April Wine - Animal Grace

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 was "Sons of the Pioneers." It's still a song that gets me in the feels. This was a one-two combination that should have connected. Except it didn't. Which still confuses me.

This was April FREAKIN' Wine and they were back. Where was everyone? "This Could Be the Right One" was the first single, and while it didn't exactly set the charts on fire, I remember hearing it on the radio in Vancouver more than a few times. The song stalled. The follow-up was the stellar "Sons of the Pioneers," which didn't even make a ripple before it sank ... to me, this was the centrepiece of the entire record, and it went unnoticed.

Now, before I keep going, I have to admit that my memories of this one are centred on those first two songs. They were so good that to me the whole album was good. End of story. Have a nice day.

Animal Grace sounded new, and the band was employing new sounds, but the underlying issue ended up being the songs. As the songs came and went, songs like "Rock Tonite" and "Hard Rock Kid" were just uninspired rock and roll musical cliches. Turns out those two songs I loved were the best songs, and what I was actually listening to now was completely different from how I remembered it.

Now, it's not like April Wine didn't pad their albums in the past. For every killer, there seemed to be an equal and opposite amount of filler.

This is coming from a guy who loved April Wine. When they were good, they were extraordinary ... sometimes things stand out more when they're surrounded by ordinary stuff - that's where the extra comes in.

I was actually really stoked to find this on vinyl. I'd not heard it in a long time, and the big songs were still the big songs, and the filler was still doing what it needed to do ... fill up space.

None of the songs are horrible, they're serviceable, and the band did the best they could with what they had. It sounded good ... and honestly, despite quite literally contradicting myself, this is still a really good album. It was an April Wine album.

Honestly, back in '84, after I'd spent my time with the album, I filed it with all the other April Wine records and was looking forward to the next one. There was always a next one. What would the band come up with on the next one?

Except there wouldn't be a next one. Not really.

I'm guessing it was Myles who wrote the little epitaph "Animal Grace" on the insert. It feels almost like a description of what they were trying to do with the album. The strength and the courage were still there, but they were adapting to a changing musical landscape, trying to be bold without losing what made them April Wine.

Animal Grace

The combination of brute strength,
courage and pride; bold yet
cautious and always with inherent
undeniable grace.

Turns out, it was the last time. I just didn't know it.

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...

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 , ...

Lighthouse - Sunny Days

Bin diving at my local record store where there were more than a few choices to make. After picking out a half dozen treasures, I figured I'd stop looking and leave before I caused myself trouble at home. Lighthouse was one of those ridiculously large bands in the early 70s I didn't understand. I mean really, BTO was just four guys, The James Gang was three, until they weren't, what in the world do you do with a dozen guys in a band? Of course I had a radio — it was the first significant purchase I made with my money from cutting lawns. I think at the time it cost about 35 bucks, and had FM and other high frequency things I never got to use living out in the suburbs away from the reach of the big city FM signal. "Sunny Days" was a great song. I remember thinking it was cool and didn't switch to the other AM station when it came on. A few years later, when I got my first record player, the obligatory K-Tel anthologies would feature a myriad of cut up and edited...

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