Old Enough to Forget

Tim Finn, founding father of Split Enz, occasional member of Crowded House and half of The Finn Brothers with little brother Neil and a fairly odd but incredibly cool album by ALT (with Andy White and Liam O Maonlai) back in '95. It's weird, not a bad weird, just weird that I came to Tim Finn's solo work backassward through his association with little brother Neil. Of course I knew of Split Enz, and dang it I loved "Shark Attack" and thought "Six Months in a Leaky Boat" were awesome, but on balance I liked Neil's songs better. Those first two Crowded House records only cemented that opinion for me. When Neil and Tim turned what was to be a Finn Brothers record into Woodface I was still drawn to Neil, but I had to admit Tim was pretty cool ... maybe I was missing out. Me being me, which is to say a borderline compulsive, I started looking for Tim's solo work. I found his debut from '83 which was okay, and I kept going and going. Of his solo wo...

Released in '85 this was an album that marked the end of Nick's initial run. Between 1977 and 1981 he dropped an album a year and was signed with Chrysalis and then Casablanca Records before taking a four year break and resurfacing with this self titled effort on RCA. Gone was his longtime writing partner and guitarist James McCulloch. All that remained was his bass player Eric Nelson who was still holding down the bottom end. Nick did pull together some stellar musicians, from Mr. Mister's Pat Mastelotto on drums, to Mitchell Fromm (I wonder if this was a typo? I'm sure this is Mitchell Froom) on keyboards. The two guitar players, Jeff Silverman and Steve (Psycho) Sykes are pretty solid and there are some tasty licks to be heard. I remember CFOX playing a track from this album ... once, and my memory is really fuzzy on this. I keep confusing a memory of them playing Giuffria's "Call To The Heart" with whatever song they played by Nick Gilder. The common t...