Old Enough to Forget

Boy howdy, this was more than a bit surprising - in a good way. Not long ago I'd found The Light of Smiles , Gary's follow up to The Dream Weaver , and while I enjoyed the album it really didn't have legs or stick with me after I'd put it back on the shelf. That's not a shot, I listen to a lot of stuff that frankly doesn't have a lot of object permanence - I attribute this more to me than the music. I'm old now, and I don't process things the same way. I either like it, or I don't. Sometimes I'll really like it, and sometimes things stick. When I first saw the cover of Headin' Home when I was poking around Gary's discography I was pretty dismissive. I mean really, who needed to see a deeply tanned and permed Gary sitting bare chested (okay not bare, it was covered in curly hair) and man spreading his red pants. Thankfully the image was cropped. So yeah, there wasn't a lot of appeal. I already knew there weren't any hits here, and...

There are good albums, and then there's Toto IV. A near perfect rock album that had it all. Big guitars, the pounding drums, great vocals, and most importantly amazing songs. The band always had all of the ingredients at their disposal but the perfect combination had eluded the band when it came to pulling off an album's worth of unparalleled excellence. Over the years I've purchased this album four times. First when it came out, and then on CD, and then when they released the All In Box set a few years ago (so good), and then again just recently when I found the record and felt it should come home with me. I bought this album before I'd heard any of the songs on the radio. Apparently "Rosanna" came out as a teaser a month or so before the album dropped and I may have heard it, but honestly I don't remember. What I do remember is hearing "Afraid of Love" blaring on the stereo at one of the record stores in the mall, and it was around the break...

It's hard to imagine now, but this movie was sort of a biggish deal. Following The Breakfast Club a few months later St. Elmo's Fire hit the threatres. The cast was a hodgepodge of members of the so called Brat Pack, and both movies were produced by a guy named Ned Tanen who was behind some pretty impressive movies. The Breakfast Club is a coming of age classic now, whereas St. Elmo's Fire is mostly a forgotten misfire that was surprisingly popular when it was released. I'll admit that I took my girlfriend at the time to see it. It was a bit weird seeing many of the kids who a few months earlier were in detention playing a more age appropriate role. In many ways it was a foreshadowing of Friends , except this wasn't funny or all that good. However, there was the soundtrack. David Foster was all over this, and it's a sort of mixed bag of horseshoes. I happen to like David Foster, but there are times his style of music, keyboard sound choices, and layers of syru...

If there was an artist I actively despised as a kid it was Leo Sayer. "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" was just plain stupid, and that horrific Frankie Valli falsetto was too much. I always thought he looked liked a diminutive version of Robin William's as Mork flying through the air. Which just shows how time blurs things, as Mork and Mindy wouldn't debut for another two years or so after this album came out ... but I remember the cover, and the blurring of time certainly hasn't helped.  I always thought of Leo Sayer as being huge in the disco era, and that songs like the aforementioned dancing song and the ballad "When I Need You" were later than this ... apparently I was wrong. Funny that. I have memories of Leo Sayer on those late night music shows, and I guess it just all sort of ran together. Anyway, back to my active dislike of all things Leo Sayer. It really wasn't based on anything other than he wasn't rock, and I didn't like how he s...

Turn Back is the forgotten gem in Toto's catalogue. It is probably my favourite album by the band. Oh, I have favourite songs from most of their albums - although I never did manage to gack down the four songs Jean-Michel Byron sang on their Past to Present collection. I did try ... man, I really tried - hence the most thing. At the time I had no idea how pivotal an album this would end up being despite being shoved into a corner by most people. After Hydra , an album I really liked, I was pretty stoked when a new album would drop. Half the fun would be reading the reviews that were often clipped and filed with the records. I have no idea why one of the stores I went to as a kid did this - not exactly a great selling feature but I didn't care. I figured the more hate the better the album. Back in 1980 when Journey dropped Discovery , Geoff Workman was the co-producer, and I happened to really like that album. Didn't hurt at all that Caddy Shack featured "Anyway You W...

I meant to pull out my copy of Hot Shots , but as I had recently found a couple of Trooper albums I'd not heard (which outside of their greatest hits album was pretty much everything in their catalogue) I figured why not put on something that was new to me.  It was either Money Talks , or Flying Colors , as there were a couple of songs I remembered from Flying Colors , so Flying Colors it was. Aren't you glad you get to get a little peek into my decision making process? I've not heard the album so it's the deeper tracks here I'm curious about, particularly the Frank Ludwig compositions. Frank had the unenviable position of being a decent writer and a good singer in a band where Ra was a great singer, and the songwriting team of Ra McGuire and Brian Smith were the backbone of the band. This I'm sure was a pretty sore spot, and it's not especially helpful or sporting for me to sit here and stir up the embers of what is now pretty ancient history. When Frank...

My first exposure to The Tubes came with "Talk to Ya Later" a song so good even Gil Fisher, The Fishin' Musician had them up to Scuttlebut Lodge to play it for his television viewing audience. It was at that moment I realized The Tubes weren't like most other bands as they opted to play "Sushi Girl" and not the big hit - that to me was cool. The Completion Backward Principle was the band's first release on Capitol, and was produced by David Foster, who wasn't yet known as the king of schmaltz, also co-wrote some of the best songs on the album. Those being "Talk to Ya Later" and the incredible "Don't Want to Wait Anymore" a song so good it's mind boggling that it was a massive hit - Bill Spooner took lead vocals on that one, and absolutely killed it - no small feat as I consider Fee Waybill one of rock's greatest vocalists. No, I'm not kidding. This was where I started with the band, so like any starting point i...

Toto, the band people love to shit on. For me, I've been a fan since first hearing "Hold the Line" and I make no apologies for loving these guys. Heck I remember when Hydra was released and I eagerly went to the record store to get it. The store used to copy reviews and place them with albums as a sales tool. I guess clipping out a scathing review and taping it to the record seemed like a good idea to someone. Anyways, I getting ahead of myself. I can't remember if this is the same "review" but it's pretty close in tone: Max Bell , New Musical Express , 17 March 1979 WILL THESE people never learn? In the time-honoured Hollywood tradition of foisting ambitious super-sessioners upon that large portion of the American public bereft of a brain, taste or the ability to decide for itself comes Toto, a six piece composed of former Boz Scaggs and Steely Dan (you know the rest) side men. Admittedly I'm not...