Old Enough to Forget

This was the shit when I was a kid. The album was legendary, and the two killers "Ballroom Blitz" and "Fox on the Run" were so good they were essentially career defining. I could stop right now and that would be enough. Mic drop and walk off.  ... I'm back.  I wanted to just jot down a few things because it's sort of my thing. It may be worth it. Maybe not, you never know ... this isn't a cheese shop, I could be deliberately wasting your time. Regardless, pull up a chair, or at least watch where you're walking if you're on your phone. I have vague memories of the cool kids talking about the song "A.C.D.C." and "Sweet F.A." and then giggle knowingly. I didn't have the album and I never heard them so I wasn't in on the joke. I knew what the album looked like. I would see it when I would browse through records dreaming about what I'd like to buy. Even then it was a long list ... it seemed long to me at the time. That ...

As a kid "Ballroom Blitz" was one of the coolest songs I'd ever heard, followed closely by "Fox on the Run." Those two songs more or less cemented Sweet's reputation for me. In the '80s I finally bought Desolation Boulevard and that more or less scratched that itch. Then in the early '90s I picked up their best of CD and got "Action" and the radio edit of "Love is Like Oxygen" and as a bonus "Little Willy" a song I knew but honestly never associated with The Sweet, or simply Sweet. During my formative years though it was the 45 of  "Action" that rocked my world. I was never a big fan of 45s and only had a few as I hated having to change the record after one song. However, as mix tape fodder they were awesome, except I didn't have the ability to make mix tapes until I was in my late teens. What does all this meanderambling have to do with anything? Not much, it's just me sitting here while listening to ...

Sweet was always a weird band for me to categorize, were they hard rock, were they glam, were they just a Chinnichap bubble gum act? I mean these were the guys who rocked my world as a kid with "Ballroom Blitz" and melted my face with "Fox on the Run" both from the North American version of Desolation Boulevard on Capitol Records. Much later I heard "Little Willy" and couldn't reconcile that this was the same band. It was written by Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn names I'd later associate with an awful lot of really questionable glam tinged rock, and some face melting goodness. They were the kings of bubble gum glam but they were so much more than that. However, let's be honest "Little Willy" is just a head scratcher, but "Ballroom Blitz" was sheer wonderfulness, and the stuff with Suzi Quatro was wicked. To me, they were a hard rock act, I had no idea what glam was a kid. Music was either good or it wasn't. By 1976 the la...