Old Enough to Forget

FM is one of those bands I knew of as a kid but had never heard anything by them. Over the years I'd hear the song "Phasors On Stun" and knew about Nash the Slash but that was about it. They were a mystery wrapped in bacon and stuffed into an enema. I recently found a couple of the band's records (not at the same time, but close enough that they were both sitting on the shelf waiting to be played) and I figured I'd play the first one. Surveillance was released in '79 and featured Cameron Hawkins on vocals, keyboards and bass, along with drummer Martin Deller and Ben Mink on stringed things (guitar, violin, mandolin) who replaced Nash after he'd left to pursue a solo career. This was Ben's second album with the band. The first time through I have to admit I wasn't really paying attention but it was cool, and I really enjoyed the science fiction vibe. Musically it was kind of progressive but it had enough of a straight ahead rock feel to keep me inte...

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...

Two Worlds came out in 1985 and the '80s had a sound, and by gum this was it. The flat splat of the drums, crisp guitars and gang vocals and sparkly keyboard parts. Body Electric was one of those bands who never really got out of the starting blocks. I remember seeing a poster for the band's debut on the wall at Little Mountain Sound. It was a cool cover, but all I knew was it was Frank Ludwig's new band, and as talented as Frank was, I never really got into his stuff. When "Do You Think They Can Tell" got some minor airplay in Vancouver I thought it was pretty cool, but it was the ballad "Don't Look Back" that clicked with me. That was an awesome song. So I picked up the E.P. and with only 5 songs, it was really all killer no filler. The album was produced by Bill Henderson and it sounded like a continuation of his '84 release Look In, Look Out . The album felt like a taster of things to come, except there wasn't anything else. This was a ...

Screams is a band who came to my attention through my buddy Jeff. I've mentioned Jeff a few times, often in a derogatory manner as he is one of those jacks of all trades and master of all, types who despite his protestations that he is in fact just a normal guy , is in fact not normal. In short I'm more than a little jealous and proud of my friend ... A while back I found an Elvis Brothers album and I had just written up. Jeff casually brokered an introduction to Brad Elvis (Brad Steakley) and we traded a couple of really pleasant notes. Brad has a pretty active Facebook which is fun to keep up with. Anyway (yeah, I may have to edit this for clarity at some point) I found out Brad had been in a band called Screams, and that Jeff had been looking for the album for a long time. I decided I'd look for it, and I found not one, but two copies in a little second hand record store close to where I live so I sent Jeff one, and kept the other. When Brad and I were trading notes he...

Franke & the Knockouts released three albums in the early '80s before being counted out. The band's first two records Franke and the Knockouts (1981) and Below the Belt (1982) were on Millennium records, whose big claim to fame was Meco and the insufferable disco reworking of John Williams' "Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band" back in 1977. The label would fold after the band's second album and MCA would pick up the band, and then not know what to do with their third and final album Makin' the Point (1984). The band's debut single "Sweetheart" would crack the top 20 in Canada, and hit the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. Their next album Below the Belt contained "Without You (Not Another Lonely Night)" that sat just outside the top 40 here, and went as high as 24 on the Billboard chart. The third album's lone single "Outrageous" didn't make any ripples.  That would be it, and the band would be relegated to being ...

Avoid Freud was released in the fall of 1980, but it wasn't until the spring that "High School Confidential" seemed to be playing everywhere. We'd giggle when Carole sang, "It makes me cream my jeans when she comes my way." On the radio it would be bleeped, but it didn't matter. Most of us, or at least me - had no idea that it was a lesbian love song. It didn't matter - the song was infectious. There was of course the inevitable backlash when something becomes too popular. For me, there was always something about Carole Popes voice that was nails on a blackboard. I will admit that I liked "High School Confidential" right up until I didn't ... but with time I like it again. I had never heard anything other than what I heard on the radio. I had no desire to pick up an album, and when the  Payolas released "Never Said I Loved You" in 1983 with Carole singing the duet with Paul I would have a visceral reaction to the song when it...

Funny I thought I'd written about Pat Benatar before ... apparently not. Well, let's make up for lost time and start with her 1984 album Tropico . This was a gear change and an attempt to sort of stay ahead of the curve. Now to be fair, despite always liking some of the songs I heard on the radio - especially those early hits, I'd never picked anything up by her. Over the last couple of years I've found most of her early efforts, and for the most part they were good albums. It was the combination of Pat's vocals, and Neil's music that really worked - even when it was a cover, like "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" written by Eddie Schwartz. Considering the treadmill the band was on, cranking out an album a year like sausages from 1979 to 1985 and the consistency of the band's output is nothing short of spectacular. Seriously. By 1984 the rock and roll of the late '70s was moving toward big hair, and the early new wave had already crashed to the beac...

1989 rock was a live 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), an...

The Marshall Tucker Band is one of those odd bands out of the '70s that shouldn't have worked on so many levels, I mean really - the band sported a flautist who also a pretty decent saxophonist. A flautist . I know, people will throw out Jethro Tull as the other rock flute player, but they were miles apart stylistically. What I know about The Marshall Tucker Band would fit on the back of a stamp, but I have heard some of their stuff over the years. Classic rock radio will play "Take the Highway" and "Can't You See" both from the band's debut. Those are pretty cool songs, and an interesting blend of country and southern rock that I always liked.  Let's just address the elephant in the room right off ... there was no one name Marshall Tucker in the band. Apparently the band was named after a sign the guys saw in a rehearsal space ... I think that's right. Regardless, turns out Marshall Tucker was a real guy, and tuned pianos. Good thing I'm...

I love Billy Squier. I'm not a fanatical fan by any means and can't tell you what kind of sheets he was rolling around on in the video for "Rock Me Tonite" I only saw the video a couple of times. It was a goofy video but honestly no worse than the video for Steve Perry's "Oh Sherrie" or any of the other early videos by musicians who didn't know where to look when on camera. It should not have been a career killer. I kept the faith and I dutifully bought each album when they came out, and while some were better than others, they always had at least one killer track, and the rest were never just filler. Heck, his final album in 1998 was the stripped down, intimate and acoustic Happy Blue , It was really good and apparently sold only 10,000 copies and I bought it twice. I'm getting ahead of myself. My journey didn't start with The Tale of the Tape , I hopped on the bandwagon along with a lot of other people when he released Don't Say No in ...

After Molly Hatchet's Flirtin' with Disaster Danny Joe Brown left the band and ventured out on his own and released his one and only solo effort as the Danny Joe Brown Band. The album was produced by the legendary Glyn Johns and was mastered by George Marino at Sterling sound. By all accounts it would seem that the folks at Epic put some budget behind the band and if it wasn't for the changing musical landscape I wonder if this wouldn't have been bigger. 1981 was the changing of the guard with a new decade underway and rock was becoming   more polished and the hair wouldn't get longer, but it was going to get bigger. New wave and techno were just on the horizon, and the three guitar attack of bands like April Wine, and Molly Hatchet - who would release their second album Take No Prisoners with Danny Joe Browns replacement Jimmy Farrar also in 1981, were on way out. Although April Wine's '81 release Nature of the Beast was huge, so there goes that the...