Old Enough to Forget

Here we have an album I always looked back on fondly. Digging up the Outlaws on this instalment of A Streaming Pile of Hit - where you put the "s" in hit is up to you. Los Hombres Malo from 1982 would be pretty much the end of the line for The Outlaws. I was pretty late to the party having jumped on with their previous release and really didn't know a whole lot about southern rock, and even less about their countrified hybrid. I knew what I liked, and I liked guitars, and these boys were all about guitars. I know that Hughie Thomasson gets a lot of love for his playing, but Freddie Salem was no slouch. Sadly Billy Jones had left the band, and was dealing with personal issues, and eventually he'd succumb to his demons. However, here the band was delivering some pretty heavy riffs, while still managing to incorporate the band's blend of rock and country. The opening track, Freddie Salem's "Don't Stop" is still one of my favourite Outlaws songs. I...

Time for another edition of A Streaming Pile of Hit - where you put the "s" in hit is up to you.  Not sure why I've been going back to the old CCM stuff that I was particularly enamoured with back in the day. Rick Cua had been playing bass in The Outlaws, most notably on a couple of their later albums: Ghost Riders (1980) and Los Hombres Malo (1982), and when he dropped his first solo album, Koo'-ah , in 1982 I found myself really looking forward to hearing it. It's weird that this is listed as being from 1985 on iTunes ... I can't make heads or tails out of where the dates come from. After all, Hughie Thomasson, Billy Jones, as well as Freddie Salem from The Outlaws were playing guitar on the album (and killing it, by the way), and former Wings drummer Joe English was featured on several tracks. If nothing else, there was some pedigree on the album. The songs, though, were mostly middle of the road, with a little extra punch here and there. I remember wan...

I know this is likely sacrilege to hardcore fans, but this is where I started with the band. "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky" was the song that hooked me. It hooked me good. I think I got the album in late 1981. I know it was about a year before Rick Cua released his first solo album, and that was in '82. The same year the Outlaws would release Los Hombres Malo  -  the last album I'd get by the band for decades. I did hear "Green Grass & High Tides" on the radio once back in the early '80s when one of the local radio stations dedicated a weekend to the 100 best guitar solos of all time. I remember it being a pretty cool song, but honestly it just felt like a retread of "Free Bird," and frankly, that song never did much for me, so any kissing cousins by default didn't do much for me by extension. That was then. But back to my first blush with Outlaws, and frankly it was a good one, even if I wasn't sure what to make of the weird balance b...