Old Enough to Forget

Back in the day I had two of Melissa's albums: this one and her follow up Brave and Crazy . I was a rocker (at least I said I was, but I still liked Christopher Cross, so go figure) and not hearing anything as captivating as "Bring Me Some Water" I stopped listening to her stuff. It didn't help that the radio stations I liked didn't seem to play anything of hers so I just moved on. Of course she'd go one to have one hell of a career I know little or nothing about. Despite me thinking her debut was as good as it got for her history tells another story. If you're a fan, I mean a REAL fan you know more than me. So I'm going to just listen to this one in a vacuum and contain my commentary to the ten songs on her debut. Seems like a reasonable compromise and it'll keep me contained and hopefully on track.  The album opens with "Similar Features" and man is it a great track - it still sounds so good. I bought the album because "Being Me So...

City Nights was Nick's second solo album, and for most of us it's "Hot Child in the City" that he's best known for ... as a solo artist. He's still somewhat infamous as the guy who left Sweeney Todd just as they were taking off ... but for many years now he's been touring as Sweeney Todd so I guess he ended up having the last laugh anyway. Regardless, there's no denying how good "Hot Child in the City" was ... it was huge on both sides of the border, and Nick's balancing of the glam elements mixed with rock and emerging new wave was pretty impressive. A big part of this was the songwriting team of James McCulloch and Nick Gilder. When Nick left Sweeney Todd, it was with guitarist and songwriter James, and if Nick had a secret sauce it was James' both as a writer, and more impressively - a really tasty and economical player. The album was produced by Peter Coleman, and Mike Chapman. Both had deep roots with power pop and glam. Mike C...

Coming in on the heels of Journey's 1983 album Frontiers , Steve Perry struck out on his own and released his solo effort Street Talk in 1984. To say Journey was a big deal during this period is an understatement. The band had been on an upward trajectory, and while Frontiers didn't perform as well as their 1981 release Escape , it was still a big deal. I suspect there was a lot of internal pressure within the Journey camp as to what was next so members of the band decided to strike out on their own. Neil Schon had previously released a pair of albums with Jan Hammer, and in '84 he teamed up with Sammy Hagar and released Through the Fire as HSAS (Hagar Schon Aaronson Shrieve). I had them all on vinyl, and frankly I can't remember much about them.  It was Steve though, who as the voice of Journey had the best shot at solo success, and with Street Talk , he dropped an album containing ten polished pop songs, that were closer to the generic adult contemporary artists o...