Old Enough to Forget

The first time I heard "Owner of a Lonely Heart" on the radio, I was smitten. "What in the heck was that?" It was one of those HOLY SHIT songs that seemed to come out of nowhere. KISM from Bellingham had a strong enough signal to reach over into the suburbs where I lived. The song quickly worked it's way into heavy rotation, but I don't remember hearing it on the two big stations in Vancouver. It took me a while to find the record after first hearing the song. There was a record store across the street from where I worked and I looked for this new Yes album, and all I found where the old Yes records, nothing new. Of course this only happened once, and I'm sure this was all compressed into the span of a couple of weeks, if that. Soon the song along with the bleeding edge orchestral blasts that were unlike anything I'd heard before was everywhere. This was Yes? Yes. Of course there was no internet back in the day, just word of mouth and the burgeon...

Spoons were never a band that was on my radar back in the day. I knew who they were, "Nova Heart" was a pretty great song, but there were a lot of great songs that never made it into my collection. Talkback  was produced by Nile Rodgers. Bowie's Let's Dance  was the other project Mr. Rodgers produced in '83. Oddly enough Nile passed over Culture Club who were hotter than something that was really hot to produce Talkback by Spoons. You'd have thunk that this would have helped secure Spoons a decent distribution deal ... but nope. Talkback would only see the light of day in Canada. Good for us I guess, bad for them and everyone else. Like the band's previous album Arias & Symphonies , Talkback would go gold in Canada, but the band's subsequent releases wouldn't fare so well. The big single was "Old Emotion" which is a song I sort of like and am sort of irritated by. The whammy bar dives never worked for me. It's not like Gordon Depp...

One of the first songs I learned on guitar was "Tush" and to this day it's one of my favourite songs to play. I still remember the first time I heard "Tube Snake Boogie" at a youth group dance ... the irony isn't lost on me, and it was so good. We yelled for it to be played again so we could sing along with the part where he's singing about the sister. Good times. When '83 rolled around videos were suddenly a thing, and boy howdy ZZ Top managed to marry cool with the blues, big beards, cool cars and chicks. Boom. Suddenly the band was more than that little ol' band from Texas. With Eliminator,  ZZ Top's eighth album, the band was propelled into the heart of the mainstream. They may have had several gold and a platinum album under their collective belts but as with all things, there are levels, and holy moly Eliminator was a whole 'nother level for the band.  The album had legs (how could I not?) and for a couple of years the band was r...

In 1983 David Bowie ruled the world. After years of flirting with mainstream success, he was suddenly the flavour of the day. It was the latest strange turn from one of rocks most durable and creative voices.  I'll also freely admit I was not a fan. At all . Not at first. To me he was the guy who did "Space Oddity" and that song weirded me out as a kid. I didn't like it, and thought it sounded terrible. It didn't help that when I was in my teens there was a young Bowie singing a duet with Bing Crosby on a Christmas Special where he mashed up some ridiculous counterpoint "The Little Drummer Boy." I hated it. Ick, phooey. Somehow I'd gotten it into my head that Bowie was unlistenable. He was a dinosaur who kept desperately throwing whatever he could against the wall trying to make anything stick to make so that  his 15 minutes would last a little longer. It didn't matter that there were quite a few of his classic songs that were pretty amazing. I h...

I was farting around meanderbrowsing (it's a real thing) through one of the record stores I occasionally shop. It's a treasure trove of stuff, but can be a tad overwhelming and while not disorganized it's all over the place. I've found more than a few awesome nuggets and the proprietor is an odd duck, at times in the best way, and other times it's overwhelming when I just want to quietly browse. However, he's a treasure trove of knowledge and his ability to retain an astounding amount of absolutely useless trivia makes me look like a moron. Something I can honestly do all on my own without help - but that's beside the point. Generally when I'm there I have a specific item I've got a hankering to find. Chances are pretty decent he has it, or knows about it. This is also the same guy that put me onto Hair Cut One Hundred (better than I expected), and the Karroll Brothers - which was a wicked score. We've also lamented poor Jim Clench's bad luck...

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 &N in GNP. The video for "How Many Times" actually got quite a lot of play on YTV Rocks - that 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 mix tapes. T...

If memory serves I heard "Wide World" on the radio once or twice ... but when I saw the video for "Slow Train" on MuchMusic that was it (the video wasn't really that good, but the song was). Who were these guys? What was it about this song with the strange riff and the moody vibe that was so infectious? The album was produced by Tom Treumuth who was also A&R for RCA and was instrumental in signing The Breit Brothers, and by all accounts Bob Buziak the president of RCA was behind the band as well. I know that's an assumption on my part, but he is given a special thank you on the back cover. To top it off the album was mastered by Bob Ludwig, which usually gives an album a little extra shine. The band was comprised of three brothers, vocalist and keyboard player Gary, whose name I knew from Corey Hart, Kevin on guitar, Garth on drums and Ian de Souza on bass. The album was full of finely crafted pop songs and it's still a bit of a mystery wrapped in...

