Old Enough to Forget

Blue Ridge Rangers was released in 1973 on Fantasy Records. The album was a collection of traditional and cover songs that were arranged and produced by John Fogerty. I suppose when it first came out it was a bit confusing. Was this a John Fogerty album? Was there a band? Who were the silhouettes on the cover? Why did they all look like the same person? Was this a giant FU to Fantasy records? After the initial run of pressings I'm guessing there was some pressure to rebrand the album, and subsequently John's name was featured more prominently. The Blue Ridge Rangers came out a year after the final CCR album  Mardi Gras marked the end of an era. I cannot imagine the pressure applied to a still young John Fogerty (28) to replicate the magic he had created with his previous band. While Mardi Gras  was a gold selling record, I suspect that was more the general public's muscle memory as it is generally considered the nadir of the band's output. I imagine there were words ...

"Last Song" is really the only tune I can name off the top of my head by Edward Bear. It's one of those little AM radio nuggets that still holds up. When I found the album I was in one of those moods where I wanted to take a chance on something, and this one looked interesting, and the bear on the cover looked slightly menacing. This pressing had the hype sticker embossed onto the cover, "includes LAST SONG, FLY ACROSS THE SEA, MASQUERADE" of the three songs I was only familiar with the aforementioned "Last Song" so I was curious to hear them. But first, some trivia. Who doesn't love trivia? Hands up? The band is literally named after Winnie the Pooh. I was this many years old when I learned that Edward Bear and Winnie-the-Pooh are one and the same. Nifty. It makes the ominous looking pissed off bear on the cover that much cooler. Now back to the previously meandering entry. The album opens with "Last Song" and the song is pure pop cheese...

Neil Diamond was one of those anomalies that thrived in the '70s. The '70s were weird. I may have been a little kid when this came out, but I knew weird, and this was weird. My dad was a voracious reader and our family room was full of books ... from floor to ceiling there were books. I remember people talking about Jonathan Livingston Seagull like it was some great insight into the human condition. I mean for me at that age, the human condition amounted to trying not to get bullied in school and what time was Star Trek on? As a kid my parent's didn't load up the car to take us to the movies very often. I still held a grudge because they wouldn't take to me to see The Poseidon Adventure ... and frankly having to sit through Song of Norway as a kid was awful, but I have to admit something must have sunk in because I have a soft spot for Edvard Grieg. It was a couple years after the movie came out that it was showing at our little theatre, and we loaded up the car an...

I was ten when this came out, and like most people it was the eerie piano run used on The Exorcist that captured everyone's imagination. I never saw the movie, although surprisingly my dad had a copy of the book by William Peter Blatty. All I knew it was supposed to be so scary people were having heart attacks in the theatre. My uncle Lloyd had a copy of the album, and all I remember is him playing the record once through the first part of side a, and it was mesmerizing. I can still see him standing by the stereo holding the record in his hands while the opening played. He then casually mentioned that Mike Oldfield played just about everything himself on the album. That stuck with me. I never forgot it. I wanted to be able to do that. Over the years I never really thought much about Mike Oldfield. His name would pop up again in the early '80s when Hall & Oates hat a hit with "Family Man" and I never really liked Hall & Oates, but that was a cool song. After t...

For many years I had never heard the album in its entirety. As a kid I was enthralled with "Band on the Run" and loved the guitar riff from "Let Me Roll It" and really liked "Helen Wheels" which apparently wasn't meant to be on the album - but in North America it was included. "Jet" still remains a song that I like and detest in equal measure. I'm not sure why. It's likely a hold over from my distaste of Elton John's "Benny and the Jets" from that same year, and hearing Jet in a song triggered my gag reflex. Who knows, I can also see I'm starting this off by wandering off topic. Let me see if I can wrestle this to the ground and try and get things back on track. Back in '73 I can't really claim to have had the deepest of musical knowledge, but I can unequivocally state that from my earliest memories I have been pretty obsessed with music. It's pretty rare for something not to be playing in the background,...

As a kid I was enamoured with the movie Yellow Submarine . I don't remember the year I first saw it on our tiny black and white television, it was maybe 1969 or 1970, My parents were having a party and I got to stay up late and as long as I wasn't seen or heard I could do what I wanted. I'm not sure if this was the night I watched Hitari! with John Wayne and Red Buttons (tell me again about the monkeys ...) and Yellow Submarine but those two movies are intertwined in my memory as a double feature. I always loved the songs Ringo sang. It was 1973 and Ringo was having his day in the sun. Songs like "Photograph" and "Oh My My" were a big deal. Although "You're Sixteen" was huge it was always a little creepy sounding even to my ten year old ears. Go figure. Over the years I maintained my soft spot for Ringo, although I never got any of his records. I did of course pick up a greatest hits CD, but my fandom never really translated into sales. So...

