Old Enough to Forget

I had never heard of SUUNS before finding Felt in the discount bin. The clearance bin that once seemed to be teeming with possibilities had been getting thinner and thinner over the last few months. The once rich field that had yielded a crop of  Marco Polo Platters  had just about been picked clean. It was the same stock, different day, and albums I'd seen and rejected were now getting a closer look. After months of flipping and skipping, I found myself looking closely at the album, trying to see if there were any hints on the jacket that would give away the contents. Admittedly, I didn't want to just lay down my money and have this be a complete waste of my time, so I checked to see what genre the band was classified under. I didn't read too far. I got as far as them being considered a rock band and figured, "Good enough." The album cover was not a wealth of information, merely listing the songs in an embossed font against a lime green background that was only ...

Fingerprintz was released in 1979, and it was mining the raw energy of punk but was infused with the emerging new wave elements and a ska beat. The album was released everywhere except North America as The Very Dab . Back in '79 I'd have had no idea what that meant, and I guess the folks at Virgin / PolyGram didn't either, so they just blacked it out and voila, a self-titled record. Although I suspect the version we got in Canada wasn't the same. For those who don't know, like me, The Very Dab , according to Google, is a traditional Scots dialect phrase meaning "the exact thing required" or "absolutely perfect." I picked this up because of Jimme O'Neill and Cha Burns, who I knew from The Silencers. Cha Burns is one of the greatest guitar players you've likely never heard of. There was something about how he played and the way he added texture and feel to the songs he played on. It's hard to describe. It's sort of like trying to de...

Freeways marked the end of Bachman-Turner Overdrive in 1977, and the next year Randy Bachman emerged with Survivor . I remember seeing this in the bins and thinking the cover was really cool. There was Randy in partial silhouette, his bellbottom jeans disappearing into the fog on the stage. His classic white Strat was partially visible, and the simple title Survivor said all that needed to be said. He was the last man standing. In the early '80s I picked up a copy and was looking forward to finally hearing what I had missed. It was profoundly disappointing. Undeterred, I had still managed to pick up a lot of things Bachman. I had a copy of Union with Fred Turner, and aside from a couple of songs it was forgettable. I also had the two Iron Horse records ... one decent, the other not so much. Heck, I even had Axe , Randy's first solo album (I still pull it down once in a while). So it's not like Survivor stopped me from being a fan ... Survivor is an odd record. It's...

You may not be able to judge a book by its cover ... but you can often get an idea of what's going to be inside. I mean, a shirtless pirate with huge pectoral muscles and an eye patch sweeping a scantily clad damsel in a dress? You know you're going to read about penis euphemisms for a hundred and fifty pages. Just because the internet is full of pointless jibber-jabber, here are a few of my favourites: Man-Root Thorn of Lust Engorged Wand Pillar of Marble Scepter of Desire Monstrous Invader Wedding Tackle What does all of this bodice-removing slang have to do with Steel Breeze? I'm working on it. Like a book, the first thing to catch one's eye is the album cover. For a new band in particular, this is a do-or-die first impression. Once you have a bit of cachet, you can release a cover with nothing on it. Ask The Beatles, or AC/DC, or Spinal Tap, but for everyone else, covers matter. The cover to Steel Breeze's debut was about as eye-catching as the cover of The Yell...

City to City was a giant killer. Saturday Night Fever had been number 1 for 22 weeks in the States, and for one glorious week in July 1978, Gerry, the antithesis of disco, was number 1. Of course, what goes up comes down, and a week later the Rolling Stones would claim top spot. However, in Canada we weren't so lucky. Here, it was Andy Gibb who knocked him out of the top spot. A week later, The Rolling Stones' Some Girls claimed top spot in Canada. What this has to do with anything is ... not much. I just think it's cool that Gerry was once the flavour of the day for a week. "Baker Street," arguably his most famous song, was huge, and it pulled the album along with it. It would go platinum in the States and double platinum in Canada. City to City marked Gerry's triumphant return after the dissolution of Stealers Wheel and his forced exile. The musical climate in '78 was a hodgepodge of great rock and roll that served as a safe place for those trying to...

Aldo Nova seemed to come out of nowhere in the spring of '82. "Fantasy" didn't sound like anything else at the time - it was rock, wrapped in new wave structure, with searing guitars and layers of synths. If this was the future of rock, count me in. Throughout the album, Aldo's frenetic guitar playing was paired with a singing voice that at times seemed too thin to pull off the songs, but Aldo didn't seem to care and he went for it ... all in, baby. The album went double platinum on both sides of the border, and suddenly there was a new kid in town (suck it, Glenn Frey). To the uninitiated, Aldo Nova is remembered as a one-hit wonder - if he's remembered at all. Not everyone fell off the bandwagon after his debut, as his next record, Subject , would go platinum in Canada and gold in the US. However, by his third album, Twitch , an album that still went gold in Canada, there were a lot more empty seats on the wagon. His career trajectory may have gone in th...