Bruce Cockburn is an artists' artist. One whose conviction and seriousness seem overwhelming and to be honest a little intimidating. He always seemed like a guy who had a sense of humour but kept it in a shoe box one the shelf in his closet lest he use it and undermine his own sense of purpose. As a teenager my first exposure to him was when he hit it big with "Wondering Where the Lions Are" a song that is intricately structured. I saw him perform the song on Saturday Night Live, and I remember thinking, "Wow, he's on T.V." followed closely by "Man, I can't stand that song." It was true, it was right up there as a tweofer along with Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" as songs I could appreciate the grandeur and scope of, but couldn't stand. Then there'd be other songs, and for whatever reason I never forgot his appearance on The Alan Hamel Show (that later devolved into The Alan Thicke Show, and would ...

Eddie Schwartz to me will always be the guy who just killed it, absolutely crushed it with "Special Girl" a song that still makes the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up. The band America also released a version of the song in 1984 and while it's musically a pretty close cover, the vocals don't get anywhere close to conveying the emotional gut punch Eddie delivers. Meat Loaf would also cover the song on his 1986 album Blind Before I Stop , and honestly it's not bad but again, seemed to miss the mark. This was also the album where Meat Loaf butchered Billy Rankin's "Burning Down" which was a weird cover that completely missed the point of the original. I'm actually getting a bit ahead of myself, and while "Special Girl" is the song I most closely associate with Mr. Schwartz, it was part of an album that really deserved more recognition than it received. I do remember hearing "Strike" on the radio a couple of times. ...

When MuchMusic launched in 1984 it was a weird and wonderful time. More often than not you just got to see what you were hearing on the radio, and the videos would run the gamut from rock to pop and then that first odd bunch of video jockeys would share some banter and introduce the next song with more witty banter. Every so often though there'd be something weird and wonderful you didn't get to hear on the radio. "Fish Heads" was one of those. Dang, I didn't mean to open that can of worms ... now I'm singing it in my head, "Fish heads, fish heads roly-poly fish heads, eat them up, yum." If you know what I'm talking about, good luck getting that out of your head. You're welcome. Fudge, this has messed with my continuity ... Where was I before I went off into the weeds? Right, videos that weren't on the radio. Aside from the unnamed song about the aquatic swimmy thing's eyeball holder there was a strange and quirky song called "Mi...

While it's unfair to call them a one hit wonder, as I'm sure the band's fans will be quick to point out other songs and stuff that were played on the radio, to most people, myself included, that big "hit" was as deep as I ever got into the band. As to their other charting songs, I don't recall hearing anything other than the"hit" on the radio. Let's be clear though, "Walking on Sunshine" is as close to a perfect summer song as there ever was. It's funny I remember that song from it's earlier iteration here in Canada, but not so well as to be able to call out the differences between the original version released in 1983 and the one that became a world wide hit in 1985. Not too long ago I was in the clearance section and came across a couple of their albums. I figured, I could be missing out. Or there could be a reason why I've never heard anything else. Which makes sense on one level, but not on so many others, as most of the...

Back in the day I did not own any Rolling Stones records. The first album I actually bought was Dirty Work in 1986, and I only bought it because I loved "One Hit (To the Body)" which is an awesome song. Later I'd succumb and get the Hot Rocks and More Hot Rocks double albums, and those were all I needed ... and this lamp. Tattoo You is a weird one for me. As there are two impressions of this album for me. The first one comes from the me of yesteryear. "This sucks, if I have to hear Mick Jagger's nut squeezed falsetto while watching him prance around in leopard skin tights I'll puke." Of course, even eighteen year old me had to admit that "Start Me Up" was something special. I had no idea how he played it - I didn't know anything about alternate tuning back then other than drop D, and that really didn't count. The second one, actually doesn't stray all that far from my first impression, although I'm a lot more forgiving than ...

Many years ago I recall hearing a guy on the radio describe the song "Worlds Away" as Vancouver's unofficial anthem. A bit of a stretch, but my goodness it is an awesome song. Back in 1982 the trio of Drew Arnott, Darryl Kromm and Paul Iverson (an amazing guitar tech and luthier by the way) released their debut album Worlds Away. I remember hearing "She Controls Me" and thinking that was a really cool song. At the time I didn't get the album, but with a name like Strange Advance they were pretty memorable, and I would buy everything they ever released in real time, except that first album, unlike Pokemon, you really can't catch 'em all - but I did catch 'em all, including a long play for "Love Games" that I since lost to the ravages of time and poor drainage in the crawlspace. In 1985 when Strange Advance released 2WO where once there were three, it was now just Drew and Darryl (they did add a whole band, including a real live drummer f...