Old Enough to Forget

Steppin' Out is not an album for the casual fan. I'm the first to admit that I'm not all that well versed in all things Armatrading, although over the last couple of years I've picked up a few of her albums, and I've really enjoyed them. Some more than others, but they were all good. While the album was "Recorded 'LIVE' in North America" the album was not released in the US. Apparently this was at the behest of Joan herself as she didn't think her album sales there warranted a live album. So those in the UK, Europe and Canada (yay) were the lucky recipients. The album itself is surprisingly short, just nine songs and clocking in at less than twenty two minutes a side, which for a live album seems a tad skinny. Most of the songs are full band with the title track being a solo version featuring Joan on guitar. The first couple of plays through, the album felt dull and frankly kind of boring. Which I found strange. Maybe my expectations were a li...

Looks like I almost got stuck in the '70s this month. Not a bad thing. Considering how much I go on about the '80s and all that, blah blah blah - I have collected a lot of stuff from the decade of my childhood. Which shouldn't really be a surprise considering most of what's available on vinyl is heavily concentrated in the '60s and '70s. When CDs came out I quickly jumped ship ... hence the lack of records from my favoured decade. Still, man there was some great stuff coming out of my childhood, and a lot of new to me stuff that has truly stood the test of time. Let's take a look at this months ... Five For Fighting No. 10 Nick Gilder - Frequency (1979) Joan Armatrading - Armatrading (1976) Ian Thomas - Calabash (1976) Linda Ronstadt - Prisoner in Disguise (1975) The Vapors - Magnetic (1981) Nick Gilder - Frequency (1979) Nick followed up City Nights and "Hot Child in the City" with Frequency and the single that should have been huge "(Yo...

Joan Armatrading is a name I've known for a long time, but I've never really heard anything by her. I've caught snippets here and there but that's about it. Then a while back I was reading up on the original Joe Jackson band, and Gary Sanford whose guitar work was so interwoven into those early albums would spend some time in the '80s playing guitar on a couple of her albums. Well, that was intriguing. Maybe I should keep an eye out for some of her stuff. As fate would have it I managed to score a really nice copy of her 1977 release Show Me Some Emotion. For me, the draw here was the production credit: Glyn Johns. It was recorded at the legendary Olympic Studios and if nothing else this would be a really good sounding record. Joan released her debut album in 1972 and Show Me Some Emotion was her forth album, and the second album to be produced by Glyn Johns. Apparently her 1976 album simply titled Armatrading is considered essential listening - this one, not as m...

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...