Old Enough to Forget

"Cars" was really the only song I knew by Gary Numan. I knew the name of the album the song came from. Over the years bits and pieces of trivia are accumulated, but in terms of his music it was still distilled down to one song ...  It would be too easy to write Mr. Numan off as a one hit wonder, and I suppose in terms of actual chart hits this was his defining moment as a solo artist. Of course this really means nothing, as Gary Numan would drop an album a year pretty much through to the end of the '80s. He'd then slow down a little but continues to make music. While The Pleasure Principle was Gary Numan's debut solo release in '79, he actually cut his teeth on a couple of albums in a band called Tubeway Army, first with the band's self titled release in 1978, and then on Replicas that came out in April of '79. By the end of Tubeway Army's run most of the band would follow Gary into his solo career. Paul Gardiner who had been with Gary from the beg...

I remember this album, or at least the two songs I most closely associated with the album: "Looking For Clues" and "Johnny and Mary." The first was quirky and the second was very new wave. I love the second, and was perplexed by the first. Over the years Robert Palmer would come to exude cool, but to me he would forever be the geeky guy holding up a magnifying glass who was looking for clues. Of course that's not entirely accurate either.  When I found a copy of Clues I was pretty stoked to go back and hear what was going on back in 1980. The album opens with "Looking for Clues" and it's hard to imagine that it's been over four decades since the song came out. It's still so good. Chris Frantz from Talking Heads played bass drum on the track. The next song "Sulky Girl" was a straight ahead rock song in the same sort of vein as "Bad Case of Loving You" which sort of made sense, and I suspect this is what people were expect...