Crawler - Snake, Rattle and Roll

I picked this up because it looked like an interesting album. The back credits caught my attention: Produced by Gary Lyons, mastered by George Marino and recorded at the legendary Caribou Ranch in Colorado. I figured the album would lean one of two ways - a sucky late '70s Dan Fogelberg type album, or a straight ahead boogie woogie rock and roll album with a bit of twang. Guitarist Geoff Whitehorn was credited with playing "fiddle" so I figured that plaid jacket was appropriate.

The anticipation of dropping the needle and those first moments of dead space are so good ... "Sail On" opens the album and the brief harmonic and sliding bass note is quickly followed by thick crunchy power chords that then give way to an infectious groove that has a lot of bounce and swing - in short, swagger. The vocal harmonies are great and the interplay between the guitars and keyboards is simply awesome.

I haven't had a truly great holy shit moment for a while. This was so good. Musically the guys weren't doing anything that hadn't been done before and vocalist Terry Wilson-Slesser had one of those fantastic, but somewhat generic voices that had me wondering who he sounded like on various tracks. That's not a shot, the guy could sing. This was straight on blues based rock that meshed some funk elements and intricate backing vocals. It was so good and just resonated with me.

I was really drawn to guitarist Geoff Whitehorn. Great tone and man, the guy played right in the pocket. Speaking of the pocket, drummer Tony Braunagel and bassist Terry Wilson (yeah, what were the chances of having more than one Terry in a band, let alone another Terry Wilson?) were awesome. The drums were fat and so crisp. Sprinkle on top the keyboard textures of John "Rabbit" Bundrick and everything worked in unison.

Now I was curious, who were these guys and how come I'm just hearing about them now? Turns out the seeds of the band were first planted with former Free guitarist Paul Kossoff when all of the guys had at one point been in Back Street Crawler who had released two albums on Atlantic Records in 1975 and 1976. When Paul passed away the band essentially ended (there was some ensuing drama I'm sure, but you can do a wiki search as easily as I can). After recruiting Geoff Whitehorn, the band would look for new management (I wonder if "Where is the Money" was directed at their old management and label?) and would be signed to Epic.

Man, I wonder what the pressure must have been like for Geoff trying to step into Paul's shoes? I suspect at first the idea was to merely continue as Back Street Crawler ... I don't know enough about Paul, other than the songs I've heard on the radio by Free. Snake, Rattle and Roll was a greenfield for me, and I had no baggage or expectations. For me it was Geoff who stood out on the album, and his playing was just so good. Heck, his solo on "Liar" is jaw dropping (it's the song that happened to be playing as I jotted down this paragraph ... the solo on the next song "One Way Street" that closes the album is even better). It's not the only highlight on the record, and I have to remind myself that this is just where I'm coming in, there was the band's debut so who knows what came before? I'm going to find out. Sadly Crawler's 1977 debut isn't out there to stream.

They would release Crawler in 1977, and then a year later Snake, Rattle and Roll in 1978 which would be the last studio album by the band. Which was too bad, but in a way it sort of made sense. As good as this was, the times were a changing and rock was going to undergo a pretty significant transformation and more than a few really good bands wouldn't make it.

With the benefit of hindsight I get to listen to this with fresh ears and wonder what could have been, even if only for a little while.

On the plus side I have some new albums on my wish list.

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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