In the early '90s I was rummaging through the discount discs at A&B Sound and I stumbled upon a couple of CDs by a band called 1927. I had never heard of them, but something about them looked cool. Pre-internet there was no easy way to find out about bands and stuff, so music had to stand on its own merit. Getting the two albums at once was fun, like the old Monty Python gag it was an instant record collection. Thankfully both ...ish and the Neapolitan self-titled album were really good. It would be ...ish that I played more often, not that I remember it being the better album, it's just the one I pull out when I think of the band. This was Australian synth heavy pop with big guitars and great vocals. Yes, back in the '80s Australia had a sound, go figure. 1927 sounded a bit like Icehouse. It wasn't so much Icehouse as it was that vocalist Eric Weideman sounded a lot like Iva Davies, who was by default - Icehouse. Icehouse at the time was hot. ...ish came out a y...

The cover for Close Personal Friend stood out for a number of reasons, and none of them particularly complimentary, but my goodness, it looked like fun, and those oxblood penny loafers, man, those were something. This wasn't supposed to come home with me, but dang it, this was on ... Released in 1978 on Infinity Records in North America and Ensign Records in the UK, Close Personal Friend was on a label with some pretty solid artists and somehow managed to implode and decimate a number of promising bands in the process. Who'd a thunk releasing an album by Pope John Paul II would cause such havoc in pop music? The year was '78 and here was Robert Johnson sporting a delightfully egg-shaped haircut and holding a sunburst Les Paul, and those shoes. Maybe I was too harsh, all of that is complimentary. He looked like Moon Martin's doppelganger, right down to the glasses, and looked like a shot from a cold nightmare ... although Robert was the better dresser, and a hell of a ...

Walter Egan is probably best known for his 1978 hit "Magnet And Steel" that featured backing vocals by Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. It was one of those hits that seemed to be on the radio all the time back in the summer of '78. One of the weird things about gold-selling singles is how muddy the waters are when you try and double check stuff. In this case I suspect Columbia moved a shitload of plastic 45s and declared it to be gold. I guess the suits figured they could save a buck and not pay to have RIAA certify the record. After all, it was a pretty big hit in the US and was also a decent hit here in Canada. Not sure what this has to do with anything, other than I found it interesting that nothing showed in the RIAA database. The music business is show business and apparently there's no business like show business. The art of sleight of hand ... Well, as often happens I've veered off into the weeds and am now trying to decide on calling for a Mulligan or ...

Right out of the gate, "No Shame" opens with every kitschy keyboard patch that was cutting edge in 1985, and the song is propelled by a frenetic right hand playing bass on a synth. The vocals were smack dab in the middle of the sweet spot of new romantic and techno. I'm trying to find the words to give a sense, but I suppose I should have just said it was an '80s vocal. The song is busy, really busy. So this is how the band followed up the '83 debut. The core band was intact from the debut, which was nice to see. I really liked a couple of songs from Heartland , but for whatever reason, when Real Life released The Flame , there was no fire and no smoke. I don't think I ever saw the record while flipping through the bins. Although I do remember seeing a collection of best-of-the-year lists culling what they thought were their top picks of 1985. There were a lot of mentions of Kate Bush, Dire Straits, and R.E.M., and there was one brave critic calling out Real ...

When I started playing records again, "Out of Nowhere" was an album I had long hoped to find, and I got close a few years ago, but the shop that had it was asking a lot more than I was willing to spend to satisfy my curiosity. I'd been waiting for a long time, so what was the harm in waiting a little longer? Not to spoil the surprise, but guess who found a copy in a dollar bin? Me. It was back in 1979, and I was sitting in my bedroom listening to CBC radio's Ninety Minutes with a Bullet. It was more than a countdown show, it was a little window that looked out into the rock and roll world. "Baker Street" was still a big deal, and there was a giveaway contest to get Gerry's new record, and all you had to do was send in a postcard with the answer to the following question: "Who was Gerry Rafferty's musical partner in Stealers Wheel?" Apparently, since Gerry was hitting it big, it only made sense that this other person was going to release a ...

I knew of Jeff before I ever heard Jeff, and over the decades (yes, DECADES) I’ve heard a lot of music he’s been involved in creating. Somewhere along the way, I grew quite fond of Jeff, and I even like his music. I consider him a friend - one I almost met in person once. If I have the date right, I missed my chance to rub shoulders with near greatness on November 16, 2002, when The Lost Dogs performed at Regent College in Vancouver. It was a wonderful little theatre. Theo Obrastoff was there that night - along with a cheap blue guitar he has since wisely hung on a wall after getting it signed by the guys (the best part is it can no longer be played) - promoting Come As A Child or Not At All , a tribute to his late son Andy. Jeff was there as well, opening the concert with a few solo acoustic songs I really enjoyed. Later, I’m pretty sure Derri played Jeff’s Gibson acoustic during The Lost Dogs’ closing set. The memory I have of Jeff, and the time we almost met, goes something like th...