Old Enough to Forget

Gary Wright followed up his double platinum release The Dreamweaver in 1977 with The Light of Smiles . It must have been a surprise and a bit of a disappointment when the album didn't perform as well as hoped. It did chart as high as 23 on the Billboard top LP and Tape chart according to what I read on the wiki, but it must have been more of a spike than anything. As the album didn't seem to attain any certifications that I could see. Not that it matters, I've said it before, and I'll likely say it again (more than once) most of my favourite albums never really attained any significant commercial success.  I'd seen this album over the years, but that was about it. Gary Wright was Mr. Dreamweaver and I'm sure somehow it was worked into his epitaph when he passed away a couple of years ago. For me I was really curious about this one, lately I've been a sucker for finding albums that follow a big release. For Gary Wright he was flying high after The Dreamweave...

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...

In the fall of '84 two albums dropped that were huge for me. Toto's maligned Isolation , and Don Henley's Building the Perfect Beast . Toto's album will be another day but today I'm sitting in the basement with the music on and pretending in twenty one again and discovering the album for the first time. David and Steve from Toto show up here quite a bit which I always thought was cool. I'd heard "Boys of Summer" on the radio and that song was so good, and the fact I had a Grateful Dead sticker on my car at the time only added to the fun. I always think of the album as being excellent, but honestly the two songs I really associate with the album are the aforementioned "Boys of Summer" and "Sunset Grill" ... I try not to think about "All She Wants to Do Is Dance" because I still think it's a giant musical turd. I still remember pouring over the credits while listening to the album, and "Boys of Summer" drove me...

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...

Pablo Cruise as a band name always confused me. Like Pink Floyd, and to a lesser extent (way, more lesser) Daniel Amos suffered from having fans ask "Which one is Pink?" Somewhere in my early teenage brain I figured Pablo Cruise was a guy who looked like a cross between Sergio Aragones and "Gold Hat" from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre exclaiming he didn't need no stinkin' badges. He would be wearing a black charro outfit singing " Guantanamera" and between sets would be passing out drinks with little umbrellas, s o you can imagine where I was trying to fit them musically. Of course with the passage of time I've heard a couple of their bigger hits like "Whatcha Gonna Do?" and "Love will Find a Way" and given my penchant for 70s cheese I was always kind of curious about the band. As fate would have it I managed to find A Place in the Sun and Worlds Away in the unloved section of one of my favourite record stores. While t...

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...