Night Ranger - Dawn Patrol

Night Ranger released Dawn Patrol in the waning months of 1982. The band would pull three singles off the album, with the last one dropping in the summer of 1983. The album was slick as snot, with a twin guitar assault that was more than capable of melting faces. Jeff Watson on one side with his mind bending dexterity and Brad Gillis, fresh off a stint with Ozzy, was on the other. Brad was featured on Mr. Osbourne's Speak of the Devil, also released in November of '82. I suspect Brad's departure was amicable as Ozzy & Sharon got a shout out on the back cover.

Night Ranger found their voice early on with bread and butter slick rock and roll. This was '82 and hard rock was coming into the mainstream. The band also managed to pull off the two lead singer trick and make it look easy. Bassist Jack Blades and drummer Kelly Keagy took turns singing their own songs while occasionally writing together. Their voices were similar but different enough to give the album a nice back and forth.

The album opens with one of my favourite tracks by the band, "Don't Tell Me You Love Me", which was fronted by Jack Blades. It's a killer song and the guitar work is astounding. It was followed by a power ballad that was all power, written by Kelly Keagy. "Sing Me Away" doesn't feel like a slow song because it isn't. This one two punch set the tone for the rest of the record.

The band didn't mess around stylistically. They had a style and they mined the same vein over and over. Big guitars, check. Big vocals, check. Hooks, check. Bake, rinse and repeat. It may not have been a formula but dang the boys were onto something. It was catchy, and the songs were good.

The songs are all rock, but there are little nods to the 80s with Alan Fitzgerald's keyboard work, which was so tasty. Night Ranger wasn't a '70s hard rock band trying to transition into the '80s. They were a rock band setting out to define the '80s. Which they would do, building on the foundations they were putting in place with Dawn Patrol. People were paying attention and the album would go gold. Things would only get better ... right?

Dawn Patrol was an album I wanted to find for a while. I wanted to go back to the beginning. I wanted to imagine them before the backlash that followed the release of Midnight Madness in '83 with the success of "Sister Christian" that seemed to erase any of the credibility the band had earned. It didn't matter the opening track "(You Can Still) Rock in America" was awesome, the band had turned into a bubble gum act. At least that's how I remember it. The music press had a field day shovelling shit on the band. If you were serious about music you could not seriously like Night Ranger. It may have sold a million copies, but the band had sold out.

The reality was they just did what they did. They were the real deal and had the audacity to rock and write catchy music.

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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