Old Enough to Forget

I bought this back in the day because of Randy Thomas, the guitar player from Sweet Comfort Band, and because I was told this album was awesome. Awesome is a bit of a stretch. I liked one song, but I'll get to that eventually. The early to mid '80s was the era of Christian music warfare. As members of the body of Christ, we had a fiduciary responsibility to subdue the ways of the world. It was "Onward Christian Soldiers," and we were going to take the D out of Evil or whatever it was we were supposed to do. Allies, dressed in camouflage and wielding their instruments, were going out there to kick butt and rack up souls on the giant scoreboard in the sky. I ate this stuff up. Make no mistake, there is still a war going on, but most of the time when we're (I am part of the great we) out there pointing fingers, we have more pointing back at us - and some pretty big splinters in our own eyes. Even back then I thought it was a corny cover, but dang it, this was Randy...

Back in 2023, Jamie Rowe dropped his new project Kalamity Kills. It was an album I supported when he launched his Kickstarter. Yeah, my name is buried deep in the credits on the CD. I've been a fan of Jamie for a long time. His work with Guardian seems to be what most of the casual fans want to hear, but it was his solo work, and the power pop he crafted with London Calling, that cemented me as a fan. The handful of albums with AdrianGale were unabashed '80s rock, and while awesome, were deliberately nostalgic and, boy howdy, they were good. Jamie is hard to pin down stylistically as he seems to flit from genre to genre. His previous album was the country hybrid Welcome Home , which was pretty decent, but to me it was just generic paint-by-numbers modern country (then again, I ain't much of a country fan). Which means it was as good as anything else out there, and if that was your cup of tea, your cup runneth over. That shouldn't read as a shot; I just think he's an...

It's hard to imagine now, but this movie was sort of a biggish deal. Following The Breakfast Club a few months later St. Elmo's Fire hit the threatres. The cast was a hodgepodge of members of the so called Brat Pack, and both movies were produced by a guy named Ned Tanen who was behind some pretty impressive movies. The Breakfast Club is a coming of age classic now, whereas St. Elmo's Fire is mostly a forgotten misfire that was surprisingly popular when it was released. I'll admit that I took my girlfriend at the time to see it. It was a bit weird seeing many of the kids who a few months earlier were in detention playing a more age appropriate role. In many ways it was a foreshadowing of Friends , except this wasn't funny or all that good. However, there was the soundtrack. David Foster was all over this, and it's a sort of mixed bag of horseshoes. I happen to like David Foster, but there are times his style of music, keyboard sound choices, and layers of syru...

This is my favourite Kansas album. Other than a couple of songs I'd heard on the radio, I didn't really know much about the band. I do know my buddy Gord liked them, and I first heard "Relentless" on one of his mix tapes - and that was an awesome tune. I didn't really have any baggage when it came to the band. When I picked up their 1982 release Vinyl Confessions , I didn't realize there was a changing of the guard when a young John Elefante replaced Steve Walsh on vocals. By the time Drastic Measures dropped in 1983, I'd gone back and picked up the excellent (to me) Audio-Visions and had started collecting the band's back catalogue. I was really getting into the band. I'll be the first to admit my preferences leaned toward the rock songs, and the more meandering wiffle waffle stuff I put up with to get to the rock songs. Yeah, I'm thinking about "A Glimpse of Home" from Monolith with its pure cheese old-timey sci-fi radio intro... b...