Old Enough to Forget

Breakdown in Paradise  was aptly titled. When the band signed to Mushroom records, the little label that signed Heart and put out their first two records (although they'd later write "Barracuda" as a diss track to their former label) their next two records Dreams, Dreams, Dreams and Lights in the Valley would go platinum in Canada. Then in '79 Mushroom Records head Shelly Siegel died and the label started to flounder, and Chilliwack kept plugging away hoping for the best. When the album finally dropped in December of 1979 the label no longer seemed to be capable of marketing or pushing singles to radio. There must have been some word of mouth no doubt as I remember the album and I liked "Communication Breakdown" and always thought it was a hit. There were enough copies printed that it's not a hard album to find. Who knows how many copies, maybe the record keeping sucked and the album actually did better than what was reported on the charts. Regardless, t...

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 ...

Here was chugging along into August, and I have to admit that my self imposed schedule of cranking out two of these a month may have been a tad ambitious. It's likely I'll take a step back and go to once a month. I mean, I'm spending a lot of time jotting down my meandering thoughts that frankly for the most part are just on this side of being coherent ... I'll let you pick a side. Still, I've been grinding my way through my pile of records. Up for grabs this time out are another gaggle of odds and sods and repeat offenders. Let's get right to it ... are you seated comfortably? Chilliwack – Look In, Look Out (1984) Neil Diamond - Love At The Greek: Recorded Live At The Greek Theatre (1977) Pete Townshend - All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes (1982) Loverboy - Wildside (1987) T Bone Burnett - The Talking Animals (1988) Chilliwack – Look In, Look Out (1984) At the time this felt like a reset for the perennial Canadian stallwarts who'd been cranking ou...

Opus X was a pretty big deal here in Canada when this came out in '82. While Chilliwack had been around for over a decade and was Bill Henderson's band oddly it was as a power trio that the band had it's greatest commercial success. Starting with Wanna Be a Star in 1981 that featured that most irritating and oddly really cool "My Girl (Gone, Gone, Gone)" the band had hoped to capitalize and really break into the lucrative US market. The single would crack the Billboard top 40 peaking at number 22. Opus X a year later was suppose to drive the wedge in even further.  You know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men. I could tell you more about the rabbits, but I really should try and stay on topic. While the lead single "Whatcha Gonna Do" did really well here at home, it didn't perform as well as hoped in the US market, stalling literally just outside the top 40 at 41. The album was a big hit here, selling over 100,000 copies, and Bi...

Funny how you can know a name but not know anything about the artist. Shari Ulrich is one of those artists who just skirted on the fringes of real success here in Canada. That sort of reads as a dismissive shot, but it's not. Many years ago I was a camp counsellor for a couple of summers and one of my fellow "shapers of future minds" was Rick Scott's son who was incredibly funny and we had a hoot over those two summer camps. Anyway I can't remember how it came up that he was Rick's son, most likely because I fancied myself a songwriter who could song about food and animals ... yeah, whatever you're conjuring in your mind's eye it's even worse. Why am I telling you this? I have no idea, but it's one of those things that came to mind when I was sitting here listening to One Step Ahead . Regardless, Shari was a member of the Pied Pumpkin that was apparently a biggish deal in the early '70s, and then she, along with Valdy, was a member of  The ...

Hey look at this, it's the last Sunday in April and I'm three months in and so far so good.  If I stop now I have a trilogy. However, I am really going for a decalogy, mainly to help wash the taste of L. Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth dekalogy (should have been spelled drek-alogy) that I actually read. ALL TEN BOOKS.  This time around I've got four treasures I found for a buck, and a Toto album I've bought three times now. I'd never heard of Patrick Juvet before, and I'd not heard the Grand Fund Railroad album so it was fun being able to expose myself to new things. Yeah, I just wanted to say expose myself in a sentence. Sorry. Look, I'm not proud of myself, but I also accept the things I cannot change. Although the ability to proof read and edit are things I should work on.  Five for Fighting No.3 ZZ Top - Afterburner (1985) Patrick Juvet - Got a Feeling (1978) Grand Funk Railroad - Survival (1971) Chilliwack - Segue (1983) Toto - Isolation (1984) ZZ ...

Slipstream was a complete unknown for me when I found it in the bin. It looked interesting and the back cover was one of those weirdly ubiquitous band shots with floating bust shots of the band looking off into space were supposed to give a sense of mystery - or something. How would I know? I was 13 when this came out. The album cleaned up amazingly well. I didn't initially recognize any of the names on the back cover. I had assumed based on the names that The Sutherland Brothers were Iain and Gavin, two Scottish lads (yeah, I went back a rewrote some of my initial meanderings after I looked the band up), and Quiver were drummer Willie Wilson, and guitarist Tim Renwick. This is really tight soft rock and feels like a lot of other stuff from 1976 and was pretty enjoyable. As good as any of their contemporaries in my opinion. First time through nothing really rose above the rest in terms of standout tracks - that isn't meant to be a shot. The whole album is full of good songs. I...