Old Enough to Forget

You ever sit and wonder what were you thinking as a kid? Maybe not even as a kid, but as a young adult who thought they knew shit , but it turns out they knew shit? Case in point: The Alarm's 1985 release Strength . It's no secret that I am drawn to shiny things. I'm often a musical crow who looks for the object that stands out and then ignore everything else around it. I bought a lot of records and later CDs for one track. Sometimes I'd get more than I bargained for, generally though I was buying so much stuff that I seldom took the time to really let an album percolate. Not always, but often enough that my memory pertaining to a lot of great stuff is full of blanks. The Alarm suffered from this fate not once, but twice. The first time was when I heard "Strength" for the first time, and my little brain (yes, little - I have a big head but I'm not efficiently using all that extra space) melted. I bought the album, and I don't know what I was expecting,...

The cover to this album seemed so familiar from my teenage record store explorations, but for the life of me I had no idea who they were. I had always assumed Straight Eight were a Canadian band ... you know what they say when you assume something: According to Merriam Webster's online dictionary the word assume has a few different connotations based on meaning and usage, but the one I was using which was to take as granted or true was number four from a list of seven variations. I should probably just use the word "Suppose" next time to avoid confusion. After all, I don't want to make an ass out of you or me. Sometimes you can judge a book by it's cover, or an album by it's art - sometimes you can't. Whatever preconceived notions I had formulated in my developing brain would turn out to be nonsense. I suppose what supported my assertion (almost said the ass word, tch tch) that Straight Eight were Canadian was the label: El Mocambo. This was a pretty infam...

China Crisis was one of those '80s bands I knew of, but had never heard. To me they were just another early English alternative new wave band that never really caught on in North America. That first blush of European new wave synth pop seemed short lived and was quickly assimilated into what would become the sound of the '80s. Fast forward four decades and a couple of years for good measure, I was flipping through the discount bin and there was a very nice looking copy of  Working with Fire and Steel - Possible Pop Songs Volume Two and my curiosity was piqued. Oh, for the record (not this one) there was no "volume one" but it was the band's second album I'd find out later. After a bath and a clean shirt (I replaced the insert) the album was ready. I seated myself on the centre cushion on the couch and had the lyric sheet ready to follow along. I felt very much like the guy on the chair in those old Maxell adverts. I would buy boxes of XLIIS tapes and when I go...

A Flock of Seagulls are remembered more for Mike Score's hair than their music, which is a real shame. Oh sure "I Ran" is often considered their "hit" and the band is dismissed as a one hit wonder which to me makes no sense at all considering they had quite a few songs I remember hearing on the radio. Then again I may be confusing what I heard in my car, with what I heard on the radio. Coming in a year after the release of their debut Listen was in many ways a stronger and more cohesive album than it's predecessor. Although at the time I read a particularly savage review more of less relegating the band to being a collection of hairstyles and that it's a shame Ali Score wasn't able to do more with his thinning hair.  There was very little mention of the music, other than to say it was formulaic and boring. This was the album I spent the most time with. I had picked up a cassette copy, back when for five minutes I was so sick of clicks and pops that I...