Straight Lines - Run for Cover

Straight Lines put out two pretty good albums and then folded. Run for Cover was the band's second album and was full of tightly polished light rock songs. It's kind of foggy now but there was a time this was the shit. Coming out of the '70s, Straight Lines wasn't ashamed of the past, but it was embracing the future. The songs were tight, Peter Clarke's vocals were really good and the harmonies were on point. David Sinclair's guitar playing was that perfect mix of tasty with a bit of edge. I suspect if he wanted to, he could cut loose with the best of them. Listening now it would be easy to dismiss this as faceless corporate rock of the most generic variety. Which is not only unfair, it's plain wrong.

It may have been my mood but I was really getting into this one. It was really good. Most of the songs were mid tempo, but the band had a killer ballad with "Letting Go" which is probably their best known song, although personally I am partial to "Heads Are Gonna Roll" from their debut which honestly sounded like something from Harlequin (not a bad thing). The debut was sort of all over the place, in a good way and David's guitar tone was very different than what he'd employ on Run for Cover. Considering it was only a year between releases the differences are rather striking. Run for Cover, for better or worse, was more cohesive and didn't flit around as much.

The band got some traction on their first release and I suppose the expectations were pretty high for the followup. Run for Cover delivered the goods and with Bruce Allen managing the band it seemed like all the pieces were in place. The band went so far as to thank all our Friends at Epic records ... which in hindsight is always awkward. Sort of like a general manager expressing his support for a coach just before getting punted. Except here it's a grateful band thanking the boss for support that was about to evaporate.

I didn't realize the band released three singles from the album. The first was "Letting Go" which is really one of the best songs on the album. It would end up being nominated for a Juno award for Single of the Year, and David Sinclair and Bob Buckley were up for Composer of the Year. The band then released another ballad, "There Are No Secrets" which honestly is an okay song and it managed to crack the top 40 and when they released "Illusions" a more uptempo song it didn't even make a ripple. Shortly after their "friends" at Epic dropped them.

It's a shame as there were better songs that to me would have gotten more traction. One of the best songs on the album was the title track "Run for Cover" which had the riffs and groove. Heck even the slightly off kilter new wave tinged "Easy to Run" would have been better. This was at the height of the skinny tie new wave era and was an interesting blend of genres for the band.

Ah. What could have been.

The back cover art is one of those weird head scratching what were they thinking? I wonder if Billy Squier saw this one (doubtful) and used this as a starting point for his infamous "Rock Me Tonite" video? Palmer Jarvis was one of the bigger advertising agencies in British Columbia back in the day, and they looked after the cover but not every pitch is a winner. Don Draper would not have approved.

It's what inside that counts though, and this was a really great collection of songs. This would be the last album by the band. They left behind two solid albums of fantastic album oriented rock. David and Bob would go on to play with Body Electric before taking different paths in the music industry. Geoff Eyre who had previously played with The Hometown Band would continue to work. As to bassist and vocalist Peter Clarke who knows, I couldn't find much which is a shame. Guy had a set of pipes.

I was saddened to read that David Sinclair who played for a lot of notable artists passed away back in 2018.

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 , ...

David Baerwald - Bedtime Stories

The little sticker on the shrinkwrap says, "You may remember David Baerwald from David & David's Boomtown ..." You bet, I remembered David Baerwald. Back in 1986 Boomtown was an album with moments of sheer brilliance. The whole album may not have been as top shelf as the first few tracks, but that didn't matter - it is an excellent album. I waited for a follow-up ... and waited, and then in 1990 it was a solo David, David Baerwald, who dropped Bedtime Stories . I snapped it up. "All For You," the opening cut, is still my favourite song on the album. It was mesmerizing. I'm not sure if the song got any airplay, it may have, but that may have been wishful thinking on my part as it was on a lot of mix tapes at the time and I heard it a lot in the car. The CD had a great booklet with all of the musician credits and lyrics. Oddly, when I found a sealed copy of the record (a great score), it just had a plain paper insert - the picture of David walking wit...

Gary Numan - The Pleasure Principle

"Cars" was really the only song I knew by Gary Numan. I knew the name of the album the song came from. Over the years bits and pieces of trivia are accumulated, but in terms of his music it was still distilled down to one song ... It would be too easy to write Mr. Numan off as a one hit wonder, and I suppose in terms of actual chart hits this was his defining moment as a solo artist. Of course this really means nothing, as Gary Numan would drop an album a year pretty much through to the end of the '80s. He'd then slow down a little but continued to make music. While The Pleasure Principle was Gary Numan's debut solo release in '79, he actually cut his teeth on a couple of albums in a band called Tubeway Army, first with the band's self-titled release in 1978, and then on Replicas that came out in April of '79. By the end of Tubeway Army's run most of the band would follow Gary into his solo career. Paul Gardiner, who had been with Gary from the b...

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