Old Enough to Forget

I picked this up because it looked like an interesting album. The back credits caught my attention: Produced by Gary Lyons, mastered by George Marino and recorded at the legendary Caribou Ranch in Colorado. I figured the album would lean one of two ways - a sucky late '70s Dan Fogelberg type album, or a straight ahead boogie woogie rock and roll album with a bit of twang. Guitarist Geoff Whitehorn was credited with playing "fiddle" so I figured that plaid jacket was appropriate. The anticipation of dropping the needle and those first moments of dead space are so good ... "Sail On" opens the album and the brief harmonic and sliding bass note is quickly followed by thick crunchy power chords that then give way to an infectious groove that has a lot of bounce and swing - in short swagger. The vocal harmonies are great and the interplay between the guitars and keyboards is simply awesome. I haven't had a truly great holy shit moment for a while. This was so good...

I know this is likely sacrilege to hard core 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 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 they 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 as a good one, even if I wasn't sure what to make of the weird balance be...