Old Enough to Forget

I can't say this was an album I'd heard when I was a kid. To be fair I was exposed to a lot of really cool music through my cousins Dean and Jeff and my Aunt Jeanne and Uncle Lloyd. Heck I remember Jeff having a Wayne Newton record and really liked "Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast" which I am not making fun of at all. I'm just using that to show that despite my penchant for B.T.O. and Brownsville Station's "Smokin' in the Boys Room" I was exposed to a pretty wide range of music. I mean my favourite record in my dad's collection was the clear red vinyl version of South Pacific . Heck, I played my Aunt's 45 of "Hitchin a Ride" by Vanity Fair about a hundred times. Okay, I've forgotten what I was doing.  Right, Sergio Mendes. Yeah, as a kid, never heard of him. As an adult, well that's another thing. I went through a phase where I got a lot of Latin Jazz, and his 1966 album The Swinger from Rio (that was apparently record...

Michael Sembello is probably best known as the dude who performed "Maniac" and absolutely nailed the guitar solo. It's a near perfect pop song and a song I always really liked. A lot. I always wanted to get the song, but I didn't want to get the Flashdance soundtrack, because I didn't want to. It was too much like having to listen to the kids from Fame all over again, and I know Irene Cara was a fine vocalist and all that but I never really liked her stuff, and I'm sure the passage of time has softened the edges off my opinion, but I'm sticking to my guns. I do remember almost getting this album. The cover had two oiled up dudes levitating off the ground while the guy in the white diaper cupped the other little dude's junk. It was a weird cover and Michael Sembello with his half black, half white face looked like a reject from the Star Trek episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" was sitting reading an old Godzilla comic. It was a little ...