Look at that, six months in, and I'm keeping up with my once a month schedule of dropping five snapshots of albums I've found. This time around it's another mixed bag of goodies, these are all new to me, which is generally a lot of fun. I finally picked up Stan Meissner's debut, and it was a nice score. I also found more Edgar Winter albums, and continue to go down the Rick Derringer rabbit hole - the man was a monster player and while not underrated he was certainly under appreciated by the masses. Probably my favourite album this time out, was finally connecting with Ian Thomas' debut album from 1973 what an incredible album. Yeah, full props to "Painted Ladies" and the drama about the hit that never was, but there is so much more to this Canadian icon. I worry that he will be nothing more than a footnote as time passes as the majority of his work remains out of print and only to be found my looking for old vinyl. Criminal, I say. Shame . shame - shame. ...

As a kid "Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo" was everything a rock and roll song needed to be. It was big, it was infectious and it was awesome, it had a lot of guitar. For many years this was all I needed to know about Rick Derringer. Then in the '80s I started seeing his name show up in weird places. Most notably "Weird" Al records. Of course being a wrestling fan back in the day when the curtain hadn't been pulled back to reveal the true nature of the business, I watched in awe as Hulk Hogan entered the ring to Rick Derringer's "Real American" and I knew this was Rick Derringer because they were schilling Rocking Wrestling , or The Wrestling Album , I don't know what it was called, and looking it up mid sentence just seems like a lot of effort. I did know that Rick was involved and I found that weird, and cool at the same time. Recently as I've been diving into a lot of records Rick's name kept popping up all over the place, from Bonnie ...

For number Four it's a mixed bag of five albums for your reading pleasure. Three out of five were new to me which is always an adventure. I think my favourite find in the bunch this time around was the Joe Walsh release. I do love me some Joe Walsh. Gotta say, four months in and holding steady. It's the last Sunday in May so without further ado ... Five for Fighting No.4 Joe South - Games People Play (1970?)  Moon Joyce - The Infinite Edge (1985)  Wang Chung - Points on the Curve (1983) Joe Walsh - The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get (1973) Nestor Pistor - Nestor Pistor for Prime Minister (1978) Joe South - Games People Play (1970?) I was intrigued by the cover and figured this could be an interesting discovery and at worst I'd be out a buck. This was a re-issue on Pickwick, which meant it was licensed from Capitol and the songs were cobbled together from different releases. Not quite a greatest hits, but it was a mixed bag of pretty interesting tunes. Trying t...

Yeah I know I've written about B.T.O more than once, but dang it man these guys were THE SHIT when I was a kid. They were the original monsters of rock for me, and every so often I will go and revisit different albums and take the musical time machine back to the land of nostalgia. I found a nice copy of the debut and figured why not go back to the beginning and see what the fuss was about? This may have been their debut but it didn't show up in my collection for a long, long time. I think I first heard the album in its entirety when I got it on CD. The halcyon days for me were those that accompanied the band's bookend releases in 1975: Four Wheel Drive , and the Christmas present Head On - those were my jam. Dang, "Wild Spirit" from Head On should have been as big as anything they'd ever done - even if it was a mono mix, which even as a preteen was perplexing as I had a stereo.  I digress. It's not unusual, in the words of Tom Jones. The first song I re...

Ten year old me didn't know what to think of the song "Rock On" as it was a unusual thing but strangely hypnotic and cool too. It was etched into my developing musical preferences. I never forgot the song. I blame Jack Wagner for Michael Damian being able to release his version of "Rock On" - yeah, I know that's not fair or accurate, but dang it the only singing soap opera star I need (I was going to try and work an "All I Need" reference in there somewhere, but it seemed like a lot of work for zero pay off) is Rick Springfield. Let's just pretend that never happened shall we (although I will reluctantly admit his cover version was "okay"). Before finding this album, the only other song by David Essex I was aware of was " A Winter's Tale" a song I found a few years ago, that has become one of my favourite holiday tunes. It is a stunning piece - although my daughter thinks it's rather "meh" but likes that I ...

Over the last year and a bit I've been accumulating more dollar store treasures than I have time to actually process. It doesn't mean I'm not giving them a proper listen and consideration, it's just that not everything has a story that can meanderamble for a while and still say nothing at the end. Also there are a lot of bands where there are numerous albums in their discography that are sitting on my shelf (more than one, as my wife reminds me) and they deserve a shout out. I figured since no one really reads this nonsense anyway and this is all about me fuelling my own inflated sense of hubris I'd start a new segment I'd slot in maybe once a week, or once a month, or perhaps quarterly, or as an annual thing. I'm hedging my bets as I generally have a lot of ideas and poor follow through. Not everything is a dollar store treasure, some of these I've had a long time, some not so long, and some were more than a buck. However, let's be optimistic and se...