Old Enough to Forget

Running on Empty is an album I associate with the early '80s, even though it came out in December of 1977. "Running on Empty" was the big song, and boy oh boy it had legs. Reading up on this one it was up for a couple of Grammy Awards in 1979. One for album of the year , and another for male vocal performance for "Running on Empty" which was pretty cool. As a record, Running on Empty was a bit of odd duck when it comes to live albums. Rather than the usual best of approach with crowd noise, Jackson Browne took a hard left at Albuquerque and road tested and recorded new songs. There were live songs, rehearsal songs, songs on a bus (which is really good, you can hear the bus), songs in a hotel room, and songs recorded backstage. He recorded it all over, everything recorded was part of the touring experience. Jackson Browne assembled a band featuring the best of the best. Russ Kunkel on drums, Leland Sklar on bass, Danny Kortchmar on guitar, and the incredible D...

In the fall of '84 two albums dropped that were huge for me. Toto's maligned Isolation , and Don Henley's Building the Perfect Beast . Toto's album will be another day but today I'm sitting in the basement with the music on and pretending in twenty one again and discovering the album for the first time. David and Steve from Toto show up here quite a bit which I always thought was cool. I'd heard "Boys of Summer" on the radio and that song was so good, and the fact I had a Grateful Dead sticker on my car at the time only added to the fun. I always think of the album as being excellent, but honestly the two songs I really associate with the album are the aforementioned "Boys of Summer" and "Sunset Grill" ... I try not to think about "All She Wants to Do Is Dance" because I still think it's a giant musical turd. I still remember pouring over the credits while listening to the album, and "Boys of Summer" drove me...

1983 was a great year for music. Of course there were other great years - lots and lots of them, especially the ones during my formative years. The early '80s though was something special. Jackson Browne was someone who had quite a few songs I liked but it wasn't until he released Lawyers in Love that I decided to put some cash on the table (The Fast Tmes soundtrack doesn't count). There was something hilariously goofy and awesome about the title track and it didn't matter where I was (or am, as I discovered when the song came on) if the song came on I had to wait patiently for my cue to sing along. Last night I watched the news from Washington, the capitol (that would be me) The Russians escaped while we weren't watching them, like Russians will (still me, but with gusto) The Tarzan falsetto is still out of my range, but there are times I still give it a shot. The dog doesn't like it. Anyway, the song is still one of those guilty pleasures, but this album got...

Over the last year I've been on a Linda Ronstadt kick. I managed to find several of her albums in the dollar bin that were in fantastic shape, and from there it led to a couple albums by Andrew Gold, and today the bins coughed up Karla Bonoff's 1977 debut. Karla contributed to Linda's release Hasten Down the Wind the year before, as a songwriter and providing backing vocals to two of the three tracks she'd written for the album.  The album itself was in decent shape, the jacket was okay, but sadly there was no insert so who knows what may or may not have been on the liner, but the back cover had a lot of information which I always appreciate. This was an album I was looking forward to hearing as I'd never heard the album or anything by Karla that I can remember, and I wasn't sure what to expect (I had some idea but you never know. There are a lot of great writers that need good singers. J ennifer Warnes comes to mind, who was great with Leonard Cohen songs, any...

Paul Janz released High Strung in 1985 and the single "Go to Pieces" got a lot of radio play, but didn't really break into the top 10. Which I still find perplexing as it was one of those ear worms that had all of the magic ingredients that made mid 80s pop so appealing. The song is awesome. Electricity, released in 1987, is the one album of his I didn't have, and I honestly can't remember why I didn't pick it up. If you lived outside Canada this was his debut, and I suppose it made sense to include "Go to Pieces" as I didn't know at the time High Strung wasn't released outside Canada. Paul has a distinctive voice, a deft hand with his arrangements and his song craft was impeccable, so it's a head scratcher as to why he didn't really catch on. I think a lot of people bet on him being a big deal too. One of those guys was Michael Godin. He was an executive with A&M who left his position to guide Paul's career. Electricity was m...