Old Enough to Forget

Author's warning.*  After selling 5,000,000 copies of his breakthrough album American Fool in the US, John was back in '83 with Uh-Huh and proceeded to go triple platinum. However, here in Canada he moved half a million copies of each album. He was a pretty big deal here ... and he'd be a big deal for a while. I was never really a big John Cougar Mellencamp fan, I'm still not, but I like him enough to buy his albums when I find them. Oh make no mistake he was decent and in small doses pretty awesome. There was something about a whole album of John's tunes that just felt overly long. I'd almost go so far as to describe a lot of it as unvarnished pretentious rock and roll. A better name for the album would be Nuh Uh. John was earnest in his pursuit of grandeur. To be fair, for all the clunkers, he'd then come out with an absolute barn burner. I didn't know it at the time, but John was carving his own niche. Americana wasn't really a thing I was aware...

With 1985's Scarecrow John Mellencamp's transition into what would later be known as Americana was complete. When this was sparkly and new it was a little harder to peg. It was definitely rock, with echoes of times gone by and it was at odds with what was currently in fashion. That didn't stop this from being embraced by those who liked rock. For me it was an odd experience. I'd never really been a huge fan, but I had to give the guy props, because when he was good he was untouchable. His previous album had "Pink Houses" which alone was enough to earn my respect. However, with Scarecrow I got my back up, almost immediately after the first time I heard the song "Small Town." In fact I got a bee so far up my ass it coloured everything, and I mean EVERYTHING he was to release after, and even altered my perception of the stuff already out there. I started to think of him as a second tier Bruce Springsteen, and that he was a preening little peacock who su...

John Cougar had been around for a while already when he dropped this one in '82, but for most of us American Fool was his coming out party. Heck, John even made an appearance on the legendary SCTV (I saw it and was suitably impressed) and played "Jack & Diane," which to me was a big deal. It's funny though, as much as I liked the big songs here, "Hurts So Good," "Jack & Diane" and to a lesser extent "Hand to Hold On To," I didn't buy the album. I would pick it up a few years later, and by that time he was hitting his halcyon days and frankly that era was okay, but didn't resonate with me. There was an irritating element to his cock of the walk self aggrandizing posturing wrapped in rockin' Americana that just bugged me. I have softened on this quite a bit over the years, and can really appreciate a lot of what he was doing, and that he was part of what was going on, without being part of what was going on musically. He...