Old Enough to Forget

I bought this back in the day because of Randy Thomas, the guitar player from Sweet Comfort Band, and because I was told this album was awesome. Awesome is a bit of a stretch. I liked one song, but I'll get to that eventually. The early to mid '80s was the era of Christian music warfare. As members of the body of Christ, we had a fiduciary responsibility to subdue the ways of the world. It was "Onward Christian Soldiers," and we were going to take the D out of Evil or whatever it was we were supposed to do. Allies, dressed in camouflage and wielding their instruments, were going out there to kick butt and rack up souls on the giant scoreboard in the sky. I ate this stuff up. Make no mistake, there is still a war going on, but most of the time when we're (I am part of the great we) out there pointing fingers, we have more pointing back at us - and some pretty big splinters in our own eyes. Even back then I thought it was a corny cover, but dang it, this was Randy...

There was a short but glorious period in the early '80s where I bought a lot of Christian music. My buddy Gord, who I love to tease, had an older brother, and between them they knew about everything. Gord was also a lot more forgiving than I ever was for sucky music. I remember the two of us being in the little Christian bookstore by my place when Gord was over visiting, and there on the wall were a couple of records by Sweet Comfort: Breakin' the Ice and Hold On Tight. For whatever reason I can still picture this wall. Phil Keaggy's Ph'lip Side was facing out with the sunburst Les Paul, and the first two Servant albums, Shallow Water and Rockin' Revival , were there too. I'd eventually get all of them...except for those Sweet Comfort albums. My memory is fuzzy at this point, but I'm pretty sure Gord played Breakin' the Ice and I was less than enthusiastic. That was also the time Gord put an air pistol into my cereal one morning and splattered me, the ...

You ever sit and wonder what were you thinking as a kid? Maybe not even as a kid, but as a young adult who thought they knew shit , but it turns out they knew shit? Case in point: The Alarm's 1985 release Strength . It's no secret that I am drawn to shiny things. I'm often a musical crow who looks for the object that stands out and then ignore everything else around it. I bought a lot of records and later CDs for one track. Sometimes I'd get more than I bargained for, generally though I was buying so much stuff that I seldom took the time to really let an album percolate. Not always, but often enough that my memory pertaining to a lot of great stuff is full of blanks. The Alarm suffered from this fate not once, but twice. The first time was when I heard "Strength" for the first time, and my little brain (yes, little - I have a big head but I'm not efficiently using all that extra space) melted. I bought the album, and I don't know what I was expecting,...

I wonder how much of a debt Dave owes to The Honeydrippers 1984 EP Volume One ? That showed there was an audience for this kind of stuff. Since they never dropped a number two, Diamond Dave did that for them. I did buy The Honeydrippers EP, but never did get Crazy from the Heat . I did like the videos and thought his version of "California Girls" was awesome. I did know that Christopher Cross provided backing vocals with Carl Wilson. For whatever reason I thought that was really cool ... mainly because I loved and still love Christopher Cross' music. When this dropped Dave was still in Van Halen and as his little EP took off, eventually going platinum I guess he figured a solo career was to be had and off he went. It is telling, that while Ted Templeman produced, long time engineer Donn Landee wasn't twiddling the nobs. Okay maybe not telling, I'm probably reading into it, but Donn and Ed seemed to be really tight and who knows maybe there's a nugget of truth ...

The Adventures popped up on my radar back in 1988 when I heard "Broken Land" on the radio ... once. I was at work at the time and the some caught my attention. I waited patiently in the hopes the song would be identified, and thankfully when it was over I got to hear a mumbled titled by The Adventures. I found the album, and got more than just the one song. It was so good and so different than most of what was in my CD player at the time. A year later they dropped Trading Secrets with the Moon , and while I never heard any songs on the radio, my mix tapes pulled a few songs and then I lost track of them. During the dying days of Krazy Bob's I popped in more than usual, often dropping more cash than usual because it was the end of an era and there were still treasures to be had while they could be had. This particular trip was only to mine his discount bins, which he would often seed with hidden gems. He was never shy about pointing out stuff I missed. On this particular v...

