Old Enough to Forget

I suppose the meanest thing I could say about this one is, "Hey look kids it Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo's less talented doppelgangers." Of course that's more than a little unfair. I did say it was the meanest thing I could say, and really, after all this time is it even fair to take pot shots at QuarterFlash? No it isn't fair, then again no one said life was fair. Let's step back and address the elephant in the room, their 1981 hit "Harden My Heart" a song that went gold, and single-handedly carried the album to platinum status by the middle of '82. The album had legs and "Harden My Heart" was an excellent song, and is still an excellent song. The saxophone solo was right up there with  Raphael Ravenscroft's work on "Baker Street" - yeah, it was that good. So we know for certain the album had one killer track and I'm going to just park that one in a safe space and listen to the rest of the album ... you know, the son...

Courtesy flush for the reader ... I will often plop down a long meaderambling introduction before getting to the point ... or as close as I can generally get. I've read this one, it's pretty incoherent at times. If you may want skip intro if you're inclined. SKIP INTRO When Heavy Metal came out in the summer of '81 it was jaw dropping. I really didn't have many of the magazines because they were a little too out there and were more expensive than the comics I normally bought. The movie though - that was another thing altogether. Besides most of the guys from SCTV seemed to be in there somewhere, and there were cartoon titties. Den would have approved ... and he did (if you know, you know). It was the music though. The first scene opens with a space shuttle with the bay doors open, and an astronaut driving a Corvette makes it's way through the atmosphere - and blaring through the speakers is Rigg's "Radar Rider" and from that moment I was hooked. T...

"Short People" was the first song I'd heard by Randy Newman when I was a kid. It was also one of those songs far too many people took at face value based on the title, who didn't even bother to listen to the song. I still remember the tempest in a tea cup and even then it was perplexing. Dang, even Billy Barty wasn't very happy about the song.  I know there were a lot of people who seemed to pride themselves on not listening to the lyrics of a song as a way of defending themselves when listening to "questionable" music. At least that was a defence a lot of "Christian" kids used to defend listening to secular music. The ability to be tone deaf and easily offended isn't something new ... The problem with satire is to some folks it's just truth wrapped in humour as a way of sending in a Trojan horse filled with hate and bigotry. Randy Newman's affinity for first person narratives that cut deep can be a little on the nose, and with ...

Time Peace The Rascals Greatest Hits was an album I found in a dollar bin and for my buck I wanted to get "Good Lovin'" and ended up getting more for my buck than I expected. The record jacket still had the original shrink wrap on it, and I couldn't bring myself to peel it off, so I didn't. The album itself was in better shape than I expected considering the liner was long gone. Very few pops and clicks. Yeah, I got my dollar's worth. Apparently there was a gatefold version as well ... that would have been nice. The cover I assumed was a nod to  Roy Lichtenstein mixed with Andy Warhol. Or not, who knows. I'm just trying to put that one semester of art history to use.  The album crams fourteen songs onto two sides, and while there are a few covers they appear on the first side. From what I can tell the songs are presented in chronological order and in the early days outside writers helped flesh out their repertoire and songs like "Good Lovin'"...

SAGA is one of my favourite bands hands down. Having said that, I'm not as obsessive as a true die hard. I mean I never poured over the lyrics trying to pieces together The Chapters but I did make a point of getting The Chapters Live when the band put the songs out in chronological order.  Living in Canada the opportunities to see the band live are few, so I settled for the live DVDs the band released. I did get to see them in a festival setting they were on second after Haywire (oh how I wished Ian and Paul would have done a song together, oh well) on one of the hottest days of the summer. It was as Eric Idle would say, "Hot enough to boil a monkey's bum." Anyway this is all just prattle, but it's sort of relevant ...I think.  Back to the obsessive comment, while I may not be a die hard who has to dissect everything into little pieces, I am a completest and when I get into something, I generally don't go in half way, if I like it - I want it all. With SAGA t...

I love pleasant surprises. This popped up on an auction site and it looked interesting, so I put in the minimum bid and forgot about it ... until I got a message telling me I'd won and should go pick it up. It was still sealed which was a bonus. Of course the cardboard dust and tight fit was irritating and I'm sure the extra bit of unwanted scuffing as on the record as I tried to get it out of the sleeve is just the way things are nowadays apparently. This is why I seldom buy new stuff. Still, this was about the music, and I had deliberately not looked up the band in advance. I was sort of expecting so indie artsy fartsy stuff, but honestly I had no idea what to expect. From the opening notes of the title track, the album was one unexpected surprise and another. Brave Shores is a synth-pop duo comprised of Jay and Stefanie McCarrol. The credits are a little sparse which is too bad. It merely says Jay vocals / production and Stefanie vocals. Then a little further down it says th...

