Old Enough to Forget

"Eyes of a Stranger" is a remarkable song. It put Payola$ on the musical map, and even after over four decades the song is still awesome. The band may have garnered some fans with it's debut and "China Boys" a song that got some sporadic play back in the day ... but I never really liked it all that much. This was the album that was supposed to allow the guys in the band to quit their day jobs, except for Bob Rock who balanced his house duties at Little Mountain Sound and being in the band. A wise choice as history would show. The band was centred on the core of Bob Rock (guitars) and Paul Hyde (Vocals) along with Chris Taylor on drums, and Laurence Wilkins on bass. Lawrence would depart after this album. The band's sound was born out of the British punk scene from the late '70s and their fuck you attitude was on full display with the band's name: Payola$. Yeah, that's a name that'll open doors to radio. I wonder how many conversations took pl...

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 it 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 was st...

I first heard of T-Bone Burnett when he was with the Alpha Band with Steven Soles, and David Mansfield. I had a friend who had one of their albums, I can't remember which one as I only heard it once, but it was quirky and caught my interest. Then I bought a copy of his 1982 E.P. Trap Door and pretty much played it to death. I loved the fact that he was self effacing enough to make a joke about his passing resemblance to Eric Idle. The office where I worked used to have copies of People magazine I like to read - for the record reviews, and in one issue there was an article where Mariel Hemingway said her favourite album was T-Bone Burnett's Proof Through the Night . Well, I wasn't sold because of her endorsement, I was sold because I'd just realized there was a new T-Bone Burnett album. I remember talking about this with my girlfriend at the time who absolutely loved The Who, and The Monkees (she had great taste in music) and she casually mentions that she saw T-Bone ope...

This was the album that was supposed to make The Payola$ huge ... all that was missing was an excellent album to propel Vancouver's perennial group of punk to pop heroes to the big time. They'd been skirting on the edge of success for a few years, and were so close to being a really big deal. The band first made it onto my radar when they released "Eyes of a Stranger" back in 1982 and the song was huge here in Canada (okay, maybe just Vancouver, but it seemed like it was huge). I remember an entertainment segment on the local news where the band was pretty excited about the prospect of being able to ditch their day jobs. A year later the band dropped Hammer on a Drum and "Where is this Love" was the big hit (all things are relative, it was on the radio and I liked it, so it must have been a hit), and remains one of those songs that'll get me right in the feels when I hear it. Mick Ronson had produced both of those albums, and while they did okay, from ...

I was ten years old when I first heard Ian Thomas' "Painted Ladies" on my AM radio. I still really like the song, and throughout the 70s, he was the consummate singer-songwriter. Even his 1979 song "Pilot," which was equal parts irritating and cool with its quirky recorder (yes, a recorder) runs, was a song I kind of liked, but it wasn't a song I was too fond of. However, when Ian performed it on SCTV with Bob and Doug (his brother Dave), it took on a second life. I knew of Ian Thomas from many of his own songs, but also from the various covers of his songs by other artists, from Santana to Chicago. But it was Manfred Mann's Earth Band's retooling of "The Runner" that really floated my boat (oddly, I never did pick up a copy, and it is still on my list of things to look for one day). Fast forward to the summer of 1983, and I'm lining up to see the Strange Brew movie, and in the opening credits, Ian Thomas delivers the title ...