Old Enough to Forget

All Dressed Up is one of the best albums you've never heard. Released in 1982 David Roberts was poised to be a big deal. At least here at home in Canada ... before the conquering the rest of the world. The album was slick with enough rough edges to appeal to the rock guy in me. It didn't hurt that the album contained a who's who of the best session players on the friggin' planet. This came out the same year TOTO IV and musically All Dressed Up borrows more from the late '70s light funk and jazz grooves than the harder West coast AOR that was starting to percolate to the top of the charts. It was really good. So what happened? I remember watching David perform "Boys of Autumn" on the Juno Awards, and he was up for Most Promising Male Vocalist in '83 but lost out to Kim Mitchell, who was so far removed from being considered a "new" talent that it is mind boggling to me the guy was even nominated. Oh well.  I don't know how well the album...

When TOTO released their massive All in In 1978 - 2018 anthology it was as a record and CD collection, and at the time I didn't want the records, but boy oh boy was I interested in getting the remastered discs. Elliot Scheiner by all accounts had worked his magic and the much maligned Turn Back in particular was supposed to sound amazing. I remember following on the band's site and there were questions about when and if the CDs would be offered as a standalone ... Short answer: Yes, and in May of 2019 I picked up the set, and when it arrived it was a good day. The box set included a bunch of stuff like Live in Tokyo 1980 as well as XX and Old is New which were all included in the box set. Of course I now have serious buyers remorse in not getting the records as I'd love to have Kingdom of Desire and Tambu on vinyl ... even though I have the original CD releases and the remastered CDs. I was scrolling on line and saw Old is New on sale and snapped it up. Which is sort o...

After selling over 4 million copies of Toto IV the band set about crafting a worthy follow up. It took a while and in the process Bobby Kimball exited the band and was replaced by Fergie Frederiksen. Fergie sounded nothing like Bobby which I thought was a good thing ... others not so much. As this is my bloggity thing, I get to say what I want, and yes it was a good thing. Heck, I'd go and pick up So Fired Up by LeRoux just because Fergie sang lead - oddly enough with LeRoux his time as lead vocalist would be a one and done as the band would break up leaving Fergie looking for work ... which he found with Toto ... for one album, and then Fergie was looking for work. I'm getting ahead of myself. I know that music is practically disposable now, but dang it this whole vinyl thing pretty much forces an active experience which I really find enjoyable. Weird how often it never used to. I'd put on an album and let it play while I fiddle farted around ... if it wasn't for the ...

Pablo Cruise as a band name always confused me. Like Pink Floyd, and to a lesser extent (way, more lesser) Daniel Amos suffered from having fans ask "Which one is Pink?" Somewhere in my early teenage brain I figured Pablo Cruise was a guy who looked like a cross between Sergio Aragones and "Gold Hat" from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre exclaiming he didn't need no stinkin' badges. He would be wearing a black charro outfit singing " Guantanamera" and between sets would be passing out drinks with little umbrellas, s o you can imagine where I was trying to fit them musically. Of course with the passage of time I've heard a couple of their bigger hits like "Whatcha Gonna Do?" and "Love will Find a Way" and given my penchant for 70s cheese I was always kind of curious about the band. As fate would have it I managed to find A Place in the Sun and Worlds Away in the unloved section of one of my favourite record stores. While t...