Old Enough to Forget

Cutting Crew were one of those bands whose career trajectory followed Newton's third law - one that has been corrupted and over simplified to: what goes up, must come down. It's not like I'm singling Cutting Crew out for a sophomoric drubbing with cheap innuendo.  The band was in good company for all that. Heck a couple of years earlier Mr. Mister's Welcome to the Real World (1985) had a couple of absolutely huge radio singles. After all that "success" that band just disappeared. Now the difference between Mr. Mister and Cutting Crew for me is that I had the Mr. Mister album. All I knew of Cutting Crew was the big single, and it was big: "(I Just) Died in Your Arms" and to a lesser extent (because I'd forgotten about it until I listened to the record) the obligatory power ballad (not a lot of power, but a lot of ballad) "I've Been in Love Before" which was pretty good. Who knows why I didn't get the album back in the day, I mea...

Boy in the Box was huge. To say otherwise is silly. Corey Hart to me was a bit of an enigma. He was a poster boy which meant he had no credibility, and was right up there with Platinum Blonde (another band I begrudgingly liked when no one was looking). Fields of Fire was Corey Hart's third album and people were expecting big things ... and others were waiting for him to fall flat on his face. I can't imagine the pressure he must have been under. He was still in his early '20s and was already a seasoned artist by 1986. For a pretty poster boy Corey Hart was the real deal, writing his own material and co-producing his own albums. The songs on Fields of Fire seem to pick up where he left off with Boy in the Box. There was a consistency to the songs that made them feel familiar, but it never felt like he was just flogging a dead horse and recycling himself. The band was again comprised of Russell Boswell on bass, Gary Breit on keys, Andy Hamilton on saxophone, the incredibl...

Back in '86 Glass Tiger seemed to come out of nowhere with "Don't Forget Me (When I'm Gone)." The song was infectious and benefited from the Adams effect. Bryan Adams was pretty much the king of the world and it seemed like even a passing association with Mister Adams was like receiving a blessing from the Pope. Bryan sang maybe two harmony lines on the song, but it was enough. The song was huge, and it pulled the album along with it and for over a year the band pulled singles from the album. I'll admit my reaction to the album initially was a bit more complicated. To me they belonged in the same boat as Duran Duran and Platinum Blonde. That boat needed to be towed out to sea and used for target practice. I was torn though, I liked the songs I heard on the radio. True, "Don't Forget Me" was worn out, but the singles were so strong. Often you're lucky to pull off one or two highlights on an album, this album was chock full of solid songs: ...

Although released in 1986 I didn't get it until I found this on sale back in '87. This was when CDs were having a bit of a packaging issue and because most record stores weren't configured for them, somewhere some smartass must have figured that creating a full reproduction of the artwork in a disposable long box was a good idea.  Yeah, it last about as long as you think it would last - not long.  Regardless, I found myself in the possession of This Side of Paradise and I did remember hearing "Emotion in Motion" which was a cool track, and even knew that Roland Orzabal from Tears for Fears provided the guitar. It was a pretty decent song, and oddly not the best song on the album. I always found it cool when a guy did a solo album and then brought along the guys from the band to play on some of the tracks. Ric brought everyone from The Cars except David Robinson to guest on at least one track. Poor David, everyone forgets about the drummer. "True to You"...

I had heard of them from my buddy Dave back in the day. Dave was pretty dialed into what was happening in Christian music and generally had decent taste. By '86 my interest in a lot of CCM (for the unwashed that stands for Contemporary Christian Music) because most of what I was hearing was inferior. I know Larry Norman asked, "Why should the devil have all the good music." He wasn't entirely right, but he was close enough to bury most of what passed for music being sold in Christian Bookstores. One the hallmarks of being Christian was trying to copy what was popular in "secular" music. The problem was there was a lag of about five or more years. Of course I'm generalizing, there were a handful of bands that were just plain good, but for me most was borderline awful. Around this time some smaller aggressive labels started to pop up.  Frontline was one of them and the acts they were signing were actually contemporary. The problem was for them to be market...

I bought this on CD when this came out. Back in '86 this was a really strange album and for me, it was almost a country album (I didn't know what Americana was), and it was fitted in right alongside all of the rock that was filling up my shelves. T Bone Burnett for whatever had a special place for me, he was his own genre. Going back to Trap Door , and Truth Decay , I was expecting quirky, roots oriented music, but with this self titled effort Mr. Burnett took it up another level and stripping things down to the bare essentials. The album was recorded live to two track analog and two track digital June 24, 25,26 and July 15, 1986. It is an amazing album, and when I found it on vinyl I figured, "Oh why not?" This was the first time I'd really paid attention to the stellar dobro and lap steel work of Jerry Douglas. It's really a shame that the instrumental version of "I Remember" as to me it was the centrepiece of the album, and I'd always pair it ...

