Jo Jo Gunne - Jo Jo Gunne

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 wider audience. Sure the songs were a bit on the hippy dippy side, this was '72 after all but you can tell the guys had a strong sense of melody and the guys could have easily made small adjustments as times changed. Heck their label mates the Eagles weren't the same band they started out as by the time they finished their long run.

Anyway, woulda - shoulda - didn't.

I suppose I could stop there, but I won't because I have more to say and while the band may not have gotten the love when they needed it, I can at least try and throw a little their way posthumously.

Debut albums more often than not capture a band at their hungriest and the songs have often been road tested and polished through trial and error.

The band was comprised of Jay Ferguson who played keyboards and was the band's lead vocalist and primary songwriter. Guitarist Matthew Andes co-wrote several of the songs on the album with Jay, including "Run Run Run." Matthew was a really competent player, and my goodness he had tone for days and his slide and solo work was right in the pocket. Mark Andres who was Matthew's brother anchored the bottom end on bass with Curley Smith sitting on the throne and keeping things groovy.

The first side is all killer. There isn't a weak song here. Oddly for me the song I keep coming back to is "I Make Love" which is the best song Grand Funk never did. The staccato piano is deliciously countered by a great guitar riff.

Side two only has four songs which seems odd as they didn't have anything overly long. Who knows maybe they had run run run out of ideas (I know, I know but it seemed like a good idea at the time). Opening with "99 Days" that showcases both Jay's keyboards and Matthew's guitar playing as they play off each other. The only song that didn't really work for me was "Academy Award" as it was an odd clunky song but it did grow on me after a while.

The album closes out with "Flying Home" that dialed the volume back and settled into a comfortable laid back groove. They were from California after all. While not much more than a generic pop song it was a nice way to close out a pretty solid record.

The band would end up releasing three studio albums over a couple of years and after their 1974 live album that was it. Then it was Jo Jo Gone.

Still they left behind some pretty cool music.

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...

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, 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 , "Don...

Lighthouse - Sunny Days

Bin diving at my local record store where there were more than a few choices to make. After picking out a half dozen treasures, I figured I'd stop looking and leave before I caused myself trouble at home. Lighthouse was one of those ridiculously large bands in the early 70s I didn't understand. I mean really, BTO was just four guys, The James Gang was three, until they weren't, what in the world do you do with a dozen guys in a band? Of course I had a radio — it was the first significant purchase I made with my money from cutting lawns. I think at the time it cost about 35 bucks, and had FM and other high frequency things I never got to use living out in the suburbs away from the reach of the big city FM signal. "Sunny Days" was a great song. I remember thinking it was cool and didn't switch to the other AM station when it came on. A few years later, when I got my first record player, the obligatory K-Tel anthologies would feature a myriad of cut up and edited...

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