Old Enough to Forget

The Final Cut seems to be one of the more divisive albums in Pink Floyd's discography, and happens to be my personal favourite. I should qualify this and right off the bat admit to being a somewhat casual whose personal collection (for a long time) of Pink Floyd records started ... and stopped at The Wall . This should give you the general idea that I am pretty much one of the great unwashed Luddites who shouldn't be allowed to pass himself off as a fan. Except I do consider myself a fan. The Wall was one of those foundational albums that would go on to sell more than 30,000,000 copies world wide. It was an impossible album to try and top.  In 1983 the band would release The Final Cut , an ambitious and ultimately bewildering album that seemed to eschew any sense of standard form and song structure. "Not Now John" was released as a single, and I don't know if I ever heard it on the radio. I was curious as to what the radio edit would sound like, so I went to YouT...

Linda Ronstadt has been one of those wonderful discoveries over the last few years. Get Closer came out in '82 and after her brief foray into new wave that featured a few Elvis Costello songs on her previous album Mad Love she was back to being Linda Ronstadt, and all was right with the world.  Times they were a changin' and Linda was content being herself and she was enough of a presence now that she could be herself and that was enough. For me at the time, Linda Ronstadt was about as far off my radar as you could get. Other than the few songs I knew from the radio she wasn't relevant to me ... at all. It may not have just been me me either, as Get Closer would mark her first album in almost a decade that wouldn't crack the top 5. The album would go gold in the US which is still a pretty solid accomplishment, but she had reached the summit, and no one stays on top forever. Anyway you can read that kind of stuff on Wikipedia, I know I did.  It's about the music, ...

Here I have Stranded , the second album by Edwards Hand, released in 1970. I never knew this existed. For decades I had been curious about the duo of Rod Edwards and Roger Hand. I first saw their names listed in the credits for Larry Norman's Only Visiting This Planet, and his follow up So Long Ago the Garden . Those two albums were recorded in England and produced by Edwards Hand along with Jon Miller. To say those albums were foundational to me is an understatement. I'd again see the same team behind a pair of albums by Malcolm & Alwyn: 1973's Fool's Wisdom and their 1974 follow up Wildwall . The two Malcom & Alwyn albums I discovered in the early '80s and while both are very good, I was especially drawn to their first album. This is a rather long preamble, but through these early albums I became aware a number of rather stellar musicians. John Wetton would of course go on to be a member of King Crimson, and later Asia, while others I wouldn't really...

A weird and inexplicably goofy thing happened in 1981. Disco, made a brief but memorable comeback inside a Trojan Horse containing rearranged versions and snippets of classical pieces mashed together, along side a steady drum beat that never varied or wavered. The album was arranged and conducted by Louis Clark. Yeah, the same Louis Clark who once was an integral part of those early Electric Light Orchestra albums who arranged their strings and stuff. The guy must have fallen on hard times to be sucked into the K-Tel universe. Except this album caught on - all over the world it was a hit, and the single, "Hooked on Classics" was a staple on the radio that summer.  Heck this album's impact is probably what gave birth to the mashup, inspired DJ's to drop their own beat over any existing piece of music, no matter how mundane. All of it, owes a debt of gratitude to the fine folks at K-Tel. We're all poorer for it. Still, there was something oddly wonderful about this ...

Released in'72, Words of Earnest was the band's third album in as many years. It would arguably be their most successful and also their last on Capitol Records. The band would take a couple of years before signing with Columbia who would distribute their last album to be released in the '70s, Do Your Thing But Don't Touch Mine. It wasn't long after writing about their debut that I found their four albums in really great shape for a pretty skookum price. Words of Earnest was the album I was most excited to hear as contained "Mercedes Benz" and "Guitars Pickin, Fiddles Playing" the two songs my Aunt Jeanne introduced to me. I'm glad I started with the debut before listening to this one. I know I skipped ahead by not playing Welcome to Goose Creek , but not everything in life follows a logical order. Whereas the debut was definitely a hodgepodge of eclectic hippy dippy psychedelic country, Words of Earnest settled into a groove early on, and w...

It's hard to imagine now, but this movie was sort of a biggish deal. Following The Breakfast Club a few months later St. Elmo's Fire hit the threatres. The cast was a hodgepodge of members of the so called Brat Pack, and both movies were produced by a guy named Ned Tanen who was behind some pretty impressive movies. The Breakfast Club is a coming of age classic now, whereas St. Elmo's Fire is mostly a forgotten misfire that was surprisingly popular when it was released. I'll admit that I took my girlfriend at the time to see it. It was a bit weird seeing many of the kids who a few months earlier were in detention playing a more age appropriate role. In many ways it was a foreshadowing of Friends , except this wasn't funny or all that good. However, there was the soundtrack. David Foster was all over this, and it's a sort of mixed bag of horseshoes. I happen to like David Foster, but there are times his style of music, keyboard sound choices, and layers of syru...