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 ...

I bought this when it came out for one song, "The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades" and by golly it was a dang good song. There was something really cool about the song with the sterile drum programming and the wicked harmonica. I always thought this was a huge hit, and the one time I watched Head of the Class , the song was featured on the episode. Apparently it was a moderate hit, but it certainly stuck with me. Oddly this album has been joined at the hip with Georgia Satellites debut album as I remember picking them both up the same day, and I remember being disappointed with both albums after harvesting the shiny songs for my mix tapes. I was probably harder on this one though. The album charged out with the two best songs on the album the aforementioned sunglasses song, and "Life is Hard" ( a song that felt to me like a companion piece to David & David's "Boomtown") and after that I just ran out of steam. I just didn't put the e...

Oh boy here we are with the twelfth instalment of Stylus Over Substance. What was supposed to be the short bite sized impressions of stuff I didn't feel like waxing all nonsensical over and wasting too many words.  I've not always been successful, or coherent. Does it really matter? Probably not, you're either in, or you're out. It's all good. Sometimes it's better. I'm still working my through the piles of records I got for Christmas, and the additional pile I just got for Father's Day will eventually get my attention. Sit back, put your feet up, let's celebrate the fifty five other entries that came before, and get to the next five. Howard Jones - Action Replay (1986) Martha and The Muffins - Trance and Dance (1980) Terry Jacks - Y'Don't Fight the Sea (1975) Barney Bigard & "The Pelican Trio" - Barney Bigard & "The Pelican Trio" (1978) The Alpha Band - Spark in the Dark (1977) Howard Jones - Action Replay (19...

Digging through the pile and sorting the odds and ends up for grabs turned out to be a mixed bags of nuts. There were some here I'd not had a chance to sit with all the way through, and a others that were old friends I hadn't spent time with and it was time to catch up. Split Enz - Waiata (1981) A Flock of Seagulls - The Story of a Young Heart (1984)  Red Rider - Neruda (1983) The Moody Blues - The Other Side of Life (1986) Gordon Lightfoot - Don Quixote (1972) Split Enz - Waiata (1981) Right off the bat let's give credit where credit is due here. "One Step Ahead" is an absolutely killer track. I'd go so far as to say it's the centrepiece of the album. A close second is "History Never Repeats" another composition by Neil. Now I am fully aware that I never had this back in the day so sitting here listening four decades later is hardly fair. The lens I'm looking through is not the same as the one I had when I was a teenager. The songs on Wai...

1986 was a great year for music, and the summer soundtrack was particularly good that year. There were two album in my collection that were joined at the hip, Peter Gabriel's So , and Steve Winwood's Back in the High Life . As the summer cooled down Bon Jovi would drop Slippery When Wet , followed closely by Paul Simon's mesmerizing Graceland . Those are just the tip of the iceberg, and are stories for another day. Still when I think of Winwood, I think of Gabriel, I don't know why - they're really nothing alike other than they were a couple of Englishmen who reached their commercial peak at the same time. I'm not going to go back and list off Steve Winwood's other accomplishments with bands like The Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, or that lone Blind Faith album ... the guy had laurels he could have rested on. Heck with all that he was still only 38 (which seemed ancient back then) when he dropped Back in the High Life . By comparison, Tom Petty was 36 and...

Maybe it wasn't the biggest hit in 1986, but dagnabbit it sure did seem to be on the radio all the dang time. "I Wanna Be a Cowboy" may have been viewed as nothing more than a clever one trick pony in terms novelty songs in the "Weird" Al era of parody songs, but there was something infectious about the song that put it up there with some of the best '80s poprock ... ever. Yeah, you may think I'm just spewing a heaping pile of cow droppings but I do mean it. I will even admit that when it came out I wanted to treat the song with disdain and dismiss it as the pile of shit it was - except it wasn't. More on that later as a good friend of mine likes to say. Boys Don't Cry hail from London, England (it may seem obvious, but there are others you know. Like the one in Ontario). The band was the brainchild of vocalist / keyboard player Nick Richards and featured his bandmates Brian Chatton on keyboards, Jeff Seopardi on drums, Mark Smith on bass, and N...