I'll admit that I was drawn and sort of repelled by "Mimi on the Beach" when it first showed up on MuchMusic back in 1984 ... however, like the Borg were so fond of saying, "Resistance is futile." The song grew on me, but it wouldn't be until after I bought The Speckless Sky , based on the irresistible strength of "One More Colour" that I started to consider myself a fan. "One More Colour" may have been a hit in terms of cracking the top 40 here at home, but it should have been huge .  This was the album that made me a fan. Shortly after I went and bought No Borders Here . I kept up with her releases for many years. I still consider myself a fan but times change and I didn't (still don't) have the necessary budget to buy everything that I want. Streaming is fun but having the whole world at your fingertips does sort of take the shine off things a little. Weird. Regardless, with The Speckless Sky , Jane was back with her band, Al C...

I never liked Lionel Richie, and honestly never really gave two shits about the Commodores. I didn't want to count how many times she was a lady. When Lionel fancied himself the third wheel to the Prince / Michael Jackson milking stool I had to suffer through Can't Slow Down  when I was at my girlfriends house. She also loved the Cats Soundtrack too ... ah the blush of a first love. I will say though that I did love Louie Shelton's guitar solo on "Hello" you gotta give credit where credit is due. It was a weird thing when I found myself strangely enamoured with "Nightshift." I found the album cheap back in the day and I think I played it once before filing it away. I did pull the title track off for a few mix tapes but I never really gave the album a chance. I listened once and passed judgment and that was that. During my recent trip to Krazy Bob's to flip through his discount bins I found several copies of Nightshift , and each time I saw a copy I ...

After a string of somewhat lacklustre albums Heart reinvented themselves as mainstream rockers, got picked up by Capitol Records and dropped one of their biggest albums ever in 1985. The band employed outside writers on over half of the tracks including the rejected Toronto track "What About Love" that became the band's first big hit in years, and after that the hits kept coming  "These Dreams" which would go all the way to number one, along with "Never" and "Nothin' at All", and "If Looks Could Kill" which was pretty cool. I wonder how much of this was right place, right time ... whatever the case Heart was back, and the album would sell over 600,000 in Canada, and over 5,000,000 in the States. Not bad considering their previous two records hadn't gone gold, and the band seemed to be done. Heart is one of those bands I never really gave much though to. When I was a kid I absolutely loved "Barracuda" and "Magi...

I had no intention of getting a copy of Here's to Future Days ... but here we are. Thompson Twins were a band who by 1985 managed to shed half of their North American audience compared to their previous release. Oh the album would be certified platinum here in Canada and the States, but this was the end of the band's commercial run. For Here's to Future Days the band enlisted the ever reliable Nile Rodgers to assist with production, and honestly the album makes a game effort. However I was at best a cursory fan and while I really, really liked "Lay Your Hands on Me" the rest of the songs I could take or leave ... although I was curious to hear what they'd do with The Beatles "Revolution" and now I'm not curious anymore. I'd rather not shit on the album because it's hardly fair. I wanted one song, and I got the song I wanted and it is still an amazing piece of music. To commemorate the occasion I danced by myself in the basement with my f...

1985 was a hell of a year for cool music. Dire Straits was right there in the mix with some of the best songs of the year. Dire Straits was still Dire Straits flitting on the periphery of what was in vogue while somehow managing to be at the centre of things. A year that saw albums by The Cult, Talking Heads, Tears for Fears, John Cougar Mellencamp along with a host of others that are too numerous to mention without taking up most of this post. This album was huge - it would move over a million copies in Canada, nine in the States topping out at over thirty worldwide. Of course to twenty two year old me, it was "Money for Nothing" that floated my boat. Much like "Industrial Disease" did from Love Over Gold . I was at best "a sort of fan" but didn't have their records. My roommate had the band's live album Alchemy (which I heard after Brothers in Arms ) and "Telegraph Road" remains to this day one of my favourite songs by Dire Straits. I...

I'm not sure why I filed Cock Robin away as rubbish. There was a bit of buzz when this was released in '85 and I'm sure I saw a video on MuchMusic but honestly have no memory at all. I do though remember watching The Tonight Show that year when they were the musical guest and wasn't impressed, but somehow I can remember they were on the show. The other day I figured it was a good day to go visit Krazy Bob and see what treasures he'd seeded his discount bin with. Sometimes it's a cornucopia of sonic goodies, and other times it's like he decided it was time to dump all of his Hammond organ dance records. It was a banner day and I picked up a dozen records that were all in amazing shape. You guessed it among them was the debut release by Cock Robin. The band was centred on vocalists Peter Kingsbery and Anna LaCazio and they were supported by Clive Wright on guitar and Louis Molino III on drums, both of whom would be gone by the band's second album. This isn...

