Old Enough to Forget

Loverboy dropped their sophomore album in the fall of 1981 and cemented their place among Canadian rock royalty. (It's a small club, but a club nonetheless.) The first two songs on their debut are classics, but for years I didn't really connect with the rest of that album. It felt like mostly filler back then - and honestly, it still does, but I'm more forgiving now. However, the follow-up, Get Lucky , was something altogether different. They delivered a masterclass in pop/rock that would polarize kids all over the country into two camps: "This rocks!" / "This sucks!" This was decades before Nickelback would take over the mantle of most divisive band in the land. I will publicly apologize to my old dear friend Steve Little, who loved "Gangs in the Streets." Just after the album came out, a bunch of us were hanging out, and Steve had his little cassette player and seemed to be playing this song and Gary Numan's "Cars" over and over...

Many years ago I recall hearing a guy on the radio describe the song "Worlds Away" as Vancouver's unofficial anthem. A bit of a stretch, but my goodness, it is an awesome song. Back in 1982 the trio of Drew Arnott, Darryl Kromm and Paul Iverson (an amazing guitar tech and luthier, by the way) released their debut album Worlds Away. I remember hearing "She Controls Me" and thinking that was a really cool song. At the time I didn't get the album, but with a name like Strange Advance they were pretty memorable, and I would buy everything they ever released in real time - except that first album. Unlike Pokemon, you really can't catch 'em all - but I did catch 'em all, including a long play for "Love Games" that I have since lost to the ravages of time and poor drainage in the crawlspace. In 1985, when Strange Advance released 2WO , where once there were three, it was now just Drew and Darryl (they did add a whole band, including a real l...

1978 was probably one of the more formative years for me musically. At the time I didn't really think much about it, but looking back, holy cow and boy howdy, it was a banner year. It was the year "Baker Street" made the saxophone sexy, and the guitar solo in that song still makes me smile. It was also the year my cousin introduced me to Ted Nugent through his incendiary Double Live Gonzo and Prism's sophomore album, See Forever Eyes . The number of bands I waited patiently to hear on the radio or at a friend's house was just mind-boggling. I started making a list of the bands and songs I could hardly wait to hear, but it got so long that it just looked silly. It's a great list. I didn't have much in the way of vinyl, so it was up to friends and spotty AM radio to supply my favourite songs. One of the coolest songs from my youth was "Action." And no, it wasn't by The Sweet (although that's an awesome song, and I did actually own the 45 a...