Old Enough to Forget

Ah, Split Enz - the new wave band who introduced the world to Tim's little brother Neil.  Thank you, good night. Don't forget to tip your server on the way out. But seriously folks, Split Enz.  Back in 1980 Split Enz was riding the crest of the first wave of new wave (it was clunky in my head too, but it is what it is). The band was creating something new and fresh and somehow still hearkened back to the roots of rock and roll. This was the album that had "Shark Attack" and the amazing "I Got You." There are others you may be partial to, but those are the songs I remember and frankly I never had any of their albums so pretty much everything is a deep cut when it comes to the band outside of the "radio" hits. Still, those two songs were indelibly marked into my musical DNA. All I knew about the band was they were from New Zealand, and that they'd been around a while before becoming an overnight success. "Wait a second, then how come you...

I was never really what you'd call a big fan of Talking Heads. I was a casual and I knew more than a few songs. They were kind of cool, but also irritating. I think part of my active ambivalence stemmed from when I was a kid watching them back in '79 when they were on Saturday Night Live. It was their performance of "Artists Only" with the child like lullaby that I found befuddling. This was '79 and art rock was pretentious and stupid - at least to me. I wanted to hear the big guitars and rock out. Why I still remember a performance I saw on TV a grand total of one time is a mystery. This was the cornerstone of my reaction to Talking Heads for a long time, and while I'd freely admit to enjoying a lot of what I heard, on balance my opinion was primarily dismissive. Then came the summer of '83 and I'm driving down the freeway in my little blue Nissan Pulsar and I've taken the sunroof out and the top of my head is poking out of the hole in the roof. I...

Foreigner was one of those bands people loved to dump on. They were a commercial behemoth, and the band had been on a killer run releasing one multiple platinum album after another since their debut in '77. After Head Games in '79 an album that had reportedly "under performed" compared to Double Vision. Which doesn't make any sense, for goodness sake the album has gone on to sell over 5,000,000 copies in the States alone ... sure Double Vision sold a couple million more than that south of the border and twice as many in Canada ... sill Head Games was hardly a failure. Whatever the reason the band would take some time and literally regroup and emerge as a foursome a couple years later. Depending on where you got on the wagon reactions to 4 were a little split. For me, I'd always liked the songs I heard on the radio, but my first album was Head Games , and that was a transitional album in many ways. The last vestiges of the '70s progressive roots had bee...

Leave Your Bones in the Hall was the second album by The Cry. Kimball Fox (Kim Berly of Stampeders fame) and the band were back for another round. Although this time drums were provided by Chas Mitchell. This was a truly collaborative effort with most of the songs on the album being attributed to all of the members in the band. I'll admit that when I see that in the credits it makes me happy. One for all, and all for one stuff. Musically the guys were capturing lightning in a bottle and with their brand of harder rocking skinny tie new wave, even getting the flat robotic backing vocals down. Who knows why the band didn't catch on. Then again the debut suffered the same fate being relegated to obscurity. The band is more or less a footnote, or the answer to a trivia question. Which is a shame. The music was really good, although to be honest by '81 the new wave propelled by the organ and catchy hooks had already crashed to the shore but the tide hadn't gone out. It's...

I must admit I skipped over this one more than once when I was scouring the dollar bins. The album was actually in surprisingly decent shape, and the jacket was okay. The absence of an insert wasn't a big deal - most of the stuff I was mining from the cheap stacks didn't seem to have all of their parts, although I suspect in this case there weren't any notes or missing pieces other than a paper liner. I bought the album because I thought it would be silly kitschy fun. "Party Fun Songs from the Golden Age of Burlesque" indeed. As you may have guessed I did eventually lay down my loonie and a few cents to cover taxes and bought the album. It came home and was carefully cleaned (who knows where this had been) and then put it on my pile of records awaiting their turn on the turntable. It sat there for more than a year and my pile had grown past by ability to keep up, and while I was making progress I wasn't exactly following the FIFO inventory model. It was more o...

Obladi obla dah. This month has a double shot of The Knack a band I've gotten into lately. They were so much more than a one hit wonder. I also figured four was enough this time. Rick Wakeman - Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1974) The Knack -  ... But the Little Girls Understand (1980) The Knack - Round Trip (1981) Foreigner - Inside Information (1987) Rick Wakeman - Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1974) I bought this as a curiosity, and it was a curiosity I got. I'd seen so many copies in the dollar bin it just seemed too interesting to pass up. I'll be the first to admit this would have been an astounding show to see live; however, hearing it as a stand alone experience is a little more disconnected. While there were parts that were certainly engaging, and I was particularly enamoured with the narration by David Hennings, there there were quite a few sections where in the cold light of day you hear the imperfections evident in the performance. While it can b...

"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...

This is the album that changed it all. Funny, I'd not listened to this one in a long time. Back when I was a kid I played this nearly to death. Even back then it was an album that had a few clunkers - at least to me. I know there are legions of fans who will lose their shit over "Atomic Punk" and that's just fine. It's a technically amazing bit of fretwork, but I didn't 't like it as a song at the time. I'm starting off on the wrong foot. I'd take a mulligan but I've used so many I'll just keep plowing on. As a teenager in the small town where I grew up there was no such thing as rock radio. Oh sometimes you'd hear something resembling top 40, but it was an all things to all people station and didn't seem to make anyone happy. I think I heard "You Really Got Me" on the radio, but I'm almost sure I didn't. It was the other kids, the cool kids at school who had records, or older siblings who had records and I'm p...

