Old Enough to Forget

Straight Lines put out two pretty good albums and then folded. Run for Cover was the band's second album and was full of tightly polished light rock songs. It's kind of foggy now but there was a time this was the shit. Coming out of the '70s Straight Lines wasn't ashamed of the past, but it was embracing the future. The songs were tight, the Peter Clarke's vocals were really good and harmonies were on point and the guitar playing was that perfect mix of tasty with a bit of edge that gave the feeling if David Sinclair wanted to he could cut loose with the best of them. Listening now it would be easy to dismiss this as faceless corporate rock of the most generic variety. Which is not only unfair, it's plain wrong.  It may have been my mood but I was really getting into this one. It was really good. Most of the songs were mid tempo, but the band had a killer ballad with "Letting Go" which is probably their best known song, although personally I am partial...

The Hometown Band released albums in 1976 and 1977, and served as Valdy's backing band for a little while, and then as quickly as they were, they weren't. As a kid there weren't a lot of choices in terms of television channels - CBC was a universal constant, which explains why so many kids of my generation revered Mister Dressup and Ernie Coombs. We knew there was a Mister Rogers, but that wasn't in our neighbourhood. Casey and Finnegan were awesome, and in a pinch there was always The Friendly Giant and Rusty and Jereome. However CBC was also home to the Juno Awards, which for a long time was the home of iffy Canadian Content that aspired to greatness, and often settled for mediocrity. We did have our own rock royalty - Bachman Turner Overdrive as our resident kings of rock, and Anne Murray was our queen. If she put out an album she won an award. I remember watching those mid to late '70s shows eagerly hoping to catch a glimpse or even better yet a performance by a...