This was a record I was pretty excited to find. It was the UK pressing, and the gatefold was laminated and looked absolutely pristine. This was also an album I'd never heard. I knew it existed, but honestly I always thought it was a throwaway album kind of like Sentimental Journey that had come out in the spring of 1970. I think one of the reasons I was so casually dismissive was it would be three years before Ringo would regroup and release his self titled album in 1973, which more or less coincidentally aligned with when I really started paying attention to music. Honestly for a long time I had assumed Ringo was his debut. The album is extra ordinary. I mean, this is a love letter to classic country, and Ringo seems so at home it's disarming. There's always been something special about Ringo's voice. It's an odd thing in many ways, but his ability to convey so much emotion and warmth is disarming. His confidence and charm are absolutely infectious. For those who ...

Here we go this month's Stylus Over Substance Volume 15. Good lord, if each volume contains five little incomprehensible blurbs, that means this year I've gacked out seventy five of these little literary turds. Man, I'm kind of proud of myself. I suppose I've gotten a little lazier with this, mainly because after a couple of years I've realized that Blogger is probably the worst platform I could have chosen. Few of my pages get indexed, and essentially I am doing this for an audience of one most of the time. Me.  Which is honestly okay, I do this for me because I enjoy it, and every so often something I write makes me giggle or smile. Which is good enough. Besides, this is all part of intentionally listening to the music I have. It may not always be good, or great, but it's always an adventure and I often have no idea where I'm going until I get there. With that here's another five carefully curated random selections. Jefferson Starship - Modern Times (...

As a kid I remember "Your Mamma Don't Dance" as one of those really cool songs, and I always got a kick (and still do) when the song got to the "Outta the car longhair." As for the Poison remake, that goes in the trash alongside the Motley Crue version of "Smokin' in the Boy's Room" neither band had any idea what to do with the source material other than try and rock it up and suck the life out of the song. Anyway ... it was the original that rings true, and it was the reason I picked up the album when I found a pretty decent copy in the dollar bin a while back. I always knew they were a successful band, but I really didn't know anything other than the one song. Kenny Loggins to me was always just the guy who managed to carve out a niche as king of the soundtrack singles, starting with "I'm Alright" from Caddyshack, and then again with "Footloose" and "Danger Zone" I mean to say those were huge is an unders...

Tonio K. is one of those artists you need to spend a little time with before you get to the payoff. I'll freely admit I came to Tonio K. through iDEoLA - more specifically because of the connection to WHAT? Records that was distributed by A&M. For whatever reason I still tend to think of Romeo Unchained and Tribal Opera as musical bookends. Which of course if pure unadulterated nonsense. Other than a heavy dose of '80s production the album's are nothing alike. Romeo Unchained was an album I didn't give much more than a cursory listen to when I first got it. There were some catchy songs here and there and musically this was a mid '80s mix of alternative and techno - it was very '80s, with all of the trimmings. It was sparkly and new. I'm not sure what I was expecting but after a couple of cursory spins it got shelved.  Which was a shame and frankly my loss. A couple years ago I found a copy of Life in the Food Chain , and I took the time to listen, I m...

I found this a while back, and what caught my eye aside from the cover, which reminded me of an animation cell from Yellow Submarine ... was the list of artists represented on the back cover. Quite a few I knew and there were quite a few I had never heard of. Thankfully on the inside of the gatefold were thirteen mini bios and pictures which I found really entertaining, and it was cool to see so many names I was not familiar with mixed in with artists that went on to become well known. Now this was a dollar bin find, but the jacket was in great shape, and the record was almost as heavy as the 180 gram stuff that gets the kids excited today. However, it was a bit worn, and after a good clean it plays pretty well but there are spots here and there where it sounds like a warm fire crackling in the background ... but honestly it's not that bad. This is more of a time capsule than it is a cohesive mix tape. With the start of a new decade, Capitol wanted to showcase how in tune they wer...

 a -ha are often associated by the unwashed as an '80s one hit wonder who aside from their clever cartoony video and impossibly high notes on the chorus on "Take On Me" never did anything else. I suppose in the US this is sort of true as Hunting High and Low remains the band's only platinum record - making them at worst a one album wonder. Still, I'm getting ahead of myself, as usual. I have a lot of half baked thoughts swirling around in my head, and am trying to get them to settle down. I suppose the problem is I have about forty years of baggage with the band. I've followed them faithfully, even enjoying their lamented '93 release Memorial Beach (which at the moment I can't recall any of the songs) and bought the download of their 2022 True North (which I'm also drawing a blank on ... but I didn't spend a lot of time with that one). Their catalogue is liberally sprinkled with astounding songs. The band is still centred on the talents of M...

The Silencers. The band that should have been. It's not like they were all over the radio, although I think I've retrofitted a memory of hearing "Painted Moon" on the radio - but I'm pretty sure it was just on a mix tape. It was the cover I found enticing. A simple white jacket with wee little black and white cut outs of the band on the bottom right corner. It looked intriguing, and it was also in a discount bin. Ah, the liquidation bin ... there was a warehouse that specialized in selling off store inventory from failed businesses and one day a couple of very large tables appeared that were full of CDs ... new CDs and they were cheap. Which was good because back in '87 my purchasing habit was insatiable which was fun for the ears and hard on the wallet. I can't remember how many discs I got from those disorganized tables but it was a lot ... the only one I truly remember getting is A Letter From St. Paul . Partly because of "Painted Moon" and be...