Old Enough to Forget

Running on Empty is an album I associate with the early '80s, even though it came out in December of 1977. "Running on Empty" was the big song, and boy oh boy it had legs. Reading up on this one it was up for a couple of Grammy Awards in 1979. One for album of the year , and another for male vocal performance for "Running on Empty" which was pretty cool. As a record, Running on Empty was a bit of odd duck when it comes to live albums. Rather than the usual best of approach with crowd noise, Jackson Browne took a hard left at Albuquerque and road tested and recorded new songs. There were live songs, rehearsal songs, songs on a bus (which is really good, you can hear the bus), songs in a hotel room, and songs recorded backstage. He recorded it all over, everything recorded was part of the touring experience. Jackson Browne assembled a band featuring the best of the best. Russ Kunkel on drums, Leland Sklar on bass, Danny Kortchmar on guitar, and the incredible D...

For most of us Warren Zevon generally conjures up one song, "Werewolves of London" and that's about as far as it goes. That particular song was one I was very dismissive of back in the day. To me it was a hatchet job that borrowed too much from "Sweet Home Alabama" and tried too hard to be clever. Yeah, fifteen year old me was a pretty harsh critic. I will begrudgingly admit that over the years the song certainly had it's charms, and Warren's unusual voice and writing is oddly engaging. In the mid '80s my old roommate had the record, and I remember playing it quite a few times and I really enjoyed a number of the songs, particularly "Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner" and "Lawyers, Guns And Money" as well as the title track, which was about as dark and twisted as songs come. With the passage of time I'd more or less forget the album, and when Kid Rock's oddly goofy and somehow catchy sampling of bits and pieces of "...

If there was an artist I actively despised as a kid it was Leo Sayer. "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" was just plain stupid, and that horrific Frankie Valli falsetto was too much. I always thought he looked liked a diminutive version of Robin William's as Mork flying through the air. Which just shows how time blurs things, as Mork and Mindy wouldn't debut for another two years or so after this album came out ... but I remember the cover, and the blurring of time certainly hasn't helped.  I always thought of Leo Sayer as being huge in the disco era, and that songs like the aforementioned dancing song and the ballad "When I Need You" were later than this ... apparently I was wrong. Funny that. I have memories of Leo Sayer on those late night music shows, and I guess it just all sort of ran together. Anyway, back to my active dislike of all things Leo Sayer. It really wasn't based on anything other than he wasn't rock, and I didn't like how he s...

I had no idea what to expect here. The cover caught my eye, and I thought the logo was cool. It reminded me a bit of Crown of Thorns, or Angel ... turns out when I actually compared them they were nothing alike. For all I knew, this was going to be a disco record, after all it did come out in 1979, and the back photo was hard to peg. Still, I'd been baited with that Patrick Juvet record ... but I was thinking this was more rock, mainly because Leland Sklar was the bass player, and while Leland has played on literally thousands of albums, I generally assume he's a measure of quality. If nothing else, the bass playing will be good. When I got home I looked up Alvin Taylor as I wasn't as familiar with him but his list of credits is still pretty impressive. He was the behind the kit on Bob Welch's French Kiss, except for Sentimental Lady. He drummed with Elton John, Eric Burdon, Sly & the Family Stone and George Harrison. As for Billy Thorpe, I figured I'd wait unti...

There was a period of time (it was actually pretty short when you look back on it - but at the time it seemed like forever) when Mister Collins was pretty much everywhere. Either with Genesis, or solo, or behind the kit just being a drummer (I saw him with Robert Plant, and there was little fanfare made about it). He first started making inroads with his early solo career, come on, who hasn't played air drums to "In the Air Tonight" but when Genesis took the world in 1983 with their self titled monster it seemed like everyone needed a little more Phil in their lives, and we got our Phil until we were all filled up. No Jacket Required is the album where he and Hugh Padgham fitted all the sonic pieces together and where Phil's now patented gated reverb drum splat sound would practically define the 80s. The song where all of this sonic mayhem manifested itself on a grand scale was the ear-worm "Sussudio" a song that elicits a pretty strong reaction both positiv...