the highest order when I was a little kid. There was something decidedly infectious about the songs and while as I got older I developed a certain disdain for the songs that moved me in my youth there was always a spot in my heart for this stuff. It's why I still like to listen to "Seasons in the Sun" and "Last Kiss" and am not ashamed to admit this was my jam. Of course Paper Lace was never a band who seemed to rise above their early success and have been more or less relegated to the pile of other AM gold singles that bombarded the airwaves in the '70s. This particular Polydor release appears to be a repackaging of ...And Other Bits Of Material the band put out in 1974. As to whether it was available here I don&#