Old Enough to Forget

When I was a kid for a long time (kid time) my record collection was one album - Dynamite . Then it doubled when I bought Canadian Mint . Of course my memory is a tad flawed, but it wasn't until '75 I bought Four Wheel Drive as my first real album and I had those K-tel records for what seemed like forever. Dynamite and Canadian Mint were indelible records. For a generation who grew up on these weirdly edited hits and oddly sequenced collections we owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Philip Kives who managed to make Winnipeg Manitoba the centre of the musical universe ... for a little while.  I was feeling a tad nostalgic the other day and decided to see if I could find my musical Rosetta Stone records. Apparently there are others like me, and when I asked about them Bob pointed me to a section that was set aside for K-tel compilations.  Oooh. While it wasn't a huge section it did yield not one, but two very nice copies of Dynamite at two very different price points ... and I ...

Yeah I know I've written about B.T.O more than once, but dang it man these guys were THE SHIT when I was a kid. They were the original monsters of rock for me, and every so often I will go and revisit different albums and take the musical time machine back to the land of nostalgia. I found a nice copy of the debut and figured why not go back to the beginning and see what the fuss was about? This may have been their debut but it didn't show up in my collection for a long, long time. I think I first heard the album in its entirety when I got it on CD. The halcyon days for me were those that accompanied the band's bookend releases in 1975: Four Wheel Drive , and the Christmas present Head On - those were my jam. Dang, "Wild Spirit" from Head On should have been as big as anything they'd ever done - even if it was a mono mix, which even as a preteen was perplexing as I had a stereo.  I digress. It's not unusual, in the words of Tom Jones. The first song I re...

Normally I don't buy a record I already have on CD, but I found this copy in a clearance bin because there was a scratch or something that made it unworthy of being in the regular rack. When I looked it over, it seemed pretty decent, although there was a little scuff on one side. I figured after a good clean it would likely play just fine - and it did. Sitting listening to this again has been like catching up with an old friend. I do get some grief on occasion for my love of Bryan Adams albums from some of my more discerning friends - then again I also like Nickelback - so to them they're justified in their assessment of my lack of musical taste and inability to adhere to the accepted tenets of good taste. Whatever. Once upon a time there was a skinny kid with a really high voice who took over Sweeney Todd from Nick Gilder and wrote songs with his partner Jim Vallance that showed up on albums by Prism, and BTO, although to be fair by that time those bands were no longer in ...

I know this is my second post about BTO, but this was a cool find for me. I had mentioned I had been looking for the B.T.O. Japan Tour album for years, and last fall my wife and I were hanging around Commercial Drive checking out the shops. She shopped for clothes and I stood around looking lost for the most part. It was a beautiful fall day, and as we made our way along the drive there on the corner was a small stall with a guy selling records. They were between five and ten bucks, which was a little high considering the condition of some of the records, but as I'd been forced to endure a few clothing shops I felt justified in stopping to see what was there. There were quite a few records I wanted, but I already had them on CD, and the general agreement was if I had it already I didn't need to get it again. I've generally stayed true to this, as frankly I spent a lot of money buying discs to replace the snap crackle and pop of my old record collection. There were three re...

Growing up a good Canadian kid, there was no band bigger or more influential than Bachman Turner Overdrive. I mean when you're a kid anything that seems to last more than a week is a long time. Heck if you can like something for more than a school year it's an eternity. I mean seriously as I got older I confuse events that happened last year, with things that happened a decade ago. But kid years? Yeah, they're like dog years - here I was listening to the radio as a kid rocking out to "Let it Ride" and a year later sitting on the floor listening to a special program on the radio playing the Not Fragile and loving "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" then in 1975 they dropped Four Wheel Drive , which would be the first record I bought with my own money. It was a dilemma too. My older cousins were playing Led Zeppelin, KISS, Nazareth, and Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies - when I told them I wanted to get Four Wheel Drive they weren't as enthu...