April Wine - Power Play

It was 1982 and April Wine was striking while the iron was hot, or in this case platinum. The band had finally cracked the US market a year earlier with The Nature of the Beast, and at home the band had released consecutive gold or platinum albums since 1975's breakthrough Stand Back. Power Play managed to ride the band's momentum to platinum status in Canada, but despite the album cracking the top 40 on the US album charts, it didn't translate into sales.

The album was produced by Mike Stone and Myles Goodwin, and the classic line up was still intact.

Brian Greenway - guitar, vocals
Myles Goodwyn - vocals, guitars, keyboards
Gary Moffet - guitar, background vocals
Steve Lang - bass, background vocals
Jerry Mercer - drums

Heck, the album cover was awesome. There was Myles with his three pickup Les Paul slung over his shoulder, arms splayed out, basking in the moment. I loved that guitar. Two pickups good. THREE BETTERER! Take that, Peter Frampton!

The only problem was the songs.

The band had been cranking out hit records like they were sausages, and I suppose it was only a matter of time before they started shovelling the waste off the floor to make wieners. The album opens with "Everything You Want, You Got It," a song that had all the ingredients, but felt like a rejected song from their previous album. I mean, it rocks and all, but it's missing something. The whole album for the most part just felt like the band was trying to replicate their past success and it just wasn't working. The songs sounded okay, but they weren't anything special.

The one and only redeeming track on the album was "Enough is Enough," a killer April Wine track that is quirky and awesome. It was the only song I really liked back in '82, and time hasn't done anything to make the other tracks any better.

"If You See Kay" ... F...U...C...K, get it? Har de har har har. Yeah, it was pure cringe. Which still surprises me, as when I was a teenager I was the self-appointed prince of the double entendre and this wasn't clever ... it was stupid. I don't think the rest of the band was all that enamoured with it either, but April Wine was never a democracy, it was Myles' band.

Now just so you don't think I've just unbuttoned my trousers just so I can take a dump on the record, I have to say that this was still APRIL WINE and as such there was a degree of respect and repeated plays that had to accompany an April Wine record. I did play this quite a bit, and to be honest the album is enjoyable for all that. Even the ill advised cover of The Powder Blues' "Doin' It Right" is okay. It's the same song, just rocked up with more crunchy guitars.

April Wine was at heart a '70s band, and the times were a changing. Power Play was already feeling out of touch with what was going on in rock. The classic line up would release their final album Animal Grace a couple of years later. It was a retooled band trying to adapt, and frankly I loved it, but it marked the end of the band's commercial run.

Power Play was so disappointing, especially when you consider the string of great albums that came before. "Enough is Enough" almost made up for it ... almost.

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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