Black Market - Changing of the Guard

Goodness me, look what the bins coughed up. Black Market's Changing of the Guard. The album came out back in '81 on the small El Mocambo imprint. As far as covers go, this is about as cheesy as they come. Except, I don't think it was meant to be cheese, as there is a special salute to the Royal Regiment of Canada on the bottom right corner on the back cover.

There was something familiar about the guy with the stache and glasses holding a machine gun pulling off a beret. Sure enough a quick scan of the back cover reveals a cigar chompin' Dominic Troiano. The two shadowy figures are wearing face coverings so it's hard to know if they're props or if drummer Paul DeLong and bassist Bob Wilson didn't want to show their faces.

It's interesting to me that this was released as a Dominic Troiano solo album. I suspect that after almost a half dozen records that Dominic wanted to try something different - hence the new band. I suppose it makes sense. Black Market is a decidedly rock oriented band, and I'd always read that Dominic's tendency was to lean away from rock into more jazz oriented composition. However, I'm likely just making stuff up as I really don't know a lot about him other than the snippets I've picked up over the years.

Now, I need to dismiss myself as an expert witness on all things Troiano. What I know would hardly fit an old baby A&W mug (they do make a staggeringly awesome three and a half oz shot glass) . What Mister Troiano has though is a certain degree of name recognition as a guitar slinger. Most of us kids in Canada will know of him from his tenure in The Guess Who before they broke up. Some will know of him through the two albums he recorded with The James Gang back in '72 where he followed Joe Walsh and preceded Tommy Bolin. I've listened to those James Gang records, and dang that first one Straight Shooter where he and vocalist Roy Kenner wrote the songs was pretty good. Speaking of Roy Kenner, on Changing of the Guard, he co-wrote five of the eleven songs, and provided backing vocals.

Ah, vocals. As a singer Dominic was a hell of a guitar player. Now to be fair (to be fair) Dominic is a decent singer and on some of the songs he sounds good but it makes one wonder, what if he sang backing vocals and let Roy take the lead? We'll never know.

I was really curious about this one, and when the opening chords to the title track really caught my attention. This was awesome. This wasn't hard rock, it was just good old rock (not just distorted guitars) with a little bit of new wave on the backing vocals, but it was the guitars - so many guitars. What an introduction. "Turn Back" cemented the album for me. There was something about the groove here and the guitars were on point. What a killer solo. No unnecessary flash, it was so tasty, man this dude could play. This, this is why Dominic Troiano is held in such high regard. My goodness what a killer. If only the vocals were better, they worked but man what could have been. I laughed at "Girls Girls Girls" of course it sounded nothing like Motley Crue, but there are only so many ways to sing "Girls, girls, girls" without it sounding similar. Would be funny though if they'd actually heard it.

This one two punch set the tone for the whole album. Musically the band covered a lot of ground. They were essentially a '70s band who knew how to write in more than one style. It's part of the records charm. Not everything sounded the same, at the same time not everything's a winner either, but it all worked. This album was so much better than I expected it to be. I figured there would be a lot of guitar, but I didn't expect him to be this good.

Sadly Black Market has been lost to time. El Mocambo folded ages ago, and who knows if any other label scooped up the rights to their catalogue. Whatever the case Changing of the Guard can only be heard on YouTube (there's always someone who is trying to save the old stuff) or if you get lucky and find a copy of the record. Who knows how many copies have survived the last four and half decades.

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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