Old Enough to Forget

This was mostly written and in my queue to post when I found out that Tina Turner passed away May 24, 2023. She was 83. Hard to imagine that almost forty years had passed since Private Dancer was released. It's always fun to revisit albums that you thought you disliked. I suppose the backlash was inevitable as "What's Love Got to Do With It" was pretty ubiquitous on MuchMusic and the radio for what seemed to be forever. I managed to keep up my dismissive airs for a long time, and even though I really liked "Better Be Good to Me," featuring the stellar guitar work of The Fixx's Jamie West-Oram and backing vocals from Cy Curnin, I stubbornly held my ground. The credits confirm both West-Oram's guitar and Curnin's backing vocals on the Rupert Hine produced track. It didn't help that everyone was trying to make a then ancient in pop years Tina Turner, who was all of forty five or six when this came out, a sex symbol. "Look at those legs!...

By 1986, The Fixx had been on a creative run that would be the envy of a lot of bands. Like a lot of people, I jumped on the bandwagon when the band released what is arguably their most well-known album, Reach the Beach . This was just a starting point, and in short order I had gone and picked up their debut, and then kept up with the band through 1991's Ink . The best song the band ever did was the long version of "Deeper and Deeper," and while it was available on the Streets of Fire soundtrack, it was a much shorter and far less satisfying version. It should have been on Phantoms in its entirety - sigh. By the time Walkabout came out, the musical landscape was all over the place. It truly was the best of times; the sheer number of classic songs and albums from this year is sort of mind-boggling. It's against this backdrop that The Fixx joined the fray. I remember the first time I heard "Secret Separation" and was totally blown away. It was, and still is, ...

I have one album in my collection that is actually new - not old new, NEW new. It's an album I got because I took part in a fundraising campaign to help Jeff realize his dream of putting out an album on vinyl. I also got it because I felt guilty for making fun of his desire to release an album that was recorded digitally and then put out on plastic to have that "warmth" only vinyl can deliver. He took offence at this (and rightly so) and defended his desire, explaining how it was recorded and mixed specifically to enhance the vinyl experience. Incidentally, quite a number of my favourite albums from decades ago were fully digital recordings that sounded awesome on record - yeah, I'm specifically thinking of In Transit by SAGA. It was also one of the first CDs, so there. He may have a point, or it may just be an ear placebo. What REALLY enhanced the experience was having a big old album cover to hold on to, with a nice insert. I also have the CD (which is just as lovi...