Van Halen - Van Halen

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 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 pretty sure that's where I first heard of the band.

As a young guitar player I was enthralled by rock and roll, especially guitar driven rock. My friends were losing their minds over Van Halen. So I bought a copy, probably in '79 because I had friends who had Van Halen II and I was generally a step behind.

I still remember to this day dropping the needle and hearing the opening to "Running with the Devil" and it ... was ... awesome. Good gravy and holy guacamole that was something. Then came "Eruption" and I'd never heard it. It started out great, and Edward was all over and his left and right hand were totally in sync and then came the impossible section. What the fudge was that? No one knew what tapping was, or how he did it ... it was jaw dropping. It was the new high water mark. Then came "You Really Got Me" and it was a twist on The Kinks classic, and there was that impossible bit in the solo again.

I had a good friend who never appreciated Ed's playing, he just called him a one trick pony with no sense of melody. I disagreed with him then, and still do. It may have been a trick, but it was employed with such precision and there was structure. It wasn't a haphazard flurry of cacophony - the solos were deliberate. You could hear it, everything was constructed with a sense of purpose.

Heck Edward's rhythm work was impeccable. I still love his work on "Ain't Talking 'Bout Love" as a high watermark for the band, even after all these years. I especially love the guitar solo ... after melting faces, kicking ass and taking names, Edward delivered a simple yet effective supporting solo that served the song.

Now I've been listening while jibber jabbering, and I flipped the record over a couple of minutes ago, and "Atomic Punk" is now blaring in the basement, and I'm really getting into it ... I'm trying to recreate my disdain for the song and I must have left it in my other pant's pocket. One of my favourite tracks as a kid was "Ice Cream Man" and even now it puts a goofy grin on my face.

Like I said earlier, I'd not really listened to this in a long time, and holy crap this album still sounds absolutely fantastic. Donn Landee who engineered the album would be Edward's go to guy for much of the band's career. Ted Templeman produced the album and at that point in his career was better known as the guy who worked with the Doobie Brothers.

Much would be made of this album over the years. From trying to dial in Edward's "Brown Sound" to how his Frankenstrat was built ... it was mostly centred on Edward, and for good reason, he was the sonic architect. To me though, this was about the band, and David Roth (as he was listed on the album) was the shit. I always thought Dave was a heck of a belter, who had more range than he was given credit for. I'll agree that in later years, his antics and penchant for over the top showmanship would eclipse his vocal prowess. His singing seemed to take a back seat to his persona. Michael's backing vocals were an integral part of the sound, and Alex Van Halen was pretty creative in how he and Ed would connect on the music. Everything was intertwined.

Still, here at this point in time Van Halen served as shots fired! Rock and roll would never be the same.

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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