Voices Carry was the debut album by 'Til Tuesday, and the the title track is one of the best songs to come out of the '80s. Of course I'm a wee bit biased. The band would only release three albums before calling it a day. Oddly the band's commercial trajectory was inverse to the quality of it's releases (at least that's how I remember it, I've not listened to them in decades). I really liked the followup  Welcome Home , but I loved the band's final album Everything's Different Now  - but by the time it was released people had moved on, and as time marched on "Til Tuesday was more or less relegated to one hit wonder status. Which was a shame. When Aimee started dropping solo records I picked them up as they came out, although I'll admit that after Lost in Space in 2002 my interest started to wane. I have yet to hear her last couple of albums. I've gotten way ahead of myself. When this dropped in '85 it was so fresh, and so differen...

"A Good Heart" was a big song in Canada back in '85. The single would sell 50,000 copies here, and the album itself would crack the top 20, but I don't think it sold enough to be certified. For me this would be the one and only time I heard the warbling Irishman on the radio.  After making his splash in the pool, there was no follow-up and in time Mr. Sharkey would be firmly relegated to the bin of one-hit wonders. It was an okay song, but honestly not one that resonated with me. Feargal was out of sight and out of mind, and he remained there. So it was a surprise when decades later it popped into my brain and I got curious. As it happened I found the album in a cheap bin and couldn't help myself.  Which is the only way you can hear the album. His streaming footprint is surprisingly thin. The album was produced by Dave Stewart who had co-produced Southern Accents with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and his own band's (The Eurythmics) Be Yourself Tonight. He...

You had to be living under a rock in '85 to not have heard "Tarzan Boy" on the radio, or seen the video. There was something goofy and infectious about the song, and it was certified 100% CHEESE. I'll admit is was one of those guilty pleasures I'd listen to in the car but I wouldn't have been caught dead with this in my collection. Of course when I found the record I had to have it. I didn't realize it was a borderline EP as the album hardly crests thirty minutes and only contains six songs. However it doesn't feel truncated or rushed. All but one song is over five minutes. "Tarzan Boy" and "Living in the Background" clock in at over six minutes and they aren't extended dance mixes, they're just longer ... but not stretched out and watered down. The album opens with the big hit, and frankly I was expecting the album to then sink like stone after the first track, and was pleasantly surprised when the follow-up "Pull the ...

Opus' Solo was one of those albums I found while looking through the online store of a little brick and mortar I liked to pop into every now and again. They used to have a few locations and over the last couple of years the other stores have shuttered, and the last survivor is a little father away and is a special trip. Anyway, they have a really solid online store, and the navigation is awesome and honestly they have a decent selection. One of the things I like to do is check for still sealed items and if they're cheap enough I'll load a cart and then go pick it up. This last time there were a couple of items that looked intriguing enough to take a chance on. Solo was a German import that was still sealed, although over the years something spilled on the cover and seeped into the packaging. It's a small stain only visible on the back top right. When I went to clean the record there was a fair bit of PVC mist which was irritating but it is what it is. The things been in...

Released in '85 this was an album that marked the end of Nick's initial run. Between 1977 and 1981 he dropped an album a year and was signed with Chrysalis and then Casablanca Records before taking a four year break and resurfacing with this self titled effort on RCA. Gone was his longtime writing partner and guitarist James McCulloch. All that remained was his bass player Eric Nelson who was still holding down the bottom end. Nick did pull together some stellar musicians, from Mr. Mister's Pat Mastelotto on drums, to Mitchell Fromm (I wonder if this was a typo? I'm sure this is Mitchell Froom) on keyboards. The two guitar players, Jeff Silverman and Steve (Psycho) Sykes are pretty solid and there are some tasty licks to be heard. I remember CFOX playing a track from this album ... once, and my memory is really fuzzy on this. I keep confusing a memory of them playing Giuffria's "Call To The Heart" with whatever song they played by Nick Gilder. The common t...