Timbuk 3 - Greetings from TIMBUK 3

I bought this when it came out for one song, "The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades," and by golly, it was a dang good song. There was something really cool about the song with the sterile drum programming and the wicked harmonica. I always thought this was a huge hit, and the one time I watched Head of the Class, the song was featured on the episode. Apparently, it was a moderate hit, but it certainly stuck with me.

Oddly, this album has been joined at the hip with the Georgia Satellites' debut album, as I remember picking them both up the same day. I also remember being disappointed with both albums after harvesting the shiny songs for my mixtapes.

I was probably harder on this one, though. The album charged out with the two best songs on the album, the aforementioned sunglasses song and "Life Is Hard," a song that felt to me like a companion piece to David & David's "Boomtown," and after that I just ran out of steam trying to get through the rest of the songs.

I just didn't put the effort into actually listening to the songs. After that, it didn't take long for this one to get shelved, and over the years "The Future's So Bright" got woven into the fabric of the '80s as another in a long line of great one-hit wonders who made the decade so awesome.

It's been decades since I've listened to this, and probably the first time I've actually really listened to the songs. The first side still got me right away. Those first two songs had the added emotional weight of nostalgia.

They're still the best songs as far as I'm concerned, but the other songs on the first side were enjoyable. Pat MacDonald had something to say, and he had a way with a phrase. Even the seemingly innocuous "Facts About Cats" was more fable than anything. After all, "Cats will be cats & cats eat birds."

It was the second side that felt like I was making fresh tracks in the snow. I probably only listened to it a couple of times when I got it, if that, and it was likely a cursory review as I looked for something with a hook that sounded like an earworm. In other words, here be dragons.

Reading this now, I think I should have just said I don't remember the songs on side two, mainly because I doubt I played the record more than once. Too late now, and even as I write this I'm thinking, "I can still edit this when I'm done."

Oddly, as I'm trying to read the lyrics and listen, I find myself listening to this like I'm still 23, and I'm having to concentrate a little harder to get through it. Which makes it sound like I'm shitting on it. Which I'm not. I mean, who shits on a record? I'm being dismissive of this, which sounds better and doesn't make the mess. Okay, for real, I'm going to edit this when I'm done.

The opening track, "Just Another Movie," is really cool, but I also know that it won't stick with me.

"Shame on You" is a song that stood out, but not because it was good. It was a weird hip-hop rap thing that felt like the extended break in "Rapture" by Blondie, where Barbara K does her best Deborah Harry. Well, we all know Deborah Harry couldn't rap.

I suppose there are people who loved "Shame on You," but for me it was a misfire that took me out of an album I was trying desperately to give a second chance.

The album closes with "I Love You in the Strangest Way," an acoustic duet with Pat and Barbara singing in unison. It's an interesting song, with a mandolin picking out a counter-melody. It's a sparse and almost melancholy song. It was a fitting closer.

I'm not sure I've changed my opinion all that much from what it was all those decades ago. The songs I liked then, I like just as much now. I'll admit I got more from the experience now than I did then, but it was superficial, and I'll end up filing the album and remembering fondly the album for what it had more than I will for what it was lacking.

It's unfair to say the songs were filler. They were dark and moody, and if that was your thing, this probably resonated with you. For me it was a trip down memory lane that included stops to a number of songs I'd forgotten and likely won't remember. If you think getting to Timbuktu is a long journey, it was nothing like trying to get Timbuk 3.

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 , ...

Gary Numan - The Pleasure Principle

"Cars" was really the only song I knew by Gary Numan. I knew the name of the album the song came from. Over the years bits and pieces of trivia are accumulated, but in terms of his music it was still distilled down to one song ... It would be too easy to write Mr. Numan off as a one hit wonder, and I suppose in terms of actual chart hits this was his defining moment as a solo artist. Of course this really means nothing, as Gary Numan would drop an album a year pretty much through to the end of the '80s. He'd then slow down a little but continues to make music. While The Pleasure Principle was Gary Numan's debut solo release in '79, he actually cut his teeth on a couple of albums in a band called Tubeway Army, first with the band's self titled release in 1978, and then on Replicas that came out in April of '79. By the end of Tubeway Army's run most of the band would follow Gary into his solo career. Paul Gardiner who had been with Gary from the beg...

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