Old Enough to Forget

I'm kind of surprised I didn't write about In Another Land earlier. I suspect this may be longer than it needs to be (likely a lot longer), sorry in advance but you should stick around anyway - it may be worth it. In terms of watershed albums this is right near the top of the most influential albums I have ever heard. The album was released in 1976 and a number of the older kids knew about him, but I was pretty clueless about Christian music. I was at a youth conference in '77 or '78 (things get fuzzy ) and the cool kids (who were likely four or five years older) were talking about an upcoming concert he was going to have in Vancouver, likely the Queen Elizabeth theatre but honestly the details are sketchy. The fact I remember anything at all is kind of amazing.  It was the youth group dances in the late '70s and early '80s where I first got a taste of his music. The big dance songs were "Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music" and "The Roc...

Courtesy flush for the reader ... I will often plop down a long meaderambling introduction before getting to the point ... or as close as I can generally get. I've read this one, it's pretty incoherent at times. If you may want skip intro if you're inclined. SKIP INTRO When Heavy Metal came out in the summer of '81 it was jaw dropping. I really didn't have many of the magazines because they were a little too out there and were more expensive than the comics I normally bought. The movie though - that was another thing altogether. Besides most of the guys from SCTV seemed to be in there somewhere, and there were cartoon titties. Den would have approved ... and he did (if you know, you know). It was the music though. The first scene opens with a space shuttle with the bay doors open, and an astronaut driving a Corvette makes it's way through the atmosphere - and blaring through the speakers is Rigg's "Radar Rider" and from that moment I was hooked. T...

Although the album came out in 1976, it wasn't until a few years later that I picked this up. For me it served as a bookend to Larry Norman's 1975 album In Another Land . Both albums were produced by Larry Norman, and both engineered by the legendary Andy Johns, with assistance from Tom Trefethen. These were the albums that introduced me the guitar playing of Jon Linn a player who was mind mindbogglingly tasty and did stuff that still makes my head spin.  Welcome to Paradise was a rock record filtered through Randy's acoustic guitar and his distinctive voice. The album kicks off with "King of Hearts" a song that has more than stood the test of time. Randy followed up with a two punch combination "Keep Me Running" and "The Winner (High Card)" that are still among my favourite songs - ever. It's these three songs alone that have made this album such an important part of my musical journey. As good as he'd be in later albums, with flashes...

Ten Years After is one of those bands a lot of people know about, but don't really know much about. At least that was the case for me. Alvin Lee, is a name I knew of, but much like the band I couldn't really name more than a song ... which I'll name later, likely a couple of times. They were kind of like Status Quo in that regard. Yeah I know I'm a Luddite, but cut me some slack, this stuff was just a tad before my time. I may be getting old but I'm not that old ... yet. Sill I do like a lot of the late '60s and early to mid-70s jam bands. As it happened I was out and about looking around a record store I'd not been to very often. They had a back wall lined with dollar records (I'm cheap). This wall didn't have that much going for it as it was chock full of showtunes and a lot of questionable stuff (maybe one day I'll by an Al Jolson album, but I'm kind of on the fence), but in the midst of all this nonsense I managed to score a couple of al...