Old Enough to Forget

Spoons were never a band that was on my radar back in the day. I knew who they were, "Nova Heart" was a pretty great song, but there were a lot of great songs that never made it into my collection. Talkback  was produced by Nile Rodgers. Bowie's Let's Dance  was the other project Mr. Rodgers produced in '83. Oddly enough Nile passed over Culture Club who were hotter than something that was really hot to produce Talkback by Spoons. You'd have thunk that this would have helped secure Spoons a decent distribution deal ... but nope. Talkback would only see the light of day in Canada. Good for us I guess, bad for them and everyone else. Like the band's previous album Arias & Symphonies , Talkback would go gold in Canada, but the band's subsequent releases wouldn't fare so well. The big single was "Old Emotion" which is a song I sort of like and am sort of irritated by. The whammy bar dives never worked for me. It's not like Gordon Depp...

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 occasion 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 do...

I remember when this came out in 1982. It was just in time for Christmas and I bought two copies. One for me, and one for my best friend Mike. At the time I didn't know the album would be a mostly forgettable collection of songs, with one really annoying "hit" with an S song in "It's Raining Again".  There was a certain degree of pent up excitement at the thought of a new album and the stop gap release of the obligatory live album certainly didn't count, at least to me. Heck, let's be honest, the live version of "Dreamer" got a second life no one saw coming, or wanted ... again, just me. Breakfast in America was huge in Canada going Diamond, with over 1.5 million copies out there. I suppose the pressure to try and have lightning strike twice was enormous. With the benefit of hindsight, and the internet there's a lot of information out there about the tumultuous gestation period that birthed "...famous last words..." The delic...

I'll admit I'm sort of a sucker for this era of soft rock. It likely explains why I'm such a big fan of Christopher Cross ... no I am not kidding. Before Mister Cross though there were others - one of whom was Stephen Bishop. A year earlier he had contributed a couple of songs to Art Garfunkel's 1975 album Breakaway , and this helped him secure a record deal. Careless would feature some of the best players of the '70s: Andrew Gold, Jay Graydon, Larry Carlton and Eric Clapton played guitar, Russ Kunkel and Jim Gordon among others on drums, and Chaka Khan who was also on ABC records appeared as a backing vocalist on a couple of track. Art Garfunkel also appeared on a few tracks. For a debut this is pretty awesome. Stephen co-produced the album with Henry Lewy who also engineered the album. Lewy was no stranger to great sounding albums which included  Mitchell's Blue and Neil Young's Harvest . The album opens with Stephen Bishop's biggest hit - or at least ...

Lonesome Jubilee  introduced the world to John Mellencamp ... no more John Cougar, or John Cougar Mellencamp ... it was John Mellencamp thank you very much. John's transformation into a full fledged folk rock (Americana is the term that would later be applied, but at the time this is just roots rock) hero was complete. While John had maintained his multi-platinum run in the States, here is Canada would find his greatest commercial success with Lonesome Jubilee . His previous three releases, American Fool , Uh-Huh , and Scarecrow all sold in excess of 500,000 copies. That an RIAA gold album from a population literally ten times small than our neighbours to the south. With Lonesome Jubilee he moved over 600,000 and this would be the peak of his popularity at least in terms of commercial album sales. He's never stopped creating music, and has released another sixteen albums, the last being Orpheus Descending (2023). However for me this was really the point where I stopped payin...

Back in the day I had two of Melissa's albums: this one and her follow up Brave and Crazy . I was a rocker (at least I said I was, but I still liked Christopher Cross, so go figure) and not hearing anything as captivating as "Bring Me Some Water" I stopped listening to her stuff. It didn't help that the radio stations I liked didn't seem to play anything of hers so I just moved on. Of course she'd go one to have one hell of a career I know little or nothing about. Despite me thinking her debut was as good as it got for her history tells another story. If you're a fan, I mean a REAL fan you know more than me. So I'm going to just listen to this one in a vacuum and contain my commentary to the ten songs on her debut. Seems like a reasonable compromise and it'll keep me contained and hopefully on track.  The album opens with "Similar Features" and man is it a great track - it still sounds so good. I bought the album because "Being Me So...