Old Enough to Forget

Here we go this month's Stylus Over Substance Volume 15. Good lord, if each volume contains five little incomprehensible blurbs, that means this year I've gacked out seventy five of these little literary turds. Man, I'm kind of proud of myself. I suppose I've gotten a little lazier with this, mainly because after a couple of years I've realized that Blogger is probably the worst platform I could have chosen. Few of my pages get indexed, and essentially I am doing this for an audience of one most of the time. Me.  Which is honestly okay, I do this for me because I enjoy it, and every so often something I write makes me giggle or smile. Which is good enough. Besides, this is all part of intentionally listening to the music I have. It may not always be good, or great, but it's always an adventure and I often have no idea where I'm going until I get there. With that here's another five carefully curated random selections. Jefferson Starship - Modern Times (...

Flash and the Pan was the brainchild of Harry Vanda and George Young. The duo had been active since the '60s, first with a band called the Easybeats, and from there they would launch George's two younger brothers Malcolm and Angus' band AC/DC. They would produce them up to 1978 before the band engaged Mutt Lange (who then was still Robert "Mutt" Lange) to produce their 1979 release Highway to Hell. Mutt was an interesting fellow, and although synonymous now with slick hard rock (or slick Shania albums) he also produced The Boomtown Rats The Fine Art of Surfacing in 1979 as well. From what I've read the origins of Flash and Pan go back to the later '70s, where they had released a couple of singles, starting with "Hey St. Peter" in 1977 and "Down Among the Dead Men" in 1978. They would release their self title album at the end of 1978, and then in 1979 the album would be released in North America on Epic. While I don't really remembe...

Boney M. was a very confusing band for me. Disco sucked. By extension Boney M. sucked too. "Rasputin" was cool and didn't count, or at least it was exempt from the obligatory suckage disco was supposed to encapsulate. Then again, looking back I had a special compartment for quite a few disco songs I sort of liked, but publicly shit on. Boney M. was the brainchild of German producer Frank Farian who wrote many of the songs, produced the records, and also sang. For years, many years, I had no idea that the folks on the cover weren't the ones on the grooves. The official line up of the band was Liz Mitchell and Marcia Barrett who shared lead vocals. Although it's Liz who is often associated as being the "lead" singer. They were both from Jamaica. Vocalist and dancer Maizie Williams was from Montserrat, and dancer and vocalist Bobby Farrell hailed from Aruba . Incidentally, neither Maizie or Bobby appeared on the records. If people knew, no one really cared...