Robbie Dupree - Robbie Dupree

Back in 1980 rock and roll was all over the place. The strange adult contemporary soft rock was right alongside the real rock and roll, and frankly it didn't seem out of place. The Doobie Brothers were probably to blame for much of this music taking over ... but honestly this was always around in some shape or form. Heck, Player was mining the same vein back in '77 with "Baby Come Back," and it was Christopher Cross who really cracked it wide open, showing there was gold in them there grooves.

The derogatory term "Yacht Rock" hadn't been invented yet. This was just soft rock, or commercial rock, or radio friendly rock, or whatever. Now Yacht Rock is a beloved genre. Who'd a thunk it, and frankly a lot of acts who are on the boat shouldn't be ... that's the problem with labels, everybody ends up with one whether they need it or not.

The album kicks off with one of the two songs I remembered from back in the day. Actually I thought there was a third ... but I was mistaken. More on that later. "Steal Away" is a slick radio friendly song that still sounds great ... yeah, it conjures up The Doobie's "What a Fool Believes" but I'd have to do an A/B to see how close they are. It's still a good song though.

The rest of the first side was enjoyable, if a tad generic and forgettable, but it does close out on a high note, as I always liked "Hot Rod Hearts," a song I'll freely admit to mixing up with Paul Davis' "'65 Love Affair" ... I know (now) that they aren't the same, and they were a couple of years apart. Oh well, so it wasn't the third hit on the album ... I should have let you know that was the "more on that later" segue that was to tie up that weird loose end.

The second side was the "here be dragons" part of my listening experience. Opening with "Nobody Else" that hearkens back to 1979 and is pretty much a disco song. Weird how quickly that era was nailed shut with the arrival of the new decade. I wasn't complaining, and I'm not complaining. Still, it's almost jarring as it was unexpected.

The rest of the second side, which was only four songs, was actually hit and miss. I'm not sure why I suddenly turned into a hostile witness for the prosecution, but I didn't really enjoy this side. The big ballad "We Both Tried" was borderline terrible, and the vocals sounded out of tune. It was like they hired a high school choir to sing backup. Oh well, the second side was short.

It's weird how this turned ... at least it ended on a relatively high note as "Lonely Runner" closes out the album, and it's a mid tempo song that has more than a little bit of Doobie juice squirted all over it. It's the best song on this side, and frankly is one of the best songs on the album aside from the two nostalgic hits.

The album was slick, and the production team of Rick Chudacoff and Peter Bunetta also served as the rhythm section on the album with Rick on bass, and Peter on drums. It was a pretty solid foundation and the songs sound great (except for "We Both Tried," but I'm trying to give him a mulligan on that one). It was cool to see Robert Palmer listed as the guitar player ... but I'm going out on a limb here and am assuming it's a different Mr. Palmer. Still, how cool would that have been?

I wouldn't call this yacht rock ... maybe a skiff or a dinghy. It was enough to hold two, maybe three good songs. Thankfully the rest of the material didn't capsize the whole thing.

Now I can't stop thinking about Jack and Rose on that stupid floating door in Titanic. There was room for two ... now I'm thinking that "Steal Away" was Jack, and "Hot Rod Hearts" was Rose. And really, that's all people remember.

For me my journey started and ended with the two big songs on this album. It was a solid listen, and "Steal Away" and "Hot Rod Hearts" were really good ... still really good. This scratched that itch, and while I wouldn't pass up getting other albums by Robbie if they were cheap, I won't necessarily seek them out.

Although I'm now on the lookout for that album by Paul Davis.

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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