Old Enough to Forget

When I was a kid for a long time (kid time) my record collection was one album - Dynamite . Then it doubled when I bought Canadian Mint . Of course my memory is a tad flawed, but it wasn't until '75 I bought Four Wheel Drive as my first real album and I had those K-tel records for what seemed like forever. Dynamite and Canadian Mint were indelible records. For a generation who grew up on these weirdly edited hits and oddly sequenced collections we owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Philip Kives who managed to make Winnipeg Manitoba the centre of the musical universe ... for a little while.  I was feeling a tad nostalgic the other day and decided to see if I could find my musical Rosetta Stone records. Apparently there are others like me, and when I asked about them Bob pointed me to a section that was set aside for K-tel compilations.  Oooh. While it wasn't a huge section it did yield not one, but two very nice copies of Dynamite at two very different price points ... and I ...

Funny I thought I'd written about Pat Benatar before ... apparently not. Well, let's make up for lost time and start with her 1984 album Tropico . This was a gear change and an attempt to sort of stay ahead of the curve. Now to be fair, despite always liking some of the songs I heard on the radio - especially those early hits, I'd never picked anything up by her. Over the last couple of years I've found most of her early efforts, and for the most part they were good albums. It was the combination of Pat's vocals, and Neil's music that really worked - even when it was a cover, like "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" written by Eddie Schwartz. Considering the treadmill the band was on, cranking out an album a year like sausages from 1979 to 1985 and the consistency of the band's output is nothing short of spectacular. Seriously. By 1984 the rock and roll of the late '70s was moving toward big hair, and the early new wave had already crashed to the beac...

Look at that, six months in, and I'm keeping up with my once a month schedule of dropping five snapshots of albums I've found. This time around it's another mixed bag of goodies, these are all new to me, which is generally a lot of fun. I finally picked up Stan Meissner's debut, and it was a nice score. I also found more Edgar Winter albums, and continue to go down the Rick Derringer rabbit hole - the man was a monster player and while not underrated he was certainly under appreciated by the masses. Probably my favourite album this time out, was finally connecting with Ian Thomas' debut album from 1973 what an incredible album. Yeah, full props to "Painted Ladies" and the drama about the hit that never was, but there is so much more to this Canadian icon. I worry that he will be nothing more than a footnote as time passes as the majority of his work remains out of print and only to be found my looking for old vinyl. Criminal, I say. Shame . shame - shame. ...

Eddie Schwartz to me will always be the guy who just killed it, absolutely crushed it with "Special Girl" a song that still makes the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up. The band America also released a version of the song in 1984 and while it's musically a pretty close cover, the vocals don't get anywhere close to conveying the emotional gut punch Eddie delivers. Meat Loaf would also cover the song on his 1986 album Blind Before I Stop , and honestly it's not bad but again, seemed to miss the mark. This was also the album where Meat Loaf butchered Billy Rankin's "Burning Down" which was a weird cover that completely missed the point of the original. I'm actually getting a bit ahead of myself, and while "Special Girl" is the song I most closely associate with Mr. Schwartz, it was part of an album that really deserved more recognition than it received. I do remember hearing "Strike" on the radio a couple of times. ...

Here we are, five months in and holding steady. I'm not sure this is worth continuing, but for me these little snack size tidbits are perfect when I don't have a lot to say, but there was something worth jotting down. Whether it was worth your time or not is a separate issue, and I make no guarantees this will be a worthwhile. For all you know, this is a cheese shop, or I could just be deliberately wasting your time, and I don't have any cheese. Five for Fighting No.5 Dave Loggins - Apprentice (In a Musical Workshop) (1974) Rick Derringer - Sweet Evil (1977)  Cliff Richard - I'm Nearly Famous (1976) Little River Band - First Under the Wire (1979) Harlequin - Harlequin (1984) Dave Loggins - Apprentice (In a Musical Workshop) (1974) I still find it strange looking at cover pictures from the early '70s, everyone looked so wise and world weary - and old. Looking at the stylized photo of Dave Loggins on the cover you'd think you were looking at an elder statesman...

As a kid "Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo" was everything a rock and roll song needed to be. It was big, it was infectious and it was awesome, it had a lot of guitar. For many years this was all I needed to know about Rick Derringer. Then in the '80s I started seeing his name show up in weird places. Most notably "Weird" Al records. Of course being a wrestling fan back in the day when the curtain hadn't been pulled back to reveal the true nature of the business, I watched in awe as Hulk Hogan entered the ring to Rick Derringer's "Real American" and I knew this was Rick Derringer because they were schilling Rocking Wrestling , or The Wrestling Album , I don't know what it was called, and looking it up mid sentence just seems like a lot of effort. I did know that Rick was involved and I found that weird, and cool at the same time. Recently as I've been diving into a lot of records Rick's name kept popping up all over the place, from Bonnie ...

1972 was a good year for Mister Winter. In the spring he released Roadwork (which I really liked) and then that fall he'd release They Only Come out at Night with his new band The Edgar Winter Group. The group would feature a young Dan Hartman on vocals, bass, and guitar and a lot of other stuff (he was a wunderkind, his picture looks like it a yearbook photo), and Ronnie Montrose on guitar - a year later Ronnie would leave and start his own band - but it was here that Ronnie honed his rock chops. I'll be honest I got this for two tracks "Free Ride" and "Frankenstein" and if the other eight tracks blow chunks I'd still feel like I got my monies worth. Then again, I found this in the dollar bin - it was a risk as who knows what condition this thing would turn out to be in. Turns out that with a little spit and polish the record looked pretty good. The record leads off with "Hangin' Around" and it's a decent song, and as the first side...

I picked this up in the dollar bin a couple of months ago, and after some TLC the vinyl cleaned up surprisingly well, I mean really well. The gatefold was in decent shape, but if there were any liner notes they were lost to time. This was an album that intrigued me, and the song I most excited to listen to was "Rock & Roll, Hoochie Koo" as I was curious to hear how different this was from the version I was most familiar with - that being Rick Derringer's 1973 killer from his solo debut album All American Boy. Oddly enough only a few months after Roadwork was released in 1972 The Edgar Winter Group would release They Only Come Out at Night and the rest as they say is history, as that album would yield two of his biggest hits in "Frankenstein" and "Free Ride" both of which would be forever cemented in the foundations of what would become classic rock.  However, this isn't about that album, this about their double live album Roadwork . I was c...

Oh, look what the dollar bin puked up. Bonnie Tyler's 1983 Jim Steinman produced and directed mega over the top opus Faster Than The Speed Of Night . I brought the album home which was in surprisingly good shape, and even the liner was decent. This would be fun. Everything about this release screamed cheese, especially the cover. I'm not sure if it was a deliberate nod to Steve Martin, but it sure does look like she's got an arrow through her head. Was she letting us know she was a wild and crazy guy? Of course you'd have had to live under a rock not to have heard "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and I will admit I like the song. Heck after almost forty years the song is part of the fabric of pop culture. Still, I was expecting very little from the rest of the album and was prepared for a lot of bloated filler. The first cut is a cover song, an interesting (in a good way) interpretation of John Fogerty's "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?" If you're g...