Old Enough to Forget

The little sticker on the shrinkwrap says, "You may remember David Baerwald from David & David's Boomtown ..." Yeah, I remembered David Baerwald. Back in 1986 Boomtown was an album with moments of sheer brilliance. The whole album may not have been as top shelf as the first few tracks, but that didn't matter - it is as an excellent album. I waited for a follow-up ... and waited, and then in 1990 it was a solo David Baerwald who dropped Bedtime Stories. I snapped it up. "All For You" the opening cut is still my favourite song on the album. It was mesmerizing. I'm not sure if the song got any airplay, it may have, but that may have been wishful thinking on my part as it was on a lot of mix tapes at the time and I heard it a lot in the car. The CD had a great booklet with all of the musician credits and lyrics. Oddly when I found a sealed copy of the record (a great score), it just had a plain paper insert and the picture of David walking with his dogs...

I heard "Mutual Surrender (What a Wonderful World)" on the radio - once. It was a nifty track that appealed to me enough to look for the album. I bought the CD and the other song I liked that made it onto a few mixes was "Dying to be Free" an oddly haunting track that really appealed to me. A year later the band was seemingly everywhere with their infectious "I Don't Mind at All" a song barely three minutes long that sounded like nothing else the band had recorded. To many it was the biggest bait and switch since Coke had tried to re-brand back in 1985. Okay maybe not that big, but I had a friend who bought the album thinking he was getting the new Beatles and declared it was a huge steamy pile of poop, aside from one great song. I don't have Yoyo on vinyl (I have it on CD), but I did recently find a sealed copy of their debut, and I know I already have it on CD and I'm not supposed to be doubling up, but come on, a sealed copy? It was cheap to...