Old Enough to Forget

I have no idea why I remembered Ian Gomm. The title to the album Gomm with the Wind always stuck with me, and I knew there was a song I knew, but couldn't remember. It was "Hold On," and while it wasn't a big hit, it did get some radio play and Ian was very much part of that early bunch of power pop acts who were crossing the pond. It's a fun song, and Herbie Flowers' bass is a sonic punch to the gut. The album contained a dozen pop nuggets with only one song going over three minutes, and that was by seven seconds. There were a couple of covers, one by Chuck Berry, "Come On," that was really cool, and the Lennon-McCartney "You Can't Do That." It was get in, get out. Keep it tight. None of the songs felt incomplete, they were just right. The album was released on Stiff / Epic and labelmates included Nick Lowe, whose "Cruel to Be Kind" had been co-written by Ian Gomm, along with Ian Dury and the Blockheads and the legendary Poi...

Whoever owned this before me wrote "Bumpers" in black felt pen on the front of the album, on the back cover, and on both sides of the record itself. So yeah, it was a pain in the ass trying to figure out how to remove most of the ink. I was pretty proud of myself, in that I was able to make it hardly visible on the front and back of the jacket. I had a defaced Wishbone Ash album, I applied my newfound knowledge and proceeded to nearly ruin the cover. Anyway, I dropped the dollar because I wanted to get "Cruel to Be Kind," a song I knew from back in the day, and if there was more than one good song it was all bonus. After all, it's not like I had a lot of his stuff. Although I was super close to picking up Rockpile's Seconds of Pleasure when it came out. My only other point of reference was Party of One back in 1990 because I really liked "All Men Are Liars," which still cracks me up, and that's the truth. Oddly enough, the guys he'd later...