Old Enough to Forget

Good old Sammy. I knew of Sammy at least a year or two before I ever heard the opening riff to "Heavy Metal" from the sountrack album. It was a song I should have loved, but it always sort of stuck in my craw like a spoonful of cinnamon. It should have been tasty ...  I'd seen Sammy's name in the credits of a couple albums I had back in the day: I think the first time I saw his name was in the credits on a Servant record. Servant had incorrectly attributed "Rich Man" to Sammy on their debut album Shallow Water ... I was this many days old when I learned Dan Hartman wrote the song, not Sammy. His name also popped up on Working Class Dog.  Rick Springfield covered "I've Done Everything For You" and absolutely made it his own. A few years later when Sammy replaced Dave in Van Halen  everyone knew who the Red Rocker was. Sammy is cool. Absolutely and unequivocally cool. For whatever reason I never really clicked with Sammy's stuff. I had all of...

By 1981 The Cars had released four albums in four years. When they dropped Shake It Up late in '81 the band suddenly had a top 10 hit with "Shake It Up" an infectious earworm that contained yet another brilliant Elliot Easton guitar solo. While the other singles from the album that dropped throughout 1982 didn't get as much traction the album still went double platinum and the song "Since You're Gone" is one of my favourite songs by the band ... ever. Roy Thomas Baker was again in the producer's chair and with Shake It Up the band crafted a collection of tightly packed new wave pop songs. It was more of the same, but different - but not as different as the songs on the previous album Panorama . It's always fun reading old reviews, and apparently the reviewer (Alan Niester) with the Globe and Mail back in '81 wrote. "Ric Ocasek and the boys have produced an understated and decidedly underwhelming package that makes no attempt to deviate...

When I first bought There Goes the Neighborhood I knew who Joe Walsh was, but other than a couple of songs on the radio I hadn't had the opportunity to hear any of his solo records. This was also true of the Eagles, but that's only tangentially related. The first Eagles record I'd pick up was Eagles Live in 1980 which more or less cemented my appreciation for Joe Walsh as a player. When Joe released There Goes the Neighborhood in '81 it would be my gateway into his solo career. I didn't quite know what to do with this one when I first heard it - this was a weird album. To me Joe Walsh was the rocker who wrote "In the City" for The Warriors soundtrack and was the guy who did "Rocky Mountain Way" and despite my teenage protestations that Triumph did it better - in the long run, Canada's other power trio couldn't hold a candle to the original. Of course "Life's Been Good" is pretty much the penultimate Joe Walsh song, but th...

The cover to this album seemed so familiar from my teenage record store explorations, but for the life of me I had no idea who they were. I had always assumed Straight Eight were a Canadian band ... you know what they say when you assume something: According to Merriam Webster's online dictionary the word assume has a few different connotations based on meaning and usage, but the one I was using which was to take as granted or true was number four from a list of seven variations. I should probably just use the word "Suppose" next time to avoid confusion. After all, I don't want to make an ass out of you or me. Sometimes you can judge a book by it's cover, or an album by it's art - sometimes you can't. Whatever preconceived notions I had formulated in my developing brain would turn out to be nonsense. I suppose what supported my assertion (almost said the ass word, tch tch) that Straight Eight were Canadian was the label: El Mocambo. This was a pretty infam...

Straight Lines put out two pretty good albums and then folded. Run for Cover was the band's second album and was full of tightly polished light rock songs. It's kind of foggy now but there was a time this was the shit. Coming out of the '70s Straight Lines wasn't ashamed of the past, but it was embracing the future. The songs were tight, the Peter Clarke's vocals were really good and harmonies were on point and the guitar playing was that perfect mix of tasty with a bit of edge that gave the feeling if David Sinclair wanted to he could cut loose with the best of them. Listening now it would be easy to dismiss this as faceless corporate rock of the most generic variety. Which is not only unfair, it's plain wrong.  It may have been my mood but I was really getting into this one. It was really good. Most of the songs were mid tempo, but the band had a killer ballad with "Letting Go" which is probably their best known song, although personally I am partial...

When Escape came out in the summer of 1981 Journey went from being big to HUGE. I first heard the band back in the summer of '78 when I was stuck in a forestry camp for the summer and one of the other kids had a copy of Infinity among his collection of summer tunes. I loved "Wheel in the Sky" even though the opening riff seemed to be an unabashed rip off of "Layla" and nobody seemed to mind or care.  The band would follow up a year later with Evolution and then in 1980 Departure contained "Any Way You Want It" which was also featured in Caddyshack. That to me was pure ear candy. How could the bad ever top this? Escape would be the band's seventh album in as many years and would be the band's crowning achievement. Everything seemed to be in place for Journey, REO Speedwagon the year before had seemingly paved the way with their Hi Infidelity album and people were ready for what Journey was about to bring to the table. No, I'm not sleeping...

The late Rupert Hine was a producer of the highest order who made incredible albums with SAGA, The Fixx, Howard Jones and Eight Seconds to name just a few. I knew he had a solo career that was a bit sporadic, but never heard any of his stuff. He released a trio of albums in the '80s. Starting with this one,  Immunity in '81 then he would drop another in '82 and finally one more in '83 and then he'd take over a decade before releasing his last solo album in 1994. I bought this as a curiosity, and really had no idea what to expect. Sometimes a producers fingerprints are unmistakable and are every where regardless of the act they're working with. Yeah, I'm thinking of David Foster ... although I do have to say The Tubes were the exception to the rule ... but you know what I mean. Rupert Hine's work with other artists was transparent. His style seemed to provide focus to the band he was producing, and he brought out their best work.  Immunity is an odd work....

