Old Enough to Forget

When Burton Cummings left The Guess Who and embarked on a solo career, he caught his second wind. Through the mid '70s to the end of the decade, he was huge at home. He went on a double-platinum run starting with his self-titled album in ’76 and hit triple platinum with Dream of a Child in ’78. I always assumed he was Canada’s unofficial troubadour. He also seemed to have more specials on CBC than Wayne and Shuster (just kidding - no one had more specials than those guys), and he hosted the Juno Awards in 1979 and 1980 when he was at the height of his popularity. Me? I could take him or leave him. He was a hell of a singer and all that, but he was also really cheesy at times. Though I really liked “My Own Way to Rock,” mainly because the guitar solo was so good. Considering my limited budget as a teenager, I never felt the urge to spend my money on his stuff. The one album I found a while back that is pretty much essential listening was his 1980 two-record collection, The Best of ...

They say you can't go home again - mostly because once you move out, it isn't your home. Still it's fun to go back to visit, raid the fridge and leave without doing the dishes. When I was a kid there were a couple of acts who managed to become legendary by only hearing about them second hand: Nestor Pistor and MacLean & McLean. When I got a Bill Cosby record, my cousin Jeff was playing George Carlin. One of those was safer than the other ...  Over the last couple of years I've picked up a couple of Nestor Pistor albums, and had my expectations dashed. Maybe they were funny once. Not to say there weren't some amusing moments, but on balance I just couldn't figure out how this stuff became the stuff of legend. Here I am with Bitter Reality , the second album by MacLean & MacLean released in 1976, although the copy I have was on El Mocambo and was dated from 1980. At the time I had no idea that Burton Cummings was on the album, although apparently his mana...

Growing up the second biggest thing in my life was comics. My dad had some very early MAD magazines among his collection of books. I would end up with a lot of the magazines and dozens of paperbacks of my own as time went on. I loved Don Martin, but when it came to the parodies for movies or TV, there were two names that were above all others: Mort Drucker and Jack Davis. A couple of years after Burton Cummings had left the band to pursue his solo career RCA put together yet another greatest hits collection. Considering the first best of collection had gone platinum in Canada, and gold in the US back in 1971, and the second collection in 1973 went gold in Canada wasn't it about time for another one? After all Burton was riding high in 1977 with his double platinum My Own Way to Rock, but that success didn't seem to help this one too much. It did crack the Billboard 200, but I guess people already had enough recycled Guess Who albums. To me though, this is the album I remember a...