Old Enough to Forget

Back in January I wrote about The Northern Pikes' excellent album Forest of Love . It was an album I bought because I thought it might be interesting (I also found it cheap which was a plus), and I was intrigued by Kevin Kane's inclusion in the line-up. I suppose if I were a proper fan I wouldn't have been so surprised at how good it was. Time to Time came out in 2023 and featured the same lineup: Jay Semko, Bryan Potvin, Don Schmid, and Kevin Kane. I went to the band's site, looked through the merch store, and saw that their latest album Time to Time was available as an autographed limited edition. In one of those "Go on, take my money" moments, I sent a message through the site and, in short order, found myself trading notes with Don  Schmid . Within literally a few days, a package arrived at my door with the record. Turns out Don lives practically down the road from me, which kind of cracked me up. Time to Time had been waiting to be played for a few mon...

The Northern Pikes were never one of my go to bands. They skirted the periphery for me, although they had a couple of killer tunes: “Things I Do For Money” was a nearly perfect ‘80s songs with a wonderfully syncopated delay on the guitar and a head bopping groove. The other was “Hopes Go Astray” which was (still is) a captivating song from  Secrets of the Alibi but don’t remember much else. The only thing I remember was being a bit disappointed. I was probably mix tape hunting, and aside from that one great song ("Hopes Go Astray") I didn’t pull anything else off and I suppose that was enough for me to bury it. Who knows. I was pretty quick to pass judgment and often it was brutal, and as I've found out in hindsight my loss. The band would keep dropping albums I more or less ignored ... okay it was more but I'm trying to soften my ambivalence. When they dropped "She Ain't Pretty" I had to admit it was catchy, but the little hairs on my neck didn't s...