Haywire - Wired The Best of Haywire

Haywire were nearly the shit through the late '80s to the early '90s. They dropped their debut in '86 and the two singles from Bad Boys seemed to be everywhere. Haywire were suddenly in the mix with the big Canadian acts: Corey Hart, Gowan (yeah, before Styx he was the real deal, baby), Glass Tiger and, of course, the king himself, Bryan Adams.

Then the band really broke with their second album, and "Dance Desire" was a huge hit. The whole album was rock deliciousness with some spectacular guitar work from Marvin Birt and Paul MacAusland's soaring vocals. The power ballad "Thinkin' About the Years" features some jaw-dropping work by Marvin. Marvin was (still is) a monster player. I love Marvin.

Then the band seemed to disappear right when they were red hot. Three years later they emerged with Nuthouse in 1990, right when Haywire's bread and butter musical style was about to be flushed down the toilet. Which was a shame, as the guys went all in on being a rock band with all of the most extravagant sundae toppings. While it wasn't as good as Don't Just Stand There, it wasn't without some really killer moments. "Operator Central" is as good as anything they'd done, and even the rather over-the-top bombastic rocker "Short End of a Wishbone" has held up really well.

Their last album, Get Off from '92, showed a band trying to stay current and was pretty good, but sadly featured one of the worst covers I've ever seen. Still, the songs represented here, "Buzz" and "Get Back," are pretty solid and frankly, when mixed with the other songs from the band's discography, are surprisingly cohesive.

If there's a word that needs to be repeated, it's that one: COHESIVE.

This is an album that totally works all the way from the first cut through to the last track. Okay, the second to last track. I don't really count the remix version of "Dance Desire" as anything other than a curiosity. Never was a fan of the bloated cuts. Still, it is what it is. The songs were nicely sequenced, and while they loosely followed the chronological order of release, it wasn't absolute. It really was incredibly cohesive (yes it was).

The band was so good, and was consistent through their entire career. Heck, the band is still out in the summer playing classic rock festivals. I saw them in the summer a year ago, on one of the hottest days we'd had that year. They were first up in the afternoon and partway through their set Marvin looked like he was going to pass out. Someone brought him a chair and he ended up sitting down with a fan pointed at him. I wasn't that far from the stage and he was white as a sheet. He still killed it and made it through. Love me some Marvin.

Paul made a pointed joke about them being all original members after almost forty years. Which I found hilarious, as a couple of the acts on the bill that day maybe had one original member and some had none at all ... ah, rock and roll. It's all about the name.

The band after all these years is still:

Paul MacAusland - vocals
Marvin Birt - guitars and backing vocals
David Rashed - keyboards and backing vocals
Ronnie Switzer - bass
Sean Kilbride - drums

Paul was (is) a hell of a singer, but to me, what made Haywire tick was Marvin Birt. The guy, in my opinion, is one of the best to strap on, plug in and rock out. Google the guy and you'll get a pretty picture of a cricket.

Now the album packaging is really top shelf, and the records are pretty to look at. I just wish the band had opted for proper credits and lyrics. Oh well, you can't always get what you want.

Wired The Best of Haywire wasn't an album I needed. I had all of their albums already, but dang it, when I found the album with the coloured discs and shiny cover, I figured it would make me a nice Christmas present ... it did, and I thanked my dog profusely.

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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