Old Enough to Forget

I found this one still in the original shrinkwrap and the cover looked interesting. It was on Capitol Records and it didn't hurt that I recognized producer Marshall Crenshaw's name on the back cover. I always love a good hype sticker, and the implication here was that this was full of hits. Three of them. Score! When I dropped the needle I was stoked to hear the opening notes to see what this was going to be ... I had cranked it a little louder than normal and I stood there looking down at the needle waiting ... then it hit. This is my favourite part of a new record. The anticipation. The opening guitar riff hit me in my happy place (the best feeling ever), and after a few licks of guitar tastiness, Gwil's voice came in and he's got his own thing going on. Part Americana Roots Rock, mixed with good old fashioned Southern Rock. I actually thought he sounded a bit like Pat MacDonald from Timbuk 3 mixed with Dan Baird from Georgia Satellites, and a dash of Steve Earle when...

Tim Finn, founding father of Split Enz, occasional member of Crowded House and half of The Finn Brothers with little brother Neil and a fairly odd but incredibly cool album by ALT (with Andy White and Liam O Maonlai) back in '95. It's weird, not a bad weird, just weird that I came to Tim Finn's solo work backassward through his association with little brother Neil. Of course I knew of Split Enz, and dang it I loved "Shark Attack" and thought "Six Months in a Leaky Boat" were awesome, but on balance I liked Neil's songs better. Those first two Crowded House records only cemented that opinion for me. When Neil and Tim turned what was to be a Finn Brothers record into Woodface I was still drawn to Neil, but I had to admit Tim was pretty cool ... maybe I was missing out. Me being me, which is to say a borderline compulsive, I started looking for Tim's solo work. I found his debut from '83 which was okay, and I kept going and going. Of his solo wo...

From the annals of What Could Have Been I present Flesh for Lulu's 1989 release Plastic Fantastic . This wasn't my first exposure to the band. I first heard them on the radio back when CBC Radio in the dark hours would feature Brave New Waves and expose people to indie and alternative music the mainstream eschewed. I'm racking my brain trying to remember the song that caught my interest. It's probably a false memory at this point but I'm inclined to think it was "Baby Hurricane" from Big Fun City / Blue Sisters Swing . At the time when I found the CD I figured it was a collection of two releases, but there was no internet so I was never sure. It was a rough, raw and pretty cool collection. I will also admit that I thought "Laundromat Kat" was awesome ... and yes it is two of their 1985 releases repackaged in 1986. A few years later I stumbled upon Plastic Fantastic , and this time while the songs were still raw there was also a polished sheen to...

Ah Steve Stevens. Back in '89 by buddy Bruce had this and said I absolutely had to hear Steve's cover of "Action." I've always liked that song, and it was indeed a killer cover. I would go out an buy the album based on that one song. I played it a couple of times looking for shiny songs to add to mix tapes. I found two: "Atomic Playboys" and "Action" and then more or less shelved it after passing judgment. It was a decent album with a fantastic cover, but it wasn't anything special. The CD is on a shelf in the studio where it's been sitting for a long time, and it never occurred to me that this was ever released on vinyl. Well it was, and I found a copy ... a rather juicy mint copy at that and it was cheap. The cover by H.R. Giger is as awesome as ever. Yes, he's the guy that designed the original Alien. I bought it. I'm a sucker. I have no regrets ... more on that as I go along. It's been a while since I've sat and real...

SAGA is one of my favourite bands hands down. Having said that, I'm not as obsessive as a true die hard. I mean I never poured over the lyrics trying to pieces together The Chapters but I did make a point of getting The Chapters Live when the band put the songs out in chronological order.  Living in Canada the opportunities to see the band live are few, so I settled for the live DVDs the band released. I did get to see them in a festival setting they were on second after Haywire (oh how I wished Ian and Paul would have done a song together, oh well) on one of the hottest days of the summer. It was as Eric Idle would say, "Hot enough to boil a monkey's bum." Anyway this is all just prattle, but it's sort of relevant ...I think.  Back to the obsessive comment, while I may not be a die hard who has to dissect everything into little pieces, I am a completest and when I get into something, I generally don't go in half way, if I like it - I want it all. With SAGA t...

Chalk Circle - As The Crow Flies (1989) Chalk Circle is probably best known for their single "April Fool" that came out in 1986. I always paired it in my head with Eight Seconds "Kiss You When It's Dangerous, I'm not sure why, but I did. They were both infectious songs, and I was going to buy the albums ... spoiler ... I never did get them. Over time I'd forget the songs, but I always remembered the bands. Not that long ago I found Almacantar by Eight Seconds, but Chalk Circle would elude me for a long time.  Then during the great sale of '23 when my favourite, and now closed, record store decided to sell everything in the store for a toonie, I found a pristine copy of As The Crow Flies . For you kids who weren't there, by '89 (earlier, but whatever) CDs were the shit, and vinyl was dead ... the fact this was still pressed was in some respects an anomaly. Not that I'm complaining. But for those who go on about the warmth of vinyl you should ...

In 1989 rock was alive and well. Seemingly out of nowhere Alannah Myles was suddenly everywhere, and propelled by "Black Velvet" she became an overnight sensation that took over a decade of hard work to achieve. I may as well get right to the elephant in the room right off the bat. "Black Velvet" is still an amazing song. Considering that musically the song is essentially a generic vamp on a bass-driven 12-bar blues shuffle, the song is immediately identifiable. It was also played to death and while it never got old, it sure did get overplayed. It also became the high water mark that everything else would be measured by. Fair or not, that's how things go sometimes. Hair metal and an abundance of musical excess and fret shredding was the flavour of the day, and Alannah Myles managed to be of the times but a step removed at the same time. The guitar work of Bob Bartolucci, who I remembered from the GNP album (also from 1989, I don't remember which came first),...

Before I put the record on, I figured I'd jot down what I remembered from the album. It's been a long time since I've given this a proper listen. First thing to disclose is I am still a big SAGA fan after all these years. Back in 1989, when GNP dropped, I bought it right away because both Steve Negus (drums) and Jim Gilmour (keyboards) were involved - they were the G and N in GNP. The video for "How Many Times" actually got quite a lot of play on YTV Rocks, which was hosted at the time by Laurie Hibberd, and they even had an interview with Steve, who talked about the album. I don't remember much about the interview, but he seemed pretty happy, and there were high hopes the album would do well. I did like the single, and I had high hopes for the album too. As much as I wanted to like the album, as a whole it never really seemed to gel for me. In addition to "How Many Times," I made an effort to like "Safety Zone" as I put it on a few mixtape...

I found a sealed copy and figured why not? It could be really good ... or it could be truly horrific. Staring at me from the cover picture was a dapper looking young man sporting a few days of scruffy stubble, looking like a young Rick Springfield (I do not mock Mr. Springfield). As far as I knew, and I knew nothing about this album, it could be anything. It wasn't opened, kind of like Schrodinger's cat, except it was vinyl. I'm not really a cat person. I had my fingers crossed and hoped for good. What I got was actually pretty good. It was a pop record with a bit of crunch, at times a lot of crunch, which was pretty great. This is an album that wouldn't have existed without Michael Jackson's Bad , an album I actually bought. Don't ask, since I staunchly avoided getting Thriller ... even though I secretly liked some of the songs. Come on, "Beat It" was worth the ticket price. The other artist this brought to mind first, though, and actually had more in...