Weathers - Are We Having Fun?

I don't go into the mall record stores very often. I'm not in the habit of shelling out for new vinyl. I am though a sucker for a deal, and the other day when my wife dragged me out so she could take some returns I found myself wandering the corridors feeling adrift while I walked past a never ending array of women's clothing stores and the occasional shop dedicated to baseball caps or luggage. There is one little record store that somehow manages to stay in business. They also have a bargain section where the records are only 25 bucks ... what a bargoon!

I started flipping through and I noticed there were quite a few records with a 75% off sticker. That was more like it. It was a small section and I found a few albums that looked interesting. I liked the cover to Are We Having Fun? I looked the band up and the first line of the wiki page described them as an "alternative rock band from Los Angeles." Good enough. Of the near handful (four, I found four) of ten dollar records (which is what I used to pay for records back in the day) I was looking forward to hearing this one (and the other three, but this was first).

Weathers is a band in an era where new bands are no longer relevant. It's weird to think that music has been reduced to the solo performer who seldom writes their own material, and the songs are written by committee and chosen by an algorithm. If you're thinking to yourself, "OK Boomer." I'm not offended at all, I missed being Gen X by four months so I'll wear my boomer badge with pride.

Regardless, here we have a band that is mining the power pop post punk vein with a twist and the results are pretty bloody good. Admittedly the songs are sort of generic and evoke the ghosts of Good Charlotte, My Chemical Romance and Sum 41 ... it's a long list (Breaking Benjamin, Hoobastank, Falling in Reverse yadda yadda yadda). However, I'm not bashing the band for being derivative, I like this stuff, dang they even name checked "Mr. Brightside" so it's not like they don't know who their influences are. It's no different than listing the endless number of '80s bands who had big hair and tight pants - FFS now that stuff got repetitive, let's be honest at some point it became a parody of a genre and I LOVED THAT SHIT.

Weathers is anchored by two Camerons: Cameron Boyer, vocals and piano, and Cameron Olsen, guitar and backing vocals, along with Brennen Bates, bass. Producer Jason Suwito provided drums, guitars and backing vocals. Musically these guys are solid and aren't trying to show off, they service the songs, and they service them well.

There are some memorable songs here, and lyrically the songs tackle the slice of life issues that are part of growing up ... of course I'm all grown up and growing out which is perplexing at times. It doesn't make the songs any less enjoyable. I've been jotting down my jibber jabber while giving the album the initial spins. So far I've played it through twice, and it's solid all the way through. The more I listen, the better it gets.

Am I having fun?

Yes, I am having fun. There may not be as many bands out there, but dagnabbit, there are still a few out there who are trying to cut through the noise. I'm going to be playing this one for a bit, what a pleasant find. Rock and roll may not be dead after all.

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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