The Seventy Sevens, the 77's, The 77s ... depending on what era you started with you're likely more than familiar with all of the spelling variations. The band's debut album must have been gestating a while before Exit was able to secure distribution. The back of the jacket has this as 1982 as that's when it was recorded, and the songs are mostly from 1980, with one of the newer ones 1981 and a cover of the old standard "Denomination Blues" that was attributed to Ry Cooder. This isn't an album I'd heard back in the day. Although the Christian bookstore I relied on was pretty good at bringing things in if I asked, I had to know what to ask for, and this wasn't on my radar at the time. By '83 my initial infatuation with a lot of Christian music had run its course, and my ability to try and like stuff that was inferior had more or less been exhausted. That isn't to say there weren't bands I still followed, but they were in the minority, an...

In the fall of '84 two albums dropped that were huge for me. Toto's maligned Isolation , and Don Henley's Building the Perfect Beast . Toto's album will be another day but today I'm sitting in the basement with the music on and pretending in twenty one again and discovering the album for the first time. David and Steve from Toto show up here quite a bit which I always thought was cool. I'd heard "Boys of Summer" on the radio and that song was so good, and the fact I had a Grateful Dead sticker on my car at the time only added to the fun. I always think of the album as being excellent, but honestly the two songs I really associate with the album are the aforementioned "Boys of Summer" and "Sunset Grill" ... I try not to think about "All She Wants to Do Is Dance" because I still think it's a giant musical turd. I still remember pouring over the credits while listening to the album, and "Boys of Summer" drove me...

Two Worlds came out in 1985 and the '80s had a sound, and by gum this was it. The flat splat of the drums, crisp guitars and gang vocals and sparkly keyboard parts. Body Electric was one of those bands who never really got out of the starting blocks. I remember seeing a poster for the band's debut on the wall at Little Mountain Sound. It was a cool cover, but all I knew was it was Frank Ludwig's new band, and as talented as Frank was, I never really got into his stuff. When "Do You Think They Can Tell" got some minor airplay in Vancouver I thought it was pretty cool, but it was the ballad "Don't Look Back" that clicked with me. That was an awesome song. So I picked up the E.P. and with only 5 songs, it was really all killer no filler. The album was produced by Bill Henderson and it sounded like a continuation of his '84 release Look In, Look Out . The album felt like a taster of things to come, except there wasn't anything else. This was a ...

Out There Tonight came out in '77 a year after the band's debut, and it was an album I'd been looking for since discovering Garfield a while back ... okay, last year. The band was a pleasant surprise, and I really enjoyed how Garfield French approached writing and how the songs were structured. It was progressive (I throw the term around, but basically to me it's a catch all for anything that isn't overly formulaic) and a little meandering, but not haphazard. This was carefully assembled and the off the cuff nature of Garfield's vocal delivery was deliberate. Think of Tommy Smother's acting all spontaneous and interrupting poor Dick with his meandering comments ... except nothing was random, it was meticulously crafted.   After I posted my blog about the band's debut I found Garfield's Facebook page. The page was inactive, but I figured I drop Mr. French a note to tell him how much I enjoyed the album. To my surprise I got a reply, and we traded a co...

The summer of 1979 belonged to The Knack. Produced by Mike Chapman who was half of the infamous dynamic "Chinnichap"duo with Nicky Chinn. Mr. Chapman had an ear for candy and by gum (bubble gum, baby!) with The Knack he managed to catch lightning in a bottle. The album would go double platinum in the States, and in Canada it would move over 400,000 copies.  The album was a big deal. Or so you'd think. The reality is a little more complicated. Going back to my teenage years "My Sharona" was the song that propelled the band into the stratosphere. Kids everywhere could play the opening riff, and like "Smoke on the Water" it gave the song a sense of simplicity that belied the song's complex structure and numerous changes. It's a mini masterclass in musical excellence and there are no bum notes or wasted space. You don't even have to hear all of the opening riff to "name that tune." I ate it up until it made me sick, and so did an awf...

City Nights was Nick's second solo album, and for most of us it's "Hot Child in the City" that he's best known for ... as a solo artist. He's still somewhat infamous as the guy who left Sweeney Todd just as they were taking off ... but for many years now he's been touring as Sweeney Todd so I guess he ended up having the last laugh anyway. Regardless, there's no denying how good "Hot Child in the City" was ... it was huge on both sides of the border, and Nick's balancing of the glam elements mixed with rock and emerging new wave was pretty impressive. A big part of this was the songwriting team of James McCulloch and Nick Gilder. When Nick left Sweeney Todd, it was with guitarist and songwriter James, and if Nick had a secret sauce it was James' both as a writer, and more impressively - a really tasty and economical player. The album was produced by Peter Coleman, and Mike Chapman. Both had deep roots with power pop and glam. Mike C...