Old Enough to Forget

File under: TLDR Note to the reader. First sorry, second not really, but I am sorry I don't have the ability to edit. Oh happy Valentine's day.  To celebrate let's take a gander at Meat Loaf's 1977 Bat Out of Hell. Over forty three million people disagree with me but for decades I thought this album was, and continues to be, one giant disappointment. I'll be the first to admit that despite decades of baggage the overwhelming power of nostalgia managed to erode even the hardest of convictions and I found that Bat Out of Hell was one of those albums I wanted to have in my collection, but I wasn't looking all that hard. It was an album I knew more about than I actually knew about. So at this moment in time I'm still holding firm on my long held opinion. But before I get into things, it's time for some meanderambling blurbage ... I remember seeing the cover when I was a kid and thinking it was the single greatest cover I had ever seen. What wonders were to b...

Like an awful lot of people I know Juice Newton from "Angel of the Morning" and it was a catchy song, and bow howdy I do like bells in popular music.Then "Queen of Hearts" was all over the radio. I will admit I like the song a fair too but buying the album never even crossed my mind. Ever. With the passage of time I learned my girlfriend, now my wife, had her '81 album Juice and she was partial to the big songs. So when I found an excellent copy of her Greatest Hits I was pretty stoked and her response wasn't as enthusiastic, but to be fair I think her reaction was due in part to the other dozen or so records in the pile of stuff I'd proudly brought home. To me I felt like a king bearing gifts, to her I was a cat who'd just dropped another dead mouse on the carpet. I'm always perplexed when labels interchangeably market best of collections as greatest hits. I know for sure there were hits on this album, a couple of really big ones, and maybe the...

Sometimes you pick up an album just to satisfy the ear worm you can't get rid of. Now to be upfront, the first album I bought from Donnie Iris was his 1982 release The High and the Mighty - an album I found about a year ago, and I played it a few times and enjoyed myself - but as I sit here listening to Back on the Streets I can't recall any of the songs from it. This isn't really a shot, it's more reflective of my under developed sense of object permanence. I have the same problem trying to remember more than a couple of the songs off the three Tommy Tutone albums I have - and I like those albums. Other than "867-5309/Jenny" and the forgotten hit from their debut "Angel Say No" I couldn't name another song. All of their albums were decent, just not especially memorable. Unless a song gets buried deep into my subconscious there's a good chance I'll more often than not experience a wonderful groundhog day moment when I play an album I...

Oh, look what the dollar bin puked up. Bonnie Tyler's 1983 Jim Steinman produced and directed mega over the top opus Faster Than The Speed Of Night . I brought the album home which was in surprisingly good shape, and even the liner was decent. This would be fun. Everything about this release screamed cheese, especially the cover. I'm not sure if it was a deliberate nod to Steve Martin, but it sure does look like she's got an arrow through her head. Was she letting us know she was a wild and crazy guy? Of course you'd have had to live under a rock not to have heard "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and I will admit I like the song. Heck after almost forty years the song is part of the fabric of pop culture. Still, I was expecting very little from the rest of the album and was prepared for a lot of bloated filler. The first cut is a cover song, an interesting (in a good way) interpretation of John Fogerty's "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?" If you're g...