Old Enough to Forget

Bad Company released Straight Shooter in 1975. The album contained eight songs, and the album's two singles "Good Lovin' Gone Bad" and ""Feel Like Makin' Love" have become classic rock classics. "Shooting Star" has gone on to be an FM standard.  I've always enjoyed Bad Company, and Paul Rodgers is often cited as the penultimate rock singer. It's interesting that renowned critic Robert Christgau who had written for The Village Voice when reviewing Straight Shooter stated that Paul Rodgers wasn't suited for hard rock as he didn't have a strong voice.* I'm not embarrassed but it's sort of telling that the era I started listening to the band was their late '80s and early '90s stuff featuring Brian Howe that gave Bad Company their gold and platinum second act. I know that time has been a little less than kind to this era of Bad Company at the time they were holding their own with the new kids and kicking ass. He...

Back in '85 Robert Plant was staging a killer second act, and it must have felt like a kick in the nuts to Jimmy Page, the genius producer, player and arranger from all those classic Led Zeppelin albums, that he was relegated to the remainder bin. Death Wish II hardly counts as a career jump start. Surely there as a way to become a force to be reckoned with, or at least be relevant. First he needed to pull together a band. Paul Rodgers, a singer who was practically the blueprint for how to be a rock vocalist apparently needed a job. Chris Slade a drummer who had played with everyone from Tom Jones to Manfred Mann signed on. Rounding out the band was new kid Tony Franklin on bass who was literally just a kid when the other guys were out slogging it out. There was some really awesome music coming out in '85 and then there were some odd ducks. The Firm was one of those weird anomalies that looked like a duck, quacked like a duck and two of the members used to be on Swan Song rec...