Old Enough to Forget

Disclaimer : This post is mostly centred on the vinyl release of the latest 77s record. The record contains seven songs but the download, streaming and CD have more. Which bugged me then and bugs me now. I have tried though to stay focused on what matters, and what matters is the band have a new record, and that it is worth celebrating. However, it didn't stop me from taking the odd potshot. 7 has been waiting patiently on my shelf for months. When the band announced their intentions to record a new album, I was excited - and a bit anxious too. Could the guys actually deliver an album worth listening to after all this time? I jumped in relatively early as Kickstarter backer 266, glad to have a hand in bringing the project to life. These kinds of endeavours demand patience, but that’s part of their charm, and it ends up making the final product all the more rewarding. I wasn’t alone in my anticipation; with 1,373 backers and over $100,000 raised, the band received an impressive sho...

Back in 2023 Jamie Rowe dropped his new project Kalamity Kills. It was an album I supported when he launched his kickstarter. Yeah, my name is buried deep in the credits on the CD. I've been a fan of Jamie for a long time. His work with Guardian seems to be what most of the casual fans want to hear, but it was his solo work, and the power pop he crafted with London Calling that cemented me as a fan. The handful of albums with AdrianGale were unabashed '80s rock, and while awesome were deliberately nostalgic and boy howdy there were good. Jamie is hard to pin down stylistically as he seems to flit from genre to genre. His previous album was a country hybrid Welcome Home that was pretty decent, but to me it was just generic paint by numbers modern country (then again I ain't much of a country fan). Which means it was as good as anything else out there and if that was your cup of tea, your cup runneth over. That shouldn't read as a shot, I just think he's an artist cha...