Old Enough to Forget

In 1989 rock was alive and well. Seemingly out of nowhere Alannah Myles was suddenly everywhere, and propelled by "Black Velvet" she became an overnight sensation that took over a decade of hard work to achieve. I may as well get right to the elephant in the room right off the bat. "Black Velvet" is still an amazing song. Considering that musically the song is essentially a generic vamp on a bass-driven 12-bar blues shuffle, the song is immediately identifiable. It was also played to death and while it never got old, it sure did get overplayed. It also became the high water mark that everything else would be measured by. Fair or not, that's how things go sometimes. Hair metal and an abundance of musical excess and fret shredding was the flavour of the day, and Alannah Myles managed to be of the times but a step removed at the same time. The guitar work of Bob Bartolucci, who I remembered from the GNP album (also from 1989, I don't remember which came first),...

The other day I was listening to GNP's lone album, the one with Robert Bevan on vocals, and it brought to mind the old CBC television show The Raes, featuring Robbie Rae (who was really Robert Bevan, if that wasn't obvious) and Cherrill Rae. Prism guested on the show, and they played a couple of songs from their latest album. It's funny the pointless stuff you remember, but I still can't figure out where I hid my spare keys in case there was an emergency. Armageddon was Prism's third album in three years, and it would become the band's commercial high-water mark. In the summer of 1979, the title track "Armageddon" was the best song I'd heard in a long time and, over the decades, has aged into one of the coolest rock songs ever. It pushed nearly eight minutes, but there were no wasted moments. My summer job in 1979, the year I turned sixteen, was with the forestry service. Along with a youth crew of close to forty other raging, hormonal teenage boys...

Before I put the record on, I figured I'd jot down what I remembered from the album. It's been a long time since I've given this a proper listen. First thing to disclose is I am still a big SAGA fan after all these years. Back in 1989, when GNP dropped, I bought it right away because both Steve Negus (drums) and Jim Gilmour (keyboards) were involved - they were the G and N in GNP. The video for "How Many Times" actually got quite a lot of play on YTV Rocks, which was hosted at the time by Laurie Hibberd, and they even had an interview with Steve, who talked about the album. I don't remember much about the interview, but he seemed pretty happy, and there were high hopes the album would do well. I did like the single, and I had high hopes for the album too. As much as I wanted to like the album, as a whole it never really seemed to gel for me. In addition to "How Many Times," I made an effort to like "Safety Zone" as I put it on a few mixtape...