A weird and inexplicably goofy thing happened in 1981. Disco, made a brief but memorable comeback inside a Trojan Horse containing rearranged versions and snippets of classical pieces mashed together, along side a steady drum beat that never varied or wavered. The album was arranged and conducted by Louis Clark. Yeah, the same Louis Clark who once was an integral part of those early Electric Light Orchestra albums who arranged their strings and stuff. The guy must have fallen on hard times to be sucked into the K-Tel universe. Except this album caught on - all over the world it was a hit, and the single, "Hooked on Classics" was a staple on the radio that summer.  Heck this album's impact is probably what gave birth to the mashup, inspired DJ's to drop their own beat over any existing piece of music, no matter how mundane. All of it, owes a debt of gratitude to the fine folks at K-Tel. We're all poorer for it. Still, there was something oddly wonderful about this ...

Foreigner was one of those bands people loved to dump on. They were a commercial behemoth, and the band had been on a killer run releasing one multiple platinum album after another since their debut in '77.  Apparently their previous albu m Head Games  from '79 had reportedly "under performed" compared to Double Vision. Which doesn't make any sense, for goodness sake the album has gone on to sell over 5,000,000 copies in the States alone ... sure Double Vision sold a couple million more than that south of the border but  Head Games was hardly a failure. Whatever the reason the band would take some time and literally regroup. They'd jettison Ian McDonald (keyboards, guitars, backing vocals) and Al Greenwood (keyboards) and emerge as a lean mean hit making machine. Depending on where you got on the wagon reactions to 4 were a little split. For me, I'd always liked the songs I heard on the radio, but my first album was Head Games , and that was a transitio...

Leave Your Bones in the Hall was the second album by The Cry. Kimball Fox (Kim Berly of Stampeders fame) and the band were back for another round. Although this time drums were provided by Chas Mitchell. This was a truly collaborative effort with most of the songs on the album being attributed to all of the members in the band. I'll admit that when I see that in the credits it makes me happy. One for all, and all for one stuff. Musically the guys were capturing lightning in a bottle and with their brand of harder rocking skinny tie new wave, even getting the flat robotic backing vocals down. Who knows why the band didn't catch on. Then again the debut suffered the same fate being relegated to obscurity. The band is more or less a footnote, or the answer to a trivia question. Which is a shame. The music was really good, although to be honest by '81 the new wave propelled by the organ and catchy hooks had already crashed to the shore but the tide hadn't gone out. It's...

I suppose the meanest thing I could say about this one is, "Hey look kids it Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo's less talented doppelgangers." Of course that's more than a little unfair. I did say it was the meanest thing I could say, and really, after all this time is it even fair to take pot shots at QuarterFlash? No it isn't fair, then again no one said life was fair. Let's step back and address the elephant in the room, their 1981 hit "Harden My Heart" a song that went gold, and single-handedly carried the album to platinum status by the middle of '82. The album had legs and "Harden My Heart" was an excellent song, and is still an excellent song. The saxophone solo was right up there with  Raphael Ravenscroft's work on "Baker Street" - yeah, it was that good. So we know for certain the album had one killer track and I'm going to just park that one in a safe space and listen to the rest of the album ... you know, the son...

Here we go this month's Stylus Over Substance Volume 15. Good lord, if each volume contains five little incomprehensible blurbs, that means this year I've gacked out seventy five of these little literary turds. Man, I'm kind of proud of myself. I suppose I've gotten a little lazier with this, mainly because after a couple of years I've realized that Blogger is probably the worst platform I could have chosen. Few of my pages get indexed, and essentially I am doing this for an audience of one most of the time. Me.  Which is honestly okay, I do this for me because I enjoy it, and every so often something I write makes me giggle or smile. Which is good enough. Besides, this is all part of intentionally listening to the music I have. It may not always be good, or great, but it's always an adventure and I often have no idea where I'm going until I get there. With that here's another five carefully curated random selections. Jefferson Starship - Modern Times (...

Town to Town was the first Phil Keaggy album I bought brand new when it came out. My first introduction to Phil was on the triple live album How the West was One with 2nd Chapter of Acts. It was a gift along with a few other Christian records I got from a girl at a youth conference. Apparently she had been gifted them and she didn't want them. Her loss, my gain. Although there were some clunkers in the pile I've since forgotten about and lost, it was that live album that blew my mind. "What a Day" and the casual chord progression Phil pulls of still bends my brain. Phil was (is) a jaw dropping player, and I still find it odd that he resonated so much with me as he wasn't really a rock and roll guy - he was a mostly soft rock guy who played a mean guitar. When Town to Town dropped it featured a lot of truly jaw dropping guitar work that accompanied by his sweet almost McCartney like vocals. The songs were at times deeply spiritual but there was something about his...

Good gravy here were are enjoying the lazy dog days of summer and thankfully the basements is still relatively cool compared to the rest of the house. The tunes are cranked and I'm annoying everyone in the house. Life is good. I suppose the most interesting thing to me in this bunch of records was hearing Leo Sayer's Living in a Fantasy , an album that fits with Cliff Richard's early '80s output produced by Alan Tarney. Man there was some good stuff coming in the early to mid '80s. Leo Sayer - Living in a Fantasy (1980) Christopher Cross -  Every Turn of the World (1985) Chalk Circle - The Great Lake (EP) (1986) Cliff Richard - Wired for Sound (1981) Red Rockers - Schizophrenic Circus (1984) Leo Sayer - Living in a Fantasy (1980) Man, had I known how good this album was I'd have gotten it years ago. I really, really liked the songs Alan Tarney produced with Cliff Richard. Oddly Cliff had a huge hit with "Dreamin'" in 1980, a song produced and ...