I'd heard of UFO before, but never actually heard them. The band's guitarist Michael Schenker was once a member of The Scorpions with his older brother Rudolf, but it's not like I knew much of their early work either. It just a nifty bit of trivia but that was about it. I sort of found Lights Out by accident. I'd been down to Krazy Bob's and I was looking for something specific so I tend to be able to get in and get out - usually with something I hadn't planned on getting by the time I leave. I tend to enjoy my visits when I'm the only one in the store and Bob isn't trying to entertain people with his array of parlour tricks. For me it's tiring but when he's alone, Bob is a treasure of knowledge and more often than not has an uncanny knack for suggesting something I'd not heard of before but was tangentially related to what I was looking for.  One of the perks of dropping a bit of cash is Bob will often ask you to choose a record (or two) fr...

I blame my wife for this. More to the point I blame that first friggin' Twilight movie. Goodness me, that was some fun, huh? The movie wasn't high art but the soundtrack was pretty bloody awesome. It was full of wicked alternative rock. Heck the biggest surprise to me was the inclusion of "Tremble for My Beloved" by Collective Soul. Don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of the band, but it felt out of place. Paramore was one of the standouts from the collection with the trio of songs they provided. It's kind of mind boggling to think that it's been over fifteen years since the world had to pick whether they were team Edward, or team Jacob ... like Jacob ever had a chance, I mean there are underdogs and then there are lost causes. My wife was team Edward, and we still have a Edward figure in the closet upstairs, in the original box I might add. I like Paramore and I have heard most of their albums except for their 2017 release After Laughter but I honestly ha...

Max Webster was a pretty big deal here in Canada once upon a time. Between 1976 and 1981 the band would release five studio albums, one live album and a greatest hits package. All of them gold, with the exception of A Million Vacations that went platinum. They had some killer tunes, but to me they were that band Kim Mitchell was in before he went solo. Which is sort of code for I never had any of their albums back in the day. A Million Vacations is the album that contained "Let Go the Line" and the title track that have become classics over the years. True fans know that Kim Mitchell was not the singer on those songs. Well, I know that too because I they didn't sound like Kim, and now that I have the album I can read the credits.  "Let Go the Line" was one of two songs sung by Terry Watkinson. The other was "Charmonium" which is also pretty good. "A Million Vacations" had drummer Gary McCracken step out from behind the kit and considering it...

There are a few "HOLY SHIT" albums from my youth that still deliver the goods. Their debut is something to behold make no mistake, but in 1978 it was Boston's second album that was my first real introduction to the band. The title track was pure sonic magic and I couldn't get enough of it. I remember trying to dial in the rock stations on my stereo at night because sometimes the signal would be strong enough to reach Vancouver from the small town I grew up in. Every so often I'd be rewarded and I'd hear the song. It probably only happened once, maybe twice but it was enough to be indelible. Heck me and my buddy Andrew who was a hell of a guitar player when we were in our teens (far better than me) decided we'd learn how to play "Don't Look Back" and as Andrew had figured out how to play the cool rhythm parts I'd have to learn the lead fiddly bits. To our credit we did a passable job without a bass player, singer or a drummer ... although ...

Back in the early '80s Christian music was a bit of a mixed bag of Licorice Allsorts. It was pretty rare to get a good one, and if there were any of the good ones someone else usually got there first leaving me with the weird orange blobs of sugary shitness. DeGarmo & Key were among the early pioneers who had chops and made records that sounded like honest to goodness records. Of course back then my budget was pretty thin and the only exposure I had to new stuff was through some of the older kids in my youth group. I wasn't exactly a kid but I was still in high school. I'd heard some of the songs from the band's first two albums and they were solid and when they dropped their third album it took me a bit but I would pick it up in '81 and really really tried to like this it. It was the band's third album and they had moved decidedly into the adult contemporary lane and while there was still plenty of guitar the songs were more like extensions of Christopher C...

Jo Jo Gunne were one of the first acts signed to David Geffen's newly minted Asylum Records in 1972. The band sounded a bit like Grand Funk at times, and while the band was heavy they were more of a boogie woogie rock band than the blues based bands like Led Zeppelin or early Sabbath. I'd never heard of the band before finding their '73 album Bite Down Hard and it was good enough to put the band on my radar. Although it turns out I had heard them before, I just didn't remember. I actually have "Run Run Run" on a few classic rock compilations in the basement. It's funny that while the song registered as kind of cool I never remembered the band. Not like it matters at all. So here we have the debut released in '72 and the band kicked off side one with "Run Run Run" that sets the tone for the rest of the record, and boy howdy do the fellows deliver. It's still a bit of a conundrum as to why this didn't catch on and break the band to a w...

I bought this one sight unseen and unheard when it popped up on the auction site I like to frequent. I submitted the minimum bid and forgot about it until I got an e.mail telling me I'd won. This was a few months ago now and it's been sitting in a pile waiting for me to give it a spin. One of the reasons I waited for a while was I honestly wasn't all that interested in hearing a couple of remix tracks. Then why buy it? Like I said, I bought it mainly because I thought it was a Manic Street Preachers album, and it wasn't until later that I discovered it was a record store day deal that only contained a couple of remix tracks. Apparently there are only 2,000 pressings and the packaging wasn't much more than an afterthought ... a plain white jacket with a sticker saying M.S.P. done & dusted. It was in a really thick PVC outer sleeve that also had a couple of hype stickers. Still, it was a band I liked and I was curious. Their 1996 masterpiece Everything Must Go is...