Old Enough to Forget

Before cell phones the big advance in telecommunications was the cordless telephone ... before that he who had the longest coiled cord ruled the world. If you could make it from the kitchen to an adjoining room you were just showing off. The long red cord is all over the album cover, and the insert. Certainly Chris was flexing. Here we have Chris De Burgh's 1984 follow up to his rather good 1982 album The Getaway , and this was so good. Man on the Line was again produced by Rupert Hine who also provided keyboards and the orchestral arrangements. I also assume he programmed the drums for most of the album. Phil Palmer was again present on guitar, and oh my stars and garters he was ON FIRE throughout the album. The guitar solo on "High on Emotion" is jaw dropping. Speaking of the drums, this is how they should have sounded on The Getaway , oh I'm  not trying to do Steve Negus dirty, the man is a premier pounder but his drums sound absolutely horrid on that album - which...

When I was in high school a friend of mine had Spanish Train And Other Stories , and I remember being enthralled by the title track. I don't recall anything else. When videos were a thing in '83 I remember seeing "Don't Pay The Ferryman" and I was hooked. The album would be a big deal here in Canada where it sold over 100,000 copies. Chris De Burgh was likeable. I'll be the first to admit that I never really thought much of the rest of the album at the time. It was decent but I was really hoping for an album full of rockers. Of course I should have known better, but hey I was still a teenager. It didn't matter though - that one song was a killer, and the rest of the album was pleasant enough and I'd play it once in a while. After all, I was a fan of Al Stewart so it wasn't like I didn't listen to what could be loosely categorized as "adult contemporary" music. Rupert Hine produced this one, and he'd been working with SAGA around t...

The late Rupert Hine was a producer of the highest order who made incredible albums with SAGA, The Fixx, Howard Jones and Eight Seconds to name just a few. I knew he had a solo career that was a bit sporadic, but never heard any of his stuff. He released a trio of albums in the '80s. Starting with this one,  Immunity in '81 then he would drop another in '82 and finally one more in '83 and then he'd take over a decade before releasing his last solo album in 1994. I bought this as a curiosity, and really had no idea what to expect. Sometimes a producers fingerprints are unmistakable and are every where regardless of the act they're working with. Yeah, I'm thinking of David Foster ... although I do have to say The Tubes were the exception to the rule ... but you know what I mean. Rupert Hine's work with other artists was transparent. His style seemed to provide focus to the band he was producing, and he brought out their best work.  Immunity is an odd work....

This was mostly written and in my queue to post when I found out that Tina Turner passed away May 24, 2023. She was 83. Hard to imagine that almost forty years had passed since Private Dancer was released. It's always fun to revisit albums that you thought you disliked. I suppose the backlash was inevitable as "What's Love Got to Do With It" was pretty ubiquitous on MuchMusic and the radio for what seemed to be forever. I managed to keep up my dismissive airs for a long time, and even though I really liked "Better Be Good to Me" featuring the stellar guitar work of The Fixx's Jamie West-Orem and backing vocals of Cy Curnin. I stubbornly held my ground.  It didn't help that everyone was trying to make a then ancient in pop years Tina Turner who was all of forty five or six when this came out a sex symbol. "Look at those legs!"  This was right up there with trying to ogle the church organist. I'm looking through the album jacket and lin...

By 1986 The Fixx had been on a creative run that would be the envy of a lot of bands. Like a lot of people I jumped on the bandwagon when the band released what is arguably their most well known album Reach the Beach . This was just a stating point, and in short order I had gone and picked up their debut, and then kept up with the band through 1991's Ink . The best song the band ever did was the long version of "Deeper and Deeper" and while it was available on the Streets of Fire Soundtrack it was a much shorter and far less satisfying version. It should have been in Phantoms on its entirety - sigh. By the time Walkabout came out the musical landscape was all over the place. It truly was the best of times, the sheer number of classic songs and albums from this year is sort of mind boggling. It's against this backdrop The Fixx joined the fray. I remember the first time I heard "Secret Separation" and was totally blown away. It was, and still is amazing. If t...

I always meant to pick this up, mainly because "Kiss You (When it's Dangerous)" was so good. For whatever reason, most likely budget - I never bought it. Oddly none of the myriad of '80s anthologies I've collected over the years has the song on it. It sort of faded into obscurity as far as I was concerned. Then  a while back it popped into my mind, I likely heard it on the radio - I don't think it matters, but I jotted it down on my little pad of paper where I have my list of wants. Right next to Riggs, Alpha Band, and Randall Waller I wrote down Eight Seconds, and what I thought was the album title When Seconds Count . You'd think carrying around the internet in my pocket I'd have just looked it up - nope. When Seconds Count was by Survivor, if you're wondering. Eventually I did find it, and the album was titled Almacantar , and this time I did use the internet in my pocket to figure out what the title meant. Well, to save you time it's a sta...