38 Special - Special Forces

When Special Forces dropped in '82 I snapped it up. Right off the bat the band was kicking in the door and "Caught Up in You" became my second favourite song by the band. The rest of the album then sort of settled into a groove as one decent but not especially memorable song after another played.

My favourite was still "Hold on Loosely," man I loved that song. I also had no idea that it was a big deal, I just knew that the song was amazing. We had limited radio when I was a kid up north, and unless it was word of mouth or something I'd read about when browsing the magazines I was pretty sheltered.

Special Forces, though, was interesting. Some of the songs were goofy, "Back Door Stranger" probably isn't a thinly veiled play on words. If it was it was way more subtle than Deep Purple was when they were singing about knocking on a back door. No, that wasn't a typo. Now, while I'm being casually dismissive of the songs as being perfunctory rockers, the first side closed with a sleeper in "Chain Lightning" that shouldn't have been as good as it is.

The second side was the side I didn't play as often, but it's cool hearing this now as it's actually got some really good songs. At the time some of the credits, especially the songwriting credits didn't register. Now in my defence they're only on the centre of the album on Special Forces, so I'm giving myself a pass.

However, of the nine songs here, three were co-written by Jim Peterik who at the time was in Survivor and co-wrote their big songs. Jim also co-wrote "Hold on Loosely" and the songs he penned here:

"Caught Up in You"
"Chain Lightning"
"You Keep Runnin' Away"

These are among the best tracks on the album. "You Keep Runnin' Away" seems to be deliberately trying to recreate elements of "Hold on Loosely" which kind of feel the same but is different. The song still fits with the overall sound. Nifty trick.

The interplay between Donnie Van Zant and Don Barnes is really good, and while it seems like Don got to front most of the big hits, I have to sheepishly admit that it's hard to tell them apart at times. Yes, that's me, the Luddite in the corner.

This was a pretty solid album and while sometimes the songs may come across as hefty filler, when the band puts it all together the results are pretty friggin' spectacular. While this would be the band's biggest selling album, it was smack in the middle of their platinum run with Wild-Eyed Southern Boys and Tour de Force.

Comments

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...

Old Enough to Forget

Search This Blog