Old Enough to Forget

I never liked Lionel Richie, and honestly never really gave two shits about the Commodores. I didn't want to count how many times she was a lady. When Lionel fancied himself the third wheel to the Prince / Michael Jackson milking stool I had to suffer through Can't Slow Down  when I was at my girlfriends house. She also loved the Cats Soundtrack too ... ah the blush of a first love. I will say though that I did love Louie Shelton's guitar solo on "Hello" you gotta give credit where credit is due. It was a weird thing when I found myself strangely enamoured with "Nightshift." I found the album cheap back in the day and I think I played it once before filing it away. I did pull the title track off for a few mix tapes but I never really gave the album a chance. I listened once and passed judgment and that was that. During my recent trip to Krazy Bob's to flip through his discount bins I found several copies of Nightshift , and each time I saw a copy I ...

After a string of somewhat lacklustre albums Heart reinvented themselves as mainstream rockers, got picked up by Capitol Records and dropped one of their biggest albums ever in 1985. The band employed outside writers on over half of the tracks including the rejected Toronto track "What About Love" that became the band's first big hit in years, and after that the hits kept coming  "These Dreams" which would go all the way to number one, along with "Never" and "Nothin' at All", and "If Looks Could Kill" which was pretty cool. I wonder how much of this was right place, right time ... whatever the case Heart was back, and the album would sell over 600,000 in Canada, and over 5,000,000 in the States. Not bad considering their previous two records hadn't gone gold, and the band seemed to be done. Heart is one of those bands I never really gave much though to. When I was a kid I absolutely loved "Barracuda" and "Magi...

Happy Valentine's Day. "Love Stinks" was probably the first time I remember hearing The J. Geils Band Band. There was a video I saw once that was so goofy I wasn't sure how to process what I was seeing - was it terrible or awesome? It.Was.Awesome. I was hanging out at buddies house for the weekend around the time the album came out and Gerry says, "Hey check this out." He plays "No Anchovies, Please" and I'm enthralled. Over the last forty plus years, I hadn't heard that song until I put the record for the first time in the basement. But, I'm getting ahead of myself ... I need a preamblemeanderamble first. The J. Geils Band broke wide open to the masses after a long career as a party band who managed to avoid their big break as they built up their audience - which honestly was unbeknownst to me at the time. Nor did I know that Love Stinks was their tenth album, and they were going to peak a year later with Freeze Frame , and then quiet...