Old Enough to Forget

After the abomination that was Power Play ... oh, it wasn't that bad ... it just wasn't that good either. I waited for April Wine to release a new album, and sure enough, in '84 April Wine dropped Animal Grace . The classic lineup of Goodwyn, Moffet, Greenway, Lang and Mercer was still intact, and all was right in the world. Animal Grace marked the end of an era. Although at the time I had no idea this was it. I'd grown up with April Wine being a key contributor to the soundtrack of my life, and I just figured that was how it would be. Funny how you don't know it's the last time until you have the ability to look back and realize it was where things ended. Goodwyn and Mike Stone crafted new sonic territory for the band. This was April Wine, but this was the '80s version of April Wine. Right from the opening track "This Could Be the Right One," April Wine was changing with the times. It was familiar, but it was new. Cementing the new sound for me ...

Sometimes my younger self likes to play games with old me. The games aren't always fun. I'm young enough to remember the things my body used to be able to do. Like the time my buddy Max taught me how to Alley-Oop dunk a basketball. "You just jump to where you want the ball to be ... it'll be there." Nowadays I'm lucky I don't kill myself if I misjudge the curb walking off the sidewalk.  Anyway, today I pulled out The Arrows album The Lines Are Open , and younger self piped up, "Hey, let's play a game." I shrugged my acceptance. "Tell me what I remember about this one before you play it." Okay, that wasn't too hard, and it wasn't an embarrassing physical challenge like trying to touch your toes. Fine, I'll play. The Arrows, The Lines Are Open . This one came out in '85 or '86. It had two killer songs, "Heart Of The City" and "Talk Talk." They were very '80s and slick as snot. I don'...

Headpins were a blip on the musical landscape in the early '80s. They started as a huge blip, then a big blip, and then a blip, and then they were gone. Like all bands, there's always a story within the story, and it changes depending on who gets to narrate. I can't speak to any of that, so I won't. It's a bit weird to sit here behind a keyboard plonking away with nothing more than an opinion and memories, trying to describe what the album meant to me back in the day and the impact it had over the years. Spoiler: Headpins were never among my favourite bands, but they had more than enough stellar moments to be part of the conversation. They were just never at the table. So the impact was negligible. Awareness, though, that's something else entirely. I knew who they were. This is a horrible way to start, as it's definitely getting off on the wrong foot. I can recover from this, don't worry. I do this to myself all the time. I just pretend I missed a turn a...

I'd never heard of Delaney and Bonnie until relatively recently. It was like they didn't exist, and then one day they did. Their names would pop up in articles and they would be name dropped by other musicians who were a big deal in the early '70s. It makes sense that they flew on the periphery of my musical radar as they were only active for a couple of years (1969 - 1970) and their recorded output actually outlived the band. I found a stained copy (I hope that's coffee) of the record in a box of records my buddy Paul was getting rid of. The vinyl was in surprisingly good shape. My gain, his loss. More than he knows. On Tour With Eric Clapton was recorded in 1969 in England, with at least one song recorded in Croydon, and by all accounts is the duo's crowning achievement, capturing them with an all-star cast of supporting musicians. Delaney & Bonnie had great friends. This would be their best selling album and it would be certified gold in the US. Who were the...

By rights The Dave Clark Five should be mentioned in the same sentence as The Beatles and Rolling Stones when it comes to the best bands to ever come out of England. There was a time Dave Clark had managed to do what his contemporaries had failed to do. Control their publishing. From the earliest days of the Dave Clark Five, Dave Clark was the band's manager, producer and publisher. Every song, whether he was part of the song's creation or not, he was listed as co-writer and publisher. While The Dave Clark Five was in name a band, it was Dave Clark and four salaried employees. However, as time marched on, and make no mistake it marches along whether you keep in step or not ... The Dave Clark Five slowly faded from the public eye. When the burgeoning market for CDs was starting to take hold, and bands were re-issuing their back catalogues Dave Clark was being a hold out waiting to cash in on the CD boom ... meanwhile The Beatles who held out for a while started releasing their m...

I really can't say I've ever listened to Marianne Faithfull. The first thing that really jumped out at me, aside from the nearly horrific condition of the record, was her voice. Particularly her vibrato. I know this was something of a hallmark in the early '60s among some folk singers but dang it, it just makes me think of running my finger up and down my Adam's apple while trying to sing. Of course the Germans have a word for this. They seem to have a word for everything to describe any situation. So off to the internet I went. Originally I was looking for a word my mum used to use that sounded a bit like "hecka" that she said described the sound a chicken made just before you chopped off its head. As you'd expect that search came up with a lot, A LOT of unusable trivia. However, eventually I settled on Die Schwebung , which roughly translates to a "floating" or "hovering" vibrato. In German acoustic terms, a Schwebung happens when two...

I'd been trying to find Rock N' Roll Nights for a few years, and I finally gave up and ordered this from overseas. Go figure, sometimes what you want is indeed more pressing than what you need. After years on the treadmill cranking out albums, this was the end of the line. Well - the end of the line as far as being a relevant commercial enterprise. Which isn't actually true either. The band was already running on fumes, and was on life support after Randy's departure following the disappointing Freeways in 1977 (who says you can't mix metaphors?). When Randy left, that was officially the end of Bachman–Turner Overdrive. Still, the band had been a veritable machine, running on fumes or not, and you gotta feed the machine so for a couple of years the remaining members tried to keep B.T.O. rolling down the highway. I'll freely admit that as a kid I was completely bullish on Bachman–Turner Overdrive - but I also stopped paying attention after Head On . Oh I still...