Chris Hillman - Desert Rose

I'm not sure how I ended up with 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, and 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 Desert Rose, I bought it. It didn't hurt that it didn't cost much ... still, a record is a record. Here in Canada it was on Stony Plain, the little record label from Edmonton, Alberta, which licensed the album from Sugar Hill. I suspect they figured it was a good bet.

Desert Rose is a country album. An honest-to-goodness hillbilly swinging good time. The songs are sweet, and the performances are top shelf. Al Perkins produced the album and played dobro on a couple of songs.

It's a strange thing, though: this is good. It's also pretty dang generic, and the songs aren't straying from the predictable chord progressions and expected tropes. A solo here, a pedal steel here, a fiddle there. Part of the problem is actually Chris Hillman. The guy is an amazing singer, but he's also blessed and cursed with an everyman's voice. There's nothing that really separates him from any other good singer. There's nothing distinctive that makes things sound like Chris Hillman. I could be wrong, but it's how it feels, and sounds, to me.

Again, I have to say, while this was playing it was a truly enjoyable listen. Chris brought in some great players to guest on many of the tracks. Bernie Leadon appears on a few tracks, providing backing vocals, banjo, mandola and guitar. James Burton, who is considered one of the finest guitar players ever, appeared on a couple of tracks. They bring a lot to the songs, as do the other musicians. They do what they can with the source material. The best backhanded way of describing the album is to say it is full of good songs that are pleasing to listen to.

The trouble, of course, is the world is full of good musicians and good songs. Being good is sort of the ante that gets an artist to the table. Releasing an album of good songs is still an accomplishment when so many artists struggled with filler, but I also know that even after spinning this a few times I likely won't be able to remember any of the songs in a day or two. I'll be left with the memory that this was a good album, but I won't be able to tell you why.

I can also say with a degree of certainty that if I stumble upon any of his albums I'll also pick them up.

After all, this was good, and sometimes that's just good enough.

Life is a funny old thing.

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...

Old Enough to Forget

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