Patsy Gallant - Are You Ready for Love

As a thirteen year old hormonal kid there was something about a red eyed devil woman wearing polka dot underpants that made my tummy feel funny ... okay it was lower than my tummy but really no one needs to know that. 1976 was a weird year. I was still big into BTO and rock and roll was king. However, there was an earworm that seemed to be everywhere and on all the time, "From New York to L.A." that was deliciously infectious and who cares if it was disco or that the song seemed to play at double time leaving Patsy Gallant singing her little heart out trying to keep up with the music. I can still sing along with the chorus, and this one song is why I picked up the album when I found it in a discount bin.

I'd not thought of her or the song in decades, however, I saw the album in a bin and there she was, red eyes and polka dots and while my tummy didn't tingle I did hum under my breath, "I'm a star in New York ..." and almost expected someone to do the call and response.

I cleaned up the record, and dropped the needle and the album was more or less what I expected it to be. Disco. It was fun, and most of the songs featured the obligatory strings but also horns, which was cool. The arrangements were good, and the songs were decent - for disco. Patsy could sing too, that girl had pipes. Patsy produced the album alongside her partner Ian Robertson, and she also wrote some of the music and arranged the backing vocals for the songs. In short, she was a lot more than a pretty pair of panties.

To be fair, while most of the songs were indeed in the disco vein, and largely somewhat forgettable there is another gem hidden on the album. Near the close of the second side, "Angie" written by Patsy is a wonderful little pop song and really stood out. I'd actually listen to more songs like this ... except the respite was short lived as the album closes with another disco track that does the '70s long fade giving the impression the listener was saved from an eternity of endless disco by having the song fade rather than wait for an end that would never come.

Oh well, I got one more song than I expected to get. Win / win. One song a side, I can live with that.

In 1977 when the Juno Awards aired Patsy was all over the show. As a kid I didn't mind because I liked the big song. Patsy would collect a Juno as female vocalist of the year, and her album would win for best engineered album. It really is a good sounding record. The song "From New York to L.A." was up for best selling single, but lost to "Roxy Roller" which didn't upset me at all.

Of course with a little fame, at least in Canada, a television variety show followed. Since we didn't have a lot of channels it was either Tommy Hunter or having to choose between The Raes and The Rene Simard Show. They were the best of times ... no, they weren't, they were just what was available - to be honest I don't really remember her show although I know I watched it.

I guess for those who cared about such things Patsy Gallant was more than just that one (okay two) catchy song, but to me I have all I need now and I don't need any more.

Now I have that stupid song stuck in my head.

Thank you for that.

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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