Old Enough to Forget

The Riddle dropped in the fall of 1984 several months after his debut Human Racing was released. 1984 was a good year for Mister Kershaw, although the The Riddle not as successful as his debut, it was the album I preferred. I likely picked this up a couple of years after it came out as I still think of this as being an album that I was listening to in 1986 or 1987. Which means I found it on sale and took a chance on it. Sounds about right. Listening to this now, with the benefit of hindsight and perspective that I didn't have at the time. I'm struck by the change in tact between his debut and the what he was writing and recording for his follow up. Right out of the gate "Don Quixote" was an odd blend of techno with elements of funk. A little bit like what Level 42 was doing as well - oddly enough Mark King would guest on the closing track on side one, "Easy." At the time I wasn't a big fan of Level 42, although Mark's talent as a player cannot be ...

The Jitters were an odd little band who released two albums during their short career. Their debut dropped in '87 and the single "Last of the Red Hot Fools" was catchy, and I heard it a few times on the radio. A couple of years later they had another minor hit with 'Til The Fever Breaks" and then they were gone.  In the early '90s I found both albums on CD, and really enjoyed them - although to be fair as I sit here I don't really remember much other than the two songs I had heard on the radio way back when. Still, the band left a lasting impression.  I was browsing through the bins the other day, and to my surprise I found a sealed copy of the band's self titled album and it was too good to pass up.  I'm gonna sit back relax and revisit an album I've not heard in decades. Ladies and Gentlemen and all points in between The Jitters. ... a little while later ... Musically, they sounded like Katrina and the Waves and Huey Lewis and the News had a...

I'd not listened to this is in a long, long time. My memories of this are mostly warm and fuzzy except for "Bad Is Bad" a song that to me was true to it's title. My buddy back in the day would go on about how "Ghost Busters" and "I Want a New Drug" were the same song ... I know there's a feel in the bass or the melody or something. I suppose there was enough merit to warrant a settlement, but to me all I heard was a gaggle of chicks shouting "Ghost busters" over and over. I found it irritating, and now it's nostalgic, go figure - and for all that I still can't hear it. The album was huge and it seemed to hang around a long time. I suppose that was due more to the fact that it was released in the fall of '83 and didn't really seem to take off until the spring of '84 and the band kept mining singles for almost a year. The album was like a Russian doll. It's an album very much of it's time but was also outside...

Teaze Tour of Japan . This is the one that got away from me back when I was in high school. There was a great little second hand store I frequented all the time. It was where I got my used comics, and picked up a seemingly inexhaustible number of Robert A. Heinlein paperbacks. Occasionally I'd get a Clarke, or Asimov but Heinlein was my jam. They also had a small section with some records. I picked up the first couple of PRISM albums there, and my once coveted copy of The Beatles White Album on white vinyl. There in the piles where I found April Wine's Live! was a copy of Tour of Japan .  I'd never heard of these guys, but it was a cool looking cover, and the inside of the gatefold was really cool too as it had an extra panel with band photographs. They looked like they were killing it. I'd pick up, and put back that album many times and then one day it was gone.  Dang. Fast forward more than a few years ( fine ... decades), and I'm digging through a bunch of recor...

For most of us Warren Zevon generally conjures up one song, "Werewolves of London" and that's about as far as it goes. That particular song was one I was very dismissive of back in the day. To me it was a hatchet job that borrowed too much from "Sweet Home Alabama" and tried too hard to be clever. Yeah, fifteen year old me was a pretty harsh critic. I will begrudgingly admit that over the years the song certainly had it's charms, and Warren's unusual voice and writing is oddly engaging. In the mid '80s my old roommate had the record, and I remember playing it quite a few times and I really enjoyed a number of the songs, particularly "Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner" and "Lawyers, Guns And Money" as well as the title track, which was about as dark and twisted as songs come. With the passage of time I'd more or less forget the album, and when Kid Rock's oddly goofy and somehow catchy sampling of bits and pieces of "...

Town to Town was the first Phil Keaggy album I bought brand new when it came out. My first introduction to Phil was on the triple live album How the West was One with 2nd Chapter of Acts. It was a gift along with a few other Christian records I got from a girl at a youth conference. Apparently she had been gifted them and she didn't want them. Her loss, my gain. Although there were some clunkers in the pile I've since forgotten about and lost, it was that live album that blew my mind. "What a Day" and the casual chord progression Phil pulls of still bends my brain. Phil was (is) a jaw dropping player, and I still find it odd that he resonated so much with me as he wasn't really a rock and roll guy - he was a mostly soft rock guy who played a mean guitar. When Town to Town dropped it featured a lot of truly jaw dropping guitar work that accompanied by his sweet almost McCartney like vocals. The songs were at times deeply spiritual but there was something about his...

Here was chugging along into August, and I have to admit that my self imposed schedule of cranking out two of these a month may have been a tad ambitious. It's likely I'll take a step back and go to once a month. I mean, I'm spending a lot of time jotting down my meandering thoughts that frankly for the most part are just on this side of being coherent ... I'll let you pick a side. Still, I've been grinding my way through my pile of records. Up for grabs this time out are another gaggle of odds and sods and repeat offenders. Let's get right to it ... are you seated comfortably? Chilliwack – Look In, Look Out (1984) Neil Diamond - Love At The Greek: Recorded Live At The Greek Theatre (1977) Pete Townshend - All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes (1982) Loverboy - Wildside (1987) T Bone Burnett - The Talking Animals (1988) Chilliwack – Look In, Look Out (1984) At the time this felt like a reset for the perennial Canadian stallwarts who'd been cranking ou...

I've had so many records to go through (I still have a couple of piles to play) that I've not really taken the time to root around on the streaming side of things. Recently my Aunt Jeanne, the cool aunt from my childhood who introduced me to a lot of cool music, was in town. We sat in the back yard and talked about old music. Well, I talked and she listened. She's still the cool aunt. It started with me reminiscing about Vanity Fare's "Hitchin' a Ride" a 45 she had when I was a kid. I played that single over and over and over on a little suitcase player, and that song still hits me in the feels. She then mentioned a band she liked that was a little different but was probably so obscure they'd been forgotten, but they were cool. It took her a moment to get the name of the band from her long term memory but eventually she came up with Goose Creek Symphony. She said they did a great version of "(Oh Lord Won't You Buy Me a) Mercedes Benz" and...

Before people took cheap shots and shit on Winger and discovered Nickelback there was Night Ranger. The band who started out as a killer rock band, unleashing "Don't Tell Me You Love Me" back by the twelve string sonic assault of Jeff Watson, and Brad Gillis, who was fresh off of his stint as Ozzy's six string slinger. It was awesome. Then came "Sister Christian" and all of a sudden it didn't matter that the same album had songs like "(You Can Still) Rock in America" and the power ballad "When You Close Your Eyes" the guys had jumped the shark, shat the bed, screwed the pooch, sold their souls to the corporate machine. They had sold out. They were a joke now, and any rock credibility was swirling the drain. They had as much cachet as Culture Club. Which was too bad as I was a card carrying member of the shit on Night Ranger club. It didn't matter that I like their songs, and even secretly liked "Sister Christian" they we...